“Something happened. I messed up.”
“Tell me.”
“Someone was asking about Colleen tonight.”
He presses his knuckles to his mouth. “Who?”
“A girl from Preston.”
His eyes narrow. “Yeah. And?”
“She knows about you cheating on Serena.”
He sucks in his lower lip. “How? Colleen told her?”
“I told her.”
He takes a step backward like I punched him in the gut. I feel the impact too. I swear, I feel it just as bad.
I was supposed to have his back.
I wait for him to say something.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” he hisses. “Why would you do that to me?”
“I thought she knew.” I scrub my hands through my hair. “I messed up. I thought she already knew.”
He glances along the path that leads back to the cabin’s entrance. “Does Serena know?” His voice is low.
“You don’t have to cover for her,” I tell him. “She already knows, doesn’t she? You told her, and she went after Colleen.”
“No!”
“Max.” I try again. “Come on. You can tell me. That night, you called her, didn’t you? After Colleen left, you went outside, and you called Serena.”
He slams his palm into the wall. “No.”
I’d expected him to look awkward when I confronted him. To mumble out a feeble response, and then I’d know for sure that all this time he’s been covering for Serena. Serena killed Colleen, and Max knew about it all along.
But he just keeps staring at me like I’ve lost it.
“I’m right, though, aren’t I?” Tell me I’m right.
“No. That didn’t happen.”
I drop my voice. “You’re not covering for Serena? Swear to me right now that you’re not covering for her.”
“No! Serena doesn’t know shit!”
My skin prickles in the cold night air. “How do you know? Because you got to Colleen first?”
I watch his eyes. His focus shifts from me to the forest, then back again. There’s tension in his jaw. He’s lying to me. He knows more than he’s saying.
My words come out fast. “You did it.”
He squares up to me. I brace myself for his fist to swing. I figure I probably have it coming. But the punch isn’t directed at me. He throws it at the wall instead. In the moonlight, I see the skin on his knuckles split open and blood spill onto his hand.
“I thought I could trust you, Adam.”
I grab his shoulder. “You can.”
“You sold me out,” he spits, and he pushes me away.
There’s nothing I can say. It’s true.
“Who’s the girl?” he rasps. “Which one of the Preston girls did you tell?”
I keep my voice steady. “I don’t know her name.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know her name? You’ve got time to tell her my business, but you don’t have time to ask her goddamn name?”
I grit my teeth. “Like I said, I don’t know.”
His mouth crooks into a smile. “Oh.” He draws out the word. “I get it.”
“What?”
“It was her. Jenna, is it? Is that her name?”
I shake my head.
“Jenna.” He says her name again, and I don’t like the way it sounds on his lips. “Is she here?”
“She’s not here.”
“Then where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.” He sucks a breath through his teeth. “I’ll just have to go find her, then. How about that?”
Blood pumps fast through my veins. He’s threatening me. He’s found a weakness—a weakness I didn’t even know I had.
I breathe slowly. “Yeah. You could go find her. But then I’d have to come find you.”
He runs his thumb over his mouth, barely noticing the blood smeared across the back of his hand.
We’re both backed into a corner. One of us will break. One of us has to. But it won’t be me.
“Colleen’s dead,” I carry on, “and I heard what she said to you that night. I was there. Then she disappears, shows up dead.”
“You’re calling me a murderer?” His breathing is fast. He’s getting scared.
“Colleen was coming for you that night, Max. She was mad as hell.”
“Yeah, because the girl was obsessed with me.”
“Exactly. She was coming for you. So, if you didn’t tell Serena...”
“Hey.” He cuts me off. “I’m not the only one Colleen took a pop at that night. How about Tommy? You saw the look on his face when Colleen said she knew his secret. She was ready to bust him as a dealer. He would have been done.”
“Tommy wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“Oh, but I would?” He slaps his palm to his chest. “How about you? Maybe you killed her. We all know you have violent tendencies. We all know that.” His teeth are bared as he talks.
My fists ball. I know exactly what he’s referring to.
“Don’t,” I warn him. “Don’t go there.”
His jaw tenses, and he rubs the nape of his neck. “I don’t want to fight with you, man. I don’t want it to be this way.”
“Neither do I.”
He looks down at the ground.
“Truth,” I murmur. “Do you know what happened to Colleen?”
There’s a long beat of silence between us, and then he nods.
My chest tightens, as if the air has been knocked right out of me. I thought I was prepared for this. But seeing him admit it, after all this time, after all these lies, it catches me off guard. It shouldn’t. But it does.
The earth feels insubstantial beneath my feet. “Was it you?”
The sound of muffled voices and crunching leaves makes us both stop. We freeze, eyes searching the darkness.
“Who’s back there?” Max yells.
We pace around the corner of the cabin.
I recognize Tommy right away, shaggy black hair tousled by the night breeze. There’s someone else with him, a guy I don’t recognize. A drug deal, that’s my first thought. It takes me a moment to register that they’re both shirtless, jeans unbuttoned, hands moving quickly over bare skin.
