You’re Next

by Kylie Schachte

  Distantly, I’m still aware of the reservoir. The wind lifting Elle’s hair. The soft lapping of the water. The scent of pine trees. I can still feel the edge of the pin in my pocket, and I know I should keep trying to fish it out, to escape.

  But I’m not really here. I’m crying for help in a dirty alleyway. Ava’s chest is warm under my hands, even as the blood drains out of her. Goose bumps rise on my arms. I’m wearing nothing but a T-shirt—my sweatshirt is tied around Ava, trying to stop her bleeding. I can hear the sirens in the distance as I beg Ava to hold on a little longer.

  “You should have seen her eyes,” I whisper. “She knew she was dying, and she was so scared. And then nothing. She was gone.”

  It breaks my heart all over again. The Ava I knew was so strong, so brave, so powerful, and even when she was dying afraid in my arms, she was still that girl. Until her heart stopped beating, and her neurons stopped firing, and she was gone.

  I open my mouth, but there’s nothing more to say, so I scream instead. Not like before, not a cry for help. Agony.

  All the pain that has brewed black and noxious inside me pours out as the scream goes on and on. The pain of Ava, gone forever, and Lucy, lost, forgotten, never avenged. Mom leaving. My grandfather on his knees. Cass walking out. Olive nearly dead in the hospital. The force of it threatens to rip me apart, and every bruise, every wound on my body—the airbag blow to my cheek, that man’s fingerprints on my arm, the gash under my eye—screams along with me.

  Ava is gone. It hurts, and it hurts, and it hurts.

  I am so small, hunched here by the water, but my scream fills the whole sky. The pain changes. Still brutal, agonizing, but what was twisted and dark and rotten is now sharp and clear. Like starlight.

  My breath gives out, and again I hear the echo of my scream ripple across the water before everything is still once more.

  I come back into my body. It aches. My throat is raw.

  Elle’s eyes are closed. Silent tears track down her face. She trembles. Trying to hold it all in.

  My voice is hoarse. “You killed her. Ava was your friend, and you left her on the ground in the cold to die by herself.”

  She shakes harder. Clenches her fists.

  “You had no use for her anymore, right, Elle? Just like your father.”

  “Stop!” she cries out. Her eyes fly open, and even though I’m chained at her feet, she’s the one who looks afraid.

  Elle sniffs and tries to get herself back under control, but the tears keep coming. She crosses her arms, hugging her chest tight, but the shaking won’t stop. No matter how hard she fights it. I know.

  “I didn’t want to hurt her,” she whispers.

  My lungs fill with air.

  “I just wanted to talk to her.” Elle’s voice rises. “I only brought the gun to scare her, but she wouldn’t listen! I built the Basement from nothing. It’s the one thing in the world that’s mine, and she was going to ruin everything!” Elle looks at me, and I have never seen her so wrecked. Eyes red and wild, makeup a smudgy mess, her breathing harsh. She says, “I shot her. I shot Ava.”

  Those words nearly crack me open again. I already knew, but hearing Elle admit it sends grief slicing through me.

  “And what was the point?” Tears continue to stream down Elle’s face even as she tries to defend herself. “Molly woke up. Was it really worth getting so upset about? Ava made this huge fuss, and it got her killed, but for what? Molly’s fine, like I said she would be.”

  Rage burns the last of my tears away. That she could justify killing Ava this way. Claim that Ava was the one who overreacted. My anger focuses me. I hook my finger around the pin again.

  Elle hugs herself tighter and looks at the ground. “I was going to call 911. I wanted to. But it was bad, right? I mean, she died anyway, and there was nothing I could have done. You said it yourself. It was too late, and I-I had too much to lose.” She draws a deep breath, pulling herself back together. Letting herself believe it’s not really her fault. “It would have been easier if it were a mugging. We could all move on with our lives.” She sniffs again and wipes at her cheeks, but she only smears the mascara more.

