Mason fell back. Controlling my body’s spin as much as I could with his face still looming over mine and blood pumping through my ears, I grabbed the knife, spiraled onto my back, and jammed the point into his thigh.
He finally let go of me. I yanked the knife back out and scrambled on my back to the passenger side door, unlocked it with my thumb, and tumbled onto the gravel.
I hooked the duffel bag’s strap with my good ankle and pulled it out, picking it and my body off the ground. Then I ran to the gate.
It was locked and too high to climb.
I looked to my right and saw a boat shed with a padlock on the door. I looked to the left and saw a rocky precipice overhanging the river.
“You fucking bitch!” Mason was limping out of the car, his fists balled up like clubs, his eyes blazing.
I whirled to face him and tightened my grip on the knife.
“Don’t come any closer,” I said. Mason stepped toward me, blood spreading down his jeans. I backed up toward the cliff’s edge.
“I’m serious,” I said, still walking toward the cliff, one hand holding out the knife, one desperately trying to unlock his phone.
Mason still didn’t say a word. He just advanced on me, slowly and deliberately.
I tried every significant combination of numbers I could think of. I tried Simone’s apartment building. I tried the P.O. box in Cold Spring. I tried the combination lock that was in his office. I tried the address where he had held the house party. None of them worked.
I stumbled over a rock with my bad ankle, nearly toppling to the ground. Mason took a closer step, but I held out the knife, and he waited. He needed me on that plane with him.
Or dead.
Wildly, I plugged in the day we first met. And the phone opened.
Fingers trembling, I dialed 911. The call went through, but I forgot to turn it on silent, and in the dead silence of our stand-off, Mason heard it ring.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
Mason rushed me.
He ran at me with his arms out and barrel-rolled me to the ground. My fingers lost their grip and the phone rolled over the edge of the cliff.
“I didn’t want this,” he gasped, holding my arms down, angling me closer and closer to the edge. My hair fell over the rock face, lifting in the icy wind from the fast-moving river.
He pressed me harder, sliding me back and back until I was suspended over the chasm, only held aloft by the hand he had pinned to the ground and the other hand he thrust into the air, fighting for dominion over the duffel bag we both held in our grip.
“I should have gotten rid of you!” he shouted. “That would have been the smart thing: to hurt you so badly that you were in no position to hurt me back. But I wanted you with me! I wanted you to enjoy this! Ungrateful bitch.”
Mason pushed down harder. “I didn’t want to go alone,” he wailed.
My whole torso was hanging over the edge now. I dug my fingernails into the dirt, searching for purchase. My hand found something, hard and cold and slender.
I craned my neck up to look at Mason.
“Don’t worry, Mason. You’re not going anywhere alone.”
I flicked my hand upward, stabbing him in the palm with the knife. He howled, let go, and, just before I careened all the way off the cliff, I grabbed him by the shirtfront and we fell together.
I didn’t feel the falling, but I felt the landing. I slammed into the rock tailbone first and somersaulted the rest of the way down.
Then there was nothing.
The next thing I saw was the river rushing by. I lifted my head, but I couldn’t see very well. It was as if I was trying to see through barbed wire—everything was blinding and gray, and it hurt to try. I shut my eyes.
When I opened them again, all I saw was dirt. My face was on the ground, and I couldn’t seem to move it. I squinted and saw Mason sprawled out several feet away. His eyes were closed.
I shut my eyes again and opened them in a different direction, looking upward. The phone had landed a little bit away from my head. It seemed intact.
I couldn’t move my legs. I pushed against the dirt with my nose, inching toward the phone. I unlocked it the same way and, blessedly, it worked.
What’s the number? I thought. I don’t remember the number I’m supposed to call. It’s three numbers. Why can’t I remember them?
I learned it too long ago. That’s the problem. I plugged in the last number I remembered learning. It rang.
“Who is this?” answered a nervous, rasping voice. A male voice. It was a voice I recognized but couldn’t quite place.
“I’m Kendall,” I said. “I’m Kendall Evans.”
And then I blacked out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“So, Kendall.” The reporter smiled at me, a warm, bright smile designed to make me feel at ease but also to completely dispel any suspicion that she was a threat. “We’re going to start recording now. Are you comfortable where you are?”
As it happened, I wasn’t comfortable. I had two cracked ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a swollen tailbone, a broken ankle, a sprained wrist, and various cuts and bruises. And I wasn’t about to be on painkillers. I was going to keep my head clear for this particular conversation, thank you.
I smiled back at her, a demure, sparkling smile. “I’m fine, Katie. Thank you so much for coming here to do the interview. The doctors don’t want to move me yet. They think I might have caught a minor strain of pneumonia when I was lying out there. It started to rain before Detective Rockford found me.”
She motioned toward the cameraman. A red light went on. “Let’s start there,” she said, leaning in. “What’s the first thing you remember after going over that cliff with Mason Frye?”
“My parents standing over me in the hospital.” Katie made an awww face.
Actually, it was my dad. Mom was already in with the DA, trying to assure that I wouldn’t be charged with aggravated assault or even attempted murder.
