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.
Robyn Wilde has been in foster care all her life. She has no idea who her parents are. Robyn is not even her real name, Robyn is the name the state gave her when she was five-years-old.
When Robyn finds a file in her foster parent's bedroom, a room that she is not supposed to enter, with her name on it as well as the name and address of a lady, Crystal Rosmus in Craven Falls. According to the file this Crystal Rosmus has all the answers Robyn is looking for as it seems that this woman knows a lot about her.
Robyn is on the next bus to Craven Falls to find this Crystal Rosmus with the hopes that this lady can tell her who her real parents are. When Robyn arrives in Craven Falls she happens upon a house that looks to be abandon. This house holds quite a few secrets of its own and if those secrets are discovered then it is most likely that Robyn herself will be discovered at the same time.
Robyn is very aware that she could be discovered any day now but does her best to cover her tracks or hide any shreds of evidence that she is squatting in the house. Robyn unfolds a few of the secrets that the house is hiding but there isn’t much she can do it about it unless she wants to be caught and sent back. The secrets that the house is hanging onto ties Buried Secrets with the first book The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers in the Craven Falls series.
One night Robyn hears a noise outside the house and when she peeps out she sees two girls standing on the other side of the window. While standing there staring out the window Robyn sees her own face peering back at her. Robyn is stunned to see herself standing on the other side of the window. Who is this girl and why does she look like her?
Buried Secrets is filled with so many twists and turns that kept me guessing from the first page. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to see what was going to happen next. The suspense alone was enough to keep me hooked. The suspense just kept coming with no end in sight.
Like the title Buried Secrets says secrets are buried deep between the pages revealing them one at a time. It was like trying to put together a puzzle only being given one piece at a time just enough to keep me hooked until the last piece was put in place revealing the whole story and once all the pieces were in place it was a shocker it didn’t turn out quite like I had expected. I can’t wait for the next book in the Craven Falls series.
I highly recommend Buried Secrets to all fans of mystery and suspense. Be sure and check out the first book The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers in the Craven Falls series as well. One-click your copy of Buried Secrets and The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers today!
Laura
One Month Earlier
I closed the door to my locker and turned just as Rachel Sawyer and Scarlet Fitzgerald, the Queen Bees
of Craven Falls High, came strutting through the entrance doors of the school. They were both laughing as they paraded down the hall just like they did every day that school was in session.
They don’t talk to me; in fact, they don’t talk to any of the girls here unless they acknowledge them
first. Not that I wanted to be in their circle. To be considered a slut or a stuck-up snob. I like who I am.
I like being the outcast.
A nobody.
If I stay who I am now, no one will bother me. I can be on the outside looking in and watching
everything everyone else is doing. Besides, there are only eight months left before graduation. There was no reason to change my life now, right?
Who was I kidding? I’d be lying to myself if I said I wasn’t jealous of them because I am. They get to
do whatever they want, and everyone looks up to them. They get invited to the best parties and date the hottest guys, like Travis Evans. He’s like the God of hotness. Is that even a thing?
I would give anything to go out with him. For him to be my boyfriend. I’ve pictured us together more
times than I could count. He’d take me to the movies and the Homecoming Dance. We’d be crowned King and Queen at our Senior Prom.
My mind was wrapped around my thoughts as my body pivoted forward and my books went flying out
of my arms. I watched as they soared through the air in slow motion like in an action movie. The pages of my books turning and flapping, then plummeting to the floor, scattering around me, as if the gravity was sucked out of the room. When I realized what was happening, I dropped to my knees—hard, knowing a bruise would appear later. But that wouldn’t be anything new. It would only match the bruises I already have.
I gathered my books and papers before they’d get kicked down the hall. I’ve seen it done too many
times and was glad it wasn’t me, until now. Now, I was the idiot everyone was staring and laughing at, and glad that they weren’t me.
I glanced over my shoulder to see who had knocked into me. Kyle Tanner, a guy from the football team, swim team, and baseball team was standing behind me. He was also the biggest asshole in our senior class who got away with everything.
He looked down at me and shouted, “What the shit are you looking at? You better watch where you’re
going, dweeb,” then joined in with his buddies as they all laughed.
I wanted to stand up, get in his face, and tell him he was an asshole who doesn’t even know what the
word dweeb means. Of course, I don’t get in his face. I don’t say anything to him. That would be a death warrant and the end of staying invisible for the rest of my senior year. No, I needed to stay hidden until I could get the hell out of this town for good.
Kyle was also one of the popular kids. You don’t talk to them unless you’re one of them. Or unless you
are spoken to and they want you to answer. Even if he did talk to me, I’d ignore him, which would make him mad. I hope he wasn’t expecting me to apologize to him. He was the one who rammed into me.
You get to know the people around you when your locker is next to theirs. Things other people here
don’t see or know. I wanted to laugh because he thinks he’s God’s gift to women because that’s what he says to himself through the metal locker doors. “Yeah, she thinks you’re hot,” Kyle would say to himself.
Answering his own questions. I wondered what Scarlet would do if she knew the secrets, he kept from her?
After collecting my books, I stand and start to make my way down the hall when I hear, “Excuse me,
but what do you think you’re doing?” I flinched, wrapping my arms tighter around my chest, squeezing my textbooks into me. God, I wished I had the power to become invisible.
