Defy the Dark

Kate Espey The Sunflower Murders

I got to second base with Zachary Feldman the night Tasha disappeared.

Not that disappeared is the right word to describe what happened to her. The newspapers always used words like abduction and murder, but that’s probably because cut up into tiny pieces and scattered across a sunflower field wouldn’t fit on the page.

Anyway, it was pretty awkward explaining it to the police when they questioned us. No, officer. I don’t know where Natasha was at twelve thirty. I was a little preoccupied with Zach’s tongue.

Wow. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I just told you that. It’s not like you don’t already know what happened. Well, not the kissing Zachary Feldman part, but the other one. The Tasha part. The Sunflower Murders.

I remember the first time I heard that name. I was channel surfing maybe a week after they found the third body, and I paused on a late-night news broadcast from Kansas City. Before, they’d called it a double murder, but I guess three’s a crowd so they decided to tack a name onto it.

It still sounds ridiculous to me. Like a bunch of yellow-rimmed flowers finally drew their seeded heads away from the sun and started killing each other.

Honestly, I think the reason they decided to call them the Sunflower Murders had more to do with Tasha than it did with the six teenage bodies strewn across various sunflower fields in the state of Kansas.

Because, I mean, have you seen Tasha? Not the headline, poor-girl-who-got-murdered-by-a-serial-killer-that’s-still-at-large Natasha Robeck. The real deal—sparkly, green-eyed Tasha with freckles sprinkled across her nose and ginger hair falling into her face. She was like a sunflower personified.

Maybe that’s why the guy chose her. I mean, there were other variables, like how she was alone late at night and there weren’t any houses nearby, and the closest streetlamp hadn’t worked properly in three years so she was shrouded in darkness. But the way I figure it is that he saw her, thought she was beautiful like a flower, tried to pick her, and when she withered and died, he returned her to a field of her sisters.

If Tasha were here, she would say it was so like me to try and poetically rationalize murder. Then she’d raise her eyebrows and widen her eyes while she smiled, just like she did in the empty parking lot of the Kroger back when she was two hours premortem.

“Are you having fun?” she yelled.

“No,” I deadpanned, examining my nails. I’d broken one on a bowling ball earlier, and every time I caught sight of it, my stomach twinged with annoyance.

I could hardly see her in the pale glow of the randomly placed streetlights. I sat underneath one, and occasionally Tasha would push the shopping cart she was riding close enough that it would gleam through the darkness. Otherwise, she was all shadows and hints of red hair.

“You know, I bet it’s still going on,” I said, referencing the dance our high school was having. I looked up in time to see Tasha skid her navy blue Converse across the cracked asphalt. She let go of the shopping cart, and it rolled to a stop a few feet away from us. “If we go now, we could probably make it in time for the last song.”

“Ugh, gross.” Tasha groaned. She stepped halfway into the light, and everything but her face was illuminated. “Why would you want to do something so boring?”

“We’ve been standing in this parking lot for the past hour.”

“Yeah,” Tasha admitted. “But that’s because we’ve been trying to think of a good place to put our ball.”

She pointed at my feet, where a neon-green bowling ball was nestled against our bags. We’d stolen it from the Country Lanes bowling center along with four others and placed them at various locations throughout the night. It was our tradition: a sort of delinquent version of a game that started when Tasha and I went through a rebellious phase in seventh grade. Think regular bowling, only outside with fewer lanes and more thievery. Tasha wanted to make the last one count. I wanted to go to the dance and run into Zach.

It’s hard for me to describe what I found so appealing about Zachary Feldman. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about him—he was average looking and a mildly terrible conversationalist. But he appeared to want me, and when you live in a small town, you lower your standards and take what you can get.

There was always that part of my brain that wondered if he was lowering his standards for me, too—if we were caught in some sort of limbo made up of ignored aspirations. But that part of my brain was easy to overlook when I was too worried about how many winky faces I could send in one text message before it became overkill.

“We could leave it here,” I suggested, casually checking my phone for a text from Zach. Nothing. “In penance for the hour of our lives wasted in this godforsaken parking lot.”

“How can you call it godforsaken?” Tasha exclaimed. “This place is magical! It’s full of so much opportunity. We could meet time travelers or find a cursed necklace.”

“Why would we want to find a cursed necklace? Wouldn’t it kill us?”

