Making Friends Can Be Murder

Chapter One

April 1, 2023

By the time the group met up for the long-anticipated yarn-bombing, Sarah had netted four new personal training clients via The Sarah Jones Project Instagram account. Not bad for the brainchild of a kid she'd met in her first week after moving to Minnesota.

"It's gonna be fun," Sarah had told her grandmother on the phone that morning, "and only a normal amount of weird."

"Your profile on the 'gram was nice," Grandma Ellie had said. Of course, Ellie approved of Sarah's unconventional stab at making friends in a new city. Ellie had always believed in "the fates."

The fates struck quite a lot when your name was as common as Sarah Jones-emails meant for other women who shared both monikers, multiple rewards customers at the local bookstore, alumni news that had nothing to do with you from your midsize university. Mistakes and misidentification abounded.

So it had been both surprising and not when three days after Sarah had arrived from Vermont and started as the director of personal training and running at LifeSport Fitness, she'd gotten LinkedIn and Instagram DMs from a girl with her same name. But, on purpose this time.

"It's the fates!" Ellie had said, and Sarah could only agree. She'd felt giddy when she'd driven to a meet-up of fellow local Sarah Joneses that week. The group had met twice already when she joined, and they'd been so welcoming. Brian, Sarah's ex-fiancé, had warned her it would take months to find community halfway across the country from home. But there she was, about to meet four women-well, three women and one seventeen-year-old kid-all with the same name. And in the month she'd spent with them since, The Sarah Jones Project had built a social media following. Sarah's client list was growing. There would certainly be more after they "bombed" the iconic eastern cottonwood in Crosby Farm Regional Park. The Pioneer Press had sent a reporter, a woman young enough to be on her first assignment, after the group had sent in a tip. Lucky for all of them, it seemed like a slow news week. A group of same-namers could make the local section.

"Remember," Sarah Patrice Jones, age sixty-nine, shouted to the group from her crouch near the tree's trunk, "stretch the fabric and simple stitch!"

Sarah-"Thirty," the group called her, as they all went by their ages so as not to be utterly confused-smoothed a double-stitched section of crocheted yarn in robin's-egg blue over a low branch and smiled at Seventeen. "This is the best," she whispered.

Seventeen beamed. "I know. I can't believe this is my 'punishment.'"

Sarah giggled. The group had begun because Seventeen had made several public and unfortunate social media blunders. The Catholic nun who directed the Upper School at Seventeen's Sacred Heart Academy had mandated a positive social media endeavor as part of a rehabilitative disciplinary proceeding.

"Is this right?" Forty-Four asked, pulling another swatch across the trunk.

Sarah held her hand over the part of the seam she'd been sewing and peered at Forty-Four's work.

"Obviously not!" Sixty-Nine piped in. "I measured precisely. We all did, remember? Or were you taking a selfie at that particular critical time?"

Thirty and Forty-Four exchanged a glance, and Thirty-Nine spoke up, her words muffled around the thick yarn needle she'd stashed in the corner of her mouth. "We have a social media presence to maintain," she said. "Forty-Four and I are the only same-named teachers who regularly wear matching outfits in the nine-state area!"

"So I've heard," Sixty-Nine said, repositioning the yarn square.

Sarah grinned as she stitched. "It's an odd group," she'd told Grandma Ellie about the Sarahs, "but they're also funny. And they're nice! You'd have to be, right? To even entertain something like this?"

Sixty-Nine, in addition to being the crochet master, had retired in the last year from corporate law and also ran a moderately popular Murder, She Wrote recap blog. Thirty-Nine and Forty-Four taught elementary school in neighboring rooms. And Twenty-Seven, Sarah's closest friend in town, was halfway to a PhD at the University of Minnesota in sociology. "Here for academic interests," she said when she'd shown up to The Sarah Jones Project a week after Sarah.

"It seems like destiny, right?" Twenty-Seven had said. "A whole club of me? A group devoted to having the most common name in the world?"

Seventeen had peered at the newcomer's state-issued ID at her first meeting. They couldn't have imposters, the kid insisted. That would "dilute the appeal of the project."

"It's not even the most common name in the state." Seventeen handed the license back to Twenty-Seven with an eyebrow arch. "James Johnson, for instance. James Smith. Both occur more per capita."

