They were both staring at me, heads cocked slightly to the side. I was blinking rapidly, because I was so irritated. Because it made sense. Because the knife was mine and the sleeping pills were mine and Jason was dead in my room.
“So tell us,” Office Dowle said as she crossed her legs and leaned back on the sofa, which definitely wasn’t for reasons of comfort. “What part of that story is wrong?”
I shook my head. “All of it. I don’t know who took the knife. But I took one sleeping pill, like always. Bree knew I took sleeping pills. She knew because I gave her one. That’s it.” And then I saw a slight nod to Officer Dowle’s head, which seemed really out of character for her. “You should talk to Bree,” I said.
“Is Bree your friend, Mallory?”
“No. She doesn’t like me. She was supposed to be my roommate but she moved out.” I left out the part about why she moved out.
“You know what doesn’t make sense? Why you would give her a sleeping pill if she wasn’t your friend?”
“She came to my room a few nights ago. Totally freaked out about something. She asked to move back in . . . but then . . . changed her mind.” Again, I left out the why. “And the next day she apologized for freaking out on me and said it was because she hadn’t been sleeping much, and I said I hadn’t either. And then I gave her a sleeping pill.”
“You only gave her one?”
“Yes. Just one.”
“Unfortunate for you, because Jason had at least four in his system.”
I shook my head, trying to understand. “She could’ve stolen them,” I whispered, though I didn’t quite believe it.
“Ah, but you see, she didn’t claim to be sleeping in her room that night. And she has an alibi.”
I choked on my laughter. “Jason’s cousin, I’m sure.”
Officer Dowle narrowed her eyes and flipped through her notebook. “Jason’s cousin?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You know, Krista Simon.”
Officer Dowle kept flipping pages and looked up at me, then down again, then at Officer James. “Jason doesn’t have a cousin here,” she said. “Krista Simon is a ward of the state.”
“No, I thought . . . I mean, I heard . . .”
“What did you hear, Mallory?”
Lies, apparently. “Jason called her his cousin once. And people think it. I mean, they look similar enough. I thought she lived with his family . . .”
“Kids being kids, I guess. Probably a fun rumor for them to start.”
This was all becoming a case of he said, she said. Or she said, she said. And this particular she now had what the cops in New Jersey referred to as a history of violence.
“What about Bree’s roommate, Taryn?”
“What about her?” Officer Dowle stood up, like she was done with the conversation, even if I wasn’t.
“Does she have an alibi?”
“Does she need one?”
“I didn’t do it,” I said as Officer James opened the door.
“You’ve already said that,” he said.
They had enough to arrest me. Or at least to hold me. And they weren’t. I took a step toward the door. “No, I mean, you don’t think I did it,” I said.
“Come again?”
I pressed my lips together.
Officer Dowle looked at me. “You think we have enough to arrest you if we wanted to?”
I kept my mouth shut. Again.
“Maybe,” she said. “But it would help if there were any prints on the knife.” She grinned, or at least I thought it was a grin. “You still need to stay in town.”
They were giving me something. A story. And I had to give them a different one.
The lawyer in New Jersey had done the same thing. He gave me a story. But that time I stuck to it.
“You left the party,” he’d said, and I did nothing. I didn’t nod, I didn’t speak, I wasn’t doing any of those things at the moment. Just staring at the blood caked under my nails, wondering when they’d let me wash it all off. They’d already scraped samples from underneath, which was unnecessary, really. It was obvious where it came from.
“You walked straight home, and you locked the door behind you. Sometime later, Brian Cole broke into your house, through the living room window. He broke the phone when you tried to call 911. He pushed you into the china cabinet. He chased you into the kitchen. You took a knife to defend yourself.”
He repeated it to me, and asked me to say it back. And I did, in this detached, monotone voice. Repeated it over and over to him and anyone that asked. And a lot of people asked that first day. I said it over and over, with my lawyer nodding slightly beside me. I said those words until it was the only thing I remembered at all.
Chapter 17
Mom answered the door when Reid knocked the next day. I’d told her he was coming. Told her and held it out like a dare, wondering what she would say, what she would tell me to do. “No, he’s not,” she’d said.
“Oh, okay, so how about you drive me over there so I can tell him not to come.”
She glanced at the phone that we weren’t supposed to use, shook her head, and actually smiled to herself. “Never thought I’d miss cell phone towers . . .” And that was the end of the discussion.
And now Reid was introducing himself—reintroducing himself—like he was trying to make a good impression, and it was kind of painful to see. Because Mom didn’t care.
Mom said, “Reid, I don’t want to seem rude here—”
I choked on a cough. “I have to get out of this room,” I said, brushing past Mom. Mom opened her mouth, then tilted her head to the side, like she was realizing, in that instant, that I wasn’t about to listen to her. Not after she’d sent me away. Not after the months where she’d done nothing. Not now.
“Just”—Reid said, his hands held out in front of him—“for a walk.”
Mom spoke to Reid, like she thought she’d have more luck with him. “Stay where I can see you.”
We left. I glanced once behind me and saw her shadow pass back and forth behind the green curtains. I wondered if this is what she always looked like from the outside.
Reid didn’t touch me as we walked to the end of the strip of rooms, and I hoped it was because he thought Mom was watching from the window.
“How’s everything at school?” I asked.
“Mallory, there’s not any school. Not really. We had this meeting yesterday, and there will be classes, but just for show or normalcy or something. For something to do. Half of campus is gone anyway. Parents picked them up. The rest of us are just going through the motions.”
Then we reached the end of the strip and there was nowhere really to go but into the woods, so we walked absently, still in view of the hotel, twigs cracking under our steps.
There wasn’t anything left to say, really, after that. Except what I was thinking, which was, “I think it was either Taryn or Krista. Maybe Bree, but I don’t think so.”
Reid looked surprised, like it hadn’t occurred to him that someone actually killed Jason, and that Jason didn’t just miraculously appear dead with knife wounds. “Why do you think that?”
“Because they’re lying. They’re all covering for one of them.”
Reid sunk onto a gray stone, twice his width, and I sat beside him. He rested his elbows on his legs and put his head in his hands. “It’s not Taryn,” he said.
I felt this pang—jealousy, I guess. Because he was defending his ex or something. And then I worried that maybe he knew for certain it wasn’t Taryn, and I got this double pang. “How do you know?” I whispered, wanting and not wanting the answer.
“It’s kind of a secret. So you can’t tell.”
“Jesus, Reid. Seriously? Enough with the secrets already. I think we’re past that.”
“I guess we are,” he said slowly. He took a deep breath and said, “Remember how I said that before me and Taryn had a . . . thing, she was with Jason?”
“Yes.”
“They were together a while. Over a year, maybe.”
And now Jason hardly glanced at her, but they still hung out in the same circle. Awkward with a capital A.