by Dana Mele
That stings worse than anything else. I take the Nyquil and wash the nasty taste down with the juice. “I’m sorry. For the note and everything else. I haven’t been myself.”
“That’s a cop-out thing to say,” she scolds. She sits down next to me and looks me in the eye. “Are you and Nola sleeping together?”
I feel guilty for some reason, which is completely irrational. “Why would it matter?”
“Because I’ll be pissed off if I’m not the first to know. And because I don’t like her.”
“No, we’re not. But she did kiss me.”
Her eyes widen. “Bad idea, Kay.”
“I forgot. I’m Soccer Spice. You’re Gay Spice.”
She looks hurt. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. You’ve completely blown me off since I told you what I think of her.”
I stand. “Do you really think I’ve been avoiding you because of Nola?”
“Why else?”
“Because I found out what you did,” I snap.
“What did I do?”
“You threw her at him.”
Brie freezes, her body statuesque. She is so still that the sound of my own breathing begins to make me feel uncomfortable. “Kay, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The eminently unfaithful,” I say. “He chose to cheat. That’s on him. But you wanted it to happen. You helped.”
Brie reanimates and her face turns red. “Kay, you’re freaking me out. You’re not making sense.”
“Unbelievable.” I grab my clothes off the radiator and she stands in front of the door, her arms crossed, her face crumbling.
“You can’t just mess with people’s hearts, Kay.”
I feel like the world is spinning in the wrong direction. I don’t know anything or anyone anymore. Brie is the one who didn’t want me. It was the first time I recognized having feelings for a girl, and they knocked me out like a tidal wave. She was this amazing person, the best friend I was lucky to have, breathlessly gorgeous. Everything about her was warm and I wanted to be near her so feverishly badly—when we sat next to each other, my skin went electric and I buzzed with life. I loved being close to Spencer, but Brie was next level. Compare a magnet to a collapsed supernova. It was amazing and terrifying and I could only stand it because I was so sure it was mutual. There was so much flirting, so much teasing, I didn’t have the humility to doubt there would be a kiss at the end.
But then there was the Elizabeth Stone incident. Elizabeth wanted on the tennis team and started following Tai around everywhere for weeks and it was unfortunate, but pathetic. When I called Tai out for letting Elizabeth drool all over her, she said I was worse, hanging all over Brie like a rejected lesbian rescue puppy. I said if anyone’s a lesbian in this scenario, it’s Stone, because she has the haircut, the man hands, and smells like a volleyball team.
It was a horrible thing to say and at least once a day it pops into my head at some point just to remind me what an irredeemable person I am.
But everyone laughed. Almost everyone. Brie looked at me like I was a stranger she didn’t want to meet. I hadn’t thought before I’d spoken. She hadn’t come out yet, but I knew how I felt. But when I finally got up the courage to slip her a note (so pathetic, so pathetic) asking if she wanted to go to that year’s Skeleton Dance with with me, she wrote back no. Just no. And we never talked about it again. She took, of all people, Elizabeth Stone. They dressed as Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly and they were hot and amazing. I borrowed Tai’s Tinker Bell costume from the previous year with zombie makeup and went as a death wish.
I never made a joke like that again. And I cried so hard that night after our lake ritual.
* * *
• • •
I DON’T KNOW what I’m supposed to think now, as Brie watches me through wet eyes. Those feelings aren’t totally gone, but they’re not the same, not in that aching way. It would hurt too much to be around her if I allowed myself to completely open that door again. I wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye, and I can’t stand to shut her out of my life. I know she loves Justine. I know she regrets kissing me. But we’re always so close. I can’t not feel it. It burns.
I close my eyes and open them again, my lashes damp. “I never messed with your heart.”
“The second you met Spencer at that party, you dropped me like I was some stupid plaything you were bored of.”
“That’s not what happened. You abandoned me for Justine. And this is after you spent a year rejecting me. Skeleton Dance, Valentine’s Day, Spring Gala.”
“I was talking to her. In less than five minutes you were all over him.”
That’s not how I remember it. “If you and Justine were just talking, why did you go home with her? Why are you still with her?”
Brie sinks back against the wall and looks at me wearily. “You had another chance to choose me, Kay. In Spencer’s room. When he walked in, I took your hand and you shoved me away.”
“What did you expect me to do? After two years of you pulling me toward you and pushing me away over and over until I have no idea what you want?”
“I don’t trust you, Kay.” Her lips tremble. “I don’t trust you not to hurt me.”
“Brie, if I could take everything back . . .” I pause. “I don’t even know where I would start. There’s too much to undo.”
“You were with Jessica and Maddy seconds after they died.”
“You were with Jessica, too.”
“What did you do?”
My voice quavers. “I’ve done a lot of things. I’m not a very good person, okay?”
“Then just be honest with me, Kay.”