Max steps on a twig, and the cracking sound makes Tommy jump back from the other guy like he’s been burned. Tommy’s face drops when he sees us.
“No.” He gropes for words. “This isn’t...”
The wind drags through the trees.
Tommy grabs his clothes from the ground. He sidles past us, fumbling with his shirt buttons as he goes.
I take off after him, but he disappears into the blackness of the tangled forest.
“Tommy?” I call.
My voice echoes back at me as I stand alone in the darkness.
* * *
I open the dorm room door and stop.
Tommy’s sitting on the floor with his knees bent up to his chest. His hands are knotted through his hair.
He flinches when he sees me.
“Hey.” I slip my headphones down around my neck. “You okay?”
He forces a smile. “Yeah. I thought you had class.”
“I did. It was canceled. There was a Code Red.” I watch his eyes. He won’t hold my gaze. He drops his hands, and his fingers thread together, gnawed thumbnails pressing into the skin on his palms. “What’s wrong?”
He jumps up from the floor and straightens out his t-shirt. “Nothing,” he mumbles. “I gotta...” He doesn’t finish the sentence, he’s already halfway across the room, sidestepping me on his way to the door.
“Hey.” I stop him. “What’s wrong?”
He shakes his head. His eyes are bloodshot, watery.
“Tommy. Talk
to me.”
He bites down on his lip. “Colleen...”
I wait.
He draws in a breath. “She had so much dirt on us, Adam. What if she’d already told people?”
“She said she knew your secret. So, what? It was an empty threat. She had no proof that you were dealing, and she wouldn’t have gone to the cops anyway. It was all talk.”
He swallows.
“And even if it does get out,” I add, “we’ll cover for you. We’ll pin it all on Scotch.” It’s a joke, but Tommy doesn’t smile.
“It wasn’t just the dealing. Colleen had more on me than that.”
“Yeah?” I wait for him to continue. But he doesn’t. “Tommy?”
“I can’t. I want to. I just can’t.”
The door falls shut behind him.
“It’s okay,” I mutter into the empty room. “I already know.”
ADAM: Where did you go?
ADAM: Max. Pick up. Where you at?
MAX: I gotta go do something.
ADAM: Why aren’t you answering my calls?
MAX: Later.
ADAM: Where are you?
ADAM: Are you looking for Jenna?
ADAM: Max?
JENNA
I wake with a start to the sound of a text message. My skin is clammy, and my heart’s beating fast. In the darkness of my bedroom, I detach myself from the nightmare, the warped images of Colleen, Serena, and Max, entangled together, their hands drenched in blood.
Their bodies drenched in blood.
The weak light from the streetlamp outside spills a gentle glow into my room through the open curtains. My phone reads 2:16, and there are unread messages. Imogen’s name is at the top of my screen.
Where are you? Is everything okay?
There’s an older message too, from Serena this time. It was sent just after midnight.
Did you get home okay? Check in, Jenna!
I squint against the bright backlight and type out a quick response to both.
I’m home. I’m fine.
As I reach across my nightstand to close the curtains, my eyes wander to the quiet, lamplit street outside.
Breath catches in my throat.
“Kate!” My scream cuts through the silence.
There’s someone out there. A silhouette in the shadows, staring up at our house.
I hear the quick thud of footsteps in the hallway. Kate rushes into my room, wrapping her robe around herself. Her eyes are puffy from sleep. “Jenna, what’s wrong?”
“Someone’s watching the house.”
We both stare out into the night.
But there’s no one there.
I lock my window and yank the curtains shut.
ADAM
My feet hit the pavement. My breath comes out in rasps. Thumps. My heart, my lungs, my sneakers on the tarmac.
I know where she is, and I get there fast. She lives in that nice suburban house near Lighthouse Point. The place with the long windows, next door to the house where the hedges are shaped like horses. In the darkness, those horses look like grizzly bears, and those long windows reflect back at me. I see myself, my ghostly reflection trapped inside the glass. I’m standing on the curb, my eyes darting up and down the quiet street.
I can’t see him anywhere. But he warned me. He said he’d come looking for her.
I know him.
I just don’t know what he’s capable of. I don’t know what I’m capable of, either.
JENNA
Kate is already in the kitchen by the time I get downstairs on Saturday morning. She has her cell pressed to her ear. There’s the usual array of paperwork scattered across the island around her open laptop.
“I’m aware of that, Felton,” she’s saying into her phone, “but people are getting scared. Jenna thinks there was someone hanging around outside our house last night.” She notices me and attempts a smile—although it’s more like a grimace. “That doesn’t change anything,” she says into her phone. “We need those autopsy reports before revisiting the statements.” She covers the mouthpiece and whispers to me, “There’s coffee in the pot.” Then returns to her conversation with an abrupt, “Officer Mowry wasn’t on duty that day.”
I slip past her and pour myself a cup of coffee.