“I can’t believe you want to leave,” she said, not acknowledging my comment.

I sighed loud enough for words to be unnecessary. My broken nail found its way to my mouth and I bit it, fighting the urge to check my phone for a text I knew wasn’t there.

Tasha shrugged and mounted a new shopping cart. She twirled out of the light and around the parking lot like no one was watching, and no one was. Not even me, which I regret, because it was one of the last times I got to see Tasha as Tasha and not as a poster child for homicide.

When I imagine it, her red hair is fanned around her head like a halo, and her eyes are closed in a kind of bliss that I’d resent. There was something about Tasha that always made me inherently angry, because I knew I would never get to be her, and it wasn’t fair.

I told that to a police detective once. He asked if Tasha had any enemies. As if Tasha could ever alienate someone enough to make them want to kill her. At that point I was an emotional mess, and I just wanted to help, so I mentioned the natural jealousy that she caused. He looked at me like I’d just confessed.

“I am ninety percent convinced that if we stay here, something brilliant will happen,” Tasha called across the parking lot. She gripped the handle of the shopping cart and leaned back. Even in the dark I saw how close her head was to the ground, and it made me wince. It was a wonder she didn’t fall off and split her skull on the pavement.

It probably would’ve been better if she had.

I abandoned my place under the dingy light and followed her into the dark.

“There’s so much potential in the air,” she whispered, excited. “Can’t you feel it?”

“I can feel my patience wearing thin,” I snapped, but regretted it once I saw the disheartened look on her face. “Come on. It’s time to go.”

“One more ride,” Tasha insisted. She pushed herself toward me. “It’s your turn.”

“I don’t want to ride the stupid shopping cart,” I muttered, annoyed.

“Okay,” she said shakily, biting her lip to hide a frown. “Then I’ll ride. All night if I have to. Until the time travelers come.”

“It’s time to go,” I said, emphasizing the last word. I was so sick of humoring her pointless fantasies.

“How can you know that? Did the weatherman forecast our destinies this morning?”

She was about to smirk. I saw the early formation of it before the streetlights cut out and we were engulfed by darkness. And then I couldn’t see anything at all.

“Looks like the Fates have decided for us,” I said as I pulled my phone out of my pocket. The screen lit up, its weak glow barely cutting through the night. Shadow covered Tasha’s face, but I could still make out her green eyes, wide with anticipation.

“See?” Tasha beamed. “This is something.”

“This is electricity,” I retorted. “Come on, Tasha. Even the streetlights are going to bed. Time to go home.”

“Carmen,” she whined, “quit being such a grouchy face.”

“I am not being a—” I started to object, but I cut myself off when I noticed the headlights. I squinted, and through my eyelashes I surveyed a truck idling toward us. At first I didn’t recognize it and my heart skipped a beat. I fumbled for Tasha’s hand in an attempt to sedate my fear, but she was still annoyed with me and slipped her hand from my grasp. The truck came to a stop and the driver stuck his head out of the window.

It was Zach.

“Hey,” he said, smiling. “I thought that was you. What are you doing?”

“Just hanging out,” I said. I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear in an effort to feel less flustered.

“In a parking lot?” Zach questioned. “It’s, like, almost midnight.”

“Someone felt potential in the air,” I told him. Tasha casually shifted her foot so that it rested on top of mine. She proceeded to put all of her weight on it to let me know that she was pissed. This wasn’t the adventure she’d imagined. “But it is clearly and tragically absent. Can you give us a ride?”

“Hop in,” he said. I walked over to our stuff and picked up my bag. I didn’t touch the bowling ball; I didn’t care what happened to it. I tried to brush past Tasha, but she shot me a look.

“What?” I asked sharply. “It’s late and it’s cold and I want to go home.”

“Whatever,” she sighed. She grabbed the ball and hugged it to her stomach while I got into Zach’s truck. It was a bench seat, so I awkwardly scooted toward the center when Tasha shoved her way in.

He didn’t have to ask where we lived. Our town was too small to even bother. There were about four neighborhoods, and they were all pretty close together. He’d get there eventually through trial and error.

“So,” I said meekly, trying to make the situation feel less awkward. “What were you up to tonight?”

“I went to the dance,” he replied.

Tasha snorted. “How cool.”

