White Rabbit

by Caleb Roehrig

  Peyton nods slowly, mechanically. “He was really scared. He drove away as soon as the garage caught fire, because he was sure that it was going to spread to the rest of the neighborhood. He was still panicking when I ran into him at Silverman’s—it’s the only reason he told me as much as he did.” Her tone is affectless, devoid of feeling, and it makes my stomach roll. “When he said I had to lie for him, I honestly thought the universe was sending me a sign that I’d done the right thing by getting rid of Fox. I mean, I was freaking out about it, and then an alibi just … dropped right into my lap.”

  “You’re not making sense!” Sebastian blurts. “The door said ‘rapist.’ We saw it! Why would Race write that if he didn’t know Fox was blackmailing you to … to do things for him?”

  Peyton releases a brittle laugh that sounds like someone prying open a sarcophagus, and which is approximately six thousand times scarier than when she was showing no emotion at all. “Do you have any idea how many girls Fox Whitney has gotten drunk or stoned and then taken advantage of? He was a disgusting asshole. Race knew even more than I did the kind of shit Fox got up to. Maybe if he’d told me some of it, I wouldn’t have fallen for Fox’s crap.”

  She aims a resentful look at Race’s motionless body, still folded awkwardly into the limited space of his trunk, and I begin to sweat as I wonder what Peyton intends to do next. Between the two of us, Sebastian and I can certainly overpower her … but if she does have a knife, then the cost of trying might end up being higher than we can afford to pay.

  Clearing my throat, I venture, “You killed Arlo because he tried to blackmail you, and you killed Race because … what? He figured out why you were so eager to lie for him? Where do you think this is gonna end, Peyton? Are you planning to bump off everyone else who was at the party and just hope the cops think that April was teleporting back and forth across the city all night on a murder spree?”

  “Race isn’t dead,” she counters pedantically. “Yet.” She spares her boyfriend another look, and I can swear that this time I almost see regret form and disperse in her eyes, a storm that won’t quite break. “It didn’t have to be this way. Nobody else needed to die tonight, besides Fox. I didn’t want to hurt anyone else.”

  “But Arlo forced your hand,” I prompt, eager to keep her talking. We could run. Peyton does track, and I know she’s fast, but she couldn’t chase us both if we went in different directions, right? “He saw what happened up at the lake house, didn’t he?”

  “He saw me dragging April into the kitchen. He thought she and Fox were both dead.” She rolls her shoulders, the joints popping loudly. “I don’t think he gave an actual shit about either of them, but he was terrified of Lyle Shetland, and he figured I could pay him enough that he’d be able to blow town for good, if he had to. He wanted ten grand. In cash.” Peyton smiles then, her teeth sharp as a picket fence. “I showed up at his house dragging a duffel bag filled with magazines and shit, and the dumbass actually believed it was the money. Like, how the fuck did he think I got my hands on ten thousand dollars in the middle of the night?”

  “And he let you get close enough to cut his throat.”

  “He told me to back up while he opened the bag, but I rushed him when he bent down to unzip it, and I stun-gunned him. Cutting his throat was the easy part.”

  “But there was still Lia—and Race,” I supply, my mouth feeling dry. The problem with running in different directions is that whomever she did decide to chase could easily die before the other managed to get help—and the nearest point of actual safety is the Jeep. There’d be no hope of losing her on a half-mile sprint, and stopping to unlock the car door would be an invitation for her to start with the stabbing. Splitting up is just as risky as trying to jump her.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” Peyton declares firmly. “Race, that stupid douche—he changed his mind! After I dealt with Arlo, I went back to Race’s house so we could work out our story, but by that point he’d seen the news about the fire, and he was losing it. I mean, he had a total meltdown—crying, laughing, the whole bit—and he started saying he had to turn himself in. I tried to talk him down, but he wouldn’t listen. He figured Fox would know he’d done it, and he’d be busted anyway, so he might as well just confess.” She heaves a weary breath. “So I told him why he couldn’t do that. Why I needed him to stick to the fucking story we’d already told you guys.”

  “He didn’t take it well?”

