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The Prized Girl

Amy K. Green

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Amy K. Green 2020

Amy K. Green asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2020 ISBN: 9780008334482

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 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008334475

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Chapter One: Virginia

Chapter Two: Jenny

Chapter Three: Virginia

Chapter Four: Jenny

Chapter Five: Virginia

Chapter Six: Jenny

Chapter Seven: Virginia

Chapter Eight: Jenny

Chapter Nine: Virginia

Chapter Ten: Jenny

Chapter Eleven: Virginia

Chapter Twelve: Jenny

Chapter Thirteen: Virginia

Chapter Fourteen: Jenny

Chapter Fifteen: Virginia

Chapter Sixteen: Jenny

Chapter Seventeen: Virginia

Chapter Eighteen: Jenny

Chapter Nineteen: Virginia

Chapter Twenty: Jenny

Chapter Twenty-One: Virginia

Chapter Twenty-Two: Jenny

Chapter Twenty-Three: Virginia

Chapter Twenty-Four: Jenny

Chapter Twenty-Five: Virginia

Chapter Twenty-Six: Jenny

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Virginia

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Jenny

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Virginia

Chapter Thirty: Jenny

Chapter Thirty-One: Virginia

Chapter Thirty-Two: Jenny

Chapter Thirty-Three: Virginia

Chapter Thirty-Four: Jenny

Chapter Thirty-Five: Virginia

Chapter Thirty-Six: Jenny

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Virginia

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Jenny

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Virginia

Chapter Forty: Jenny

Chapter Forty-One: Virginia

Chapter Forty-Two: Jenny

Chapter Forty-Three: Virginia

Chapter Forty-Four: Jenny

Chapter Forty-Five: Virginia

Chapter Forty-Six: Jenny

Chapter Forty-Seven: Virginia

Chapter Forty-Eight: Jenny

Chapter Forty-Nine: Virginia

Chapter Fifty: Jenny

Chapter Fifty-One: Virginia

Chapter Fifty-Two: Jenny

Chapter Fifty-Three: Virginia

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five: Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

Chapter One
Virginia

Five Days After

WHEN MY HALF SISTER, Jenny, was killed, it was all over the news—national news, not just the local paper that had to use an offensively large font to fill its pages. Strangers drove great distances to be part of the fanfare. Reporters and their vans lined the street in front of the church hosting her funeral. I parked my dented Jetta along the side of the road about a quarter mile away. There was no reserved parking space for me.

St. Bernard’s Cathedral was the only church aesthetically pleasing enough for my stepmother, Linda, to hold the funeral in. It was too large for the community; even Christmas Eve Mass couldn’t fill more than half the pews. Not today, though. Today, the local police were turning people away.

Men and women were milling around crying, consoling each other. No one was smiling, not even the polite forced smile you use to mask pain. Just hordes of people looking truly devastated by Jenny’s death. I didn’t recognize any of them, and I highly doubted they had ever set foot in this town before.

A dopey uniformed officer named Brett stood at the base of the church stairs. We went to high school together. It was the type of town where no matter the age, it felt like we all went to high school together in some shape or form. He looked exhausted, and his buzz cut was useless to sponge up the beads of sweat multiplying across his forehead. He just let them grow until they dripped off and splashed onto his shirt.

Brett was a bouncer without a list, making gut decisions about who he could let into the church. I was fourth in line, an actual line that I had to wait in patiently to attend my own sister’s funeral. It was my choice. I didn’t deserve special treatment. I was not a good sister.

I watched Brett turn two people away before recognizing the couple in front of me and allowing them inside without hesitation. When I stepped up for my turn, he looked up carelessly, locked on my face, processed who I was, and straightened his spine.

“Virginia … hi. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“This is crazy, huh?” He finally wiped his brow, altering the trajectory of his sweat beads.

“Was I supposed to RSVP?” I joked. I probably shouldn’t have. No jokes at funerals.

“Of course not,” he said, too nervous to get it. “Please go on in.” He stepped aside and extended his arms with such flourish it was as if I had the last golden ticket.

IT WAS LOUD INSIDE. Churches were supposed to be quiet. The noise was unsettling. A group of sobbing women who must have gotten in just before Brett took the helm filled the last two rows. They looked like they were attending the Kentucky Derby. Are funeral hats a thing?

The next few rows were a mixed bag of strange faces and town staples. It was easy to tell who the out-of-towners were because they ignored me. The people from town gave me intrusive pitying looks followed by immediate avoidance of continued eye contact. It was the same way when my mother died.

Wrenton was one of those old New England towns where the founding families all spawned from some combination of people from the Mayflower, and for a long time it was just the same names swapped around over and over again. Even though there were a lot more surnames now, it still felt to me like we were all from the same litter, destined to live and die where our ancestors had. Someday, I was going to leave and never look back—just not today.

