Envy

chapter 31

HAYLEY RYAN AND COLTON JAMES WERE IN HIS BEDROOM—with the door open—as the teenager with a mass of dark hair proudly demonstrated an app that he’d finished programming the night before. Although Colton had been up all night, his energy level was completely unfettered. The app might not be a million-dollar idea, but it was definitely a viable one. He was hoping to make enough to buy a new car. Maybe he could convince his mom that the car she never drove could be traded in too. He was thinking big, and Hayley was suitably impressed.

“It is a simple idea,” he said, “using existing police-scanner information that’s already out there on the Net. I had to link up with a bunch of guys with servers in their basements. That was kind of tough, but I managed. I think they think I’m a lot older than I am.”

Hayley sat on a stool next to Colton’s ginormous computer screen. She inched herself a little closer than necessary to see, but that was only so she could be close to him. He smelled delicious. Like Colton.

“How does it work?” she asked, brushing a stray blond lock from her forehead as she leaned a smidgen closer—close enough to brush against him a little. Sure they were dating, but nothing other than a once-a-week make-out session had transpired between the pair. She wanted to go further—not as far as they could go—but it just didn’t seem like they were there yet. She liked everything about Colton, but she wasn’t convinced she was in love with him.

Hayley wasn’t sure what that kind of love really felt like. She tried to dissect it in the analytical way that she did with a lot of things. She tried to measure her feelings for Colton against the feelings she had for her mother, father, and sister. Of course, those feelings weren’t the same kind of love, and she accepted that she’d know when the time was right and if the feelings she had were of the depth needed for the most intimate experience she could imagine. She’d dreamed about it more than once, especially after they’d kissed the first time behind the twin 50,000-gallon water towers on the edge of Port Gamble’s business district. She could still feel his lips on her from that encounter. All other kisses would be measured by the first one. She was glad Colton had been the boy of her dreams.

Colton flashed a big, white smile. “Users select the location that they want to keep tabs on. It allows them to listen in as the police, fire, and other emergency responders chat in a monotone about people and their messed-up lives. I’m not kidding about messed up. Seriously messed up.”

Hayley was interested. “Like what?”

“Like a guy was in trouble because his wife or girlfriend kicked him out of the house with nothing but his cell phone.”

“So what’s the big deal?” she asked.

“I mean nothing,” he said, laughing. “Dude was butt naked.”

Hayley laughed too. “Okay, that is messed up.”

Colton’s mom, Shania, appeared in the doorway. She was a pretty woman with dark hair like her son and the S’Klallam Indian lineage that she could trace back to the days before Port Gamble was known as Memalucet. Though she seldom left the house, she never failed to dress up for the day as if she was going to the office or even a casual lunch out. Her clothes were almost all in earth tones. The only concession to glitz was the entwined ropes of liquid silver that wrapped around her neck. Colton confided to Hayley it was to hide a jagged scar, something his mom never, ever talked about.

“Colton?” she asked, her dark eyes heavy with concern. “Katelyn’s mom is here. She wants to talk to you.”

Hayley’s mind stumbled a little on what Shania James just said. It was true that Sandra Berkley was Katelyn’s mom, but, she wondered, if there was no daughter anymore, was she still a mom?

Colton and Hayley followed his mother down the hallway.

Shania lasered her eyes on her son and in mime-fashion mouthed the words: “She’s been drinking.”

Duh.

Sandra was a disheveled mess plunked down on the sofa in the front room. Her hair needed brushing, maybe even washing. She wore skinny jeans and a black cardigan sweater. On her feet were slippers, not shoes.

Yet it was what was sitting in her lap, gripped tightly by her chewedto-the-nub fingertips, that commanded Hayley’s full attention.

Katelyn’s laptop.

“Hi, Mrs. Berkley,” Colton said.

“Hi,” Hayley echoed.

Sandra glanced up at the teenagers, then back down at the laptop. She locked eyes with Hayley briefly.

Hayley recalled the incident in Katelyn’s bedroom. She felt uneasy.

“Hayley?” Sandra asked, never sure which girl it was and in that moment not really caring. “Colton. I’m sorry, Colton,” she said, her voice soft and a little unsteady. “I know this will sound stupid.”

The teakettle whistled from the kitchen.

Shania looked at Sandra with the compassionate eyes of someone who’d seen her own share of pain.

“Sugar and milk, if I remember?” Shania asked, turning to leave her son and his girlfriend alone with the mess of a woman who’d come calling.

“Yes,” Sandra said, managing something of a smile.

That Shania recalled how Sandra liked her tea was a reminder of how they’d been close once, when their children were babies, and before the incident at the Safeway.

Shania left the room and Sandra held up the laptop.

“Colton, I want to know what’s inside this thing,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked, though he knew the answer. Her daughter was dead and she wanted to know more about the child that she’d lost. Most parents would probably do the same thing.

“I don’t think I could do that,” he said. “It seems kind of private.”

“I don’t want you to read what’s in her laptop. I want to do that. I want to know everything I can, but I don’t …” She trailed off, trying her best not to cry.

Her obvious pain made Colton feel uncomfortable. He hated seeing anyone cry, especially another kid’s mom.

“You need the password, right?”

Sandra nodded. “That’s right.”

“You want me to hack it?” Colton said. “Seems kind of wrong to me.”

“What’s wrong is that Katelyn’s dead,” she said.

Shania returned with a couple of teacups on a tray. The smell of chai perfumed the air.

“You two want anything?”

“No, thanks, Mrs. James,” Hayley said. “I’m heading home now.”

Colton took the laptop and followed Hayley to the back door, as she slipped on her jacket and they went outside. Though he was barefoot and wore only jeans and a Green Day T-shirt, he didn’t seem to mind the chill. Hayley pulled her zipper up to her neck, bracing herself for the onslaught of the cold winter air.

“Okay,” he said. “That was weird.”

“Yeah, she looks terrible.”

“I’m not really a hacker, you know that, right? People think because I’m playing with my computer all night that I could crack the Da Vinci Code.”

“You’ll figure it out,” she said.

“I guess I can try.”

A large flock of Canada geese flew overhead, honking as they headed away from Port Gamble. Hayley wondered for only a second if Katelyn was somewhere up there too, watching, hoping, urging someone to tell her story.

Hayley looked around before planting a kiss on Colton’s cheek.

“I have faith in you,” she said.

“Nothing like a little pressure.”

She waved at him and walked across the now snow-crunchy yard between their houses. Hayley knew Katelyn’s password, but to say so would be too hard to explain to the boy she really, really liked.

No one, certainly no teenager, was normal or felt they were. Everyone wore a kind of mask that kept people from really seeing what—or who—was inside. Katelyn did. Starla did. And as she walked to her own back porch, Hayley Ryan knew that she and her sister kept things secret too. She didn’t grasp all that they were or what they could do. She knew that even people she cared about—her father, her mother, Colton James—probably never could comprehend it.

After all, it happened to her and her sister, and they couldn’t understand it.