Bury Me With Barbie by Wyborn Senna Read Free Book Online Page A

pitching the tenth coin, P.J. heard a sharp slam and footsteps in a room beyond.
    P.J. had seen photos of Hailey, thanks to the Best Barbie Board. They revealed a young woman who looked as fresh-faced as sweet young Laura Ingalls from
Little House on the Prairie
. In one photo, she held a sandy-haired Midge doll close to her face. In another, she was dressed in lavender, one of three bridesmaids at an outdoor wedding. In a third, she was lying beside a pool in a chaste one-piece swimsuit. The fact that she taught second grade only added to her rep as a darling. But knowing what kind of virulent messages she could and did leave on the boards suggested to P.J. that Hailey was anything but seraphic and nothing like her best friend Beth, a woman who never let a single post go by without a comment, but whose messages were always sweet and kind.
    When Hailey pushed ever so slightly on the half-closed laundry room door, P.J. jumped forward, grabbed her, and struck her skull with the pointed end of the tack hammer.
    A single utterance escaped Hailey lips that sounded like “bahhh.” Disoriented, Hailey stumbled around in an effort to leave, but it was too late. Her long, light brown hair was already becoming matted with blood from the first strike when P.J. landed a second wide-arced blow behind Hailey’s left ear, showering a spray of blood all the way up to the ceiling.
    Hailey stared at P.J. blankly as she fell down on the laundry room floor, trying to place her attacker. Once down, P.J. kicked her repeatedly in the upper torso and head.
    Soon Hailey was little more than a rag doll. The room had been renovated from white to dark red. P.J. pried the tack hammer out of Hailey’s final, deep head wound. She put the bloodied hammer in a plastic bag and selected two plush towels from the folded stack atop the dryer to wrap the bag before sliding two jumbo rubber bands around the bundle.
    She stepped over the glassy-eyed woman at her feet and took her shoes off at the entrance to the laundry room before proceeding through the house to find where Hailey kept her dolls.
    The Raphael home was uncluttered and neat. Whatever wasn’t beige ranged from dark brown to red to burnt orange in an autumnal palette that suggested the hand of an interior decorator. As P.J. passed through the living room, kitchen, and foyer, she noticed a painting of a cowboy surrounded by a cluster of cattle. She stared at it, wondering how the man managed to keep the cows clustered around him. If she were one of those mooing McBurgers, she would surely find a way to hightail it to greener pastures.
    She struck gold when she entered the first room off the hallway on the right. An assault of calico drapery and bedding reinforced the image P.J. had of Hailey being born for prudish prairie life. A personal computer sat on the desk, along with student papers exhibiting youngsters’ evolving penmanship as they practiced writing the alphabet.
    A curtained window in the room faced the backyard, where there was a large kidney-shaped pool and lounge chairs. It was the same pool seen in the photo Hailey shared online with friends. With hands still gloved, P.J. opened the window and a light breeze blew in, slamming the bedroom door with a loud bang—
    * * *
    Whaa whaa whaa whaa whaa whaa whaa whaa…
    P.J. jolted awake and put her hand against her racing heart. The alarm clock beside the bed was flashing “8:00,” which looked like BOO, BOO, BOO, BOO in the darkened room.
    She was home.
    She had slept through the night.
    The door had never slammed at the Raphael house in Tucson. The light breeze, instead, had been refreshing as P.J., who had been sweating copiously, started to calm down and assess Hailey’s collection.
    Midge and bubble-cut Barbies, most of them dressed in 900-series outfits, lined plywood shelves along two walls. There were plenty of unparalleled Midge dolls, including an assortment without freckles, some with side-glance eyes, some with teeth, and