“I am honest with you.” I can’t stand the way she’s looking at me. Not after what Cori said. Lost cause. “Okay, you want to know what you’ve missed?” I pull up the email from Jessica on my phone and flash it at her. “Correspondence from corpses. That final project? A website blackmailing me into carrying out a dead girl’s revenge against my best friends. And it’s all on me. Tai, Tricia, Cori, Maddy, Jessica. I’m screwed. And you’re mad because I didn’t invite you along. You should be thanking Nola for bumping you out of the passenger seat. What else would you like to know, Brie?”
“What website?”
“It doesn’t exist anymore.”
She bites her lower lip. Her eyes are full and her voice is thick when she speaks again. “It just disappeared into thin air?”
The realization breaks over me like an icy wave. “You do think I’m crazy.”
Her gaze wavers. “This is a bad idea. This is stupid.”
“What?”
“I’m done.”
I stand, alarmed. “Brie, stop it. You’re not giving up on me. This is just a fight. You’re my best friend.”
She looks me in the eye. “Did you kill Jessica?”
“No!”
“Hunter?”
“What? No.”
“Maddy?”
It’s like one slap in the face after the next, but I deserve them, so I stand there and take them. “No. Is that all?”
She tears her coat off and rips her shirt up to reveal a voice-recording instrument. “Done. I’m so done.”
17
I call Nola as soon as I get outside, but the call goes to voice mail over and over. I try Spencer next.
“You told me about Jessica. Why did you hide Maddy from me?” I say as soon as he picks up.
“I tried. When we met at Cat Café, I tried to tell you. We weren’t exactly speaking before then. Then I was going to tell you at dinner but you never showed.” He sounds like he’s been crying, too.
“We didn’t have plans.”
“Jesus Christ.” He pauses. “I have a text from you telling me to meet you.”
“Right. Someone faked my number just like they faked my email. Is tha
t even possible?”
“Yes, but it’s pretty damn convoluted. You could just say you blew me off.”
“But I didn’t, Spencer. And you flooded my inbox with texts. You have to be cool.”
“Really? Is that how I have to be? How many lies have you told the police this week?”
“Have many lies have you told me? Like, you forgive me for Brie? What’s it going to take? Will you have to sleep with the entire student body before we’re even? Maybe throw in a couple of professors?”
“It’s not about getting even.”
I feel like running and never stopping, but I’m weak and the constant urge to cough makes it hard to pace my breathing. I head for the lake and walk briskly around the path toward Old Road, our meeting point. I don’t know what my plan is. To ask him to meet me, to keep on going through the village and never look back, to make an endless circuit or plunge into the water and scream into the icy darkness. “I never, never tried to hurt you.”
“By hooking up with Brie in my bed?”
“It was a mistake, it wasn’t about you, and I regret it. You can’t possibly say the same.”
“I did regret it. The second I woke up, reality hit and I wanted them gone.”
The words knock me breathless. I look up suddenly, and stop cold. His car is parked at the curve of the path. “Where are you?”
“Driving in circles.”
I turn around slowly, but I’m completely alone. I’ve come far enough along the path that the thorny hedges and thick border of trees now separate me from the campus buildings. That’s definitely his car, the battered, ancient Volvo with a dented hood and smashed left headlight. I begin to back down the path toward campus, keeping my eye on his car. “Where?”
“Near campus. Want me to come get you?”
“Why are you here?”
“Because—”
“Why are you always here?”
I hear footsteps behind me and turn to see him walking down the path, and I break into a run. I hear him follow, and I sprint toward his car. There’s no other option. The thornbushes are too thick; they’ll only ensnare me, and the lake will similarly suspend me. He calls after me to stop, and I shout that I’ll stop if he does. I finally slow when I reach his car and hear him halt behind me. I turn around to see him a good ten yards back. We’re at the edge of the village now, and since it’s the middle of the day, people are strolling from shop to shop. I beckon him toward me cautiously.
“What did I do, Katie?”
“Don’t call me Katie. Especially not now.”
He closes the last few steps between us and looks down at me, the liveliness gone from his eyes, his face a wreck. He smells like cigarettes and coffee and he hasn’t shaved in a couple of days. “I don’t know what you want from me anymore.”
“I want to know how far you’d go to hurt me.”
He closes his eyes and a ghostly cloud of breath escapes his lips. “I didn’t sleep with Maddy to hurt you. It just happened.”
“Jessica?”
“Maybe.” He opens his eyes. They are the same pale blue I fell almost in love with, but the angelic-demonic paradox is gone. They are blank and broken and empty. “Did it work?”
“Did you kill Maddy to hurt me?” The words sting my mouth, but I have to say them. It will hurt worse if I don’t. I can’t stand uncertainty anymore, not even the shadow of it.
He takes my hands in his and turns them over, examining my palms. Then he traces a line and looks up at me, one last spark igniting in his eyes with a twisted smile. “You see this line? Everyone focuses on the life line and the love line. This is the killer line. You’re a killer, Kay. You look so innocent, but you shatter everything you touch.” He pauses, and then presses my hand to his lips.
“That’s not fair,” I whisper.
His eyes fill and he closes them. “No. Not everything. Just everyone who loves you.”