"But, you know what I mean, right?" Twenty-Seven had smiled at the other women. She was gorgeous, long brown hair settling perfectly over her shoulders. "When people tell you you're the seventh Sarah Jones they've met or something?"

Seventeen had looked suspicious, but then she came out with the group's own origin story. "There was another one on my basketball team," she admitted, "but she's horrible and she spells it wrong."

"No h?" Twenty-Seven had asked. But Seventeen's dopple-namer was even worse.

"Uh-uh," she had said. "Serafina."

"Good lord." Twenty-Seven had chuckled a little, and Thirty noticed her sparkling white teeth and the sideways S on her necklace. "So she's S-E-R-A? She's not invited, is she?"

"Absolutely not." Seventeen had put down her Starbucks and crossed her arms. "I'm a purist." She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, thinking the statement through. "But in a good way."

And now, here they were, performing their culminating task. They hadn't talked about what was next for the group, but they'd all agreed on a spring break after the yarn-bombing, during which Seventeen would rehab her AP Bio grade and the others would do whatever things normal adults did. The Sarahs swirled around the cottonwood, each with her own tote bag. The reporter from the Pioneer Press stood close, scribbling notes between questions like, "How many Sarah Joneses have you all met in your lifetimes?" and "Why yarn-bombing?"

"It's whimsical!" Seventeen said in response. "An intergenerational endeavor with positive public appeal." She'd rehearsed that one.

"Are we still on for lunch after this?" Twenty-Seven whispered to Sarah as they smoothed out a cable-stitch section.

"Totes," Sarah said. They'd go to their usual spot, a café across from her Minneapolis apartment, just a building north of the one her mother had lived in when she'd moved to the city thirty-five years before. Sarah liked to look up at the third-story window she imagined had been her mother's, liked thinking about Ainsley taking Sarah's father back there after they'd been to a play at one of the city's many tiny theaters. The fates had taken Sarah's mother from them back when Sarah was a sixth grader, but Ainsley had shared countless stories about her time in Minneapolis. Even though Brian had been sure the entire endeavor would be filled with woe, Sarah hadn't regretted moving to Minneapolis even one time, especially once she and Twenty-Seven became virtually inseparable in their first month of friendship. "Meant to be," Ellie had said. "Your mother would be proud."

And as she looked at the tree, its girth covered with fiber, Sarah agreed. Ainsley would have loved this as much as she'd loved making god's eyes with her daughter's Girl Scout troop, as much as she'd loved collecting lines of poetry in spiral-bound notebooks.

"It's frickin' gorgeous!" Seventeen said from the base of the ladder Sixty-Nine had climbed to stitch the final sections. "The colors! They're magical!"

"Let's not get carried away," Sixty-Nine said, her hiking boot thunking the bottom rung. Once they were all earthbound, the six Sarahs and the reporter walked across the wood-chip path that ran next to the cottonwood. The colors they'd chosen-the swatches of blue, lavender, goldenrod, and kelly green-checkerboarded over the bark, the tree's knots poking through here and there. The branches telescoped toward the sky.

Seventeen sighed, her hands clasped over her heart as if in prayer. "It worked."

"It's gorgeous." Sarah squeezed Sixty-Nine's shoulder. The oldest Sarah had both fists on her hips and tears in her eyes. The tree was oddly moving, an explosion of color in the midst of the spring-brown woods.

"It's weird in a truly great way," Thirty-Nine agreed. "My firstgraders are going to love this." She turned her back and took a selfie, Forty-Four ducking in with her matching Liston Heights Elementary sweatshirt.

"Get by the tree," Seventeen said, herding them all and handing her phone to the reporter. "Take our photo?"

Sarah ran a hand over the trunk before she turned back toward the camera. Twenty-Seven's arm looped around her waist. Sarah tipped her head against her friend's, felt the warmth of her cheek next to her own.

Sarah couldn't know as she smiled that nothing about this group was really as it seemed.

Chapter Two

Video Transcript Recorded by Sarah Jones, Age Seventeen

May 29, 2023

Hello. I'm reading to you from the extensive narrative I've written (and may one day publish) about the events of spring 2023 and how they relate to my endeavor called The Sarah Jones Project. I'll start by saying I never expected it to go this far. Technically, after the yarn-bombing in the park-which, I might add, was covered by both the Minneapolis and St. Paul papers, as well as a couple dinky local publications-I'd executed my duties and been excused from my purgatory.