  “He did not.” A faint, creepy smile slithers across her lips. “I had to use the stun gun again, just to keep him from calling the police, and then…” She shrugs listlessly. “Then it was too late to take chances. I can’t let him tell the cops about me, so … he has to die, too.”

  “Peyton, listen to yourself,” Sebastian implores, his voice rising again as he tries to cope with what she’s saying. He thrusts a hand into the damp air, fingers splayed, his body tense as a coiled spring. “This is … it’s insane! It’s fucking insane. Two people are dead already—isn’t that bad enough? You don’t have to kill anyone else!”

  “I don’t want to, all right?” she snaps back fiercely, eyes blazing. “This actually isn’t a whole lot of fun for me, Bash. That wasn’t all acting, when I was crying earlier? When I was pretending I burned down the Whitneys’ house? Killing Fox … it was awful. It happened, like—it was—even when I was doing it, I couldn’t believe I was doing it, and, and it was … awful. I barely kept from puking.” Her throat flexes at the memory, and her chin jerks forward. For a moment, I think she’s going to puke right in front of us, but then she swallows and grits her teeth. “But Fox Whitney was a human colostomy bag. He was a misogynist dickhole, he blackmailed me for sex, he wiped his ass with his friends, he sold drugs to kids … Just tell me he didn’t deserve it.”

  “I—” I want to argue with her, to turn this conversation around … but what can I say? Fox Whitney really was a terrible person. Murder is wrong—I mean, obviously—but I’m not going to miss the guy. I can’t offer anything more than empty platitudes about right and wrong anyway, and I’m not sure those will make much of a difference to her at this point. But I have to say something. I have to try.

  Peyton isn’t acting anxious or desperate; on the contrary, she’s controlled and steady, seeming not the least bit worried we might get away from her—and that makes me cold with dread. The unbeatable team of nerves and my smart mouth conjure up some words at last.

  “Peyton, I’ve hated Fox a hell of a lot longer than you, but somehow I managed to not kill him. Maybe you could’ve given not killing people a try?”

  She rolls her eyes, annoyed. “You are such a sanctimonious shit, Rufus, you know that? I mean, keep it up, really—you’re making what comes next a whole lot easier.”

  Sebastian grabs my elbow and pulls me closer, protectively, his eyebrows drawing together. “You don’t have to do anything, Peyton. And you can’t kill all three of us. Lia’s expecting us to tell her what went down tonight—in person—and if we don’t do it soon, she’s gonna call the police!”

  “And by the time they get here, I’ll be long gone, and all their loose ends will be wrapped up for them,” Peyton finishes complacently. “Race’s dad will be getting back from Washington in, like, half an hour, and when the cops show up to ask where his son is, he’ll be finding a convenient suicide note on Race’s computer that confesses to everything.” She gives us a little frown, more disappointed than regretful. “I really … I almost thought it was a good thing that you guys showed up here instead of Lia. You already seemed pretty sure Race did it, and I could tell you bought my story. I thought maybe I could let you go to the police and back me up—tell them I burned down Fox’s house, and let you support my alibi. But Race needs to die here. It’s what I wrote in his suicide note, and it’s too late to go back and change it without getting caught. Maybe if you guys had kept walking. Maybe if you hadn’t looked in the trunk. But…”

  Her face goes blank again, her eyes as cold and empty as Pluto, and I h
old my breath instinctively. Sebastian’s fingers tighten on my arm, and I can tell he senses it, too—something is about to happen; we’re all out of time. Whatever move we’re going to make, we have to make it now.

  And then Peyton lifts her right arm, and I see what she’s been keeping just out of sight. All the pressure levels in my body change; my stomach drops, my lungs rise, and my heart suddenly feels as if it’s beating in the center of my brain.

  In her hand is Arlo’s rifle.

  28

  In the east, the sun is finally starting to make its presence felt, daylight asserting itself in shades of white and silver that displace the mist’s dreamy blues and purples; but Fernwood Park remains an endless swamp of turbid air and wet grass nonetheless, trees looming like shrouded sentries as we struggle past them with our cumbersome burden. Race’s legs feel surprisingly skinny in my arms, but his upper body keeps slipping from Sebastian’s hold, and—to Peyton’s escalating aggravation—he and I have to stop frequently to rest and switch places.