He drops my hand and walks back to his car, leaving me standing frozen and speechless.
Then something inside me hardens. “Well, everyone you fuck is dead, Spence.”
A disquieting calm falls between us, and for a moment the rest of the world goes silent. The image of him with Jessica, dead, flashes in my head once more. “That’s one hell of a coincidence.”
He eases back onto the hood of his car and places his hands over his mouth. “Do you think I killed Maddy?”
“I don’t know who did it.” I flick my eyes over to the village. There’s no one passing by just now. Just Spencer and his car in front of me, a barrier of thorns to one side, and to my other, the lake where Jessica was murdered.
Spencer hops off the car and I take a defensive step back, but he turns away from me and yanks the door open.
“Good-bye, Katie.”
Then he’s gone.
* * *
• • •
I TRY NOLA again, and finally dial Greg’s number, even though he has no reason to speak to me again after what I did to him.
He answers on the first ring. “Ms. Kay Donovan,” he says in a pleasant voice. Clearly, he doesn’t know what I did. On the plus side, it doesn’t sound like it did too much damage.
“Are you busy?”
His voice sobers. “Are you crying?”
“I just need to talk to someone.”
“I’m not busy. Are you okay?”
“The polar opposite.”
“Want me to come get you?”
“Can you meet me at Cat Café?”
“Sure. Do you need anything?”
“Just be there.” I hang up. My nerves are too raw to design my answers with wit or grace.
I barely recognize myself in my reflection in the glass door of the café. The cold and the crying fit have puffed my face out to twice its size. My eyes look swollen and bruised, and my lips are dry and pale. I haven’t showered in over a day, and my hair is matted and frizzy, escaping from its ponytail in wild bursts. I order a decaf tea, load it with lemon wedges and sugar, and blow my nose into a wad of napkins. Then I settle myself into a corner table far from where icy air is leaking into the room through the front door.
A freezing gust of wind sweeps in with Greg. He jumps over a table and sits down across from me.
“What happened?”
“My best friend tried to secretly record me confessing to killing Jessica, a cat, and one of my other best friends.”
He slides his hand across the table and takes mine in his. It’s rough and soft at the same time.
“The good news is that I don’t think you’re much of a suspect anymore,” I say.
“That’s funny.” He pulls his wool hat off and shakes his hair to unflatten it. “Because after Madison Farrell died, they came around again. I don’t think I’ve seen the last of them.”
“Do you always tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
“The truth isn’t always enough,” he admits.
“I’ll drink to that.” I raise my cup and he bumps his fist against it.
He sighs. “I didn’t know Madison. Why are they asking me about her?”
I can’t think of a reason. Unless they really, really want to draw a connection and I’ve been underestimating how much the police have been focusing on Greg all along. God, did I play a part in that? “Wish I could tell you.” I pause. “They asked me about you.”
“Ah. So that’s where the blade line of questioning originated.”
I feel my face turn bright red. He doesn’t look the slightest bit disturbed. “You mentioned the blades. The police didn’t release that information.”
“Oh my God, Kay, I must have killed my girlfriend,” he says in a mocking voice.
I wait. “I know if you were confessing you would be crying or something. Because you loved her.”
“Justin
e told me how you and Brie found Jessica. We both cried. Is that satisfactory?”
I feel stupid. “I’m sorry.”
“This is real Game of Thrones shit. I mean clearly you’re Cersei.”
“What? No. The wildling with the red hair.”
His face splits into a grin. “Ygritte. She has a name. She dies.”
“Don’t they all?”
“Some of them get to avenge first. I like to consider myself—”
“Jon Snow. Your hair gives you away. But don’t even think about it.”
Greg leans back in his chair. “I like that we can be tactical adversaries and still converse like friends. Is this what it’s like to live in a comic book?”
I shake my head. He puts me in a good mood. He reminds me so much of Todd before Todd was ruined. It hurts and feels good at the same time.
“Why don’t you suspect me?” I ask him. “Even my best friends think I’m capable of murder.”
He pops a piece of gum into his mouth and chews thoughtfully, and then looks straight into my eyes. “Because you don’t have the face of a killer.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
“Oh? Why are you so sure I didn’t do it?”
“Well, I did talk to the cops about the whole blade thing,” I admit. “But it’s true. You don’t seem like you could have hurt Jessica.”
“What do the neighbors always say in the interviews? Quiet guy, kept to himself. I never thought he would be capable of something like this.”
“My neighbors think I’m definitely capable of something like this.”
“Well, my classmates whisper.” He taps his fingertips on the table rapidly like he’s playing a silent piano concerto. “Let’s not feel sorry for ourselves. We get to live.”
I try to smile but something misfires. “Do you think we’ll still feel that way after twenty years in prison?”
“Do you know what I really thought when I first saw you?” he asks, his eyes clear as a still pool.
“Get out of my coffee line, you stuck-up bitch.”
He grins and brushes his wavy hair out of his face. “Who is this girl who ruined my play?”