Dead End Girls Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 by Wendy Heard

  Cover art © 2022 by Sean Freeman and Eve Steben. Cover design by Sasha Illingworth. Cover copyright © 2022 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Christy Ottaviano Books

  Hachette Book Group

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  First Edition: May 2022

  Christy Ottaviano Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. The Christy Ottaviano Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Heard, Wendy, author.

  Title: Dead end girls / Wendy Heard.

  Description: First edition. | New York ; Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 2022. | Audience: Ages 14–18. | Summary: Desperate to escape suffocating expectations and menacing families, seventeen-year-old Maude and her step-cousin Frankie fake their own deaths while on a family vacation in Hawaii, with deadly consequences.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021032557 | ISBN 9780316310413 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316417884 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Death—Fiction. | Deception—Fiction. | Lesbians—Fiction. | Gender identity—Fiction. | Stepfamilies—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels. | Thrillers (Fiction)

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.H4314 De 2022 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032557

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-31041-3 (hardcover), 978-0-316-41788-4 (ebook)

  E3-20220408-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve: One Month Ago: Frankie

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen: One Month Ago: Frankie

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen: One Month Ago: Frankie

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One: One Month Ago: Frankie

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four: Three Weeks Ago: Frankie

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight: Three Weeks Ago: Frankie

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One: Ten Days Ago: Frankie

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three: Ten Days Ago: Frankie

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty: Fifteen Minutes Ago: Frankie

  Forty-One: Frankie

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three: Frankie

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five: Frankie

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine: Frankie

  Fifty

  Fifty-One: Frankie

  Fifty-Two: Frankie

  Fifty-Three

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  About the Author

  Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.

  Tap here to learn more.

  They tried to be too clever—

  and that was their undoing.

  —Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

  I RING THE DOORBELL. IT LIGHTS UP BLUE, AND A FAINT CHIME echoes inside the house.

  I wait on the porch with my suitcase, scanning the dark suburban neighborhood with tired eyes. It’s been a long day.

  The faux-Mediterranean houses are almost identical. It’s like that here: every tree the same height, probably planted on the same day, watered on synchronized timers, any misbehaving too-big or too-small trees torn up by the roots. The night air smells like jasmine, but I don’t see flowers anywhere. The city of Irvine probably has air fresheners hidden in the hedges.

  The door opens. My chest tightens.

  She looks tired. Her long auburn hair is a little tangled, her makeup faded.

  “Hey, Mom,” I say.

  She backs up to let me in. “It’s late.”

  “Academic Decathlon.” I bump my suitcase up over the threshold.

  She wrinkles her nose at it. “Would you put that in your room?”

  My room. I laugh bitterly under my breath and cross the white-tiled foyer to the carpeted stairs. As I climb, the twins come thundering down. “Maude!” yells Caden, who’s in the lead.

  “Maude!” echoes Andrew, chasing Caden down the stairs, through the foyer, and around the corner to the kitchen.

  I shake my head at the miscreants and resume my trudging up the stairs. The heavy suitcase thunk-thunk-thunks behind me.

  On the landing, I am confronted with Todd. My stomach sinks. He’s six feet away, but I can smell his cologne. He’s broad-shouldered and polo-shirted, his light brown hair parted on the side, a walking advertisement for tennis rackets.

  He forces a smile. Here we go. We’re having an interaction.

  “Maude,” he says.

  “Todd,” I reply. It rhymes. He grins. It’s tight, almost a grimace. My skin crawls with discomfort. “I’m excited about next week,” I say, just to say something. “It was nice of your family to invite me again.”

  This makes him beam with self-satisfaction. They’re so charitable, the Maxwells, willing to bestow their riches upon us lowly plebes. “Aw, that’s fine, Maude! Glad you’re coming along.”

  Mm-hmm. “Well, I’m gonna get cleaned up.” I point to the guest room.

  He steps aside. “Go to it, kid!” He trots down the stairs jauntily. What a guy.

  I rush along the hall with my rolling suitcase, let myself into the bedroom, and breathe out in a huge whoosh. I shut the door behind me and stand there in the dark, relishing the silence and privacy.

  I wasn’t lying; I am excited about next week. I’m exhausted and stressed, with so many details crowding my brain it’s like living inside an ant farm, but…

  Wow. Next week. Is this real? Am I finally here?

  I flip on the light.

  It’s like a hotel room. They bought this house when my mom was pregnant with the twins, and the decor is completely impersonal to me, picked out by the interior designer so as to double as a guest room when I’m not here.

  This house has four bedrooms. You’d think the twins could share, leaving me with my own room, but my mom and Todd feel it’s unhealthy for them not to have their individuality. I haven’t unpacked since I was eleven, but no one wonders whether it’s healthy for me to have all my possessions in this suitcase.

