“Babe—” he starts.
“Don’t babe me,” I say, turning to face him. “You don’t get to call me that ever again. You can save that for Tamara, who you’ve spent months lying to. You know what? I should have told her instead of Mila. Then everyone would know who you really are.”
Noah’s fists are clenched and I’m immediately transported back to the lifeguarding shack, when he punched a hole through the wall after I told him I was pregnant.
“Jesus, Ellie,” Noah says. The words are acidic. “You don’t know when to stop, do you? I never should have gotten involved with this fucked-up family.”
“And I never should have gotten involved with a selfish asshole who only cares about getting laid.”
Something snaps in Noah’s eyes and I see the same deep anger there I saw once before. He reaches for the lamp on my side table. The movement happens so fast that I don’t see him throw it across the room at me. I only feel the ceramic base collide with my chest and all the air leave my lungs. The lamp crashes against the floor, shattering. I gasp for air and slide down the wall, trying to right myself, to stand, to breathe.
“Shit,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. Noah rushes toward me and I can’t tell if he’s going to save me or kill me. He crouches down, ceramic shards crunching underfoot, and I feel cornered, trapped. “Ellie, I didn’t mean it. Ellie, I’m sorry.”
Then I hear a voice from downstairs. “Ellie?” Stella yells. Noah whips his head toward my bedroom door, then back at me. He puts a finger to his lips, telling me to be silent. Always to be silent. “What the fuck was that noise?” Stella calls. “Are you okay? I left my physics book here. Have you seen it?”
I try to scream, to call out for her, but I’m paralyzed and my vision is spotty. I wonder if this is how it feels to lose control. Am I letting Noah’s violence absolve me of my own guilt, my own crimes? I am an accomplice, after all. I deserve this. I deserve to be punished, to pay for Mila’s death.
But then I hear footsteps, pounding up the stairs and just outside my door. Stella knocks once, then pushes the door open.
“Ellie, what the . . . ?”
38
STELLA
The words dissolve when I see Noah standing over Ellie, his arms outstretched and his eyes wide with shock. Ellie’s folded into a ball clutching her stomach, her bedside lamp in pieces beside her.
“Stella,” Noah says. He steps toward me and I instinctively push him out of the way and throw myself over my sister, shielding her.
“Get the fuck away from us,” I shout. I turn to Ellie. “Are you okay?” I push the hair back off her forehead. She’s more shaken than I’ve ever seen her. Pure terror fills her eyes. But Ellie nods and I grab her hand, pulling her to stand. “Whatever just happened, you need to get out of here, Noah,” I say, succumbing to the anger I always knew was inside of me.
Noah holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.” All of a sudden, he bursts into tears, covering his face with his hands and dropping to his knees. “I didn’t mean . . .”
Ellie pants hard behind me and grips my wrist.
“Stella,” she says. “You need to know the truth.”
Noah sobs on the floor and I know what Ellie’s going to say. I want to shut her up, to make it stop, to hold the world still and travel back in time to when none of this had ever happened, when Mila was still alive.
“No,” I whisper.
Then Ellie says what I knew all along.
“We killed Mila.”
39
ELLIE
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were just going to talk to Mila, to explain what could happen if she told anyone about the abortion, to show her how high the stakes were. To convince her to stay quiet.
Noah suggested Mila and I go running together, that we could casually bump into him in the woods as if it were no big deal, like it was a coincidence. It seemed to make sense. It seemed so easy.
Getting her to invite me was no big deal. In fact, she practically begged me. And I was happy to do it. Stella never wanted to run with me, and I was sick of running with the other girls who couldn’t keep up. Only Raven could, but she was no fun because her panting was so loud it was distracting.
Under any other circumstances, it would have been like breaking ground on a new friendship. But on that day, everything went wrong.
I left before dawn, when the sky was still dark and dewy, and met Mila outside her house, on the wraparound porch. I suggested we take the Oak Tower trail, just like Noah said, so we wouldn’t come across anyone else. Mila didn’t hesitate. Her eyes sparkled and she nodded enthusiastically. “Creepy,” she said. “I’m into it. Tamara says that all the bartenders sneak up there to smoke weed after their shifts at the restaurant.”
We took it slow over to Ellacoya. I wasn’t paying attention when she snapped a selfie at the trailhead, but I figured I wasn’t in it since I was stretching beside her. That was my first mistake.
“Ready?” I asked, flashing my best smile, trying to cover my nerves.
Mila nodded and rubbed her hands together. “Let’s go.”
We took off together, our legs stiff from the early-morning cold, and made our way up the dirt trail over the hill. If we looped around for a mile, it would lead toward Foxfire Point, one of the most beautiful vistas in Edgewater. But if we veered to the left, we’d head up to Oak Tower, where Noah and I agreed to meet. Our sneakers hit the ground together in a series of thwap-thwaps, running over crunchy leaves and tangled roots.
We ran in silence, but my brain was on fire, curious how this would go, if Noah would freak her out. He promised to make it seem like no big deal. Soon we trotted up the hill, sidestepping the rocky pit covered in brush. I remember thinking how strange it was no one had filled it in, but then I remembered that no one maintained this trail, not after they shut it down.
