Now, in these final moments, he missed them. He missed her.
What would she think of him? When he was a little boy, he’d believed his father’s stories about growing up strong. To save her. To bring her back. But Brett’s mother had never been as happy as she was in the moments when she was dancing with him. Sharing secrets. They’d been best friends and they’d been kindred, and his father had taught him to hate the parts of himself that were like her. To cut them out. To pummel them with invisible fists until no softness remained.
Still Brett cried in the dark of the night, when he was alone. And now, with only a pale, ghostly girl watching, he felt tears stinging his eyes. He lowered his head.
“I didn’t want to go to the party,” he admitted. “I hate those things, if I can be honest. Parker always starts shit that he can’t finish, so I step in to protect him. But I knew that night would be different.”
He’d known it, deep in his bones, long before midnight, when Parker’s text had come in. Ruby still at home?
Brett wrote back, Yep. She’ll probably be going to bed soon. So . . .
So, get your ass over here. I’ve got a present for you.
Brett almost told him no. He was tired, and he wanted to go home. But there was work to be done, and he told himself that after that night, Shane would never hurt Ruby again.
He’d never hurt anyone.
And so, Brett made his way to the party in the hills. He arrived just in time to see Gavin staggering into the bushes. That was a surprise, but Parker was full of surprises, and it was a night of unusual allegiances. Parker and Gavin. Ruby and Brett. Of course, Ruby didn’t know that Brett was looking out for her, but that wasn’t the point of doing a good deed. You protected people because it was the right thing to do, and because they needed it. Ruby may not have been the angel that people thought she was, but she wasn’t violent. She wouldn’t hurt Shane, and right now, Shane needed to be hurt in order to learn his lesson.
For doing what he’d done.
Brett had felt certain of that, trudging across Dahlia Kane’s lawn. Then he saw Shane passed out on the far end of the patio. Someone had written all over him, and the guy was dripping wet. “What happened?” he asked.
Parker slid out of the shadows, flashing a grin. “Juniper Torres tried to drown him.”
“Um. What?”
Parker laughed, clearly delighted at the strange turn of events. “You know how she feels about my girl. Of course, she had the good sense not to sneak into Ruby’s bedroom—” He choked off, his jaw clenching. “You ready to do this?”
Brett’s stomach tightened. He wanted to feel excited, wanted to believe he was a hero meting out justice. But as Parker lifted Shane’s limp body from the ground, all he felt was dread.
“We should wake him up,” Brett suggested, forcing a smile. He knew if he said it like that, Parker would think he was being devilish, wanting Shane to experience every moment of pain. In reality, the thought of pummeling an unconscious boy made him want to throw up, even knowing what he knew about Shane.
What he thought he knew.
And so, before the flurry of fists, Brett slapped Shane in the face. Parker was already laughing. And Brett tried to get into it, tried to pretend he was in an old-timey movie, where men slapped each other and said, “I challenge you to a duel!”
In reality, there was no challenge, and this was no duel. But Shane did wake up, after the second slap. When he realized that Parker was holding his arms, and Brett was standing in front of him, he did what anyone would do. He struggled. He screamed.
No one came for him.
Maybe the party was too loud, or maybe the distance was drowning out the noise. Brett sucked in a breath. He felt like he was waiting for something, and he couldn’t summon the energy to lunge until Parker whispered in his ear, “He recorded her without her permission. He exposed her to the entire school. What kind of man does something like that?”
Brett’s fingers curled into fists. He knew exactly what kind of man used a person’s most vulnerable moment against them. That was why his mother had been taken away in the middle of the night. Because his father had recorded her, drunk and stumbling, and used the video as evidence to lock her up.
Something inside of Brett broke. All his hesitation fell away, leaving only fury behind. Rage. By the time blood appeared in the corner of Shane Ferrick’s mouth, the party was winding down.
“I hit him, over and over again,” Brett said into the cold, gray bedroom. There was a sheet draped over the headboard, to hide what had been written there, but he felt the words pressing into him, warning of what was to come.
