by Dana Mele
I shrug, uncomprehending.
“I directed the fall student showcase production last year. I had this narcissistic habit of watching the audience, because by opening night, I’d done everything I could with the actors, and I just wanted to see how people reacted to our work. And in the fourth row, six seats from the left aisle, there was this girl who had texted and whispered through half of the show. As did half of the audience. The only ones with their eyes really glued to the stage were parents of the actors.” He rolls his eyes and smiles into the palm of his hand. “But toward the end, people stopped texting. Because almost everyone starts paying attention at the end of Our Town.”
I place a hand over my mouth, remembering. That was the show Brie and I went to the night we met Spencer and Justine.
“And during Justine’s farewell speech, this girl who had been texting and whispering and smirking this whole time just got this beautiful, haunted still look on her face. And because of exactly where she was sitting in relation to the stage, a pale beam of light fell onto her, like a spotlight. And silent tears started running down her face, just at the moment I had been desperately begging Justine to start crying.”
I remember that speech. Justine’s character had died and returned to her life to say a final good-bye to everything she would miss. Every single word had stabbed me like a pin in a separate and distinct section of my heart.
“And I thought, girl in the audience, you are ruining my play, because you are the ghost. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, because I had dreamed you without knowing you. I felt like I had somehow picked this play unconsciously just to meet you. Then you suddenly got up and ran out of the theater. And then later at the cast party, before I got up the nerve to speak to you, I saw Spencer Morrow slobbering all over you, and then you insulted my play pretty harshly and called me a six-foot-tall Gollum, and my second impression superseded my first.”
I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for a thousand years and if I don’t let it out, I will burst. “What’s your point, Greg?” I manage.
“I trusted you before we met. My gut says you’re good. I know we haven’t known each other that long, but if you ever need to talk, you can talk to me. Suspect to suspect.” He rolls his sleeves up, exposing his intricately tattooed forearms. “So. Are we finally going to trust each other?”
I wrap my fingers around my mug and consider my options once again. Brie and Spencer are gone. I have Nola, but things are weird now. Time is running out. With the police putting a wire on Brie, for all I know, they’re moving in to make an arrest, although it sounds like things aren’t going well for Greg either. At the very least, they may be considering calling my parents to come so they can formally question me, and I need to avoid that at all costs.
“Trust is a strong word.”
“Fair enough. We’ll keep things casual with a side of paranoia. Let’s talk alternative suspects. I like you, but I do see how perhaps your neighbors may view you as potentially evil. That six-foot Gollum comment didn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy.”
“It wasn’t personal,” I say quickly. “I don’t even remember saying it. I say stupid crap like that all the time. Used to. I’m . . . rethinking some character choices.”
He looks at me dubiously. “You’re not an actor? You talk like one.”
“Nola. Everything is dance and theater. She’s rubbing off on me.”
“Well, do you think your prior choices may have earned you some enemies?”
“I’d say that’s a definite.”
“Every motive in the book can be boiled down to pride. You insult someone, you potentially make an enemy for life. Maybe a deadly one.” He whips a notebook and pencil out of his pocket. “So, let’s profile our killer. Maybe she’s a Bates student after all. Someone with access to Jess, the lake, and the party.”
“You’ve eliminated Spencer?”
“No connection to Madison.”
“I see.” I let him continue.
“It could be a student with a grudge against Jess, or you if you’re being framed. A frenemy. A rival. Or a victim of bullying. Not to demonize victims, but revenge is a strong motivator.”
“So, basically the entire student body.”
He shoots me a reproachful look. “Everyone?”
“You’re implying that I’ve never been bullied, right?”
“I didn’t say—”
“No one gets away unscathed, Greg. People like you think you’re so morally superior. There’s someone lower on the social ladder that you laughed at or made fun of, or didn’t invite, or picked last.”
“I don’t think I’m superior at all,” he says. “Just because I’m nice to you doesn’t mean I don’t have, like, a stadium full of regrets.”
“Regret is too polite a word.”
“For?”
I feel so tired, I make a cradle of my arms and rest my head on them. He scoots closer. “Tai and I—my ex-friend, I guess—used to say the bitchiest shit, but people thought we were funny, so we’d get away with it.”
“Okay.”
“You can get away with murder if you’re lucky. You don’t even have to be smart. Just have a social or political one up on everyone else. People look the other way if they want to. Everybody knows it.”
“That’s true sometimes.”
“I don’t want to get away with it anymore.”
He is very quiet for a long moment, and then his voice comes out in a whispery rasp. “Was that a confession, Kay?”
“No. Forget it.” I squeeze my eyes shut tight to minimize the risk of crying. Of everything that has happened in the past few weeks, the worst has been Brie slipping away, and it didn’t happen in an instant. By the time she agreed to try to trap me, I’d already lost her. Did I start losing her years ago, when I made that unforgiveable joke? Because I was so afraid to apologize, because that would mean admitting I did something awful?
“How do you ask forgiveness for something that can’t be undone?”
