Dig Two Graves, page 1
Copyright © 2022 by Gretchen McNeil
All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023.
First Edition, March 2022
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FAC-020093-22014
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Marci Senders
Names: McNeil, Gretchen, author.
Title: Dig two graves / by Gretchen McNeil.
Description: First edition. | Los Angeles ; New York : Hyperion, 2022. | Audience: Ages 14–18. | Audience: Grades 9–12. | Summary: While at a girls’ empowerment camp, high school pariah Neve and her new best friend Diane joke about killing each other’s bullies, and soon after returning home, Neve finds herself being blackmailed into committing murder.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021010154 | ISBN 9781368072847 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781368079105 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Friendship--Fiction. | Murder--Fiction. | Bullies--Fiction. | Bisexuality--Fiction. | Social classes--Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels. | Thrillers (Fiction)
Classification: LCC PZ7.M4787952 Di 2022 | DDC [Fic]--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010154
Visit www.hyperionteens.com
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
SPRING
EPILOGUE
THE END
PROLOGUE
SUMMER
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FALL
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
WINTER
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To the Firestones, real best friends forever:
Roy, Michael, Jacob, Trevor, and Noelle
Any kind of person can murder.
—Charles Anthony Bruno, Strangers on a Train
SPRING
EPILOGUE
NEVE STOOD BEHIND INARA’S PRIUS, ARMS FOLDED ACROSS her chest, as she watched a trail of students stream into the front entrance of La Costa Canyon High School. It was an overcast January morning, a far cry from the last time she’d walked through that parking lot with the blistering late-summer sunshine bouncing off the gleaming front windows, but then, as now, Neve felt an odd sense of calm.
Back in August it had been a false positive—Neve had fortified herself against what she expected to be a renewal of the harassment from the previous spring—but now her confidence was real.
While she couldn’t change the leaked text message that had made her the most hated person at LCC, the news about her that had spread like wildfire over the last couple of months was, at least, not as negative this time.
How Javier Flores, star athlete at Holy Name Academy, had killed Yasmin Attar and Charlotte Trainor, and possibly some other girl back in Boston, which was why the family had moved to San Diego in the first place.
How Neve and Inara had figured it out in time to save Neve’s life. How she’d held off the killers by herself until the police arrived.
How she’d barely been saved from death by the SDPD officers who shot and killed Javier as he was pointing a loaded Glock at Neve.
And how all of it was caught on tape.
Diane had eventually caved. At first, she’d dissolved into hysterics over Javier’s dead body, then tried to blame Neve as the actual perpetrator, who had been holding Javier and her hostage at gunpoint. Until Officers Hernández and Lee arrived on the scene. Officer Hernández immediately released Neve and placed Diane under arrest. Apparently, Inara had forwarded Neve’s recording from the night before, then called Officer Hernández directly. Neve quickly explained the cameras and the video footage being recorded somewhere in the house, and Officer Hernández had confiscated the laptop. It contained the video feed of Diane and Javier admitting to the murders, and when she was confronted with her own words, Diane’s story fell apart and she shifted the blame from Neve to Javier. She begged Neve to back her up, claiming that Javier had manipulated her into acting as his accomplice.
Which was half-true, Neve had to admit, but that would be for a judge to decide. Despite whatever feelings she’d had for Diane, she wasn’t about to let her get away with murder, and channeling her best Sam Spade at the end of The Maltese Falcon, Neve turned her back on her former best friend.
Neve wasn’t expecting her fellow students to high-five her in the hallway or invite her to eat lunch at the cool douches’ table when she started back at school that morning, but she was expecting to be left alone without the hostilities and threats that had plagued her last spring.
“Gonna be okay?” Inara stood beside her, almost propped up against the car. “LCC has been rough.”
She’d told Inara a lot over the last few months as their friendship developed. It was nothing more than that—just a regular old friendship—but it was exactly what Neve needed in her life. Someone who accepted her as she was and cared about her and her well-being.
And besides, you never know what friendship can turn into.
“I’ll be okay,” Neve said, exhaling long and slow.
“Scott and Vonny are worried.”
Neve laughed. Somehow it felt perfectly normal that Inara referred to her parents by their first names. “They have every right to be, but things are different now.”
“Yep.”
“Thank you,” Neve said, turning to Inara, who was going in late to her own classes in order to drive Neve to school. “For coming with me today. I appreciate it.” Inara’s long hair was tied back at the temples and hung down the back of her plaid jacket, and Neve noticed for the first time how much Inara’s hair had grown since they’d met.
Inara smiled by way of a reply, then reached into the pocket of her jacket. “Got a gift here.”
“For me?” Neve had gotten used to deciphering when Inara’s lack of pronouns made things ambiguous.
“Yep.” Inara handed her a small box wrapped in green tartan paper.