“And then?” a voice said, and Brett looked up, to see a figure slipping into the room.
The door closed, blocking them in.
29.
BLACK SWAN
When the world went dark, Ruby’s heartbeat calmed. For the first time all night, her fingertips ceased to buzz. Her nerves untangled and her breathing slowed. The circus was coming to an end, and she could feel it.
It felt good.
The inside of her mind mirrored the dark, quiet corridors of the house as she slipped out of the bathroom. Gavin had wanted to go first, but with a touch on his arm, Ruby had stopped him. She’d been up and down these halls more than anyone. Tucked away inside a secret passageway, and pushed down the stairs.
It made sense for her to lead them.
And so, she did. On lithe limbs she glided across the floor, her feet a whisper in stockings and no shoes. The rope was looped around her arm. At the foot of the stairs, she paused, waiting for the others to catch up. A part of her wanted to take each of their hands in hers and walk up the stairs as an impassible wall, but of course, it made more sense to press against the banister. To take up as little room as possible, in case Brianna was lurking nearby. Ruby suspected she wasn’t. Right about now, she’d be guarding the patio, or listening in the secret passageway while Parker convinced Brett to stay quiet. Still, it was foolish to take up more space than necessary. In single file, they kept to the side of the stairs, and their steps made no sounds.
This was happening. This was working. Ruby grinned as they reached the second floor, her eyes acclimating to the darkness. She couldn’t see much, but she could make out the emptiness of the hallway. The lack of a murderous doll. To add to their luck, the door at the end of the hall was open, along with the balcony doors beyond. Ruby could see the moonlight pouring in, surrounded by an indigo sky, and it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She wanted to rise up into the darkness and never come down. Of course, being a girl, and not yet a ghost, her body was subject to gravity, and thus, she could not go swimming in the sky.
But she could go swimming in the pool.
Yes, Ruby thought, we are coming to the end. She could feel it in her bones as they passed Juniper’s open door. In spite of her desire to keep moving, she turned, peering at the photographs inside. Photos of two smiling girls at age eight, twelve, fourteen.
Ruby and Juniper.
Her heartbeat went erratic, and before she could stop herself, she was plucking a picture from the wall. A grainy shot of Juniper and herself, surrounded by cupcakes. Red velvet, because that was Ruby’s favorite—not that it mattered in her family. Ruby never got to pick out her own cake. Three of the four Valentine girls had August birthdays, and by the time Ruby was in second grade, she was splitting her cake three ways. Splitting her presents. Splitting her party. And even then, she didn’t really mind, until her mother brought home a Reese’s Pieces cake, forgetting Ruby’s allergy to peanuts. That, Ruby had minded. Still, she’d sat through the party, helped her sisters open their gifts, and then quietly slipped into the bathroom to cry. She couldn’t cry in her bedroom, because it wasn’t hers, like everything else in the house. The bedroom was shared with Charlotte, and the birthday was shared with Scarlet and May, and nothing, absolutely nothing, had been Ruby’s.
Until that birthday.
Back then, Ruby a
nd Juniper were joined at the hip, but halfway through the party, Juniper had started to feel sick. At least, that was what she’d claimed. But two hours after her sudden departure, a knock had sounded on Ruby’s window, and Ruby had rushed over to see her friend holding something on a tray.
Cupcakes. Twenty-four red velvet cupcakes, each with the name Ruby scrawled across them in pretty red frosting. “They’re all for you,” Juniper had insisted with a smile.
Now, as Ruby stared at the photograph, her chest ached and her eyes stung with tears. She wanted to pull Juniper into her arms. No, she wanted to build a workable time machine and go back to the moment before things fell apart. If Juniper had been her friend all these years, would she still feel like a person, instead of a cracked, porcelain replica of herself?
It was impossible to know, and it was foolish to be wondering about it now. The past was the past. But with the future uncertain, and altogether empty without Shane, Ruby kept searching for the last time she’d felt human. As she hurried into the fifth bedroom, the photograph clutched in her hand, she found herself face-to-face with the answer.
