Mind Your Own Beeswax by Hannah Reed Read Free Book Online

newest addition to my close group of friends senior year when she started dating T. J. Schmidt only a few weeks before the bottom dropped out of our party barrel. Our future dentist and his longtime girlfriend, Ali, were in the midst of another of their relationship crises, only one of multiple routine breakups, when Lauren seized the opportunity to insert herself into the action. She moved in fast. T. J. hadn’t stood a chance.
    We were all tight back then, and having Lauren around complicated things. Suddenly our friend Ali was replaced, and the dynamics of the group changed in some inexplicable and very uncomfortable way. I felt the change in us that very first day when she came around on his arm.
    Now here we were in the woods looking for my runaway honeybees and all of a sudden we were talking about Lauren Kerrigan.
    “What a blast from the past,” I muttered to Patti and Holly. Shadows moved and swayed around us, became longer and more sinister. Overhead, the trees seemed to grow taller and denser. Kind of creepy, considering the topic under discussion at the moment.
    “Blasts. We all heard gunshots,” Patti pointed out, using blast in an entirely different context than I had. None of us had moved from our spots on the deer trail. “This is too spooky for me. What if what we heard were shots from Rita’s missing gun?”
    “Would a handgun have sounded that loud?” Holly asked, looking at me.
    “That’s a really good question,” I said, again thinking back to the shots we heard earlier.
    “You knew all about the differences between rifles and shotguns a little while ago,” my sister pressed. “GA ( Go Ahead ). Enlighten us. What kind of gun was it?”
    “Uh, uh . . . How should I know?” I said, realizing I’d used the extent of my limited weapons knowledge on the town’s no-rifle policy.
    “Wouldn’t a handgun make more of a firecracker sound?” Patti asked.
    Holly piped in. “Or a noise like those snap-n-pops we used to throw on the ground when we were kids? Remember? They sounded like caps?”
    “We don’t know if the shots were fired from close by,” I said, “or from far away, so all we’re doing is wildly guessing.”
    Too bad Hunter hadn’t been with us when we heard them. He would have known.
    I looked down the trail and noticed Holly and Patti doing the same. Up ahead, the path we were following would come out into a clearing, marking the southern end of The Lost Mile. Somewhere north of there it had all started for us back then. Or ended for us, if I wanted to go and be all dramatic.
    “Tell me what’s going on,” Patti demanded. “I’ll find out from somebody else, and what if they tell me wrong? Don’t you want me to get the story straight?”
    My nosy neighbor had a very good point.
    “Besides,” Patti added, “if you can’t trust your best friend, who can you trust?”
    Oh jeez, not that again! My next-door neighbor was NOT my best friend. At least not from my point of view.
    Holly gave me an amused smirk.
    I decided to give Patti the bare bones facts since she wasn’t going to quit bugging me until I did. “In high school a bunch of us went into The Lost Mile from the other end. Some of us had been drinking.”
    Holly snorted.
    “Okay, all of us were, but some more than others. And bad things happened.” That was an understatement. Too much booze and even more bad judgment had ridden shotgun with Lauren Kerrigan when she pealed away from the northern entrance to The Lost Mile. “Lauren took off on her own,” I continued, “drove into town, and ran over somebody.”
    Holly stepped in. “Not just anybody, either. Johnny Jay’s dad. Wayne Jay.”
    “Our Johnny Jay’s father?” Patti said. “She killed the police chief’s dad? That’s horrible. How come this is the first I’m hearing about it?” Patti’s eyes actually gleamed with glee, and I had to think the world was filled with gossiping people who thrived on the bad fortunes of others. Please, don’t