I could see Linda in the front row amidst a few distant relatives of hers. Her outfit wasn’t as on point as I’d expected. Her black skirt was wrinkled in the back, and her pleated blouse was, dare I say, frumpy. She hadn’t touched her curling iron, which was a real shocker. Linda always curled her hair for events. Instead, the blonde strands, too long for her age, just fell flat against her back.

I watched her face contort and quiver as people whispered things to her with delicate smiles. I knew she was hurting, but I was struggling to muster any sympathy. Jenny was her only child, her favorite little trophy, and Linda was a parasite. Every activity was a calculated move to help Linda feed off her daughter and reinforce her fragile ego.

It was never more apparent than with the beauty pageants. From ages five to twelve, Jenny won more Grand Supreme titles than anyone else in New England. I was told about it quite often, and Linda wasn’t going to let anyone in this church forget it. Gigantic glamour shots of Jenny surrounded the coffin. In each one, a dead-behind-the-eyes little girl was dressed in a slightly provocative costume with enough makeup for a roadside hooker.

You would think my half sister had been some angelic being. There were just so many stories about the pageants, and her beauty, and how big her heart was. Her potential! These people were delusional. Jenny would have been fourteen in three weeks. She hadn’t done a pageant in months and was becoming a nosy little twat.

I took a seat away from Linda next to an elderly couple who smelled like a forgotten attic. I didn’t know them, and they didn’t know me. The elderly strangers in the church seemed less creepy to me than the younger people attending the funeral of a child they didn’t know. Old people just like to go to church.

From a private door in the front, my father, the esteemed Calvin Kennedy, entered the church and joined his wife. I knew he was a suspect. The father was always a suspect in these sorts of things. Part of me hoped he was guilty. I found solace in fantasizing about all the horrible drop-the-soap-type prison clichés.

I was not one for being out in public for extended periods of time. In Wrenton, everyone knew everything about everyone, or tried to at least. In the minutes it took me to pay for my gas I could learn five to seven intimate facts about my neighbors. World news didn’t resonate. A good story was one you had to whisper for fear that the very person you were shit-talking could be lurking just around the next corner.

My skin was crawling. I could feel the eyes on me. Suddenly, I was relevant again and my secrets were fair game. I had to get out of that church. I slipped out of the pew, kept my head down, and made my way to the exit. Another A-plus decision for Virginia Kennedy.

JENNY’S FUNERAL LASTED a little over an hour. I waited outside, among the hedges to the left of the church doors. If I smoked, I’d have been smoking. Instead, I just chewed at my fingernails, trying to gnaw them even, each bite making it worse.

I could hear everything. Linda’s cousin read a poem she had written that rhymed, some of Jenny’s perfect little friends from school sang a song, and the priest talked forever about God choosing special children to stand by his side in heaven. The verbiage was particularly disturbing given she was raped and murdered, left to die in the woods. Seems like he could have chosen her with a lightning bolt or something.

When I heard pews creak and feet shuffle, I knew it was my time to fully commit to bailing. I hustled to my car, keeping my head down and praying I wouldn’t cross paths with anyone who would attempt to engage. I didn’t go to the cemetery. It was a selfish thing to do, but Jenny wouldn’t know. She was too busy being God’s personal assistant now.

I went home to my tiny apartment, where I could pretend nothing had happened. I could pretend nothing had happened to Jenny, or to me, or to the world. I could embrace some sort of delusional existence where I wasn’t a piece-of-shit person or a piece-of-shit sister. It would be harder to hide now, now that Jenny was gone.

Chapter Two
Jenny

Five Weeks Before

THE SCHOOL BUS was late on the first day, and Jenny leaned against the remnants of a rock wall, shifting her weight back and forth, bored, anxious. It was her first year in high school. Technically, she was only in eighth grade, but the student population was small, and long before she was born, the district voted to convert the former middle school building into town offices. The students were displaced. Seventh graders were crammed into the elementary school, and eighth graders moved into the high school. It was normal procedure now, but no less jarring for those making the transition. Last year Jenny had shared the halls with kindergarteners; now there was a guy with a mustache waiting for the bus.

The other students huddled together across the street from Jenny in a small area deemed to have the best cell phone reception. She wished her parents would let her have a cell phone, but there was no way they would give her one after what had happened.

Jenny was the only one who seemed to care when a faint whistling came from up the hill. She gazed toward the bend in Sanford Hill Road, anticipating the source of the sound. A lanky teenage boy in an oversized camouflage jacket, baggy jeans, and combat boots marched around the corner. Jenny recognized what he was immediately: a new kid. He looked older, maybe a junior. She stared at the stranger until it was obvious he was walking toward her, then averted her eyes, pretending to look for something in her backpack.

