He shifted his lower jaw around.
I clarified, “I’m not allowed to be here.”
His eyes were unnaturally wide, like he was trying to take in all the light he could. I think I was probably doing the same. I couldn’t stop the quiver in my jaw when I said, “I didn’t do it.”
He took me in his arms and said, “I know, I know.”
“I didn’t,” I said. And then I kept saying it. And Reid kept pushing me farther into his chest, like he was trying to muffle the noise or something, but I just ended up saying it louder.
But then I thought about him saying I know, like maybe he knew more than I did. “How? How do you know?” Maybe the cops suspected someone else. Maybe the secrets had made their way to Reid.
“Because I know you,” he said.
He said it so simply. So convincingly. I wanted, so badly, for the me he saw in his head to be the real me—a girl who couldn’t possibly be capable of that. Of killing Jason Dorchester. So I clutched his sweatshirt, like it was the only thing keeping me on this side of the world.
I tilted my face up and my lips found his and I felt his grief and fear—or maybe that was mine—and, underneath it all, I felt like I was atoning for something. It wasn’t for this, but I took it. I took it.
And I tasted salt. Like I had been crying without even realizing it. I took a breath and wiped at my face, and I kissed him again, but I still tasted salt. I put my hand on his cheek and felt his tears. Not mine. His. He looked at my hand, like he was surprised by it too.
Or maybe he was surprised that he was kissing when he should’ve been grieving, yet again, because he took a step back.
He led me to his car, and we crept out of campus with the headlights off, coasting in neutral until we hit the main road.
I directed him to the hotel, and because I didn’t know what to say, I said nothing.
He squinted out into the dark, even though there wasn’t really a reason for that. “How did you get there?”
“Where?”
“To me. Campus.”
“Oh,” I said, looking down the dark road, which looked so much darker and less inviting now that there was nothing waiting at the end of it. I shrugged. “I ran.”
“You ran,” he said, and he was staring at me, and I could see him perfectly from the outside lights, but nothing else. So it really was like he was the only thing in the world at that moment. And it really looked like he was going to say something I wasn’t ready to hear. But it didn’t matter anyway because I had basically already said it by admitting I ran to see him.
He didn’t say anything. He shook his head, reached out his hand and put it on my face, like he had so long ago. And he was looking at me, like he did back then. But he was seeing this me, and not the old me. I could feel it, in the blood running hot under my skin. I closed my eyes, just for a second, and when I opened them, he was focused on something over my shoulder. “Is that—”
I whipped my head around, expecting Brian’s mom to come jumping out of the shadows, hair wild and claws bared. But instead I saw my mother, standing in the open doorway, the light behind her, watching me.
“My mom.”
“Um, maybe I should come in—”
“No, actually that’s a terrible idea.” Reid made a grab for his door handle. “Reid.” And since I couldn’t think of a way for the words not to hurt, I said, “This isn’t the best time.”
He nodded and moved his hands back to the wheel. “I’ll be by tomorrow.”
I smiled and closed the door. I waited at the curb for him to back out of the parking lot before walking down the path of closed doors to the one with my mother waiting, half in, half out. His taillights faded away and I stopped smiling.
“Where have you been?” Mom asked as I walked past her into our shared living room. Like the answer wasn’t obvious.
We were thirteen when Colleen’s dad moved out. Her mom had shrugged it off and went to work the next day like nothing happened. By the time I’d gotten there, Colleen had trashed half the house. I’d walked in the front door, and she was breathing heavily through her nose, like some wild animal. Chairs knocked over, a broken lamp, magazines on the floor. She looked at me, reached her hand out to the side, to the television stand, and sent the picture frames crashing to the floor with a quick swipe of her hand.
I’d walked over to where a frame lay bent but salvageable, and I dug my heel in until the glass shattered into an infinite number of pieces, beyond repair. And that’s what we did for the next hour. We ruined things, without speaking.
Her mom came home, and she looked at us standing in the middle of all the debris and said, “Who did this?”
Colleen leaned forward and said, “I did.”
And then her mother let out this low sob and Colleen broke into the kind of crying that sounds like laughter but isn’t, and they fell into each other’s arms.
They didn’t notice when I left.
And now my mother was standing there, like Colleen’s mom had done all those years ago, and I wanted to come clean, to feel some forgiveness, something. Anything.
“That’s Reid,” I said. And in case she couldn’t figure it out, I added, “Carlson. Remember?”
“I remember,” she said. “I’m just wondering what you were doing with him in his car.”
“I’m kind of seeing him and I had to tell him—”
“Are you a fool?” she said, her eyes wide. “You’re kind of seeing him? The day after you’re accused of murder? Are you out of your freaking mind?”
“I had to tell him—”
She put her hands up. “No more. No. More.” I didn’t know whether she was talking about my words or me seeing Reid, but either way, it wasn’t the reaction I’d hoped for.
My mother was picking up groceries Monday morning when the cops came back. I thought about just standing silently on the opposite side of the peephole, pretending I was out as well, except I hadn’t heard a car pull in recently. So I figured they’d been sitting there for a while, waiting for a chance to talk to me alone. Like maybe they knew there were things I didn’t want my mother hearing about.
“Good morning, Mallory,” Officer Dowle said when I opened the door. “We wanted to talk through a few of the events from two nights ago once more. This isn’t a questioning—we just want to make sure we have our facts straight.” And the fact that they didn’t ask if my mom was around confirmed that they knew she wasn’t. I also knew that they could get in trouble for this—and I was fairly certain they didn’t know I knew it.
Which is why I said, “Come on in.”
Officer Dowle sat on the hotel-green sofa, but Officer James stood near the front window, staring out the curtains like Mom did at home, like he was waiting for something. Worried about something.
“Look,” said Officer Dowle, “I’m just going to lay out the story that’s being painted by the other statements we’ve gotten. So you can understand our concerns.”
“Okay,” I said, and I planted my feet firmly on the carpet and crossed my arms over my chest, because this part I was used to.
“You invited Jason Dorchester to your room.”
“What? No! I wouldn’t ever—”
Officer James cleared his throat. “We’re just telling you a story.”
Officer Dowle grinned. She continued. “You invited Jason Dorchester to your room late at night. He snuck over. You gave him something—a drink, maybe—with a bunch of your sleeping pills dissolved in it. And you waited for him to fall asleep. Then you took your knife and slit his arms and he bled out, a very slow death. And then you took a sleeping pill yourself, so you could claim you were asleep when it happened.”