I stopped in my tracks. I recognized the voice talking to me before I even turned around. Scarlet
Fitzgerald spoke in her snobbish, annoying, high-pitched voice loud enough for everyone standing around to hear. She sounded like a pig squealing the way she talked sometimes.
She had always been the girl everyone noticed. She thrived on having everything her way. Though it
was because of her dad, who was the Mayor here in Craven Falls. God, I hated her as much as I wanted to be her. To be her friend, but that would never happen, and it was probably best that I didn’t become her friend. Eight months was all I had, and I was out of here forever. Out of this small, unpopulated town. Good riddance Craven Falls.
Turning my head, I looked over my shoulder, and saw Rachel and Scarlet gawking at me. Without
hesitation, I stepped aside and waited for them to pass. Scarlet tossed her red hair over her shoulder, lifted her head high as if she were trying to sniff the air as she went.
After they walked by, I headed to my first class, which happened to be with Scarlet and Rachel. I wasn’t sure what difference it made who got there first. Stay invisible, my head repeated.
≁ ≁ ≁
Although, it felt as if I had just sat down, the bell rang and class was over. I gathered my things and
stood, walking out of the classroom. I jumped back, ramming my back into the metal frame of the door.
“Fuck,” I murmured, squeezing my eyes shut to eliminate the abundance of pain shooting down my back.
The pain I should be accustomed to since it’s all I ever feel anymore.
When I opened my eyes, Rachel and Scarlet were standing in front of me as if they were waiting for
me, but that couldn’t be? Why would they be? I feared what they were going to do to me, but neither of them moved, which seemed to frighten me more.
“Hey, Laura. What are you doing after school tonight?” Scarlet asked.
My mouth dropped open and I quickly closed it. My eyes moved from Rachel to Scarlet. “Um,” I started to say and then began to stutter. “Wh… what do… do you mean, what am I doing tonight?” I sound beyond stupid right now.
“W… w… well,” Scarlet stuttered back, laughing directly at me.
I hated her more now than ever.
“We were wondering if we could like, get together and study math tonight. At your house,” she
concluded, throwing one of her smiles onto her face as if it would win me over.
Did she think I was one of her guy toys and could persuade me to do whatever she wanted? “Math?” I
questioned. My mind was racing faster than a roller coaster. Zipping up and down the hills and turning fast until the rush of the ride was over and I was climbing out of my seat wanting to do it all over again.
“Yes, Math,” Rachel repeated. “We have an exam coming up, and we really could use your help. You’re
so good at it and…” she stopped and spoke again. “I know it sounds strange, Scarlet and I are talking to
you because we never have before...” Rachel paused and swallowed.
My mind scrambled with thoughts. Rachel swallowing when she was talking was something she did
when she was nervous. But why would she be nervous talking to me? Or was it because she was doing
something she really didn’t want to do? How would I know if they were serious or not? Should I accept their invitation? Should I believe one single word they’re saying? Why are they even talking to me? Why do they want to hang out with me of all people? I’m a nobody.
My mind was battling with too many questions I didn’t know the answers to. Did Rachel forget that we drifted apart at the start of seventh grade?
“We’d like to get together. You know, hang out after school. Do some homework. Talk about boys,”
Scarlet said, taking over the conversation as she tossed her hair over her shoulder.
“Oh… Uh,” I replied, trying to come up with an excuse as to why I couldn’t hang out with them, but
I couldn’t and replied, “Sure, I guess so. That sounds great!” Sounds great, I scolded myself. It’s a horrible idea. Your mom will kill you if they come to the house.
The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers starts off with a bang as a high school student is being chased by someone who wants her dead. She is chased under the bleachers where the deed takes place. The identity of the girl or the killer is not given. The story then goes back a few months before the girl is chased under the bleachers.
The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers is told from three points of view. The story is told from Rachel’s, Laura’s, and Scarlet’s points of view. Three high school girls.
Rachel and Scarlet are best friends. Laura and Rachel used to be best friends a long time ago until Rachel discovered a thing called popularity. There are things about Scarlet that Rachel doesn’t like but puts up with because she wants the popularity that being friends with Scarlet gives her.
Rachel has a nice home with a loving mother.
Laura is an outcast she likes to stay to herself since she lost her brother and father in an accident and now her mother is an abusive alcoholic.
Scarlet has a few secrets that she would like to stay hidden or at least her father does.
Scarlet doesn’t really have a problem with holding on to secrets if releasing those secrets would get her what she wants. Scarlet likes to play games on people. She likes to hurt people. She uses people and manipulates them into being her friend and doing what she wants to get her way.
The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers was a fast-paced read that kept me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out whodunit. There was suspense and mystery from the first page all the way to the last. It had me guessing as to who was killed under the bleachers with each turn of the page.
Rachel, Laura, and Scarlet are all very memorable characters. Each girl brought their own special touch to the story. The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers would not have been the same without each of the girls with their personalities and the person they are. I would like to see The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers made into a movie. I can’t wait to dive into the next book Buried Secrets.
I highly recommend The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers to anyone looking for a good murder mystery with lots of twists and turns. One-click your copy of The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers today!
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