He sauntered over and joined Jenny at the rock wall, but left a comfortable space between them. He took a deep breath and rubbed at his thighs, preparing for an interaction she didn’t care to initiate. She fidgeted with her bag, like maybe she was so enthralled with it that she hadn’t noticed him. Surely he would understand because whatever she was looking for was important. Where was the freaking bus?

“Want one?” the boy asked, reaching into his coat pocket.

Jenny paused her frantic searching to look up and see him pull out a packet of cigarettes. “No, thank you,” she said, even though her brain pulsed with the opportunity to do something so forbidden.

“Eh, that’s good. These things are disgusting.” He pulled one from the pack and returned the rest to his pocket. With his other hand, he grabbed a lighter from his jeans and lit up. “I’m hooked.” He smiled as he turned his head to blow the smoke away from her.

Jenny debated going back into her bag. Would he notice that she had just given up this all-important search? Why did she even care?

“What’s up with this school?” he asked. “I hate new schools. Either they assign me some hyperactive pep squad bitch to show me around, or no one knows I exist.”

“We don’t have a pep squad.”

“Good, maybe I’ll be left alone then.”

“Maybe” was all Jenny could muster. He had engaged her, but now he wanted to be left alone. Mixed signals.

“Where’s the bus?” he asked.

Jenny shrugged.

“You just have all the answers,” he teased.

Jenny’s reciprocating smile was cut short as a car came speeding down the hill, tearing through the gravel, and sliding to a stop in front of them.

Christine Castleton rolled down the window of her hand-me-down Nissan. “Hey, Jenny,” she said, as if they had interacted more than zero times in the past. “I have one seat left. Are you interested?” She intended for the question to be rhetorical. Of course Jenny would want a ride. Christine Castleton was a special brand of popular. After a knee injury her junior year derailed her promising athletic future, she went from golden child to intoxicating rebel. At some point over the summer, she had even dyed her hair a bright magenta, unheard of in this town.

It meant something that she was talking to Jenny. It meant something to be chosen, but Jenny froze. Her summer had been long and full of painful isolation. Her mother had made sure of that. Jenny wasn’t ready for the Christine Castletons of the world. It wasn’t just a car ride. It was an initiation.

“I’m going to wait for the bus,” Jenny answered, trying to be casual about it, but Christine hit the gas and blew through the stop sign at the end of the road, evidencing her disapproval.

“Must be some bus,” the boy she had momentarily forgotten about said before smirking. He took one last long drag from the cigarette, tossed it to the ground, and stomped it out with his combat boot. “Day one, can’t wait.”

The sound of diesel in the distance was the most welcome noise Jenny had ever heard. They both slid off the rock wall, and she was unsure if she should walk with him or leave their interaction at that. She took the lead, and he followed just enough behind her to show he wasn’t sure either.

“I’m JP, by the way. If you cared.”

“Jenny,” she said, hoping this wasn’t a mistake. It was her first day of high school; she hadn’t even boarded the bus yet and had already rejected Christine Castleton and attached herself to a weird nobody.

JP reached out to symbolically hold the bus door open for her, and as her foot left the ground, a voice yelling in the distance demanded their attention.

“Jenny! Jenny!” her mother screamed in no particular direction as she came barreling down their driveway, running parallel to Sanford Hill Road and all too visible from the bus. Linda was in her silk bathrobe, hair wet, arms and legs flailing. “Jenny!” She spotted the bus and began a targeted sprint.

Jenny stared in shock before jumping off the bus, pushing JP out of the way. “Mom, what? Stop.”

Linda threw her arms around her daughter and squeezed. “Oh my God, I didn’t know where you went. I was so scared.”

Jenny shoved her off. “Jesus, Mom, this is so embarrassing. Please go.”

“You’re right, OK, I’m sorry.” Linda backed away. “Have a great first day. I love you.”

Jenny rolled her eyes and headed back to the bus. Doomed.

Chapter Three
Virginia

THE FUNNY THING about death is how hard everyone strives for normalcy in its wake. If we could all just pretend it didn’t happen, these horrible feelings would go away. Only a week had passed since Jenny’s murder, and we were having Sunday dinner. The weekly ritual was something none of us enjoyed to begin with. Now, it was unbearable.

I pulled into the driveway around six, awaking several reporters who had been parked across the street for the past three days. They flooded from the vans but couldn’t step on the property, and I was grateful for the long driveway. I slipped into the side door attached to the garage. Once I was inside, they went silent and retreated to their vehicles like zombies resetting in a haunted house. They would lie dormant until I resurfaced later that night.

I entered the kitchen from the garage. It smelled like Italian. I peeked in the oven and saw a lasagna. It was store-bought, Costco probably. Linda always cooked extravagant Sunday dinners, but since the murder, doctors had her on something close to horse tranquilizers.

“Hello?” I yelled out into the house.

“In here,” said my father from the living room.

He sat in a brown leather chair and clung to his phone, typing with purpose. He looked up after a second. “Virginia, come, sit.”

