Buried
Secrets
Craven
Falls Book 2
by
Donna M. Zadunajsky
Genre:
YA Mystery
My
name is Robyn Wilde, or at least that’s the name the state gave me
when I was five years old. I have no idea what my real name is or
where I came from, who my parents really are, and why they didn’t
want me.
But
I can tell you this:
“I’m
fifteen and ran away from my foster parents’ house after finding a
file hidden away in their room with not only my name on it, but also
the name Crystal Rosmus. According to the file, she knows a lot about
me. How, I have no idea. But she lives in Craven Falls, Ohio, and I’m
on a bus right now to find her.”
The
Dead Girl Under the Bleachers
Craven
Falls Book 1
Three
girls…
Three
dead bodies…
The
quiet town of Craven Falls is depleting in population. One by one…
Scarlet
Fitzgerald thought it would be fun to play a game on Laura Stevenson,
a nobody at Craven Falls High. But what happens when the game
unleashes buried secrets Scarlet doesn’t want anyone to know?
Secrets that could get someone killed, including herself.
Three
can play a game, but one of them ends up dead…
Prologue
I’d have to admit; I wasn’t used to the physical exertion. The muscles throughout my entire body ached and burned like they were on fire. Sure, I did my share of chores around the house, but digging a hole was beyond the kind of work I normally did. It wasn’t a routine for me. I had never done something like this before. I just prayed that the hole would be deep enough. Because it would be terrible if I did all this work for nothing. A waste of my precious time. Because God knows that I don’t have time to waste.
I stopped once the hole was the exact size I needed it to be. Like I said, I had never done this sort of thing before. I hadn’t planned to dig a gigantic hole in the woods big enough to bury a body in. A body I hadn’t intended to kill. If I said it was an accident, would you believe me? Probably not. You don’t even know anything about me. And neither did she.
I wiped the sweat from my brow, feeling satisfied. A job well done, that’s if I were giving out compliments to myself, which I’m not. No one has ever praised me for anything that I’ve done in my life, so why start now?
I turned and drove the shovel into the mound of dirt beside the hole. I had to finish this before it got too dark or worse, someone came into these woods and saw what I was doing. Then I’d have to get rid of them too, and I wasn’t sure I could handle killing someone else.
I walked over to where I had left her body and grabbed her arms, pulling her toward the open grave. Her back scrapped against the earth, cutting her skin, not that I cared. Once I was at the edge of the hole I had just dug, I dropped her arms and sat down beside her.
Dirt covered her body from being dragged, but she was still beautiful. I ran my fingers over her hair, now tangled in a brownish red. The blood had dried in a crust form, matting the hair to her head. If you saw her now, you wouldn’t know that her hair was once blonde, though browner at the roots like mine.
I wondered if they would miss her, but quickly blocked the thought from my mind. I wouldn’t let her. Or at least I wouldn’t miss her. To be honest, I really didn’t even know her all that well. We knew nothing about each other because the truth of the matter was, we had just met for the first time in fifteen years. A secret that was kept from me. Actually, there were many secrets kept from me, but she was the one that mattered most. But I won’t sit here and waste any more time reminiscing over the past I hadn’t known about until just a few days ago.
Getting to my knees, I rolled her into the hole. The hole wasn’t deep, maybe two or three feet. Her body hit the bottom with a loud thud. No sound escaped out of her, which told me she had to be dead. She needed to be dead for this to benefit me.
Leaning forward, I peered into the open grave. She didn’t move. Was I expecting her to? When I arrived here in Craven Falls, I had only one thing on my mind and that was to find out who I really was. Well, until her. This girl now lying in front of me. I hadn’t meant to hurt anyone when I arrived in this town, but I did and there was nothing I could do about it now.
I jumped down into the hole and laid her on her back, whispering in her ear. Words only meant for her to hear, that’s if she were alive. I wished that she hadn’t provoked me into killing her and wondered at that very moment if we were alike? If we shared the same habits and loved the same things as clothes and music. It didn’t matter now. I made one tiny, infinite mistake, and now I have to cover it up.
