Free Dear Killer by Katherine Ewell Page A

the tiny, near-invisible flecks of brown in her intensely blue eyes.
    “Are you going to kill her?” she asked, expression utterly cold and unfeeling.
    I paused.
    “Yes,” I said.
    She looked at me carefully, warningly. Be careful, she was saying silently.
    “Don’t get too close,” she whispered.
    “I know.” I smiled.
    “Kit, I mean it. I—” She paused and continued in an even quieter voice, barely loud enough for me to hear. “Why is she here?”
    “It’s good to know what you’re up against, right?”
    “I . . .” She hesitated.
    She was so concerned. Her eyes glistened sharply out of the smoke, and her slender fingers quivered. The sharp curve of her jawline was a strangely angled shadow.
    “It’s fine. I’ll be fine—you don’t have to worry,” I said to her comfortingly, and she was uncertain for a moment, but then she softened. She remembered my precision, my carefulness, my fastidious organization.
    She smiled back, reassured that I knew what I was doing and hadn’t forgotten how to keep myself safe. She tossed her arms around my shoulders quickly, her breath wafting across my neck.
    “Just be careful,” she sighed tenderly. She let me go.
    Before I went back to Maggie, I flashed my mother a cocky, vibrant grin. She really didn’t have to worry about me.
    She returned the smile with a motherly, reassuring, thoughtful, vaguely uncertain nod of the head.
     
    Maggie and I lay on our backs on the floor in a pile of pillows, looking at the pale cream ceiling.
    We were tired—since it was a school day that day and a school day the next as well, we should probably already be asleep. But we were teenage girls. And teenage girls never go to bed on time. We kept ourselves awake by talking. Our voices sounded sleepy.
    “I can’t believe you know policemen. Like, actually know them, are actually friends with them. That’s crazy. You just went into a crime scene, no big deal.” Maggie yawned. She was more talkative when she was tired, apparently. My mother was that way as well.
    I giggled. “I have my mom to thank for that. She invited him over for dinner. I told you she’s got a habit of inviting random people over. And, you know, we became friends.”
    “Oh, so that’s what she meant earlier about inviting people over.”
    “Yeah, yeah.”
    “That’s cool. I’d like that. You know, if my family did that. You’ve got a nice house. You’re right to invite people to such a nice house.”
    “Your family doesn’t do company much?”
    “Nah. We don’t do much of anything . . . much. My immediate family, at least. My extended family’s the only exciting part. They’re nice,” Maggie said softly.
    The room went quiet.
    “Nothing at all? That must be boring,” I said, laughing, trying to lighten the mood.
    “Nothing, really. My parents are . . . I don’t know, quiet, don’t bother me much. They’re out of town a lot. And I’m an only child, so home is just boring.”
    “Look at the bright side. Freedom, right?”
    “Freedom is just another word for no one cares,” she said, and laughed breathily.
    I didn’t know what to say to that. But I had to say something, so—
    “I don’t think so.”
    “You don’t?”
    “Freedom is freedom, right? For whatever reason, you can do what you want, right?”
    “I suppose.”
    “If you’ve got freedom and no one cares, you should be having more fun,” I said jauntily.
    “Like what?”
    “Strike out. Do something crazy. Dye your hair pink or something, at least.”
    “That’s against uniform regulations at school.”
    “Who cares ?”
    “I care.”
    “Why? It’s not like you want to be a Nobel Prize winner or anything. You can take all those hard classes and stuff, but you can’t fool me. You’re a little rebel on the inside, just like me.”
    “I’m not,” she said flatly. “I’m good. I stick to the status quo. And how do you know I don’t want to win a Nobel Prize?”
    “Because I can see right through