  “But I couldn’t move on.” My voice crackles with fury. I finally manage to slip the pin out of my pocket. My finger shakes with the strain of not dropping it. “I wouldn’t let it go. So you set your dad up to take the fall. You planted all of those documents and then passed them along to me.”

  Elle shrugs. “That was always my last-resort plan. My father knows what he wants to know. To him”—she gestures behind her—“Boyd is my driver, and I could never be capable enough to run something as complex as the Basement. It’s easier for him to believe that.”

  There it is: that flash of hurt again. You can tell yourself your parents are crap. You can hate them. But it still hurts.

  “Come to the police with me.” My wrist feels like it’s about to break, I have it bent back so far to reach the first lock. I stab uselessly with the pin, searching for the hole. “Tell them all of this. It’ll ruin him.”

  “What?” She takes a step back from me and stands up straighter. “No. I’m ending this tonight.”

  “It’s too late for that,” I insist. “You can kill me, but the truth is going to come out.” The pin slips into the lock. “You know politics. You know how this works. If you try to hide it, when the real story comes out, that you killed Ava and tried to set your own father up for it, everyone will think you’re a sociopath. They’ll feel bad for him.” I wiggle the pin, trying to get it to catch. “You want to say a real fuck you to your dad? Be the one to come forward. You murdered Ava. You’re going to pay for it no matter what, but you can at least tell your story first, before he puts his spin on it.”

  She looks at me for a long time. Standing there at the edge of the water, with the moon shining in her sad eyes, she looks my age for the first time tonight.

  But I don’t feel bad for Elle. She killed Ava, not to mention all the other lives she’s hurt with the Basement.

  She opens her mouth to say something. A twig snaps, and she whirls around.

  Boyd has returned. “Your father called while I was on the phone. He wants you home soon. Let’s get this over with.”

  Elle looks back at me. She hesitates.

  “I see.” Boyd looks at me, too. The feeling of his eyes on me makes my heart start to pound again.

  My wrist burns as I scramble with the lock.

  Boyd says, “This has gone on long enough. We end this now. I’m not taking the fall for you.”

  Elle looks at Boyd like she’s seeing him for the first time. “You don’t make these kinds of decisions.”

  The first lock pops free, and I swallow my cry of relief. There are more locks to go, plus Elle and Boyd to contend with once I’m loose. I’m smaller and faster than them. I can do it.

  Boyd shakes his head. “Typical. You know, until now I had almost forgotten you were a teenage girl.”

  Elle rears back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’m not letting your ridiculous emotions get in the way of what has to be done.” He strides toward me.

  Elle cries out in protest.

  I drop my bobby pin on the cement.

  I scream again.

  Boyd doesn’t pause. He hoists me up by the arms. Like I’m nothing. Like I’m weightless.

  For one interminable moment, I am airborne. I can only watch and scream as the still, glassy surface rises to meet me.

  I crash into the water.

  I didn’t have the foresight to stop screaming, to shut my mouth up tight. It fills with dark, brackish water. I cough and choke, but there is nothing but water. Always more water, ready to fill me.

  Cold, so cold. Like a weight. Dragging at me.

  I kick and thrash, a bone-shattering desperation flickering and spasming in me, but there is nowhere to go. Nothing but water.

  Dark, so dark. I was never afraid of the dark. But this is black, flat, endle
ss.

  Lost, dizzy, so deep. In the void. No up, no down. Nothing but water. Always more water.

  It seeps into me, not just my mouth and nose but my ears, my eyes, my very pores, and I grow heavier and heavier still, until I cannot fight any longer, and I am left a broken body spinning gently in the current.

  Something drags at me. I give a weak jerk, but I am too waterlogged to fight.

  My face is cold right down to the skull. There are sounds, echoing in the deep, but they, like everything else, are formless.

  I drift.

  Pain. So much pain.

  Guess I’m not dead.

  My bones shatter. An unbearable thudding pressure on my chest. I scream, but all that comes out is torrents upon torrents of water. An entire reservoir’s worth, coughed up onto concrete. I gag and choke, but there is nothing but more water spewing and spewing out of me.