That’s when I heard Noah’s footsteps coming from the other side of the hill. I worked hard to keep my gait steady, to not give anything away. But Mila turned to me, her face a question mark. “Is that—” she started to ask.
“Oh, hey,” Noah said nonchalantly, and only a little out of breath.
“Noah,” Mila said, surprise creeping into her voice. “What are you doing here?”
“We just wanted to—” I said, but I already knew I chose the wrong words.
“We?” Mila asked, confusion on her face. “Are you guys talking again?” She knew how badly Noah hurt me. I should have known she would be on my side. Or what she thought was my side.
“Well . . .” I started.
“Seriously, Ellie? You’re still hanging out with this douche?” she said, scoffing at Noah. “Let’s go.” She turned and motioned for me to follow her, but I stood grounded into the earth and looked to Noah. His eyes were pleading.
“Hold up,” I said, my voice wobbly.
Mila turned back to us and crossed her arms over her chest, annoyed at the whole situation.
“We just wanted to talk to you,” Noah said. “What Ellie told you . . . we just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t tell anyone, okay?”
Mila raised her eyebrows, as if she couldn’t believe he had to ask that. She tilted her chin up toward him, defiant. “Tamara is my friend,” she said. “But Ellie is too. When someone asks me to keep a secret, I do. I value trust and loyalty, unlike you two, obviously.” She threw me a disappointed look. “But you should seriously come clean to her,” Mila said. “This is only going to end in disaster for you.”
“You don’t understand anything about this town,” Noah said, fear and frustration filling his voice. “We need you to keep quiet.”
“That kind of sounds like a threat, Noah,” Mila said through gritted teeth.
“Mila, please,” I said, trying to fight the tears, the raw scratching in my throat. “I don’t want anyo
ne to find out. It could ruin Noah’s chance of getting into Princeton.” I was feeding her lines that Noah fed me, but there was nothing else to do.
Mila rolled her eyes. “That’s what this is all about? You want Mr. Johnson to help get you into Princeton? There are other schools. And maybe you should try to get in on more than your girlfriend’s dad’s word.” Mila threw her hands up. “You know what? Maybe everyone should know what liars you both are.” Her voice was sad and unsteady. She looked at me with pained eyes. “I can’t believe you set me up like this, Ellie.” Then she turned toward the ridge in the woods and took off.
Before she could get beyond the clearing, Noah took after her, his stride so much longer than hers. “Noah!” I called out. “Stop!”
But it was too late. Noah barreled toward Mila and shoved her hard, over the edge of the pit we had passed only a little while before. All I could hear was a strangled scream stretching into the woods and the rustling of dried leaves as she tumbled down through brush and roots and stones.
“Mila!” I called.
She yelped from below and called back to us. “What the hell, Noah?”
I peered down into the pit and saw her there, clutching her ankle, dirt smudged on her face.
“Ellie, help me!” she called. “I think it’s sprained.”
I turned to Noah and saw fire in his eyes, fear curling at the edges of his mouth. “What did you do?” I yelled.
“Ellie!” Mila called again. “It really hurts. Can you get help?”
I opened my mouth to respond, to say Yes, of course. But Noah clamped a palm over my face, blocking air to my nose and mouth. “No,” he hissed. “We have to leave her there.”
I wanted to protest, but I couldn’t breathe. I formed my hands into fists and started pounding on his chest. But he grabbed them both in his other hand and I was trapped.
“I know you want to play nice, babe, but you can’t,” he whispered. “Not now. We need to scare her. Make her think we’re going to leave her here for dead if she tells your secret.”
Fire filled my lungs. Your secret. As if this whole mess was mine and mine alone. As if he played no part in my trauma, my pain. As if he was just here to clean up the mess. As if me having an abortion was even a mess to begin with. But I nodded in that moment. I just wanted him to let me go.
“We’ll come back after school,” he said. “We’ll help her then.”
I wanted to tell him it was the dumbest plan ever. That there was still time to right this. But Noah gripped my face and my hands tighter, pushing me back toward the ledge of the pit. I nodded again and Noah finally dropped his grip. I took a sharp breath in and rubbed my sore wrists.
“Mila,” Noah shouted down to her. “We’re going to leave now.”
“What?” she screamed. “You fucking asshole! Are you serious?”
“Mila,” Noah said again, calmly, like he was talking to a child. “We need you to agree that you won’t tell anyone about Ellie. If you agree to that, we’ll come back after school and get you. We’ll help you.”
I could hear Mila breathing, panting in pain. “Bullshit,” she said. “I’m calling Coach.” I could hear her fumbling for her phone and then her voice rang out, small and defeated. “Shit.”
“There’s no cell service up here,” Noah said. “But if you agree to keep quiet, we’ll come back later and pretend like none of this ever happened, okay?”
Mila was quiet for a beat until finally she said one word. “Fine.”
My stomach dropped and I knew this was bad. But I couldn’t speak.
Noah turned back to me. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “Meet me back at the entrance after practice. We’ll figure it out then.”