“If you’re sorry, forgiveness isn’t the point, is it?” he says. “It’s not about feeling better, it’s about doing better.” He grins. “Totally plagiarized from Pastor Heather.” He pauses. “But it makes me feel better. Having something to do.”
“I’m not the same person I was,” I say. “I’m not.”
He squeezes my hand. “I believe you. I never thought you were evil. But, Kay. I’m not just here for group hugs. We’re murder suspects. We have shit to figure out. Have I convinced you that the killer was a student?”
I sigh. “Do you have one in mind?”
“Actually, I do. There’s someone out there who had the same means and opportunity as you.”
“Motive?”
“A long-standing grudge.”
“Really?” I try to look at his notepad but he holds it out of my reach. “Do the police know about this?”
“She’s been lying to the police. You’ve been helping her lie.”
“What?”
“The only missing piece is an encounter on the night of the murder. If Jess fought with someone that night, I think that’s enough evidence to arrest.”
“She did fight with someone. You.”
“Or maybe Brie.”
18
I’m so shocked I laugh. “Brie didn’t kill Jessica. She’s not even capable of yelling.”
“So maybe she did it quietly.”
“I can’t believe you’re serious.”
“Dead serious.” He shows me his phone, and I see a picture of Jessica and Brie wearing Bates Academy orientation T-shirts, arms linked, grinning into the camera.
I cover my mouth with my hand. “Brie barely knew Jessica.”
Greg shakes his head. “They were best friends for the first month of school, and then they had an epic falling-out.”
“You didn’t know her then.” But I didn’t know Brie then, either.
“That’s how bad it was. This thing saturated Bates for Jess. That’s why she was never there. She sent me this picture when we started dating and told me, ‘This is Brie Matthews. She comes to cast parties. Never speak to her.’”
“What happened?”
He shakes his head. “They got really close really fast. Told each other all their deepest, darkest secrets, swore to be best friends for life. I think Jess may have had feelings for Brie but I kind of got the sense that it maybe wasn’t reciprocal.”
I nod, trying to ignore the weird hot sensation that creeps up the back of my neck. “Not outside the realm of the imagination.”
“Then Brie started hanging out with some other girls, and I guess Jess maybe wasn’t cool enough for them or something. The next year, Brie apparently pulled some unspeakably mean shit that Jess wouldn’t go into detail about.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“People never believe someone they love could do something cruel.”
I’m glad I didn’t tell Greg about Todd. But the way he’s looking at me, it almost seems like he knows.
“Jess was really upset, so she went to Brie’s room and found the door unlocked, and her computer unprotected, and she forwarded a bunch of Brie’s emails to her parents. I don’t know who they were to, or what was in them. But, suffice it to say, there was resulting animosity between Jess and Brie.”
“There’s no way,” I say simply. “I would trust Brie with my life. Even if she decided never to speak to me again, I’d take the fall for her.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
“Because I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that she’s innocent.”
He smiles sadly. “It’s things like that, Kay. It makes it hard to believe you’re a killer.”
I stand. “I’m sorry I can’t get on board with your theory.”
“She made my girlfriend miserable and now Jess is dead. There’s no one else I think could have done it.”
“Maybe your girlfriend lied.”
He shoots me a warning look.
“Sorry.” I stare into my cup, afraid to look him in the eye. “Whatever Brie might have done to hurt Jessica’s feelings, what I did was worse.”
He looks at me blankly. “What did you do?”
I tell him the truth about Dear Valentine, the one thing that connects me and everyone on the revenge blog to Jessica.
Dear Valentine was supposed to be a fund-raiser where students could purchase a flower to be delivered to another student during classes and the money would go toward the Spring Gala. But it usually served as something of a popularity contest. Tai, Tricia, Brie, and I always ended up with enormous bouquets of roses, while the majority of students generally got two or three flowers from their besties.
Two years ago, I got a really beautiful, expensive white orchid plant from an anonymous sender with a note that said Be mine. It had been months since the Elizabeth Stone incident, and Brie had been acting cutesy and flirty again, so of course I assumed it was from her and humiliated myself by thanking her with a badly written (rhyming) poem. But she swore up and down that it wasn’t her in front of the entire dining hall. It wasn’t any of the rest of our friends either. I had been so sure it was Brie, and that this was finally going to be our big cinematic love-story moment, that I just kind of started hating those flowers. They sat on my desk in the generic glass vase from the village flower shop, taunting me with their presence every night while I tried to sleep. And they were there in the morning, still stubbornly alive, pale and perfect and undying.
Because they were sent anonymously, I couldn’t figure out who they came from, but I hated the sender, too. How cruel did you have to be to send flowers with an unsigned note that says Be mine to a person who is so obviously head over heels in love with someone else? Of course I’d assumed they were from Brie. And of course I was crushed when they weren’t. I thought the sender was taunting me for some random bitchy thing I said or did to them. Let’s be honest. There were too many to narrow it down.
I was sure it was done out of malice by someone who watched me repeatedly break my own heart with Brie and wanted to torture me. So I decided to torture them.