  “Flora? Flora, can you hear me?”

  A deep, throbbing hum aches in my bones. It’s me. I’m shaking so hard I’m hurting myself. I try to stop, but I can only tremble and jerk more spastically.

  “Get the blanket. Bring it to me!” someone shouts, their voice knifed through with panic.

  Hands, brushing lank hair from my face. They’re gentle, but the touch feels like sandpaper against my raw, waterlogged skin.

  “Flora, I have you. I have you. I found you.”

  I am lifted, something wrapped tight around me. I think I am warmer. The shaking doesn’t stop.

  “I found you, I’m here,” someone is repeating over and over, like they’re trying to convince themselves. I slip away again.

  I come to in the back seat of a car.

  My grandfather’s car.

  I’m still shaking, but not so violently. Someone’s undressed me, and I’m wrapped in a space blanket.

  I feel physically blue.

  “She’s awake.” Cass twists around in the front seat. She watches me without blinking.

  I blink enough for the two of us.

  “Flora? Are you with us?” A deep voice. My grandfather’s. He’s driving. He’s also soaking wet. Somehow, he still manages to look pulled together. His hair is slicked back from his forehead.

  I open my mouth. All that comes out is a hoarse death-rattle wheeze. I seem to be out of water to spew, though, so that’s a plus.

  My grandfather looks at me in the rearview mirror. I nod. I’m with you.

  I look at Cass and try to convey all of the many questions I have with the shape of my eyebrows.

  She bites her lip. “I put a tracker in your phone the other day, before you went to the Basement with Valentine. I meant to tell you, but I forgot about it with everything else.”

  The words don’t make any sense.

  “Wh-hhh…” I cough, and when my voice finally comes out it sounds like it’s buried in mountains of sand. “What about your text?”

  Cass looks at me blankly. “What text?”

  My brain still feels waterlogged. “You found something?” She still doesn’t react. “You were coming to meet me.”

  “I never texted you.” Her eyes still hold all the hurt from earlier. “I didn’t want to talk to you.”

  I know I didn’t imagine that message. Elle must have figured out how to spoof Cass’s number, to lure me out. I’ll have to ask Olive about it. My aching throat tightens at the thought of her.

  Cass hesitates. “I did find something, though. Dorsey’s not the killer. It’s Elle.”

  I can only stare.

  “After we fought, I couldn’t just go back to school,” she explains. “I figured if Ava were really trying to bring the Basement down, she would have been collecting evidence.” Cass pulls something up on her phone and hands it to me.

  It’s a picture of Elle. She’s at the Basement, standing in the shadows near the back exit like she’s watching a fight. The picture is grainy and dark, but I can tell she’s smiling.

  I swipe through. There’s a few more. In one, Elle sits at an old steel desk, counting money. I can tell from the cement walls it’s in the same tunnels under the hospital, maybe a small utility room she converted to an office.

  “How did you get these?” I swipe through them again.

  Cass clearly finds my surprise irritating. “I talked to Ava’s parents. Told them what we’d found, and what we thought Ava was doing. They helped me figure out her cloud log-in. Amazing what you can do when you’re just honest and straightforward with people, right?”

  I’m so in awe of her, the jab doesn’t even hurt. “So how did you know to come save me?”

  Cass gives me an exasperated look. “I’m pissed as hell at you, but I still worry. I wanted to check up on you before I brought the photos to the police. When I saw you were at the reservoir, that didn’t seem right.”

  I start to cry for the billionth time tonight. Cass never bails on me. I should know that by now.

  “Stop it,” she snaps. “I’m still angry. Don’t give me the grateful puppy face and think that’s going to make it okay.”

  I inhale and nod. I deserve that.

  The metronome click of the turn signal.

  I look out the window and frown again. “Where are you going?”

  My grandfather’s eyes go steely. He uses a long beat of silence to tell me exactly how stupid he thinks I am.

  “The hospital,” he says.

  I sit up in my seat.

  “No.” I wheeze like one of those dragon-nail ladies in the antismoking commercials.