  Speaking of which, I roll it to its usual spot by the dresser, squat beside it, a
nd flip it open. I dig out my pajamas and bathroom bag, and then I reach into an almost-invisible slit in the lining and pull out a manila envelope. I open it and make sure everything is still inside. It’s become a nervous compulsion to check on it daily.

  Usually I’m at my mom’s for seven days. On day seven, I do exactly one load of laundry, repack my suitcase, go to my dad’s house (which is twenty minutes away), and repeat the whole thing. When my parents got divorced, they split everything neatly in half, including me.

  But this week is different. When I left my dad’s house this morning, I was doing it for the last time. We fly to Hawaii on Saturday, and a few days later I’ll be dead. It will be a tragic accident.

  I seriously cannot wait.

  I make sure everyone is in bed before I venture downstairs for something to eat. I rummage around in the fridge, annoyed that there’s kid food, stuff to make kale smoothies, and nothing else. What am I supposed to eat?

  “Caden has a fever.”

  I jump out of my skin and whip around. My mom’s behind me, looking tired, a bottle of children’s Tylenol in her hand.

  “Oh,” I say, not sure how I’m supposed to respond. I wasn’t mentally prepared for a conversation.

  “Can I get the ice pack out of the freezer?” she asks, annoyed.

  “Oh,” I repeat, understanding now. I’m in her way. I step aside. The fridge is one of those stainless-steel-with-glass-doors things. It brings back memories of the ancient honker of a fridge we had when I was a kid in our old apartment in Santa Ana. I remember her and my dad moving it up the outdoor stairs on a dolly because they couldn’t afford movers. I try to imagine Todd, whom I sometimes call Toddbercrombie, attempting to move a refrigerator up a rickety concrete staircase and smile faintly.

  She gets the ice pack and goes to a drawer for a hand towel. I return to searching for something to eat.

  “Make a smoothie,” she recommends, about to leave the kitchen.

  Her smoothie comment feels passive-aggressive. As always.

  My eyes flick down to her hip, where her pajama tank leaves a couple of inches of flat stomach bare. “I can still see the cherries,” I say meanly, for revenge.

  She whips around, trying to see the back of her hip, where two red cherries are half-blurred out. “I have five more laser treatments,” she replies, defensive. “They’ll come off.”

  “Is it going to be mom-kinis on the cruise again so Morticia doesn’t see your tat?” I’m referring to her mother-in-law, the matriarch of Todd’s family and a woman my mom is terrified of. Morticia inherited her husband’s commercial real estate development business when he died, and apparently she runs it ten times better than he ever did. Todd has some job in her office dealing with clients, which pays suspiciously well.

  Mom breathes at me for a second, clutching the towel. “Don’t call her that.”

  “Worried she’ll hear?” I look up at the ceiling. “Think she has cameras in here? You could be right. She has to keep an eye on her baby boy.”

  Mom shoots me a last glare and storms silently from the room. All this mental energy just to measure up to a family that builds tract housing.

  I watch her go, vengefully satisfied. The slightly trashy tattoo is a remnant from her youth, when she was poor and lived in crappy apartments with my dad and me, back in the days when they were working toward the college degrees that would ultimately buy them a better life while I was going to Head Start preschool. She was curvier then, when she and I were both young, before she knew how to count every calorie and shove hours of Pilates into a jam-packed schedule. She looked a lot like me, actually, when she was my age, but from her attitude you’d think she’d been born a size 2.

  Fuck your smoothie, I think, and decide to eat the boys’ chicken nuggets.

  As the dino nuggies warm up in the microwave, I picture my mom’s face when I go missing. Will she be frantic? Will she be distracted by the need to shelter her smaller children from what’s happened? I hope not. I hope she really feels it.

  I eat the chicken without tasting it. I usually have dinner at one of my secret part-time jobs, but tonight I was in LA arranging a secret bank account, which is why I didn’t get here till nine; the 5 freeway between Orange County and LA is no joke. I should have eaten in LA, though. I could have had tacos, and no one would have noticed my big ass while I ate except people who appreciated it.

  School is a distraction. It has to be done, though. Like social media and texting with friends and taking selfies while doing stupid, mundane things that never needed to be documented—it’s all part of the game.

  Lucas meets me at my car, and as always I feel pangs of guilt. He’s exactly what I needed: sweet, a little shy, a bit nerdy, but with a solid family and a loyal group of friends.

  “Hey, Maudie.” He trots toward me, backpack bouncing, and envelops me in a soft hoodie-and-aftershave hug. I return the embrace, aware we’re being watched by a group that includes Deanna, a girl I made out with at fat camp (disguised as basketball camp) last summer.

  “Hey, Lukie.” I kiss him, which is soft and warm but not my thing. At all.

