The Best American Mystery Stories 2019

So when Mel came sprinting out of the barn, grinning wildly, saying she’d done it, Amanda was sure she was just fooling around. Until she saw the smoke.

She could have run in then, tried to put it out. Or gone and pounded on the Caldwells’ door and told them to call the fire department quick. She could have done something.

Instead, she saw the smoke, the orange glow of fire from deep inside the barn, and she ran like the coward she was, the coward she would always be.

She took off right behind Mel and Katie. They were laughing, giddy, and hadn’t Amanda laughed too? Sure she had. It was terrible, but it was also exciting and crazy, like nothing she’d ever done. Thrilling. They’d had no idea the Caldwell boys were sleeping up in the hayloft. The plan was to make people think Hannah had burned down the barn. Get her in a little trouble. Not have the whole town think she was a murderer. Not to be murderers themselves.

The pumpkin watched, smiling stupidly at her, looking more like Hannah than ever.

I love you, Manda Panda.

Amanda remembered feeling Hannah’s warm breath on her neck the night she’d slept over, snuggled up against Amanda in her twin bed.

Go to sleep, Amanda had said that night, irritated that Hannah was there, that she was so pathetic and desperate, but also a little thrilled by the power she had over this girl, this girl who loved her so completely. Who called her Manda Panda, which was incredibly stupid but kind of sweet.

Amanda had hated it and loved it all at the same time. Which was the way she’d felt about Hannah, wasn’t it?

Amanda wondered for a moment if Katie or Mel ever thought about that night, about Hannah, about those boys in the barn — she hadn’t spoken to either in years, couldn’t even bear to keep up with them on social media. No, she thought. Neither of them ever understood the enormity of what they had done. Neither of them could.

The candle flickered, making the pumpkin seem to open its eyes wider, looking frightened, desperate.

Please, Manda. Don’t let them do this to me.

“Enough already,” Amanda said, picking up the carving knife, digging it into the pumpkin’s left eye, determined to change its shape, to make it look less Hannah-like.

In the darkness and silence, she worked to make the eyes more triangular, angrier, more like one of Jim’s devil-faced pumpkins.

When she finished with the eyes, she stepped back. It was no good. It just looked like a furious version of Hannah leering back at her.

You can’t make me go away this time.

She picked up the knife again, thinking she’d fix it — change the nose and mouth, banish Hannah-beast once and for all.

She froze, sure she’d heard a giggle from somewhere behind her, deep in the dark center of the house.

She listened hard, and it was not laughter she heard this time but the clip-clap sound of boot heels moving across the floor. The sound of her old pink cowboy boots — the boots her mother had shamed her into giving to Hannah.

The boots Hannah had been wearing that night.

The boots look good on you, Hannah.

“Hello?” she called. She waited, knife clutched in her hand, heart pounding in her ears.

“Hannah?” she asked, choking out the name.

The jack-o’-lantern grinned, seemed to give her an evil wink. I’m right here. I have been all along.