Other than Diane’s gun, Neve was pretty sure this was the first gift she’d gotten from a non–family member since her mom stopped hosting birthday parties when she was twelve, and she was delighted, after prying open the wrapping paper and lifting the lid, to discover a pendant inside.
She lifted the pendant by the black cord threaded through its eye, and realized it was a bird. Not just any bird—it was a replica of the Maltese falcon from her favorite movie.
“Found this place on Etsy for custom pendants,” Inara said, then smiled. “Since the real-life noir plot.”
Neve laughed. She’d definitely lived the part. All those actresses who’d played femme fatales and damsels in distress would have been proud of how Neve had taken control of her own destiny. She smiled as she looped the pendant over her head. “I love it. Thank you so much.”
The bell rang, signaling the five-minute warning until first period.
“Five more months,” Neve said, staring at the school she hated so much. “Then I’m outta here forever.”
“Forever?” Inara asked. “Never coming back to Carlsbad at all? For any reason?”
They’d shared their college plans—Neve’s wish to go up north or back east, and Inara’s desire to stay close to her family and go to a state school in either San Diego, Riverside, or Orange County—and though Spring Neve would have said, I’m never coming back to this shithole and meant it, Winter Neve didn’t feel quite the same way.
“I’ll always come back,” she said, one hand clasping the new pendant. “For my parents. And Deirdre.” Then she glanced up at Inara and smiled. “And to see my best friend.”
And she knew she would. Forever.
THE END
PROLOGUE
NEVE STOPPED AT THE END OF THE DRIVEWAY AND STARED UP at the brightly lit Spanish-style McMansion with a mix of loathing and trepidation. “I really don’t want to do this.”
Yasmin rolled her eyes, a signature move. “We’ve been over it, like, a bazillion times.”
“I know, but . . .” Neve let her voice trail off as the front door flew open, flooding the street with the rhythmic, booming bass of house music. A group of La Costa Canyon High School students—most of whom Neve recognized, but whose names she couldn’t have c ome up with if there was a gun to her head—spilled out onto the front lawn, each holding a red plastic Solo cup.
“But what?” Yasmin threw up her hands. “Marisol’s spring break party is supposed to be, like, the event of the school year. We have to show.”
Neve was pretty sure she didn’t have to show up at a party she hadn’t actually been invited to, but she knew voicing that opinion would only lead to another overdramatic Yasmin Attar eye roll, so instead, she stood with her hands wrapped around her waist, unwilling to move.
“You promised,” Yasmin whined, a hint of a threat in her voice. “You’re my best friend. This is what best friends do.”
“Go to boring parties full of people we don’t even know?”
“Go to awesome parties full of people we want to know.” Another eye roll. Neve wondered if they gave Yasmin headaches. “Stop acting like the first half of an antidepressant commercial and let’s go.”
Neve sighed, feeling like a very bad friend. She didn’t understand why Yasmin was suddenly so hell-bent on going to this stupid party. They never went to these things—Yasmin always declared that San Diego parties weren’t as cool as the ones she used to go to back in Chicago—which was just as well since she and Neve were never actually invited to any.
Then suddenly, Yasmin’s stance had changed. They’d been at Starbucks “studying”—which was more like people-watching while sending snarky texts back and forth—when Marisol Arenas and her boyfriend, Brian Leaf, breezed through the entrance accompanied by Marisol’s BFF Luna Krupkin and some tall, muscular guy with striking hazel eyes. Yasmin had gone silent, her attention fixed on the unknown hottie. The group sat at a nearby table, either ignoring LCC social outcasts Neve and Yasmin or else not even noticing their presence, and discussed the upcoming beach bash. When they left, Yasmin decided that she and Neve were going to crash it, and Neve had decided that they absolutely were not.
They were an odd BFF couple: Neve Lanier, the weird Bay Area transplant with a penchant for black-and-white film noir and its accompanying fashion, and Yasmin Attar, the suburban Chicago princess who’d done beauty pageants as a kid and who loved to have all eyes on her. But when Yasmin transferred to LCC at the beginning of junior year, she’d had difficulty making friends and had eventually sought out the mutually friendless Neve, who ate her lunch alone in the hallway of the science building.
Neve had been skeptical at first: She’d been at LCC for two years already and the only reason anyone at that school ever talked to her was to make fun of her retro clothes and hairdos, taunting her with the nickname “I Love Lucy,” and challenging her I-don’t-give-a-fuck-what-you-think attitude by trying to get under her skin. But Yasmin didn’t give up, and Neve appreciated that. After all, she’d been the new girl once, and she knew firsthand how hard it was to make friends at LCC. That initial lunch had been chilly, but Yasmin had showed up again and again in Neve’s lonely hallway, and much to Neve’s surprise, they’d bonded over a mutual dislike of the über-wealthy, painfully snobby San Diego suburb of Carlsbad they’d both been forced to move to by their families. And they’d never had a single argument until that day at Starbucks when Neve refused to go to the party.