Linda was curled up on the couch, leaving plenty of room for me to join her. She was put together, but wrapped tightly in an old afghan that her late mother had knitted for Jenny, and rocking so subtly one could miss the motion if they weren’t looking for signs of insanity.

I lowered myself down onto the couch, afraid if I created too much movement she would break. “How are you doing, Linda?” I asked.

She smiled at me. “I’m doing well. Thank you. How are you?” Her voice was affected. Linda always spoke with misguided energy, but now she was deflated, giving a canned response that was totally inappropriate given the circumstances. Jesus Christ, Linda, just admit something really horrible happened and you aren’t one hundred percent. I won’t tell anyone.

“You know …” I trailed off. “A lot of reporters out there.”

“A bunch of vultures who don’t think of us as real people,” spat my father.

“They just want to help,” Linda tried.

“Help who? You think they’re out there to help us? They’re out there waiting for us to do something that they can use to say it’s our fault. Proof we weren’t good parents, proof we didn’t do enough to protect our daughter. It’s what they always do.”

That upset Linda. She rested her head down on the arm of the sofa, a physical sign of surrender.

“Do the police have any leads?” I asked my father.

“It was that man from the pageants. Had to be. A truly disturbed man. Evil.”

Linda met this with a labored moan. “Can you please stop? Can we just have a nice family dinner?”

“Christ, Linda, what else do you expect us to talk about?” he grumbled.

I didn’t expect compassion from my father, even in this extreme circumstance, but it wasn’t any easier to witness. Even I wanted to offer Linda a hug, something my father only did in front of the cameras. She just looked so fragile. I almost forgot how much I disliked her.

The timer went off in the kitchen, and Linda unwrapped herself from the blanket and announced, “The lasagna is ready.”

MY FATHER SAT at the head of the table. He brought his phone with him, something that always agitated Linda. I sat in my normal chair to the left. The extra leaves were still in the table from the wake, resulting in three empty chairs instead of just one, Jenny’s.

Linda entered with the lasagna and placed it in the center of the table. She had removed it from its packaging and set it into a casserole dish, hiding the evidence. Such a poor misguided woman to think anyone would care that eight days after the death of her only child she didn’t make a homemade lasagna.

She took the chair to the right of her husband, then reached out and took his hand, pulling it away from the phone in an affectionate way. He obliged and set it down on the table. A small victory for Linda.

“I would like to say something before we eat,” she announced.

“We don’t need to be dramatic. Can we just eat?” asked my father.

“Calvin, I want to say something.”

He leaned back in his seat. Another Linda win. She interlocked her hands, thinking about her words. “Jenny was such a beautiful girl. She had a bright future. She could have been Miss America, but she was taken from us by a monster. I hope that once they find that man and bring him to justice, we will be able to find peace.” She nodded like she had finished grace and reached for the knife, slicing into the lasagna.

Linda’s obsession with pageants was nauseating. It had long been one of my triggers. I knew what it was like to be my father’s child. It came with such pressure to be successful that I had long ago snapped, revolted, and practically been disowned. That poor child saved me. She became the focus so that I could slip away. It worked for everyone until it stopped working for Jenny. For the past few months, she had not been behaving as required. It was not addressed, and it was ignored to the point that even now Linda was talking Miss America. I could feel my temperature rising. I had to say something.

“But don’t you think the timing was odd? I mean, if it was this Benjy guy, why now? She wasn’t even doing pageants anymore. Don’t you think he would have found a girl, you know, more perfect?” I knew the last part would sting. That was the point.

“She was perfect,” Linda snapped.

“I just mean, I think too much emphasis is being put on her pageant life. The pictures everywhere are these disgusting glamour shots. I think it’s just creating a false story. She wasn’t a doll. She was a teenager.”

“That’s enough,” my father commanded.

It felt empowering to get that out even if I was alone in thinking it. I was a lousy sister, and this felt like the least I could do. Someone had to stick up for her memory, not the memory her parents and the media wanted portrayed, the memory she would want.

I left right after dinner. They wanted normal and that was normal. I didn’t like those people. I hadn’t realized how much of a buffer Jenny had been between me and my father and Linda. I always thought they used her to ignore me. Apparently I used her too.

I stepped outside and awoke the zombies.

They kept yelling questions as if I would stand at the top of the driveway and yell answers back down to them. The narrative was already clearly established: Jenny was a beautiful, pristine child raped and murdered by a pedophile obsessed with her. A murder that rocked a perfect town and a perfect family. I would watch that Dateline episode. It was time to shake that image up a bit.

When my car reached the end of the driveway, the reporters parted to allow me access into the street. They surrounded the car, trying to get a good look at me. I rolled down the window to help them. Then I raised both middle fingers and announced, “You’re all so fucking stupid,” before hitting the gas and driving off.