Page 40 of The Fall of Iris Henley
CHAPTER 22
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 8:13PM
SOPHIE GARCIA’S HOUSE
“So then she’s like, ‘Sophie Garcia, if I catch you talking like that to your brother again there’s not gonnabea homecoming.’”
Sophie takes a hit on her (new) vape pen. The weed smell is potent; I wouldn’t have the guts to use it in my bedroom. My mom would sniff that out from a half mile away. But Sophie’s lucky. Her mom let her move into the little studio apartment in their backyard on her sixteenth birthday so she could stop sharing a room with her sister. She’s got privacyandher own bathroom. Plus she’s allowed to decorate however she wants, unlike both me and Hayden, which means she’s painted her walls in lush glittery colors and filled the space with throw pillows and thick rugs. There are pictures tacked on every wall: ballet dancers in complicated poses, vintage glamor shots of old-school movie stars, art prints cut out of magazines. You could squint and pretend that you’re in a cramped bohemian apartment in New York.
Hayden snorts with laughter. She’s on the floor with her civics book open next to her, but she’s not looking at it. She’spainting her nails in alternating colors of green and gold. We’re supposedly studying for our civics midterms, but no one’s mentioned the Constitution in at least an hour now.
“She’s all talk,” Hayden says. “They all want their pictures of us in plastic crowns. There’s no way she’d make you stay home.”
“That may be true for you guys,” Sophie says darkly. “But unlike you, my mom doesn’t do any kind of vicarious living through me. She just wants law and order in her house so Grandma doesn’t start making us go to Mass five times a week.”
Sophie’s mom, Toni, is actually the only sane mother I know in this town, truth be told. Sure, she’s got an iron fist about things like sibling rivalry or whatever, but she’s also not obsessed with Sophie maintaining some illusion of perfection. Sophie says it’s because her grandma, who moved in with them after Sophie’s dad moved out, was such a hard-ass back when Toni was growing up. But Abuelita is always on the lookout for excuses to get them all back on the straight and narrow.
“Well, then, it’s easy,” Hayden says. “Stop being a bitch to your little brother.”
I expect Sophie to snap back, for them to snipe at each other like usual, but instead she turns to me. “You’re awful quiet.”
I’ve been lying on my stomach on Sophie’s bed, scrolling through fragments of Kendra Koenig’s life. She doesn’t have any social media accounts—or, at least, she doesn’t have any that I can find with a casual search. But there are still a few hits when I google her name. Local news items about her family (though she’s not mentioned by name in stories about the murder). A few sports items from when she played soccer. A picture of her on a horse at thirteen, riding in a parade.
I put my phone down next to me. “I’m just thinking about those pictures. Seriously, if you’d seen them…”
“Yeah. It sounds fucked up,” Hayden says. She’d lookeddisturbed when I’d described my conversation with Kendra Koenig in the art studio.
But Sophie just shrugs. “I don’t know. I think it sounds like she’s working stuff out,” she says. “Maybe it’s some kind of art therapy. Mom made me do some of that after Dad left. I had to go into this lady’s office once a week and draw pictures of my feelings.”
“These weren’t pictures of her feelings, Soph.” I think again about the images I’d seen: bodies sprawled across a dirty floor. Staring eyes, blood, gore. My shoulders involuntarily shudder.
“Just think about it for a minute,” Sophie says. “Whether or not you think she’s in denial about Rocky, she saw something really awful. So maybe drawing it is her way of working through it.”
“Or,” Hayden says carefully, “maybe she’s reliving it.”
Sophie just stares at her for a long moment. I’m the one who speaks.
“What exactly are you saying?”
“I don’t know!” Hayden throws her hands up in the air. “I mean, it’s just weird. You have to admit it’s weird. Drawing her brother’s dead body again and again? Not normal!”
“Well, what happened to her wasn’t normal,” Sophie says.
“No, I know, but…” Hayden shakes her head. “Haven’t there been killers that’ve drawn their victims afterward?”
Sophie gives a little shriek. “That’s messed up, Hayden!”
Hayden shrugs again. “I’m just saying! Something about it makes the hair on my neck stick up. It feels wrong.”
I frown, trying to imagine what she’s suggesting. Is there any version of reality in which I’d believe Kendra might’ve murdered Rocky and Lynette? Her behavior in the studio was weird enough to set off a few red flags, but turning a gun on her beloved brother is a stretch.
But could she be behind the Sekrit post? That’s easier to imagine. I wonder where she was last Friday when her parentsshowed up for the game. Maybe she was somewhere in the crowd, hat pulled low over her head so no one would notice her. Maybe when she saw how we all reacted, something in her finally snapped.
“Kendra’s messed up, but she’s not a killer, and I very much doubt she’s behind the Rockytruther account,” Sophie says. Then she frowns. “You know who I’ve been wondering about lately? Bryce.”
“Bryce… Sanders?” I ask, and she nods.
This time Hayden frowns. “It can’t be Bryce. Everyone knows he’s got a huge crush on Iris. Why would he start a rumor like that?”