I allowed a spring in my step as I walked into Sister Mary Theresa's office that Monday during study hall, our usual meeting time, knowing I would no longer be on probation. This was it: no more punishment, no more guilt, no more confession.

When I made the first Instagram account and posted the offending memes, I didn't realize all of it would lead to this. And, perhaps for liability purposes, I should say that this video is not sanctioned in any way by Sacred Heart Academy. They don't even know about it. Well, I think they don't.

Hi, Sister. I swear my heart is in the right place.

That morning after the yarn installation, Sister had the Pioneer Press open on her desk. There we were in full color, a multigenerational group of friends, arms around each other in front of the tree. I couldn't believe how well it turned out-how actually beautiful the tree looked, the squares interlocked like some kind of magical 3D quilt, the limbs snaking into the sky like a creature out of Greek mythology.

"Can you believe how it turned out?" I remember asking Sister. I pulled out my phone to show her some of the other photos we'd taken, including close-ups of the stitches and colors.

"I suppose this is an acceptable use of your cell phone." Sister sounded serious, but I could see a smile at the edges of her mouth. She isn't as tough as she wants everyone to think.

Just being honest here, Sister, as you have so diligently taught me.

The articles, the publicity, the clicks on social sort of proved that my project-to create a "whimsical internet extravaganza designed to bring an intergenerational group of women together to explore authentic friendship"-had actually worked. The Pioneer Press piece began with the lede, "A seventeen-year-old girl with an unusually common name has built an uncommon community." How much more perfect could you get?

Sister grinned at me and said, "You've done it." Remember, before The Sarah Jones Project embarked on Season Two, everyone thought it was a great idea. "You've created something meaningful and shared it." Sister smiled wide, and she rattled the Starbursts around in her habit pocket until she found two yellows, my favorite, and tossed them like dice on the table.

"So, I can have a clear record?" I asked.

"I'll clear the suspension," Sister said. "I'll write your college recommendation personally. People"-she raised a finger, and I said the rest with her-"can grow and change."

I hadn't considered then what would happen to the Sarah Joneses next. We hadn't talked about disbanding or anything, but Sarahs Thirty-Nine and Forty-Four were busy with teaching. Sixty-Nine had her crochet club and the blog she couldn't shut up about. Thirty and Twenty-Seven were, like, best friends, which annoyed me because Thirty had become sort of a big sister to me, plus my AP Bio tutor. But, I was a kid. I was supposed to have friends my own age. After the meme debacle that had landed me in Sister Mary Theresa Probation, I still had a lot of work to do on that front.

That was why, when I got an Instagram DM from @Rubyyyyyy_13, I was so quick to respond. I have the DM right here. It says, "When I first heard about you, my nanny and I agreed you were socially awkward and weird."

I mean, what a start, right? But those descriptors are both sort of accurate. Maybe I'm awkward. And weird. But at least I'm socially aware? Ruby went on: "But now I've seen the tree, and it does actually look sick. And, you're kind of famous. I can't believe my nanny got to do that. She's Twenty-Seven, btw."

I knew that, too. Twenty-Seven's boss was also a Sarah Jones. That's how they met. But her boss? She had like a big-time job with all kinds of crazy public responsibilities at the Minneapolis branch of the actual Federal Reserve. As Twenty-Seven put it (and as I definitely did not repeat to Sister Mary Theresa because we don't say the h-word), there was not a "snowball's chance in H-E-double-hockey-sticks" that she would join the group.

But her nanny signed right up! And now, I was fielding messages from actual teenagers who were interested in my work. In me!

"Are you taking new members?" Ruby asked next. "I mean, I know I'm not named Sarah Jones. But are you going to yarn-bomb again?"

I thought the group was sort of over. Like I said, I'd done my penance after "bullying" Serafina Jones. Everyone was happy with the elevation of their public profiles. Sixty-Nine had texted to say she had a new sponsor for the Murder, She Wrote blog. Sister was happy with both the results of the project and the positive press. She even let Sacred Heart's director of communications put me on the school's main Instagram account, which seemed ironic because I was getting famous for making bad choices.