by Hannah Jayne
“No.” Sawyer paused, then gaped when the fabric of the bracelet brushed against her cheek. The embroidered words Best Friends Forever just at her peripheral. “Where did you get that?”
Chloe smiled. “We both have them again. You found Maggie’s, didn’t you? I know you were over there.”
Sawyer felt sick and she closed her eyes tight. “You’ve been watching me.”
“Always.”
Sawyer’s tongue brushed across her lips. “You killed Kevin.”
Chloe rolled the strand of hair between her forefinger and thumb, her eyes fixed on it, admiring it.
“Why Kevin? Why now? How long—how long have you felt this way?”
The question seemed to make Chloe seethe, the cold steel of the knife vibrating against Sawyer’s carotid artery. “Forever.” She clipped the word.
“Forever?”
“God, Sawyer!” Chloe threw up her hands. “I couldn’t take it anymore! I loved you, I love you so much and I couldn’t watch it anymore. He was—he was ruining you, and you were letting him.”
Tears blurred Sawyer’s vision. “No,” she whispered.
Chloe’s eyes glowed like the last ashen embers of a dying fire. She almost looked sad. “Don’t you see?” She smacked the knife hard with her other hand, and the thwack made Sawyer jump. “He didn’t care about you! He didn’t love you. I wasn’t the only one, either, Sawyer.” She dropped her eyes for a brief second, looked at Sawyer through lowered lashes. “But you were the only one he hurt.”
Sawyer’s stomach dropped and an inappropriate rush of shame washed over her. “You knew about that?” Her voice was a choked whisper against Chloe’s ragged sigh.
Chloe shrugged. “You let him.”
“I didn’t let him hit me.” It was Sawyer’s turn to be angry now. “I didn’t just let it happen.”
“Well, you sure as hell didn’t stop it, now did you?”
“It wasn’t like that. I couldn’t—”
“Couldn’t let him go?” Chloe mocked. “Couldn’t ask for help? Couldn’t see past your own stupid nose is more like it. You’re a victim, Sawyer. Look at everything bad that happens to poor, poor Sawyer. You didn’t need him. So when I saw an opportunity, I took it.”
“What are you—”
“That night. You finally—finally—broke up with him. But I knew it wouldn’t stick. You’d go crawling back to him. He’d tell you how much he loved you, and you would turn into a big, sobbing bowl of jelly. So I stepped in. You know what happens when guys drink, Sawyer? They get horny. And a guy like Kevin Anderson doesn’t really care where he gets it from.”
“You…” Sawyer couldn’t push the words past her teeth.
“Oh, don’t act so surprised. You weren’t the only one. And neither was I.” Chloe shrugged again, the knife bobbing in her hand. The sharp blade caught the light, and Sawyer sucked in a breath.
“It was the perfect storm that night,” Chloe went on. A grin spread across her face and the calm serenity in it was chilling. “One, two, three…Kevin Anderson, done in by me.” She seemed proud of her macabre rhyme and laughed, the tinkling sound catching in the charged air.
“So, your brake lines? The gash on your head? That was all you?”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Sawyer! I had to play the game!”
“This is a game to you?”
She shrugged again, looking suddenly, chillingly, nonchalant. “Let’s say I was killing two birds with one stone. Everyone thinks someone’s out to get me.” Chloe’s eyes suddenly went hard. “Maybe paying me some kind of attention for once.”
Sawyer swallowed. “And?”
“And my crap excuse for a mom gets the ride of her life on her way to work.” Chloe held out her hands like a scale. “Win, win.” She licked her lips and a grin spread across her face. It was maniacal, totally gleeful, and it gave Sawyer terrified chills.
“But you said the car was fixed.”
“Yeah.” Chloe nodded, still grinning. “It was.”
Sawyer’s breath hitched on a sob as the weight of Chloe’s confessions pressed against her. “You murdered my boyfriend. You were there that night. The shoe—my shoes—and the sweatshirt. You took Kevin’s sweatshirt.”
Chloe’s lower lip popped out. “I was cold.”
Sawyer worked to form the words. “You killed my boyfriend.”