  “Flora, don’t be an imbecile. It’s tiresome.” He tries to sound disdainful, but his knuckles have gone white on the steering wheel.

  “No,” I say, and my heartbeat, so timid and exhausted a moment ago, ratchets up again. “Please! We have her. We have her! You can’t do this!” I scrabble at the door like I mean to jump out, which I recognize is earth-shatteringly dumb, but I know that if I go to the hospital Elle will get away. Another one is going to get away.

  My grandfather presses the child lock. “Are you quite finished?”

  I wrap the blanket tighter around my middle. I close my eyes. I take four deep breaths.

  I stare my grandfather down in the mirror. “Eight hours.”

  “Come again?”

  “I need eight hours,” I tell him. “Bring me to the police. Let me close out this case. Then I’ll go to the hospital without a fight.”

  He purses his lips. His eyes flicker back and forth between me and the road.

  “They threw me in the water. They threw me in and left me to die. Please.”

  In the mirror, my grandfather nods once. “Six. Six hours. No more. Then the hospital.”

  I settle back against the seat. I can close my eyes for a second before we get to the precinct.

  A moment later, I bolt up again, electrocuted by panic.

  “What? What is it now?” Cass asks.

  My phone. When I went into the water, my phone went with me. Cass’s phone still in hand, I race to log in to my own cloud account.

  My heart climbs the walls of my esophagus as I wait.

  The site loads. I take a shuddering breath and hit Play on the new recording saved in my folder.

  The sound of a car trunk opening. The metal clank of chains. Muffled voices grow sharper.

  Elle speaks, “Tape her mouth, too.”

  That’s the thing movies always get wrong about chloroform. It takes a few minutes to knock you all the way out. In the trunk of Elle’s car, the last thing I did before I blacked out was hit Record on my phone. The app is supposed to automatically upload to the cloud, but did it have time to sync the whole thing before I went under?

  I skip forward in the recording.

  Elle again. “It was too late, and I-I had too much to lose. It would have been easier if it were a mugging. We could all move on with our lives.” I push the Pause button and breathe.

  The car is silent for a few seconds before Cass starts yelling, “You absolute dumbass! The next time you put yourself in danger like
that to get a confession, I swear to God, Flora, I will kill you myself.”

  “I’ll help,” Gramps adds.

  I drop Cass’s phone on the seat next to me and collapse against the window.

  The photos. The recording. On their own, neither one would be enough. Too many ways Elle could lie, make excuses, take back what she said.

  But together, we got her.

  “You recorded this?” Richmond leans back in her chair. “While Elle Dorsey, the congressman’s daughter, had you chained up at the reservoir?”

  The three of us are sitting in Richmond’s office. For once, I was happy to let Gramps do all my explaining. Without him, I don’t think Richmond would have been much inclined to talk, especially considering that I’m wearing a tinfoil blanket, my wet underwear, and nothing else. I wouldn’t let him bring me home first. No time. I pull the blanket tighter around me.

  I’ve played the recording for Richmond. Twice. She’s seen the photos. Now she watches me from across her desk. Her expression is unreadable.

  “Yes.” I’m still getting my voice back, but I sound stronger by the second. “I have a witness who can corroborate details about the fight club, as well as Elle’s motive to keep Molly Sawyer’s injury quiet.”

  Richmond nods. “I see. Wait here.”

  “Do you think Elle will try to walk back her confession?” Cass asks after a minute or two of quiet.

  I had her. I saw the look on her face as I talked about Ava’s final moments. I’d like to think Elle had a change of heart.

  But it seems unlikely.

  “Probably,” I say. “I don’t know if Elle has it in her to actually face what she did.”

  My grandfather straightens his tie. He reknotted it while we waited for Richmond to see us. “I’ve known girls like Elle Dorsey. She’ll toe the party line. Her father will make sure of it.”

  He’s right. We’ll deal with that later.

  My wooden chair in Richmond’s office is making my butt go numb. I’m still so cold.