  We make our way through the bright, shimmering Irvine morning. Irvine High School is something out of Mean Girls. The mascot is a vaquero, which is… not representative.

  As Lucas and I walk to class, he tells me about a video game thing I can’t quite understand. I’m distracted. All the time I was planning, I hadn’t considered how difficult this last week would be. It’s crunch time now and crucial for me to act completely normal. Not one thing can go wrong. All it would take is Lucas telling the cops, “She seemed distracted, like something was eating at her,” to get them looking where I don’t want them looking. With this in mind, I pay careful attention to his story, laughing in the right places. At the door of his first-period class, I kiss him on the cheek and tell him I’ll see him at lunch.

  I exhale heavily as I walk toward my own class. Lucas is kind, and he doesn’t deserve to be used like this. Compartmentalize, I command myself.

  Deanna is in my first period, AP Government, and I can feel her eyes on me as I take my seat a few rows in front of her. I don’t meet her eyes. I can’t change the fact that she exists, that in dark, whispered moments with our shirts off, I confessed my total and complete gayness to her, that she is someone who could poke all kinds of holes in my veneer of perfection with Lucas. I’m riding on the hope that she won’t do that to a dead girl.

  I make sure every upcoming test is entered into my calendar. I take copious notes in Google Docs on my MacBook. I spend all day planning for the week after spring break, which is midterms, groaning with classmates about how I’ll have to study on my trip, kissing Lucas at lunch in front of his friends, posting selfies and videos. I do these things because I am a funnel spider, and I am building my web.

  LAX IS A HOT MESS, AS ALWAYS, A TANGLE OF CONSTRUCTION AND crowds. Having made the harrowing journey at six a.m. despite the twins’ best efforts, we finally reach the security line, carry-on bags in hand. Todd and my mom are as coiffed as always, but they’re strained and exhausted; the twins are whining, and I’m not as helpful as I usually am. I’m busy second-guessing each step of my plan and mentally cataloging every item in my suitcase.

  A TSA agent is examining the security line critically. She looks Todd and my mom up and down. Her eyes travel to the boys, who are trying desperately to escape, and then to me. I attempt to appear calm. What does calm look like? Suddenly I don’t know. A rictus grin is stretching across my face. That’s not right. That’s not how normal people smile at the crack of dawn.

  “Good morning, Maude,” a quiet, singsong voice says behind me.

  I whip around. It’s Frankie, Todd’s niece—my step-cousin. She’s my age, and we’ve run into each other over the years at family events. The last time I saw her was at Christmas dinner. She has wavy, dark hair in a shaggy, collar-length cut I could never pull off. She’s always wearing baggy, nondescript clothes, which is interesting; sh
e’s the oldest grandchild in this family, heir to the throne, and she slouches around, face averted, looking like she’s hoping to bum a cigarette. I was honestly shocked the first time I met her, having expected a cheerleader or a Harvard-bound valedictorian, someone buttoned up and Pelotoned. It’s not that she isn’t pretty. She’s got huge dark eyes, smooth, tanned skin, and almost-black hair she inherited from her mother, who my mom says used to be an Italian fashion model. It’s just that she’s so different from the rest of her family.

  Over Frankie’s shoulder, I see her dad, Todd’s brother Chris, arrive with his arm around a woman I don’t recognize. The adults spot each other, and a flurry of loud “Hey, mans” and “Nice to see yous” ensues.

  “Does your dad have a new girlfriend?” I ask Frankie.

  “New wife. Leah.” She has a low, husky voice.

  “I didn’t know he got married. Was there a wedding?”

  “Nope. An elopement.” Her mouth tweaks into a little smile. “Grandma freaked out. Calls her the ‘little gold digger.’ Won’t even say her name.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s amazing.” I give the woman—Leah—another once-over. She’s a good deal younger than Frankie’s dad, who looks exactly like Todd but two inches shorter. She has black hair that cascades down her back and an olive complexion that’s been helped along by spray tanning. With glee, I imagine my mom’s discomfort; this woman is thinner and fitter than she is, not to mention younger.

  “Do we hate her?” I ask Frankie. “Or do we love how much she pisses off your grandma?”

  She grins, mischievous, and a dimple appears in her left cheek. “We love it. She’s nice, actually.”

  “Get in line,” the TSA agent yells at the Todds. “You need to be in line or step away.”

  My mom shoots her an angry-Karen look as she and Leah step sideways to continue their conversation within the confines of the line. I retreat into a nervous silence.

  We inch forward, and I sneak looks at Frankie, who is quiet behind me. Stepfamilies are weird. Your parent remarries, and you’re supposed to feel instantly close with this group of complete strangers. And everyone keeps up the farce; no one ever calls bullshit. Why does the fact that my mom made empty promises to Todd mean I should develop some sort of immediate, mushy connection to his golf-douche brother?