Except Yasmin had begged and pleaded and threatened and cajoled, and eventually Neve had given in, a decision she was currently regretting with every antisocial fiber of her being.
Yasmin watched her closely, her lips pressed together in an ugly sneer as if she was about to unleash one of the nasty zingers she usually reserved for Marisol, Luna, or their exclusive clique, but then she appeared to change her mind. The sneer vanished, replaced by a tiny pout of her full lips. Yasmin clasped her hands in front of her chest and batted her impossibly long eyelashes. “Please?”
It was a lethal combination, the pout and flutter. Every time Yasmin used it, Neve’s heart thumped heavily in her chest, reminding her of the growing attraction she felt toward her best friend. And every time, Neve caved.
“Twenty minutes,” Neve said. A peace offering, not a capitulation.
“Thirty?” Yasmin begged, tugging on the puff sleeve of Neve’s forties-inspired black-and-gray housedress. “Then we can go if you still hate it.”
I will. “Fine.”
Yasmin squealed with glee as she dragged Neve up the driveway. The outdoor partiers cast cursory glances in their direction, and Neve was grateful that most of their faces were lost in shadow, because she was pretty sure every single one of them would have registered the same thought: Why are they here?
Once inside, Neve understood why the group outside had relocated. The interior of Marisol’s house was packed with barely dressed bodies dancing, leaning against one another, lingering on the stairs, making out in the hall. There were faces she recognized but also plenty she didn’t, and she wondered if this “social event of the year” was actually famous enough to attract students from all over San Diego County.
She huddled close to Yasmin, who led her through the crowd, snaking around the soccer team and apologetically cutting through a half-dozen conversations. Yasmin kept her eyes moving, almost as if she was searching for something, while Neve tried to make a mental note of all the exits in case a fire broke out or something equally catastrophic occurred. Death by house party was not what she wanted in her obituary.
After a circuitous route that seemed to drag them through every room on the ground floor, Yasmin made a sharp turn, then stopped so abruptly that Neve ran into her, knocking her forward.
Recessed lighting illuminated a kitchen so huge that Neve was pretty sure both her bedroom and her sister’s could have fit inside with square footage to spare. The countertops and cabinets were blindingly white, especially after the darkened rooms in the rest of the house, and the far wall was one giant glass accordion door, which was wide open, revealing an expansive deck. Neve could hear the waves crashing on the beach below.
She knew Marisol was rich, but she didn’t realize she was this rich.
The kitchen, like everywhere else, was swarming with high school students, most wearing swim trunks or bikinis and little else, and Neve realized how conspicuous she must be in her dark vintage dress, reddish-brown hair pinned up in a pompadour. It was kind of hard to blend into the background, especially in these painfully white surroundings, and Neve zeroed in on the microwave’s clock, hoping by some time-warping miracle that their thirty minutes was up.
No such luck.
She turned to Yasmin to tell her that she was going to wait outside on the deck—in the dark—but her best friend stood frozen, her stare fixed on something across the room.
No, not something. Someone.
He was tall and handsome like every other cookie-cutter suburban douchebag in that house, pouring a rum and Coke from the bar with the ease of someone who did that sort of thing all the time. He wore a blue slim-fit tank top and swim trunks, and a strand of pukka beads around his neck. He would have blended into the beachy upper-middle-class miasma of the party if it hadn’t been for his eyes. Large and hazel, staring right at Neve.
The guy from Starbucks.
Brian stood behind Hazel Eyes with an obviously intoxicated Marisol hanging off him, arms caressing his bare neck and chest as if there was no one else in the room. Hazel Eyes finished pouring the drink, then handed it to a blond girl beside him. Neve couldn’t see her face, but she must have said something funny because Hazel Eyes laughed, then leaned down and whispered in her ear.
Yasmin stiffened, her gaze locked on Hazel Eyes and the blond, and suddenly Neve knew exactly why they were at that party: Yasmin had a crush on Hazel Eyes.
“You’ve seen him once!” Neve blurted out, feeling irrationally peevish at the blush she saw creeping up Yasmin’s neck. “You don’t even know his name.”
Yasmin squared her shoulders. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Then she nudged Neve toward the bar. “Come on. I want a drink.”
Neve followed Yasmin to the bar, where she unabashedly angled her body between Hazel Eyes and the blond girl. Neve was begrudgingly impressed with her friend’s ballsiness, but flirting with a dude you didn’t know at a party you weren’t invited to in front of the blond he had clearly been putting the moves on was more than just bold. It was rude. And in addition to the sort of nebulous rage over the whole evening she was feeling, Neve was suddenly ashamed of her friend’s brazen self-interest.