“Would you lay off?” I demanded, and turned to look at her. “What more were you expecting, huh? We went bowling. I listened to you ramble about potential in a parking lot for an hour while you waited for something to happen.”

Tasha’s eyes widened in shock. I never attacked her like this. Quietly, she protested, “Nothing was going to happen if we just sat at home or went to a stupid dance.”

“For all you know it could have happened there,” I said.

“That doesn’t mean it would,” she mumbled.

I heard Zach cough and I blushed, embarrassed that I was arguing in front of him. Sighing, I looked away from Tasha and stared straight ahead.

That’s the thing about Tasha that I keep forgetting: she always wanted something to happen. She never said what. It was like she expected life to hand her an adventure and she’d just go on her merry way with no consequences. She grew up thinking she lived in a fairy tale. No one knew it was actually a horror movie.

We drove in silence until Zach pulled up to a stop sign. Before I could comprehend what was going on, Tasha had unbuckled her seat belt and ducked out of the truck.

“What are you doing?” I asked, exasperated.

Tasha stepped up to the window, a grim look on her face. “Carmen,” she said slowly, urgently, “this is important. This is our chance to live and breathe and do something.”

“Do you even know what you want?”

“No.” Tasha stared at me with a glint in her eyes that said she didn’t like what she saw. “But I’m not going to find it here.”

Then she walked into the darkness, away from me. I knew that I was supposed to go after her. That was what best friends did. And we were, I reminded myself. Best friends.

But I hesitated.

Something was ending. Like a story coming to a close and there would be no epilogue, no To Be Continued.

I thought that it was the end of our friendship. I didn’t know it was the end of her life.

Anyway, my hand hovered over the door handle and I was going over the pros and cons of following her when Zach put his hand on my leg. Well, not really my leg. More like my thigh. My really upper thigh, which, now that I think about it, might’ve made it third base instead of second. But whatever. I was still staring out the window, unable to shake that sense of foreboding.

Then Zach pressed his lips to my neck.

Suddenly, trailing after Tasha yet again didn’t seem so appealing. I tilted my head back and let him do his thing, trying to relinquish the knowledge that this would be awkward and involve an unsexy amount of spit.

I caught one last glimpse of Tasha’s fiery red hair before I closed my eyes. She looked so small, all alone in the dark.

The sheriff found us, parked at a stop sign. He knocked on the window and we broke away, mortified. I never made out with Zach again after that. We didn’t even kiss. I mean, nothing kills the mood quite like getting busted. But when it’s by the police, and it’s because your best friend is missing, not even the strongest of hormones can prevail. I stopped talking to him.

And then they found her body. Then I didn’t talk to anyone.

There were five other girls besides Tasha. At first they thought it was a one-time deal, that Tasha was horribly unlucky and nothing like this would ever happen again. But then they started finding more girls, all in sunflower fields, all chopped up into itty-bitty pieces. Then it was a serial killer. Then it was worthy of national news coverage and the FBI.

Then it was the Sunflower Murders.

I went out to Tasha’s field last week. You know, where they found her. It’s bare now. The guy who owned the land got sick of the media coverage and mowed the flowers down. When I found out they were gone, I was angry. Everyone in town seemed so relieved, but I was livid.

Tasha was dead. I understood that. But she was still there, in that sunflower field. If she was going to be dead, then she should at least be somewhere beautiful. Not in an empty field.

So I went.

It was two in the morning, and there was no moon and everything was bathed in black. I thought I’d feel closer to her there, but I was as empty as the field. I tried lying down; the earth was dry and scratched my face. There were no sunflowers. There was no sun.

There was no Tasha.

I stared at the stars and waited for the tears to come. They never did, and when the sun came up, I went home. It was like I hadn’t even gone. So I thought that if I wrote it down, it would help. But it hasn’t. Nothing’s changed.

My best friend was murdered, and I made out with a boy in his truck. My best friend was all alone when someone grabbed her from behind, and I worried about what to do with my hands.

She had unspeakable things done to her that everyone spoke about anyway, on national news, with official-sounding words meant to mask the unpleasantness of it all, and I let Zachary Feldman do things to me that would’ve been whispered about in locker rooms and hallways if everyone weren’t already talking about poor Natasha Robeck. The lost little girl. The angel in heaven.

The first of the six Sunflower Murders.

I’m sorry, Tasha. I’m so, so sorry.