Vainly pretending I’m not hanging off Kate’s every word, I slide into a seat at the breakfast bar and check the news app on my cell. Unsurprisingly, Colleen’s story is still headlining the local sector. None of the articles are calling Colleen’s death a tragic accident anymore.
And between Hollie and Serena, that makes two of my closest friends potential suspects in a homicide case...not that Serena’s connection is public knowledge. Yet.
Tearing my eyes away from the now familiar thumbnail picture of Colleen smiling in her Preston cheerleading uniform, I move on to my emails. There’s a new message in my inbox from Mom. I open it and download the attached images. The first is a picture of Vietnam. It’s a city scene, capturing the motion of pedestrians on a dusty street, oblivious to the person watching them from behind the lens.
My gaze wanders over the text in the body of the email. Hi, I miss you! Vietnam is incredible. Everything’s going great, and a Cambodian magazine has picked up some of my articles from This Girl’s Guide. And guess what, Jenna, I’ve met someone! In the second image, I see Mom with her arms wrapped around a middle-aged guy with long hair. They’re grinning, content in their own little world that I’m not a part of.
I open up a reply email and type out my response. It starts off with the usual, Hi! Miss you, too, that kind of thing. And I do miss her. Of course I do—she’s my mom. But it’s been such a long time since I’ve seen her, the months and years have turned her into some abstract part of my identity. I miss the feeling of knowing what it’s like to be around her. Kate is amazing, and we’ve got the whole niece-aunt relationship nailed, but I haven’t had a “mom” in a really long time. I miss knowing what that’s like.
I push the thoughts aside and carry on with my reply. That’s awesome about the magazine—well done, Mom! Who’s the guy? Tell me everything! Then, before I can stop myself, words are flowing onto the screen, omitting the usual pleasantries. I need your advice. What if you had information that could save one friend at the cost of another?
What if you start to doubt the people you thought you knew best?
I look again at Mom’s city photo. All of these people, just going about their day minding their own business. What the image can’t possibly show is what’s inside their minds. What they’re thinking. What they’re hiding.
Kate drops into a seat at the breakfast bar, and I jump. I quickly flip my phone facedown onto the counter.
“Morning, hon.” Kate runs a hand through her wavy hair. “I’m sorry about that.” She slaps her cell down beside mine and takes a long sip of coffee from her mug.
“That’s okay. I didn’t interrupt you, did I?”
“No, no. You’re fine.”
“What did Felton say?” I ask, sitting a little taller in my seat. “Have there been any developments with the investigation?”
“Not yet.” She musters a weak smile. “But we’re interviewing more people today.”
“Hollie?”
She pats my hand. “We’ve still got a lot of people we need to talk to. There’s a ton to get through.” She gestures to the paperwork covering the breakfast bar. “Case in point.”
I feel queasy, all of a sudden. I should tell her. I know I should tell her.
“Kate, I—”
Her cell starts to ring.
“One sec,” she says as she pounces on her phone. “Detective Dallas speaking.”
While she’s distracted, I reopen the email to Mom and delete the last few sentences, leaving only the pleasantries behind. Mom can’t help me with this. No on
e can. I need to make the call on whether or not what I know about Max and Colleen should be made public, at the cost of hurting—and possibly incriminating—Serena. I sign off the email with xs and os and hit send.
Kate draws in a sharp breath. “When?” she says into the phone. “Where?” She pauses, then grabs her keys from the counter. “I’ll be right there.” She ends the call and heads for the door.
“Kate, what’s wrong?” I call after her.
“There’s been an incident at the harbor.”
My brow creases. “What kind of incident?”
“10-54.”
My heart leaps into my throat. I’ve heard her use that code before. Serena. Serena was at the harbor last night. Imogen and Brianna, too. I suddenly remember their predawn messages. They were checking up on me, but I didn’t even think to check up on them.
Kate’s voice interrupts my racing thoughts. “Another body has been found.”
ADAM
I’m not a violent person.
I know that’s what people say about me, that I’m dangerous, and that’s why my dad sent me here. They think that coming to Rookwood was my “get out of jail free” card. If you surrender, reform, they’ll let you off for murder.
But I didn’t do anything.
I don’t think I did, anyway.
I stare at the bleak dorm room walls. These four walls are branded with memories of all the years past, yet somehow they’re still bland, devoid of any personality, anything that connects us to the lives we had before. The people we were before.
But staring at the cracks in the plaster reminds me of those first few months, when all I could do was stare.
Tommy didn’t come back to the dorm last night. He took off right after Max and I found him with that guy, and he didn’t come back. I waited up until dawn, expecting him to appear at some point. But he never showed.
I press dial on his number for what must be the dozenth time.
His prerecorded voice comes back to me, “Hey, this is Tommy. Leave me a message. Or not.”
“It’s me,” I say into the phone after the beep. “I’m around, if you want to talk. Or not.”
This Is Why We Lie Page 14