A low chuckle escaped from deep inside my throat as I stared down at her. I wasn’t sure where it had come from. Why did I think this was funny? I wondered if it would have ended up differently for her if she wouldn’t have been such a pest? Well, I couldn’t think about that now. She was already dead. She was in the woods where no one would come to look for her. Because in all honesty—they wouldn’t even know she was missing.
I climbed out of the hole and stood above her. My lips spreading wide as a smile appeared. A side of me that felt all too new.
A gust of wind with a faint smell of rain came from out of nowhere. I needed to stop dicking around and cover her body before it rained. There were no leaves on the trees to help shelter me from the rainwater, just scrawny twigs like branches.
I turned and picked up the shovel, scooping the dirt onto her body until the hole wasn’t a hole anymore.
Then I walked away.
Part One
What you see isn’t always what is real…
It’s what you believe you want to see…
by: Donna M. Zadunajsky
One
Robyn
Three Weeks Earlier
According to the state of Illinois, my name is Robyn Wilde. I don’t know if that is my real name from birth or just something child services gave me when I ended up in the system, which I couldn’t tell you how that happened. I was very young, maybe five, when I moved to a different home. At least that was what I overheard my social worker tell my foster parents because I remember little from when I was a child.
I guess you can consider me a nobody. Like nobody wanted me. Nobody cared about me. Nobody loved me. Maybe the state should have just named me Nobody, instead of Robyn. Many times, I wondered if I had a different name other than Robyn before they placed me here? If I did, I can’t remember it. I can’t remember anything about my life, before I came here.
Here’s what I know: I’m fifteen years old, and I have lived in the poor, underclass section of Chicago my entire meaningless life. I’m not sure if I had a real family or if they’re somewhere out there in the world beyond the city of Chicago. If I did, were they dead or didn’t they want me anymore? Is that how I ended up in a foster home? I’ve been searching for those answers, practically my whole life.
I like to think my family died a horrible death. Okay, maybe not too horrible. They were my parents. There must have been no one else in the family to take me in, which meant no aunts or uncles to help raise me, and that was how I ended up here. I can’t recall anything before this shithole of a home, as if I blocked it from my mind. Just for shits and giggles, I tell my friends that my foster parents keep me drugged. That’s why I can’t remember my past.
But sometimes—sometimes I think I can feel someone else’s pain. I’ll get these sudden sharp pangs in my head, but then they disappear as if they were never there. But when I get them, I have to lock myself away because I can’t control what I do, not only to myself, but to others around me. I know something was wrong with me, but where I live, the people I live with, you don’t dare complain about being sick. Maybe it has something to do with all the germs floating around in this dirty, filthy, cockroach infested house.
I don’t know if anyone else feels the same way, but to me foster care was bullshit! The people that took me in, they don’t really care about me. I think they do it for the money. They don’t buy me the things that I need, like clothes or food with the money they get from the state. Instead they buy drugs and things they want.
Or maybe I’m an unlucky soul who got a raw deal in life. I got stuck with an awful foster family that didn’t give a shit about me or the system. It wasn’t as if I could compare this family with other foster families because I’ve only been in this house.
There were three other kids that had stayed here in the house with me and my foster parents, but they moved to another foster home, except for Alyssa.
Alyssa was like a sister to me. Close enough to a sister I never had. We were only three years apart in age; her being older than me. We liked the same things too. We would stay up late, reading, or just talking like sisters do. But that was the thing, I don’t know if that was true. I don’t know if real sisters or siblings got along with one another and did things together. I guess I will never know. I just wished someone would want me. That someone would love and hug me every day. Or at least show me some affection.
Alyssa was the first to go. The thing was, after she left, I never heard from her again. I’m not sure where she went and if she was okay. She has to have a better life than what we had here. I just wished she had taken me with her. I have three more years in this dump, then I can leave and do whatever I want, just like Alyssa.
~
Saturday morning when I woke, I had a feeling my life was about to change. Though, I couldn’t tell you it was for the best, because I didn’t know that yet. It all happened when my foster parents left the house and like I always did, I went rummaging through their things, looking for cash or valuables I could sell to get things I needed.
As usual, I searched in all their hiding places. I walked over to their dresser and rooted under clothes for cash. When I opened the bottom drawer of the dresser, I stumbled upon a hidden floor under my foster dad’s jeans. Obviously, one I hadn’t found before today, which seemed weird because I have checked this drawer before. I removed everything and found a single file.
