Free Bad Girls Don't Die by Katie Alender Page A

then rounded back out.
    It actually kind of looked like a really vague silhouette of a person.
    But that was impossible. Not only impossible, but silly too. If you stare at anything long enough, you can make yourself see whatever you want to see.
    And there was a dust speck on this one too, but it looked even bigger. You could see it clearly—a little sphere of light, smack in the middle of the frame.
    Well, you can’t win ’em all.
    At least I’d managed to get a few eerie portraits of the house. Not bad for a roll that should have gone to the great darkroom in the sky.

I WAS ON MY WAY back to my room when I heard a noise from downstairs.
    Shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle.
    It stopped abruptly.
    Gophers. The pipes. The house settling.
    As I turned toward my door I glanced back at Kasey’s room. For the first time I noticed a tiny bit of light shining through a crack. Her door was open. Only slightly, though. I craned my neck to see if I could see her outline under the covers. I couldn’t tell, so I turned back around.
    She was behind me.
    I gave a little shriek and did that really embarrassing terrified hand-wringing thing.
    Kasey just looked at me, completely calm.
    It took me a second to catch my breath. “What are you doing?”
    “Getting a drink of water.”
    “How did you get up the stairs without making any noise?”
    She looked at me like I had a screw loose. “Socks,” she said. She lifted her foot to show me. The underside was covered in a black coating of dirt, in the shape of a foot.
    “Those are filthy,” I said.
    Something occurred to me.
    “Did you just go outside?”
    Kasey looked puzzled. “Why would you think that?”
    “I just . . . heard—thought I heard . . .” I shrugged.
    “Lexi, are you feeling okay?” She studied me intently.
    “I’m fine,” I said.
    “Okay, because last night you got a little”—she considered carefully—“overexcited.”
    I couldn’t keep my cool any longer. “Well, maybe if I hadn’t had to follow you into the basement and then cook for you and do your homework and have you ruin my pictures—”
    “Oh,” she said. “Are they ruined?”
    There was no regret in her voice, only mild curiosity.
    “No,” I replied. “Lucky for you.”
    “Sorry,” she said, her eyes wandering up to the ceiling. “But you were acting really weird. It distracted me.”
    Was I acting weird?
    The story, the tree, the basement door, the cold air . . . all things that, in the light of early morning, seemed a lot more explainable than they had last night.
    Maybe a little weird.
    “See you later,” Kasey said, padding away down the hall.
    “Oh,” I said. “Wait.”
    She stopped and turned around.
    “Do you need any more help with your report?”
    She shrugged. “It’s cool. I finished it last night.”
    Oh. “Good for you,” I said. “Can I see it?”
    “Um, no . . . not right now,” she said. “It’s six thirty.”
    I nodded. “Right.”
    I hurried through my shower and getting dressed.
    For some reason I was highly disinterested in seeing my sister again that morning.
    All this time I’d thought Kasey was kind of on the verge of something, and suddenly it hit me that what if, you know, it wasn’t her ? What if it was me ? Can you go crazy without knowing you’re crazy?
    I mean, most crazy people do, right?
    See, times like these make you really wish you had a best friend. Someone you could go to and be like, “Am I nuts, or . . . ?” and they would just tell you flat-out.
    It was way too much to think about at seven fifteen, without even a Pop-Tart in my stomach. Mom was in the kitchen already, watching her coffee brew. She leaned against the counter, mesmerized.
    She didn’t look up when I came in, which was totally okay by me. I got a glass of juice, stuck my Pop-Tart in the toaster, and dropped a plate onto the counter with a clatter. Then I had to stop and wait, and the kitchen was quiet except for the electric buzz from the toaster and the