With Tricia’s financial backing, I bribed the students running Dear Valentine to deliver a set of gifts back to the sender. They wouldn’t reveal her identity. But they were happy to arrange a series of deliveries. One for every bloom on the orchid she sent me. The twelve days of valentines, Tai called it. She and Tricia helped me brainstorm, and Tricia alone dealt with the messenger. The first day was a simple note—I’m yours—with one of the orchid blooms enclosed.
The second, a lock of my hair, again, with one of the blooms.
The third, a smear of blood on an index card. With every note, we sent another orchid bloom.
On the fourth day we sent a carefully scrubbed rib bone from the dining hall with the note All of me.
That night, Tricia said the Dear Valentine delivery girl showed up at her door, looking nervous. She said the sender was pretty upset and asked us to please stop delivering the notes. But by then we had so many ideas, Tricia happily bankrolled the rest of the project, and the delivery girl agreed to take the money, no questions asked. I guess now I know that’s not the whole truth. Nola was the delivery girl, and Tricia didn’t pay her in money. She paid her in promises and lies. It was just as cruel as the actual prank.
We’d had so much fun on the Dear Valentine project, hunting for “body parts” online, in village shops, even in the woods. Only Brie wouldn’t be a part of it. She completely dropped off the radar during that whole period. On the day I burst into her room with a weirdly realistic candy brain we’d ordered off the internet, she looked at me and just pointed to the door without saying a word.
That just made me throw myself into the project with more determination. If Brie didn’t get it, Tai and Tricia did. It was a joke.
At the end, the orchid plant was just two skeletal stems wired to fake plastic twigs, and I felt a little better. I tossed the stems, scrubbed the vase, and filled it with chocolate kisses, which Brie had given me a bag of, with no card and no real kiss. It served Dear Valentine girl right. She was mocking me with her gift, and if she had anything to say to me, she could say it to my face.
I thought that was the end of it.
But when I texted Brie asking her to the Spring Gala, she turned me down again, with no explanation. I wrote back with my heart pounding, Someone else? And she wrote, Dear Valentine Girl. She didn’t show up at the dance at all.
We never talked about it again.
That was my first and last prank. Initiation and hazing, yes. But nothing like Dear Valentine.
I finally look up at Greg. “I did that to Jessica. My friends, too. She probably thought Brie was involved, but Brie refused. That’s probably the unspeakably mean thing Jessica was referring to.”
“Jesus, Kay, it didn’t even occur to you that she might have actually liked you?”
“You tell me. I was hanging out with Brie at the time. All the time. They weren’t mean; I just took them that way.”
He sighs heavily. “She never told me, so there’s no way to know. She still retaliated against Brie, so Brie had a motive to get back at her.”
“She didn’t do it. She wouldn’t even send a shitty valentine.”
“It all depends on what happened afterward,” Greg says. “Did they or did they not run into each other the night of the murder? Is it possible?”
I think back to the night of the murder. I had drained half the bottle of prosecco when the headlights swept over the dark water. The details of my thinking were fuzzy, like scribbles on torn notepaper, but the ideas were bold and urgent and strong. I didn’t stand up when Spencer got out of his car and slammed the door, because I knew I might sway a
nd crash, and I needed him to understand how serious this was.
He looked down at me, shocked. “Katie?”
“Who the fuck is Jess?”
He checked his phone. “Oh shit. I’m so sorry. I got two calls in a row. I just assumed.”
“You said everything was going to be okay.”
“I wanted it to be. I still do.”
“After what you did?”
“I don’t know what to do anymore.” He took a sip from my bottle and made a face. “God, Katie.”
“Make it okay.” I pulled him close and kissed him. I was still sweaty from the dance and cold from the chilled night air and the combination made me shiver against his warm skin.
“I don’t know how anymore,” he whispered into my mouth.
“End it. Whoever she is, get rid of her. I don’t want to hear her name again. I never want to see her face.” I edged back into the shadows, pulling him by the hand.
“Will I still hear Brie’s name?”
“She’s gone.” I kissed him again, slower, dancing my body against his, guiding his hand around my waist, the other on my shoulder, his fingers entwined in the strap of my dress. “Get rid of this girl.”
* * *
• • •
NOW GREG LOOKS at me expectantly. “Is it possible Brie could have fought with Jessica that night?”
I shake my head. “I doubt it.”
19
When I get back to my room, I find a piece of masking tape over my nameplate with the word KILLER printed on it in thick red letters. The door is plastered with messages scrawled in black and red permanent markers, along with a few newspaper clippings about the recent murders. Someone has drawn a grotesque cartoon of a hangman with a cat’s body dangling from the gallows with the letters K-A-Y in the blanks. The phrase You might as well be dead, too is repeated several times in a variety of colors and handwriting. There are subtle references to at least a dozen girls I’ve pissed off over the past three and a half years, funneled into a general hostility and summed up by the cartoon of the hanging cat, the corpse I handled, but whose death I played no part in.