I sat on the floor of their bedroom and scanned through the documents, which were about me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. What I was reading! I hopped on the junky Dell computer my foster parents had in the kitchen and googled the name listed in the file. The name I was hoping belonged to my birth mother.
I clicked on the site under her name, which then took me to another website. It was as if the computer was playing some kind of game with me. Click this link, then that link until I would get so frustrated and give up on the search, but I would not stop now. Not when I was so close to knowing where I came from and who I really was.
Was the computer trying to hide the truth from me? The truth that I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, or did I? Would it be something that would destroy me? Or something good? I could definitely use a change in my life. Like getting out of this place. It surprised me the state allowed me to live in such filthiness.
I clicked on another link that sent me to, of course, a different page. There it was in black and white typed letters the name, Crystal Rosmus. It said that she was a former police officer here in Chicago. I read the article about her, but I didn’t know how it had anything to do with me. There was no mentioning of my name, just some kid by the name of Megan Josten. Something about a robbery that had gone wrong. Why would my foster parents have a file like this? It had my name on the outside of the envelope, but I couldn’t find anything on the papers related to me.
This Crystal Rosmus seemed to have disappeared into thin air. I searched her name but without a credit card the link wouldn’t tell me anymore than what I had found. I would have to see if my friend at school could find out more for me.
I racked my brain, trying to think if I had ever heard of her name before, but nothing came to me. But I also wasn’t sure if that was her name any longer. She may have changed it or gotten married, but there was only one way to find out.
When my foster parents came home, I asked them about what I had found. Let me just say that things didn’t go so well, and I got my ass kicked out of their house for snooping through their things. Normally, I would return in a day or two, but not this time. I wasn’t going back into that house if my life depended on it. I grabbed what little things I owned, which wasn’t much, shoved them into my backpack, and walked out the door.
Two
After arriving at my friend Simon’s house, I told him everything that I had found and what I needed from him. Within thirty minutes, he dug up some information for me and I was about to take a trip.
I mapped searched Craven Falls, which was a six-hour drive from Illinois to Ohio; seven if you counted the stops along the way. Of course, I didn’t have a car, nor was I legal to drive. Not that I’m saying I have never driven before because that would be a lie. I have friends that have cars and a few friends who have helped me hotwire a vehicle. But I don’t have a license, and it would be idiotic to risk stealing a car. So, this meant that I’d have to scrounge up some money and get a bus ticket out of here. I would make my way to this town of Craven Falls and find this Crystal Rosmus.
~
The bus ride wasn’t bad. Well, actually, it was the first time I had ever been on a bus. I walked to school in Chicago, so I couldn’t compare this trip to anything else. I had never been out of the state of Illinois and probably never would have been if it weren’t for that file I had found.
The houses seemed to get further apart the more we drove out of the city. There was nothing but farmland. Not like Chicago, where the homes touched each other. The yard was no bigger than two cars side by side. I guess that’s why the kids in my neighborhood played in the streets.
I dozed off only to jolt awake when the bus made a hard right turn off the highway and onto a bumpy road. Trees surrounded both sides of the bus as I looked out my window. We were in the middle of nowhere. I prayed that I hadn’t made a mistake coming here, but it was a little too late for that.
As we drove further down the road, a sign appeared, Welcome to Craven Falls, population 2,800. Although, someone had spray-painted in red words less than above the 2,800. I was sure that the town wasn’t aware of this or they would have cleaned off the paint. But then again, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. A slice of fear tingled through my body. It was the feeling you get when you know something isn’t right or was about to happen.
Houses and stores appeared as the bus drove through the small town of Craven Falls. It wasn’t what I had expected at all, but it had to be better than where I came from. I had cared little for the city of Chicago, but this, well, this was creepy in all aspects. Like something you would read in a book or watch in a scary movie. I had a feeling something had happened here in this quaint little town, and that I should turn around and leave as fast as I could.
Donna
M. Zadunajsky started out writing children's books before she wrote
and published her first novel, Broken Promises, in June 2012. She
since has written several more novels and her first novella, HELP ME!
Book 1 in the series, which is about teen suicide and bullying.
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