He was sitting in a chair, red markings covering his skin. His hair wasn’t dripping anymore, but his shirt was open, like he was waiting for a flurry of fists to knock the breath from his lungs. Waiting for fat purple bruises to cover his chest.
“I’m taking him,” Ruby said, looping an arm around the doll. When Juniper turned to her, eyes widened in concern, Ruby explained as best she could. “This story ends in fire. You know it does. And I know he’s made of porcelain, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch him burn a second time.”
Juniper nodded as Ruby dragged the doll across the room. If she was worried about Ruby’s state of mind, she didn’t show it. There were more important things to consider, like, for example, their death-defying escape. Once upon a time, in the dead of night, Shane and Ruby had made plans for a death-defying escape. A way to break free of Parker, together, and stop being scared. And then . . .
“We’ll just be together,” Shane had said, grinning like a Cheshire cat, and Ruby had melted.
Now, hurrying across the balcony, Ruby thought of other things that could make you melt. She could see the line of gasoline snaking around the house. It didn’t snake around the pool, but if Brianna struck a match soon, there wouldn’t be time to leap to safety. Ruby would go up in flames like Shane had, one year earlier.
They would all burn.
For the moment, the patio was dark. Ruby saw no hint of white, no garish red lipstick. “We can jump together,” she said, binding the balcony doors with the rope. This time, she made a knot. No bows. “We’ll have to climb over the railing, then push off from the ledge. Otherwise, I’d say we should hold hands.”
“We can hold hands now,” Juniper said, entwining their fingers for the briefest of seconds. When the girls pulled apart, she was clutching the photo that Ruby had taken from the house. “You saw my bedroom?”
Ruby nodded, watching her in the moonlight. “Of all the things you could’ve wanted, you wanted me.”
“Back in my life, yes.”
“I want to be,” Ruby said, and it was the truth. She was deathly tired of lying. Deathly tired of wearing a mask. Before she could stop herself, she threw her arms around Juniper, whispering, “I’ve wasted so much time—”
“Um,” Gavin broke in. “I don’t want to be that guy, but you’re wasting time now.”
“Shh.” Ruby held a finger to his lips. “We’re having a moment.” And they were. They were holding each other, for what might be the last time. They were even swaying a little, and Ruby thought it was perfect, that it should end like this. Two princesses on a balcony, dancing in the moonlight. Two knights reunited after a long and painful war.
Then, just as Ruby felt the illusion, Gavin’s voice broke into their bubble again, shattering the fantasy. “Well, I’m going to jump. You guys can—”
He wasn’t able to finish his thought. Spinning away from Ruby, Juniper took his face in her hands. “Oh my God. Shut your beautiful face.”
Then, under a million twinkling stars, she kissed him. It was ridiculously innocent. A perfect Juniper kiss, Ruby thought with a grin. Soft and tentative and ending as quickly as it had begun, but still, it did the trick. Gavin came away with a smile on his face, and then he was part of the fantasy. All three of them had slipped into an alternate reality, where the world was beautiful and terrifying, and you had to see both sides in order to survive.
Together, they climbed over the railing. Inside the house, footsteps were thundering on the stairs, but it didn’t matter, because the plan was in place. The players were poised to jump. Fingers curling around the railing, Ruby turned to Gavin first, saying, “Ready?”
He nodded.
“Junebug?”
“It’s now or never,” Juniper said, and her voice wasn’t shaking that badly. “On three?”
Ruby nodded. It made sense to do it together. Together, they’d count. Together, they’d leap. And then, hours from now, when the fear was gone . . .
We’ll just be together.
Tears streamed down Ruby’s cheeks. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, not without Shane. There was no together anymore. Reaching over the balcony, she lifted the doll into her arms. “One,” she said.
Juniper swallowed beside her, saying, “Two.”