Chloe abruptly dropped the strand of hair and narrowed her eyes. “Some boyfriend,” she spat.
Sawyer shook her head, incredulous. “You framed me, Chloe. You put all that stuff in my locker.”
A ripple of fury washed over Chloe’s face. Her nostrils flared, her lip curled slightly. “You weren’t listening, Sawyer. I had to make you listen.”
“By getting me thrown in jail?”
“It wouldn’t have gone that far. I would have saved you. I needed to get your attention, to force you to listen. You can be a little hardheaded, Sawyer.”
“I can’t believe—I can’t believe…” Sawyer’s lower lip started to tremble. Chloe frowned, her eyes mirroring Sawyer’s sadness.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to apologize.”
“I’m not apologizing!”
Chloe stepped toward Sawyer so that their faces were mere inches apart. Chloe cocked her head, and Sawyer watched the blade come up. Chloe pushed a heavy lock of Sawyer’s hair away with it and Sawyer tried to hold still, tried to stay herself against the rippling shiver that went through her body as a few strands of her hair, severed by the knife, fell against her bare arm.
“Do you see why I had to do it? Why I had to take care of you? I’m always taking care you. But that’s fine.” A weird, slow smile spread across Chloe’s face. “I like taking care of you.”
“You need help, Chloe. You need serious help.”
Chloe cocked an annoyed eyebrow and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Excuse me?”
“You’re crazy.”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “I’m crazy?” she sputtered. “I’m crazy? I try and protect my best friend, and what does she do? She goes and plays human punching bag with some cocksucking jock. And for what? So you can be ‘popular’?” Chloe made air quotes around the word, but her eyes were wild and deadly serious. “So you can sit in the cool section at the big game with all the other silicone-stuffed lemmings?” She scratched her head at the part. “Come on, Sawyer. You’re pretty and all, but not pretty enough to be that dumb.”
Sawyer stared at Chloe, dumbfounded, and Chloe stomped a foot. “Are you kidding me? You still think he loved you.” Chloe got up in Sawyer’s face again, bits of spit sticking to Sawyer’s cheek as Chloe bit off her words. “He didn’t care about you. But you wouldn’t know love if it hit you in the face.” Chloe used both her hands to smack Sawyer’s cheeks. “You never even paid attention to me when Kevin came around.” Her voice was a low whisper.
Sawyer wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “What? I don’t understand. I mean, why—why now? Why are you doing this to me?”
“Why?” Chloe gaped, looking wildly astonished. She stumbled backward and sank into an armchair, her fingers absently running over the knife. “I really, really can’t believe you’d ask me that. I mean really, Sawyer, you’re making me look bad.”
“But—”
“But, but, but,” she mocked, “of course. Why would I do this to you? The answer is in the question.” She laughed mirthlessly. “People are dead all around you, and you ask why I did this to you. It’s not what I did to you, it’s what I did for you. What I always do for you.” She jabbed an index finger toward her chest. “I protect you. But do you see it? No,” she dragged out the word. “Of course not. You never see it because it’s all about Sawyer. Sawyer’s boyfriend. Sawyer’s teacher making a pass at her. Sawyer’s new family. Sawyer, Sawyer, Sawyer.” Chloe stood. “But what about Chloe?” she po
inted the knife at herself. “What about me?” Her eyes flashed back to a fresh, clear blue, and when she blinked, a single tear rolled down her cheek.
Sawyer sucked in a shaky breath and thought about Tara lying nearly unconscious upstairs, thought about her baby sister. There was no way past Chloe and her knife. No cell phone, no help on the way. She licked her lips.
“I love you, Chloe,” Sawyer said, her voice a breathy whisper.
Chloe sniffed and shook her head. “Don’t you say that. You don’t love me.”
“I do.” Sawyer took a step forward.
“Stop!” she gripped the knife and shoved it in front of her. Sawyer’s eyes went to it, and she felt herself start to shake. She steeled herself, forced herself to look away.
“You don’t really care about me,” she murmured.
“What did you say?”
Sawyer swung her head to face Chloe and kept her words flat and matter-of-fact. “I said, you don’t really care about me. You don’t really love me.” She chuckled. “I guess you were right. I don’t know anything about love.”
