The Curse of Hollister House

Saturday

As tired as I was, sleep evaded me. After hours of tossing and turning and getting nowhere, I finally got up and went up to the attic. There was a voice in the back of my mind that seemed to be nagging at me with the idea that perhaps the secret to finding Stella’s killer, and Tracy’s as well, was in some random piece of information I had at my disposal. Could my twelve-year-old self have known something I didn’t even realize? Apparently, Naomi’s twelve-year-old self had known something that might very well identify who’d killed Stella after all these years.

“Where do I even start?” I asked Alastair.

“Meow.” He trotted across the room and pawed at the box where I’d found the journal I’d kept after Stella died.

I bent down to take a look. In addition to old books, I found photo albums, old notebooks, and even the Nancy Drew log Stella and I kept during our girl detective phase. We’d outgrown that before entering middle school, so I didn’t think there would be clues inside the log, though we had kept it well into the summer after sixth grade, and Stella had died in the fall of seventh grade, so maybe there could be.

“‘April 12th,’” I read aloud. “‘The Case of the Missing Homework.’” I smiled. Most of our cases were pretty silly, but Stella and I’d had a lot of fun pretending to be girl detectives. I continued to read. “‘Stella is sure she did her English homework this week, which required us to do a biography with photos from our life. When she went to hand it in, the homework she is sure she put in her backpack that morning was missing. Mrs. Brubaker is threatening detention unless she redoes the paper by the end of the week.’”

I looked at Alastair. “I remember this. Stella was so mad.”

“Meow.”

“‘After examining the facts, we decided that someone had taken it from her backpack after we arrived at school but before the first bell rang.’”

“Meow.”

“Yeah, it would be an odd item for someone to steal, but it was possible because we’d leave our backpacks next to the door of our classroom and then head to the playground to hang out on the monkey bars. Still, who would steal an assignment like that? It wasn’t like Stella was missing some generic math homework that someone who didn’t do the assignment could copy and turn in as their own.” I mulled the thought in my mind a bit more. “I sort of remember that Stella found other stuff missing from her backpack. A brush. Lip gloss. I think even a half-eaten apple.”

“Meow.”

“If Stella had a stalker, that would explain a lot.” I thought about the old truck parked near the school. I thought about the man Naomi had seen in the woods twenty years ago, and the man who’d been hanging out in the field behind the school when Tracy disappeared. Was it possible they were the same person?

It was too early to call Cass, so I texted him. I figured he could call me when he got up. In the meantime, I continued on to the photo album. I was pretty sure I had photos of Stella and me in the weeks leading up to her death.

Most of the photos had been taken at my house or hers, but there were a few taken in town and even a series taken at the middle school during our first week of classes. I remembered how excited we were to finally leave our childhood behind when we’d become mature and sophisticated middle school students. We’d felt so grown-up. High school was just around the corner, and Stella and I had definite plans to rock our teenage years before moving on to college. But Stella had died, and I’d become even more introverted than I already was, so none of the dreams we’d shared during those first few weeks of seventh grade ever came true.

I paused at a photo I’d taken of Stella in her volleyball uniform. She stood with the ball resting against her hip as she prepared to attend her first practice. The smile of innocence on her face sent sheer pain through my heart. I ran a finger over her form. “I’m so very sorry.”

I was about to turn the page when I noticed a truck parked on the street that paralleled the school, which was clearly visible in the background. White truck, brown camper.