The rest of the day was a blur of classes and notes and pens scratching paper. But by the time Coach dismissed us from practice, it was pouring rain and fear quickened in my heart. We had to get to Mila soon. Her mom would be worried. She would miss a shift at Ellacoya. One day of hooky was fine. Not coming home at night was something else. Especially in this town.
I arrived at the clearing that led to the trail, soaking wet and clutching my windbreaker around me. Noah was nervous when he got there, too. His eyes were wide and he couldn’t stop touching his face, cracking his knuckles. “Come on,” he said. He had brought a rope and some bandages, and I could tell he was weighing what he had done, what we had done.
We walked in silence, our footsteps squelching in the mud. It was getting darker then, colder. And I started to worry about what state Mila would be in now, what we would find when we reached the pit. A half mile into the trail, we could barely see our hands in front of our faces, and I whipped out my phone to use as a flashlight. I shone it around at the trees, the sky, the brush as rain pelted down, obscuring my vision.
“It’s just up ahead,” Noah said.
“Mila,” I called. “Mila, we’re back. I’m so sorry. Let’s get you out of there. Let’s get you home.” But no one answered.
I snuck a peek at Noah and he looked scared for the first time. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were wide.
“Where is she?” Terror filled my voice. My heart was in my throat.
“Mila!” Noah screamed.
We both picked up our pace, nearing the entrance to the pit. I held my breath and angled the flashlight on my phone so it cast a spotlight down below.
But I didn’t see Mila. The pit was just a sea of wet, dark mud, filled with brush and fallen leaves. I couldn’t get a good look inside. I couldn’t see anything. There was nothing.
No sign that a human had ever been there at all.
Except . . . except for the blood. A thin trail dripping down the side of the hole. It was dark and shiny, almost blending in with the mud.
“Mila!” I shrieked. But no one answered. I spun around, trying to catch my breath, trying not to look at Noah, to imagine the possibilities.
“Come on,” Noah said, clipped and scared. “Let’s go.”
“No. She has to be here somewhere,” I said, desperate. “We have to go down there. There was blood. You saw it too. I know you did. What if she’s trapped?” But Noah grabbed my hand and yanked, pulling me after him, toward the road.
I don’t remember saying yes or no or doing anything but moving. All I knew was that within minutes I had followed Noah off the trail and down behind the Ellacoya Resort’s boat launch, stumbling over rocks and trying to keep my lunch from coming up out my mouth. Tears and rain blurred my vision as I tried to keep up. At one point, I tripped over a root and let out a sob. Noah turned around and clamped a hand over my mouth for the second time that day. His hair was matted to his forehead and his eyes were wide and bloodshot. When he released his grip, my jaw ached and I continued following him until we got to the other side of the resort, which spits out onto a side road.
“Noah,” I started. My voice trembled.
“What, Ellie? What?”
“We have to call someone—the police, Coach, her mom,” I said, quietly, pleading. “We have to do something. Anything. She could be down there still. Or somewhere on the trail, hurt.”
Noah ran his hands through his hair, like he was clawing for the answer. “No,” he said. “She probably got herself out of there and is already home. Don’t you think?”
“We would have heard about that at school.”
“Call her, then,” he said, throwing up his hands. “Call her.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket with shaky hands. “Shit,” I said. “There’s still no service. We have to get back to the main road.” I bolted and continued to dial, waiting for the phone to connect. Finally, after another half a mile, the call went through. I held my breath, waiting for someone to pick up, to hear Mila’s raspy voice, to get yelled at for what had happened. But it went straight to voicemail. I tried again. Same thing.
I brought the
phone down from my ear. “What if—”
“Don’t say it,” Noah said. His hands were shaking and he sped up, taking off down the road. “Don’t you dare say it.”
“We left her there to die,” I said, trailing behind him.
Noah turned around fast with his pointer finger outstretched. “Shut up, Ellie,” he said, the words cutting through the air like a knife.
I stumbled backward, like I had been punched in the gut, like all the air had been knocked out of me. I sank to my knees, trying to understand what just happened.
A few months before, this exact scene would have been my best-case scenario. A nighttime run alone with Noah. Feeling his sweaty, heavy body syncing up with mine, our breath finding each other’s, our gait in time. It would have been magical, a moment I could capture and replay on repeat to help me fall asleep.
But all I could do was stay crouched on the ground, gravel digging into my knees, rain pelting down on my back.
“We didn’t . . .” Noah shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, stepping back. “I’m sorry. We just . . .” He crouched down beside me. “We have to go,” he said. “I have to go.”
Then he stood and sucked in his breath. He looked back to the trail where we had left Mila and then the other way, back toward town. I squeezed my eyes, willing this to be a dream, but when I opened them, Noah was gone.
I stumbled to my feet and walked to the gas station down the road, the one with vintage signage, cheap beer, and the only pay phone in town. I knew Noah was wrong, that we had to do something, that we had to tell someone. I fumbled in my pocket for a quarter and picked up the receiver. I dialed, knowing it wouldn’t be traced back to me.
“911, what’s your emergency?” a perky woman asked.
“There’s a girl up on the Ellacoya trail,” I said with a chalky voice, barely able to get the words out. “A runner. I think she’s hurt.”
“Can you be more specific, dear?” the woman said.
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