Dead Girls Don't Lie Read Online Free PDF

was killed because he was part of a gang. It also said his body was found two days after Rachel and I went into the old house.
    When I finally got brave enough to ask Rachel about it, if she had seen anything when we were in the house, her eyes went wide with fear, but she said, “I didn’t go all the way upstairs. I got scared because I saw a mouse, and I cut my footon the stairs when I was running away.” I knew she was lying. Rachel wasn’t scared of mice or anything else. When I pushed her, mentioning the kid who was murdered, her voice got cold and expressionless. She said, “He was a gangbanger. He got what he deserved.”
    Around the left side of the house there’s a broken window, maybe big enough for me to climb through. The urge to get inside the old house is so strong that I’m already thinking about how I’ll put my towel across the glass so I can climb in without getting cut. I don’t know what I’ll find inside the house, or if there’s anything there I want to find. I only know I have to. I should have gone to the police and told them what I saw that night. I should have made Rachel go too.
    At the window I pause. There’s something tucked behind an overturned couch, a backpack or a duffel bag maybe. It looks too new to have been there long. I lean forward, trying to see it better—
    “Hey!” A guy’s voice startles me so badly that I scream and spin around.
    “I, I—” My heart pounds and my voice cracks. I turn to face the voice, momentarily blinded by the sun coming through the trees behind him.
    “You shouldn’t be here.”
    “I was just—” My eyes adjust to the light, and I recognize the guy standing in front of me.
    Evan Cross.

Chapter 4
    I stumble back and try to say something, but I can’t.
    His voice softens. “I mean, this isn’t the safest place for you to be. There’s broken glass all over, and druggies sometimes hang out here. What are you doing, anyway?”
    “I was on my way to the lake,” I manage to reply. I think this is the first time Evan has ever talked to me.
    He looks at me with suspicion. “The lake? You seem to be a little lost.”
    The truth sounds completely insane. I go with, “I took a detour. I was on my way to my friend’s house to see if—” I remember Rachel’s dead and bite off “to see if she could come with me,” and finish, “I just wanted to check on her mom, to see if she’s doing okay.”
    “Oh.” Evan looks down. “You mean the girl who lives on the other side of the woods. The one who …” He trails off and his face twists. I hate how he says “the girl” like Rachel meant nothing to him. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe I lost Rachel’sfriendship over a stupid rumor. He takes a breath. “I just went by there. Her mom isn’t home.”
    “You went to Rachel’s house? Why?” Curiosity completely overcomes my fear, and I look up enough to make eye contact with him.
    “Oh.” He crosses his arms and avoids my eyes, like now he’s the one who was doing something wrong. “I went to tell her mom that my uncle is willing to fix her window. For free.”
    “Oh.” Evan’s uncle owns Cross Landscape and Construction, the biggest, actually the only, landscape/construction company in town. “That’s really nice of him.”
    He smiles a sad smile. “Considering everything her mom’s been through, it’s the least we could do.” Something about the way he says it, something about his smile, makes me think there’s more to it than that. “Anyway, nobody’s home, and it’s still kind of a mess. I don’t think you want to go there.”
    When he stops talking I realize I’m still looking into his eyes, the clear blue eyes I memorized from his yearbook photo. Eyes that look like Skyler’s. I drop my gaze and neither of us says anything for a long moment. Finally he says, “Hey, I know you. Jaime, right?”
    “Jaycee,” I correct him. I know I’m blushing all the way up to my red hair. Blushing, another bad look for someone as