“Three,” they shouted together, leaping into the sky. Then flight. Then gravity, pulling them down faster than Ruby thought possible. She hit the water hard. The blue-eyed, pale-skinned boy slipped out of her grip almost instantly, and she found herself reaching for him before she tried to breathe. Then the moon was hurtling toward her. For a moment, she thought she was seeing double. No, triple, she amended, staring at the lifeless face of Shane Ferrick, the luminous moon in the sky, and the girl stepping out of the shadows, clad only in white.
30.
HAIL MARY
Parker slipped into Brett’s bedroom. The place was ominously gray. Torn photographs littered the floor, hinting at Brett’s secrets, but Parker didn’t give them a second look as he closed the door behind him.
All he cared about was the boy on the bed.
“Leave me alone,” Brett said coldly. His skin looked as gray as the walls. He was holding something in his shaking hands, something shiny and metal.
His brass knuckles.
“Look, I messed up with the video.” Parker stepped closer, running a hand through his hair. “I lost my head, seeing Ruby with him. I mean, can you imagine? If you’d walked in on me and her, wouldn’t you have—”
“Don’t.”
“I’m just saying, it would suck.”
“You don’t get to talk to me like that. You don’t get to act like you understand. All my life, everything I’ve done . . . It hasn’t been to trap you. It’s been to protect you. And yeah, if I saw you with her, it would’ve sucked, but guess what? I’m a big boy, Parker, and if I found you with a rope, the last thing I’d do is tie you up.”
“Bullshit,” Parker said, advancing on him. “What did Brianna offer you? You’ve been trying to tell me, haven’t you? Trying to turn my gaze to your bedroom? Why? So you could lure me in here—”
“I didn’t lure you! You lured us to this party. That’s literally a thing that happened.”
“All you people can do is throw dirt at me. Well, guess what? I made you into something. I made her into something. Gavin’s dying to be me. Juniper, too. Don’t hate me because I have what you want, okay? If you’d just played along . . .” Parker leaned over him. Then they were staring at each other, and Parker was reaching for Brett’s collar, and . . .
“No.” Brett crawled backwards, away from him. “No, I don’t want you like that. I don’t want you at all.”
“You’re lying.”
“I don’t! She didn’t offer you, because she knew I wouldn’t take it. She knew. She knew.” Now he was rocking, and Parker was starting to feel nervous. Of course Brianna had offered
a little taste of Parker, in order to keep Brett cooperative. What else could his friend possibly want?
Parker snorted, shaking his head. “She put my picture in your room. She covered your walls with my face, and you tore up every single—”
“Believe it or not, Parker, there’s something I want more than you. Something I can actually have.” Brett reached up, pulling the sheet away from the headboard. That thing curved like a tombstone. Across the front, words had been written:
Brett Carmichael
Rest in Peace
“What the hell is this?” Parker demanded, gaping at Brett. “This is what she offered you?”
Brett covered his face with his hands, voice cracking. “It’s what I wanted.”
Parker’s first instinct was to leave the room. To give Brett the space to pull himself together. Still, he waited. He’d made so many snap judgments tonight, and in the weeks leading up to the party.
“Why would you want this?” he asked.
“Because of what I did,” Brett managed. “All year, I’ve been trying to push it away, but I can’t.”
“So she offered to make it go away for you. To take your life as payment for Shane’s.” Parker looked up, a chill unfurling in his stomach. A voice trickling into his ears. If he wanted to get out of here, he had to be willing to make a sacrifice.
“I didn’t give her what she wanted,” Brett said, holding up his brass knuckles. “It was more of a gesture, anyway. She wants the truth. She wants her brother’s killer to suffer.”
“Maybe,” Parker said, his heartbeat quickening. “I mean, she definitely does, but since we’re all guilty, I bet she’d take any one of us.”
“What do you mean?”
Brett was looking at him, gaze softened, and Parker told himself to stop. To shut up. There had to be another way. But just as he closed his mouth, the lights started flickering, and it seemed like a sign. A warning of flickering to come. Of fire. If someone didn’t step forward soon, all five of them would die.
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