When I woke up, Dad was there, calm and professorial, reading a copy of the New Yorker. He didn’t even notice I had woken up until I started croaking, “I’m sorry, Dad, I’m so sorry—”
“Shhh,” he said, putting his hand on my head, the closest un-bandaged part of me he could find. “It’s OK. You don’t have to explain anything.”
“But don’t you want to know how—? You should ask me why—”
He shook his head again and patted my scalp. “Mom told me the facts. I don’t need you to justify yourself. I’m sure you did your best. I believe in you.”
I was struggling. “But . . . I should explain to you why I . . .”
He shook his head. “I don’t need you to explain it to me. To be honest, I’d rather be a safe haven from this for you. Associate me with everything else. Talk to me about everything else. You’ll need to talk about this year enough. You don’t have to with me.”
There was no need to lie about my parents in the interview, and for that I was grateful. I looked back at Katie. “My parents have been with me the whole way,” I told her. “I’m very lucky.”
She pursed her lips. “I understand that your mother is representing you. Was there ever a discussion about you retaining outside counsel?”
“Why do you ask, Katie?”
“Well, to put it delicately, there are some sensational aspects of this case that I imagine might make it difficult for a mother to represent a teenage daughter.”
I looked through the window of my hospital room and saw Mom, standing straight and still with her arms crossed. She was staring at the reporter with narrowed eyes.
Mom had been against me giving any interviews. But that was before someone in the state troopers’ office had leaked the report to the New York Post. An Ivy League drug dealer, a kidnapped prep school girl, a fight in the mountains—it proved irresistible. After someone in the hospital had leaked the photos of Mason and me as we were brought in—each of us prettier and blonder than the other, bruises notwithstan
ding—even out-of-state newspapers started hounding the hospital, Columbia, Howell, everyone.
My mother had eventually conceded that we needed to spin the story ourselves. But she would probably have clocked the reporter if she’d heard that last question.
I pivoted. “I’m not sure I know what you mean by a ‘case,’ Katie. I haven’t been charged with anything.”
“But Mason Frye has.”
“He has. Detective Rockford tells me that he has been charged with possession, conspiracy to manufacture, and conspiracy to distribute, as well as kidnapping and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
“And you haven’t been charged with anything?”
I smiled. “I feel like you want to ask me something. Go ahead and ask.”
Katie’s eyes narrowed, but her otherwise pleasantly bland expression remained intact. “Well, let’s circle back to that. Let’s start by going over that night. How did Detective Rockford find you? I understand you managed to call someone who alerted the police?”
“That’s correct. I was almost passed out, but he understood that I was in trouble and called Detective Rockford.”
“Remarkable. Can you tell us about this hero?”
Again, my gaze drifted out the window. Behind my mother, Gilly and Simone were sitting in the waiting room. Simone had refused to let me go on TV without her first doing my hair and makeup. And from what I gathered, Gilly was wherever Simone was these days.
“He won’t leave me alone, Ken.” Simone was the first non-family member and non-cop to bully her way into my hospital room. After scolding me for not calling her before my dinner with Mason, and then for calling Gilly instead of her, she began her new favorite game: complaining about Mikey.
“He’s insufferable,” she insisted. “All he wants to talk about is Kendall this, Kendall that, what does Kendall think. It’s pathetic. He’s so anxious, we actually had a sleepover, Ken. A sleepover. My mother made s’mores dip. We watched Mean Girls.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” I raised the arm in the sling. “I’m not exactly mobile.”
“Just say you’ll go out with him or say you won’t,” she said bluntly. “Put him out of his misery.”
I pointed at Gilly through the window. “That’s the hero, right there, Katie,” I said. “He’s a friend of mine from school.”
The second cameraman turned just in time to see Gilly knock an unlit cigarette from Simone’s fingers. She glared at him as he ripped it to shreds.
Katie looked at him appraisingly through the glass and turned to me with a conspiratorial, all-girls-together grin. “Just a friend?”
I laughed. “Come on, Katie.”
“You have to admit, it’s pretty romantic that he was who you called.”
I looked away from Gilly, back at her. Smiling again, forcing it more this time, I told her, “I totally see why you would think that, but, honestly, we’re just friends.”
“If you say so . . .” she singsonged.
I had. I had said so.
It had sucked. Gilly had bounded into the room, so relieved to see me, his face like one of those lamps you use to alleviate Seasonal Affective Disorder.
I had launched right in. “We’re not going to date, Gilly. I’m grateful to you, and we’ll always be friends. But at the end of the day, you framed me. You hacked my profile. You spied on me. You lied to me. I know,” I said, holding up my hand as he opened his mouth to protest. “I know you’re sorry. I believe you. But I can’t. I won’t. I won’t be the girl who just forgives that. And if that makes me a bitch . . . then I’m a bitch.”
Gilly’s skin had gone almost green, and he had walked out of the room like he was the one with a concussion. But he had come back every day. He wasn’t going away. I couldn’t make him.
I smiled at Katie. “I know. I wish I had a better story for you.”
Her face got serious. “Let’s talk about boys, Kendall, if you don’t mind.”
