08 - December Dread by Jess Lourey Page A

have been two. I was disappointed. I’d hoped I’d have a better answer to my own question. “Um, I’m wearing down , that’s what. I want you. I want you bad. We should consummate our relationship. Right now. I love you, baby.” Satisfied that my message was clear, I hung up. Or at least I wanted to, but I had no idea how to work the phone.
    I swerved over to Patsy, who was staring up at the TV. This drink-ing was super fun. Why had I given it up? “Here ya’ go.”
    I handed her the phone, but she didn’t take it. Her eyes were glued to the set. I followed her gaze to the grim-faced reporter standing in front of a trim white house with black shutters, klieg lights casting a deep shadow behind him. The front yard was drifted with snow and contained a sad little snowman with a bright scarf and a lop-sided smile. Reflected police car cherries pulsated off the reporter. I closed one eye so I could focus. The ribbon underneath him read “River Grove, Minnesota.”
    “Police confirm a woman’s body was found in her home this evening by her water delivery service. We have learned from an unnamed source that police believe she is the most recent victim of the Candy Cane Killer, though no official information is being released until the family has been notified.”
    “Oh no,” I said, feeling a sickening jolt. I went from drunk to sober with unnatural speed. “He got another one.”
    Patsy gripped my arm with painful force. Tears were coursing down her face. “I know that house. It’s Natalie Garcia’s. Mira, she was homecoming queen!”

Ten
    Three cups of coffee and two hours of trying to calm down Patsy made me as sober as a nun. See, not only had Natalie been homecoming queen, she’d been my best friend in 6th grade. She and I had practiced kissing with pillows and swore we’d never tell anyone. She was the person with whom I’d first experimented with lipgloss and mascara, and the girl I giggled on the edge of the playground with the day I stole my dad’s dirty magazines and smuggled them to school. We’d started an underground newspaper that year, posting silly knock-knock jokes, ridiculous rumors about teachers (“Is it just me, or does Mrs. Thielen seem a little pregnant this month?”), and made-up horoscopes. We’d called it the Pee-ville Papers. It had flown off the shelves. After swearing to never get married unless it was a double-wedding and pinkie swearing that the only thing that would come between us was a war or maybe a really bad earthquake that left her house on one side of the divide and mine on the other, we’d grown apart in 7th grade. Natalie discovered boys, and I stuck with books.
    We stayed friendly, in a distant way. Come high school, Natalie became very popular, cute but not beautiful. I remembered her as just plain fun to be around. She was funny, always seemed interested in people when she talked to them, and was a good storyteller. She had charisma, I guess, that and a great head of wavy dark hair. My only clear memory of her those last couple years in Paynesville was at my dad’s funeral. She and Patsy had both attended, the only two kids I remembered in that big, empty church. I had felt too ashamed of my dad’s car accident to say anything, and after the funeral, I hung onto that feeling, shutting most everyone out.
    Patsy, on the other hand, had kept in touch with everyone from high school who was still in the area, and she knew Natalie well enough to have been to her house a few times in the past year. River Grove, where Natalie’s house was located, was the next town over heading northwest on Highway 23, not more than a 15-minute drive from Paynesville.
    “She was a nurse, but she threw those Coddled Cook parties, you know the ones where they show you how to use kitchen gadgets? That’s why I was at her house. She never married. She said she wanted to go to medical school someday and that her career was always going to be her focus.” Patsy blew her nose again.