  The stakes changed pretty drastically upon the reintroduction of Arlo’s rifle. If we could somehow get away from Peyton, escape and lose ourselves in the fog before she could take proper aim, we’d have a chance at hiding from her—perhaps; but she seems well aware of this fact, and trails just far enough back to be out of arm’s reach while still keeping well within sighting distance. She handles the firearm like she knows what she’s doing, and it makes me think twice about saying fuck it and trying to run anyway. Besides, I can’t make a move unless I know Sebastian will also be safe, and there’s no way to confer, to plot. We have to bide our time—we have to hope there’s enough time to bide—and wait for a clearer opportunity to present itself.

  The first thing she did, once the barrel of the weapon was out in the open and we all knew exactly where we stood, was instruct us to put our cell phones on the ground and stomp on them until they shattered. Then we were ordered to pull Race out of the Camaro’s trunk and, supporting his weight between us, march him off into the pale abyss of Fernwood Park in order to meet our collective doom.

  “Race is having a lot of problems, you know, dealing with his guilt over killing Fox and Arlo?” Peyton explains conversationally as we maneuver the limp body past some misshapen statue, a freakish homunculus of cast bronze that had evidently been placed in memory of one Wilfred Stanhope—a backhanded tribute, if I’ve ever seen one. “There’s a whole lot of stuff about remorse in the note he left on his computer. He’s starting to think maybe he just doesn’t deserve to live after everything he’s done. He hasn’t made up his mind about whether Lia’s going to live or die, and he’s not sure if he’ll be making it home from the park tonight. He’s real fifty-fifty on the whole thing. Poor guy is really losing it.”

  “Sounds like you thought this through,” I comment sourly.

  “The rifle was sort of a happy accident,” she admits, sounding pleased with herself. “I didn’t know Arlo would be armed—not for sure—and there were a million ways that little scenario could’ve gone sideways on me. But it didn’t. And when he was dead, I figured he didn’t need a gun anymore, so I took it. Now, when Race uses it to whack you guys, and then himself, it’ll prove he was at Arlo’s.”

  I look down at poor Race—a guy I never thought I’d ever think of as “poor Race”—and feel a little sick to my stomach. His skin is sweaty and pale, dark veins showing across his eyelids in spidery lines, and I wonder what she did to make sure he’d stay unconscious for this long. Somewhere, she has to have screwed up—left evidence connecting her to these murders. She’s wearing gloves to keep her prints off the rifle, but her hair tumbles loosely over her shoulders; she might easily have shed long, telltale strands of it on Arlo’s body, or Fox’s. Not that it would exactly be damning, since she spent half the night partying with the pair of them.

  In any event, it’ll be pretty useless to Sebastian and me, whatever might or might not turn up in a police lab, months or even years after they find us dead in a grove of pine trees with Arlo’s bullets clanking around in our skulls.

  “We need to stop,” Sebastian says gruffly, as Race begins to slip out of his hold again, sagging lower and lower to the ground. My boyfriend is walking backward with his fingers hooked beneath the unconscious guy’s armpits, and the awkward task makes his steps short and difficult. “My hands are starting to cramp.”

  “So the fuck what?” Peyton fixes him with a peevish look. “You won’t have to worry about it much longer. Suck it up.”

  Sebastian comes to an immediate halt, glaring daggers of flame at her, his jaw clenched so tightly I can see his pulse throbbing in his neck. “I’m about to drop him, so we’d have to stop anyway.”

  For once, I’m not the one about to rage out; powerlessness in the face of impending death is causing Sebastian’s anger to metastasize, and I realize as I look at him that if a “clearer opportunity” doesn’t present itself soon, he’s going to try something to turn the tables. Or maybe he already is. I watch Peyton reposition the rifle, running her fingers impatiently along the stock, and I speak up. “We should switch places again.”

  “You’re stalling,” Peyton snaps, “and I’m sick of it. Keep moving.”