I nodded. “Of course. I understand people have questions about my relationship with Mason Frye.”
“I have a picture of you two here,” she said, handing over an iPad. “You look pretty cozy in it.”
It was a picture from James Greenberger’s party. We were at the bar. I was standing with my back to him, and he was arching his torso around me like a snake. He was smiling down at me, and I was looking up at him intently. I looked like the girl in the picture. I wondered if he looked like anyone he had made up, or if that was really him.
“I went to the police the very day after this picture was taken,” I said quietly.
“And what made you decide to turn Mason in?”
I ran out of livable options. “It took me a long time to realize the damage that Mason was doing,” I told her, casting my eyes down. “I’m not proud of how long it took for me to wake up. I can only say that I was young—I am young.”
“What do you think should happen to Mason?”
Leon had cut a deal. It seemed like Rodney was going to cut a deal, as well. But Rodney hadn’t even sent a lawyer for Mason. Mason had done all of this to force his father into his life, but the gamble hadn’t paid off. His father wasn’t coming to protect him.
I almost felt bad for him. Almost.
“That’s up to the courts to decide,” I said. “I’m just glad that he’s no longer free to make and sell those drugs that damaged so many lives.”
“And what’s next for you, Kendall? Are you going to be able to go back to your senior year soon?”
“Actually, I was accepted into the Young Astronomers Talent Search program. It starts in January. I’ll spend what’s left of the semester recuperating and doing my schoolwork from Howell Preparatory School remotely. If I pass all my tests, medical and otherwise, I hope to be in Texas, studying astrophysics, this spring.”
That was one of the reasons I was doing the interview. We hadn’t heard anything from YATS. As far as I knew, I was still accepted. But Dr. Forrester had come to visit me and warned me that the program was aware of my situation and not . . . pleased. I needed a boring interview, to answer the questions, make the press go away.
Because I still really wanted to go to YATS. It was a relief to be sure of that.
Katie asked me a few more questions about the kidnapping and my daring escape. All of that was in the public record, so I stuck to the facts. Luckily, they were violent and lurid. It was good enough TV on its own—hopefully they’d stick to that and focus less on how a girl like me got there in the first place.
“Well, you are a very brave young woman,” finished Katie. “We wish you the best of luck with your recovery.”
“Thank you, Katie. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.”
She looked sly. “I have just one more question.”
“Sure.”
“I understand that you were very popular at your high school, the well-regarded prep school Howell: star athlete, student government, liked by everyone.”
I felt the girl in the picture, of her own volition, shimmy over me like a silk nightdress. “That’s a very flattering portrait.”
“But this isn’t your first brush with scandal.” She pulled out the iPad again. “Could you tell me about this picture?” I took it from her.
And there I was, clutching my shirt to my chest in the gym, bra straps sliding down to my wrists, skirt still on the floor.
Grant was standing next to me, but you couldn’t see his face, just his shoulders and hips. The focus of the picture was me.
I put down the iPad and turned to my bedside table. There was a glass of water next to a vase full of the most beautiful, full red roses. The bouquet was almost too perfect.
But then, Audrey was like that. The note was fastidious and succinct.
Dear Kendall,
Please accept my best wishes for a quick and full recovery. You are in my thoughts. I think you should know that reporters have been patrolling Howell for quotes about you. I can’t speak for everyone, of course
, but please know that I refused to comment. Ellie told them to go eff themselves. She sends her best, as well, and goodbye. She’ll be in Paris next semester, studying art.
All my best,
Audrey Naeema Khalil
Ellie had also plotted an escape route. Good for her. Hopefully, I’d get to take mine, too.
I took a sip of water and picked up the iPad again.
I was blushing in the photograph and looked like I might be shaking. The image was the platonic ideal of a shamed girl getting caught in the act—the picture you would conjure up when you think “bad girl.”
But I looked at it closer. I had always remembered that moment with me wide-eyed and panicked, struggling and fidgeting. But that’s not actually how I looked.
My eyes were actually narrowed, and my lips pouted. I didn’t look panicked. And I suddenly remembered that, in that moment, I hadn’t launched into my panic mechanism, counting the seconds—one, two, three.
I didn’t look panicked in that photo. I looked annoyed. I looked angry.
That seems right, I thought.
I handed the tablet back to the reporter. “What’s your question, Katie?”
She seemed taken aback, almost mad. “What would you say about the girl in that photo? What kind of girl is that?”
I shrugged. “Me.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Throughout this process and, really, my life, I have been enormously fortunate to have the support and encouragement of a vast array of brilliant, loving friends and family.
Any acknowledgments have to begin with Fred Kaplan and Brooke Gladstone, my parents. My first editors, these are the two smartest people I know, and I can’t express strongly enough how grateful I am for how they raised me—not least because I never, ever wanted for books! I was never treated as a “child,” but always as a person with a valid point of view, which they were always eager to hear and engage with. Thank you.
Also, big thanks to my inspiring and feisty-as-hell grandma, Ruth Kaplan Pollock, and to my wonderful step-grandfather, David Pollock, for all his love and support.
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