Episode 13: Noon Talks and New Evidence
- Crystal Crawford
- Mar 17
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 1
Collin and I sat in two of my back-porch chairs and sipped hot chocolate for about twenty minutes, rehashing the morning’s events and our trifold-poster info to see if we’d missed anything. The privacy fence in my backyard made it feel like a secure spot to chat, but we kept our voices low, anyway… not just for potential passersby, but also because my mom had stationed herself in the living room, tucked up in her reading spot on the couch with a clear line of sight on us through the back window. The kitchen was between the living room and the back porch, though, so as long as we talked softly, she wouldn’t be able to hear us from there, and my dad was on the other side of the house in his home office, working.
As the sun slipped toward its noon position in the sky, my mom disappeared from her reading spot to prepare and bring us a variety platter of homemade sandwiches cut into triangles—egg salad, peanut-butter-and-jellys, tuna salad, ham and cheese, and even some pimento-cheese ones. She also brought us glasses of ice water.
Collin and I both smiled and gave her our genuine thanks, then took a short break from our brain-work to dig into some lunch.
Mom didn’t ask questions about what Collin and I had been discussing, but she did give me a pointed glance before heading back inside. She was still convinced Collin was there as more than a friend.
To be honest, he was. He was there as my accomplice and the sole other witness to some epically crazy junk, but I couldn’t exactly tell her that.
We finished the sandwiches and I took the dishes inside, then we returned to rehashing what we knew… but even I had to admit, we’d been over everything a dozen times, and nothing new had jumped out at us. We had partial information and theories, but not anything we could tangibly act on—nothing that could help us find Chloe or figure out what had really happened to Emery. Unless Lockley had some info about Emery’s secrets, or the cheer hawks came up with some new data, we were stuck.
Eventually, Collin’s phone rang.
It was Lockley. She’d seen his text and had just gotten home.
“She’s heading over now,” Collin said, slipping his phone back into his pocket.
We sat in the porch chairs, waiting, while I tried not to look anxious.
Lockley came up to the gate in our fence a couple minutes later, and Collin got up to unlatch it and let her in.
As soon as he opened the gate, Lockley beelined for the porch. Collin trailed close behind her.
“You okay?” Lockley asked, focusing on me. “Collin said you wanted to talk to me.” She sat down in an empty porch chair near me and set her purse down.
I nodded, trying to figure out where to begin. Eventually, I decided to just go for it.
“The other night, when you were talking to me about Chloe, you said you’d realized there were things Emery had kept from you. Why did you say that?” I asked her. “At first, I thought you meant you didn’t know why she’d been at the gulf that night, but the more I think about it, and about how you said it… Was there something else you think she hadn’t told you? Something besides what caused her to go to the beach that night?”
Lockley stared up at the sky, then sighed. “I thought you might bring that up again. Yes, I’m pretty sure she was keeping something else from me, but honestly, it’s going to seem so dumb. It’s probably just a strange coincidence.”
I sat up straighter. “What do you mean?”
Lockley turned to look at me. “You know those new cheerleaders at the school, the three who transferred in this year?”
My heart skipped a beat. “Yeahhhh,” I said, then glanced at Collin.
His eyes were wide.
Lockley reached for her purse, then pulled out a folded bunch of papers from it. “Soon after they transferred in, those three asked me about Emery—whether I’d known her, and if we’d been close. I’d never met them before they transferred, and assumed Emery hadn’t either, so it seemed a little weird. I thought they’d probably heard the rumors about Emery and were curious, but then they showed me these.” Her eyes locked on mine. “I was trying to decide whether to tell you, but… well, here.” She handed me the folded papers.
I took them and unfolded them, and my breath caught. The birds in the corners and the size and coloration of the papers were unmistakable—they even had the jagged edges.
These pages had been torn from Emery’s notebook.
My hands shook as I looked up at Lockley. “These are Emery’s.” The drawings didn’t all look like her style, but these were definitely pages from her notebook.
“I know,” Lockley said. “I recognized the paper. I just don’t know what to make of it.”
I stared at her. “Why did those cheerleaders have these? How did they have these?”
Lockley shrugged. “They said Emery gave the drawings to them after they met her at the regional cheerleading competition a couple of years ago—the year she drowned, though obviously before that happened. They said they got to talking with her on a break between events, and they were all kind of sketching stuff in her notebook. According to them, Emery tore out the pages when they were done and gave the pages to them.”
That was a detail the cheer hawks had conveniently left out when they told Collin and me they’d been looking into who may have been targeting Emery—and when they asked me if Emery had left me any messages.
Lockley looked right at me. “But it makes no sense, Aubs. Emery and I went to every competition together, and I don’t remember ever seeing those girls until they transferred to our school.”
The full impact of her statement hit me. “You mean you think they might have lied about how they got these pages?”
Lockley bit her lip.
My brain nearly exploded. “You’ve been just sitting on this ever since they transferred in?” I gaped at Lockley. “It’s been almost a year since they showed up, Lock! Why didn’t you mention this to me sooner?”
Lockley looked away and sighed. “Those three showing up here saying they’d met Emery seemed strange at first, but the more I think about it, I can’t say I was with Emery every moment at every cheer competition, so I can’t even know for sure if they’re lying. Maybe she did meet them and hang out with them for a few minutes—maybe I was in the bathroom or went to buy a snack or something. I mean, she must have met them, right? How else would they have had those pages?”
My frustration with Lockley eased a bit, because… how, indeed? It was possible they were telling the truth about meeting Emery at a competition, but then why not mention it to me when we talked today? Especially since they made it obvious, in our conversation, that they had some kind of inside info about Emery and her notebook—and my dreams—but never explained how they’d gotten it.
Those cheer hawks seemed to be more tangled up in this than they’d admitted, and that set off a simmer of unease in my stomach.
Collin leaned toward Lockley. “Did you tell the police about this, Lock?”
Lockley’s face snapped up to look at him. She shook her head. “Why would I? It’s just some drawings. It’s weird, sure, but it’s not like it has anything to do with how Emery died.” She looked at me, suddenly uncertain. “Right?”
I gaped at her. Did Lockley not realize what her account about those three cheerleaders meant? This was new evidence about my sister’s disappearance—evidence we hadn’t had two years ago. Emery’s case had been closed once the police ruled it a drowning… long before these three cheerleaders transferred to our school. The police had probably never known of any connection between Emery and those girls, which would mean Tory, Jillian, and Meredith wouldn’t have been questioned or even checked into unless Lockley or someone else had made that connection for them.
Throw in what I now knew about their ability to turn into hawks and it seemed pretty certain that those three were involved as more than random cheerleaders who happened to interact with Lockley at a competition, then later transferred to our school.
Their possession of Emery’s notebook pages called a lot of things into question about what happened to Emery that night, and why she had been at the gulf.
Not that I considered them suspects, necessarily…
But maybe I should.
***
Author Note:
Easter-Egg Alert! If you’ve read any of my other YA fantasy or sci-fi series, you may recognize some of the sketches in Emery’s notebook… while others of those drawings are a hint at things to come! There are references here to at least three of my other books or series—including Legends of Arameth, The Leyward Stones, and The Extraordinary Extraterrestrial Love Lives of Doppelgangers. See if you can find them! :)
Not familiar with the other books and series I mentioned above?
You can read them ALL right now inside my subscribers-only reading portal, PirateCat Publishing—plus exclusive content and ongoing stories and series—for just $5/month! (And you’ll be helping support me at the same time, so I can continue to write more stories. 💖) Find out more on my Join page!
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