Chloe gaped. “Are you kidding me? All this. I did all of this for you.”
“I think you did it for you. I think you like to hurt people and you wanted an excuse to do it. You don’t love me, Chloe, you don’t even like me half the time.”
“Shut up!”
The smack across Sawyer’s face was hard. It stung, and she reeled. She tried her best to stay calm, unaffected, as she wiped her hand across her throbbing nose. She looked at the blood in her palm, tasted it gushing from the front of her mouth. “That just proves it.”
“No.” Chloe’s eyes were big, the tears falling immediately. She raked her fingers through her hair, still clutching the knife in front of her. “I’m sorry, Sawyer, I didn’t mean to do that. But you—you don’t understand. I love you. I love you so, so much. Can’t you see? Everything I do. Are you listening to me?”
But Sawyer was nonchalantly looking around the house, kicking at the carpet with her foot, as if Chloe was trying to sell her Girl Scout cookies, the knife in her hand nothing but a box of Thin Mints.
“You’re impossible!” Chloe shrieked, whirling around to pace. When she stepped back again, Sawyer was gone.
She cut through the entry hall and kicked the front door open, letting it smack loudly against the wall. She knew it would get Chloe’s attention, knew that if she took off, Chloe would follow. Sawyer snatched Tara’s bag from the peg by the door as she ran, her socks smacking against the damp concrete of the driveway.
It seemed like only seconds that Sawyer had been home, but the storm-dark sky was already bleeding into an inky black. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees, and the icy cold froze Sawyer’s lungs and made her legs feel tight and heavy. She heard Chloe cross the threshold and bound after her, just seconds behind.
Sawyer pushed herself harder, vaguely wishing she had her windbreaker to cut through the biting wind.
“Oh God.”
She remembered the photo of herself running pinned to Chloe’s wall. She was wearing the windbreaker she wished she had now—the one she was wearing the morning she ran in the neighborhood.
Her best friend had been stalking her.
Terrorizing her.
She tore down the street, looking for somewhere to go. The houses that had been so cheery and homey just hours ago seemed to scream out their emptiness. The blank, black windows reflected Sawyer’s image back to her, a bitter reminder that she was all alone.
“Sawyer!” Chloe was closing in on her, and suddenly Sawyer cut left, running up her neighbor’s driveway. The wind whipped her hair in her face, but her pace was steady. Rain had just started to fall, heavy drops turning the dirt into mud and pounding over the abandoned two-by-fours and other construction debris as Sawyer cleared through the unlandscaped front yard and tore around the side of the house. The fresh redwood fence and cheery neighborhood façade ended at the back of the model, and Sawyer paused, heart thundering, as she looked out at the muddy expanse in front of her.
Chloe hadn’t come around the house yet, and Sawyer took the second to stop, digging through Tara’s bag until she found her cell phone. She mashed all the buttons and the screen lit up, letting Sawyer know that she had only one bar of service.
“Get back here, Sawyer!”
Chloe’s voice reverberated through the fresh construction, and Sawyer pitched forward, running toward the lone cell tower at the back of the development. She was at the base of the small dirt hill as Chloe burst into the backyard.
Sawyer mashed the phone again, the screen still flashing that single bar. The rain was starting to fall steadily in icy sheets and she shivered, turning back toward the hill, her socks sinking into the mud.
“Sawyer!”
Chloe was at her ankles now, her clawed fingers grabbing at Sawyer.
“Let me go!” Sawyer kicked at Chloe’s hands.
The rainwater washed down the muddy hill in gales, and Sawyer slid down toward Chloe. Chloe grabbed at her, her fingers digging into the soft flesh of Sawyer’s forearms.
“Come on, Sawyer, we can leave. We can go away from here.”
“No.” Sawyer shook her head, her tears mixing with the rainwater that pelted her face. “You’re sick, Chloe. This isn’t love. You don’t love me, you need help.”
“Stop saying that!”
“It’s true.”