  “I’m not stalling.” Sebastian growls through his teeth, eyes blazing. Race is drooping lower and lower, the fabric of his sweatshirt twisting and bunching under his arms as my boyfriend struggles to hold on. “This isn’t fucking easy, okay!”

  “I got him in the trunk all by myself, and you two pussies can’t even carry him a hundred yards together?”

  I glance around, wondering if that’s really how far we’ve come. Clearly intimate with the terrain, she’s been guiding us nonchalantly through the park—presumably back to the Tidwell Pavilion, where she initially intended to confront Lia—but we’re taking a different route than before, and I have no real clue where we are. Across from me, Sebastian bends down and drops Race defiantly to the ground at his feet. “If you wanna take over, be my guest.”

  “Are you fucking for real?” Peyton gives him an incredulous stare and then lifts the rifle. “Pick him up!”

  “Why don’t you go to hell, Peyton?”

  I’m still holding on to Race’s bound ankles, scrambling to figure out if I need to defuse the situation or help Sebastian provoke Peyton even more—when I feel the unconscious boy’s feet twitch. Then they jerk, violently, kicking out of my grasp and smacking down onto the ground as Race’s entire body begins to shake and jolt. A wet stain blooms in the crotch of his track pants, spreading quickly down his leg; his back arches, his neck goes stiff, and his eyelids flutter, exposing nothing but ghastly white.

  Peyton recoils, staring down in shock as Race writhes and flexes in the grass, the sharp smell of urine filling the close air. “What the hell?”

  “What did you do to him?” I ask. The boy’s skin is the color of congealed fat, and a gurgling noise sounds in his throat. To Sebastian, I say, “Quick—get the tape off his mouth!”

  “Stop!” Peyton jerks the rifle up again, but her expression betrays fear and growing insecurity. “Leave it where it is.”

  “He’s having a seizure, Peyton,” I shout with mounting impatience. “He could swallow his tongue, or choke to death on his own barf! How’re you gonna work that into your handy suicide narrative?” She doesn’t respond, but the rifle drops a few inches, and Sebastian immediately leans down to remove Race’s gag. “What the hell did you do, anyway? How much voltage does that stun gun pack?”

  “It’s not—I mean, I just zapped him the once, and he was only out for a couple of minutes!” She’s flustered and unnerved, watching her control of the situation swiftly evaporate. “When he was coming around, I made him drink a glass of water with some white rabbits dissolved in it—to relax him. Usually they just relax him! Like, make him happy and goofy and … and easy to handle? And I thought, I mean, with all the stuff in the news about them, if they turned up in his system afterward, it would make it more believable that h
e’d killed a bunch of people!”

  My mouth snaps shut, and I glance back at Race. Sebastian, looking seasick, has rolled him onto his side while spasms rock the boy’s torso and pungent, foamy liquid oozes from his mouth. “You gave him some of Fox’s stash, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “‘So?’ It was poisoned, Peyton!” She stares at me, alarmed, and I realize that she had actually missed that entire revelation. She’d been out in the hot tub when Arlo confronted Fox about the doctored pills and probably knew nothing of their unintended side effects. “Fox cut the white rabbits with something, and—you know what? It doesn’t even matter. Race might die from this, okay? You’ll never convince anybody that he shot us and himself—not when they do an autopsy and find out he was having a grand mal fucking seizure at the same time!”

  “N-no.” She shakes her head vehemently, her face white. “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not.” In her eyes, I can see she believes me—or thinks maybe she should—and her gaze darts to the boy jerking and twitching on the ground. I cut a glance to Sebastian, and he stares back at me with a look as loud as a thunderclap. His lips are clamped shut, but I hear him screaming in my mind, asking the same question I’m asking myself: Is this it? Should we wait longer? Can we afford to? I pour more poison into Peyton’s ear. “You fucked up, and it’s game over, so you might as well just help us get him to the hospital! Maybe if you save his life, the cops’ll take it into account.”

  She keeps shaking her head, but the rifle dips another few inches as she stares uncertainly at Race, chewing her lip while he convulses and she tries to think of some new workaround—some way to alter her plan and still forge ahead. It’s as distracted as she’s ever going to get, I realize, and so I blank my mind and lunge.