“You are so ungrateful.” Chloe’s teeth were gritted and rainwater dripped from her chin. “I can’t believe I loved you. I’ve done everything for you! You didn’t even ask, and I did it.” She slammed her fist against the mud just to the side of Sawyer’s ear. “You don’t even care! You don’t even care!” Chloe was crying now, great, wracking sobs. “I did everything for you, Sawyer. Everyone wanted to hurt you, and I didn’t. I didn’t.”
Sawyer flipped, her fingers and toes digging into the mud as she tried to wriggle away.
“Where are you going? Stop it!” Chloe’s words broke on the whipping wind as she lunged with both hands toward Sawyer. When the knife plunged deep into the back of Sawyer’s calf, her scream was sucked up by the wind.
Sawyer looked back, astounded. There was nothing but the urgent sense of cold at first, but then the pain was searing hot and heavy, starting from the blade and shattering through Sawyer’s body. But she knew she couldn’t stop.
“Sawyer!”
She couldn’t help but look over her shoulder. Chloe was on her knees, her hair sopping wet and plastered to her forehead. Her clothes were streaked with mud and Sawyer’s blood, and Sawyer’s stomach ached but she wasn’t sure if it was from the blood or for the fact that Chloe was kneeling there with the bloody knife pressed against her own throat.
Terror rained down on Sawyer.
“Chloe, put the knife down. Please.”
Chloe shook her head as tears rolled over her pink lips. Her hand started to tremble, and tiny rivulets of black-red blood bubbled up at her neck. “You don’t care about me. No one does! No one does!”
“That’s not true. I care about you. I want to get you help. We’ll get you help. Please.” Her voice was little more than a whisper and almost lost on the wind and rain. “Please don’t do this.”
Chloe’s knuckles were white. The night dropped into an impossible silence, a muscle-aching slow motion.
Sawyer picked her way down the hill, favoring her aching leg. She was within arm’s length of Chloe when Chloe clamped her eyes shut, the blade pressing deeper into her skin. Sawyer reached out to touch Chloe’s arm, but before she could, she felt the dizzying smack of her head against the slick mud, flashes dancing in front of her eyes. Chloe was on top of her, looking down on her, her eyes caged-animal wild.
“You don’t care about anyone! I loved you and you don’t care!”
“Don’t hurt her!” Cooper’s
voice sliced through the night, and Chloe’s head snapped up. He was standing in the backyard, hands splayed. Dried blood, so dark it was almost black, was smeared across his forehead, across the sucking wound at his hairline.
“I killed you!” Chloe yelled, hysteria making her voice high and frantic. “I killed you!”
“No, you didn’t,” Cooper said calmly. He took a tentative step forward. “And you’re not going to hurt Sawyer, either.”
“Don’t tell me what I’m going to do!”
Sawyer was vaguely aware of what was going on. Her head was still spinning from hitting the ground, and the throb in her leg went up to her teeth. “Cooper?” She knew it was a mere whisper, but she wanted to feel his name on her tongue if only one last time. Chloe looked down at her and wagged her head.
“Don’t listen to him. He’s going to turn out just like Kevin did. He’s only going to hurt you.”
Sawyer saw Cooper moving from the corner of her eye.
“That’s not true,” Cooper said from the foot of the dirt hill. “And I know that you’re not going to hurt Sawyer, either, Chloe.”
Chloe pushed the blade of the knife against Sawyer’s neck again. “How do you know that?” she spat.
Cooper took another step forward, his voice dropping to a normal level. “Because I know.” His eyes went to Sawyer’s, locked on hers. “You never hurt the person you love.”
A warmth pulsed through Sawyer, and she wanted to smile, wanted Cooper’s words—the way he said them, with his eyes staring into hers—to be the last thing she ever heard. Chloe’s hand was shaking hard again, the action causing little pricks against Sawyer’s throat.
“No,” Chloe said, teeth gritted.
Sawyer clamped her eyes shut, waiting for the searing pain of knife through flesh.
“No,” Chloe said again. This time it was softer, and Sawyer felt the knife back away from her throat, heard something slap into the mud. “I do love you, Sawyer.”
Chloe’s words were strained and muffled, and when Sawyer opened her eyes, Chloe’s hands were in front of her face, her shoulders shaking.