“We won’t talk to anyone. And anyway, I’ll kick anyone’s ass who comes near you. Cross my heart.”
I opened the door. The rain had stopped, but the moisture still clung to the trees and the grass. I heard crickets everywhere. And some bird kept fluttering its wings directly overhead. Colleen followed in my footsteps, down the path to the old student center, where the walls were still half standing.
“What happened here?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Some history I don’t know about.”
“So that kid who wandered off—he’s dead?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I guess. There’s no body, but it happened a while ago.”
I led her to the path that narrowed as we walked, and I kept glancing behind me to make sure I could still see the clearing.
Colleen said, “Don’t worry, nobody’s following us.”
“It’s easy to get lost,” I said.
I stooped down next to where the memorial should be and brushed the weeds aside. “See?” I said, pointing to the letters on the front. Then I flipped it over for her to see the other side. forgotten but not gone.
“The irony,” Colleen said, “is that somebody had to remember about this to write that he was forgotten. You know? You can’t know you’ve forgotten something until you remember it.” Then she scrunched up her mouth and said, “That was either really profound or really dumb. I can’t decide which.”
“Profound, of course,” I said, which it was, actually. I hadn’t remembered that Dylan was at my house—I hadn’t remembered Dylan’s role in Brian’s death. I hadn’t remembered the events between the party and Brian coming in through the window. And I had been so focused on the events I did know, I didn’t even know I was missing something.
I had been so preoccupied not remembering that the memory became something else. Something more. I guess that’s why hysteria was called conversion disorder—it converts. Mind to body. Internal to external. The memory of someone touching my shoulder to a handprint seared onto my skin.
“Maybe it’s him,” Colleen said.
“What?”
She ran her fingers through the grooved letters. “The killer. It’s this kid. Danvers Jack.”
“Jack Danvers,” I said.
“Whichever.”
I shook my head, sick of thinking about ghosts. About what they could and could not do. About what a memory could and could not do. I tried to play it lightly. “I don’t think ghosts carry switchblades.”
“No. I mean, I bet it’s him. The real him. I bet he left because, hello, have you seen this place? Who would want to stay here?”
“So, what, he’d rather hunt his food than be served in the cafeteria? That’s not the rich-kid way.”
“Okay, so I’m not rich, I get that. But from what you’ve told me, I’d choose the forest.”
I stood up and she followed. “Your choice of boys would be severely limited,” I said.
“Ha,” she said. “Ha-ha.” She turned to head back down the path toward the old student center, but there were voices carried in the breeze.
Colleen froze first, obviously taking to heart what my mother had told her. And what I had told her about our encounter at the diner. She pushed me behind the nearest tree and slouched behind the tree next to mine.
“What are we doing here, Taryn?” Oh God, it was Reid. With Taryn. In private. I looked at Colleen and hoped she understood I didn’t actually want to hear this. Not even a little. Colleen gave a tiny nod of her head, like she was reassuring me. Like she had everything under control. Like she wasn’t about to let me get hurt again. She had no idea how much this was going to hurt.
“Someone’s spreading lies about me,” Taryn said. “The kind of lies that could get me in real trouble, you know?”
“Who’s spreading lies?”
“Your girlfriend,” she said. “Mallory. I don’t know what she said, exactly, but the police came by to talk. My dad’s lawyer isn’t here yet, though, so they have to wait.”
But all Reid said was, “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Oh. Okay, so maybe you can say I was in your room that night?”
“But you weren’t in my room that night. You want me to get detention so you can have an alibi?”
“It’s not so far from the truth, really. I used to be in your room all the time. You didn’t seem to have a problem with it then.”
“That was a long time ago. And then what? Krista decided I wasn’t good enough for you?”
“It wasn’t like that, Reid. It’s just, you know, I was going through a lot of stuff then. And she helped me see I should probably be alone then.”
“Krista doesn’t help people.”
“She does. She cares about me. A lot.”
“Then get Krista to vouch for you.”
“She can’t. She already told the cops that she and Bree were working in her room on some history project. So stupid. She wasn’t thinking. She should’ve remembered me.”
“Taryn,” Reid said, so quiet and careful I had to strain to hear it. “If you didn’t do it, you shouldn’t need an alibi.”
“Damn it, Reid. You know I didn’t do . . . that. I couldn’t have. But there’s my history with Jason—it’s going to come out, I can feel it. I need someone to vouch for me, and I was alone in my room. So please,” she said. “You know me.”
There was silence, followed by footsteps, and I imagined them walking arm-in-arm together. But then I heard Taryn say, “Reid?”
And Reid sounded far away when he said, “No. Actually, I don’t know you at all.”
Colleen craned her neck around the tree trunk and shook her head. Taryn was still there. We heard bricks scattering. A few smashing sounds. Taryn grunting. It sounded like she was building a fort. Only when I heard her breath, laced with tears, did I realize she must have been throwing bricks at the half-standing walls.
Watching everything crumble around her.
Chapter 20
We waited for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, before we finally heard her footsteps stomp back toward campus. Colleen stepped out of our hiding spot first.
“You were right,” she said. “We should’ve stayed in the car.” She stared down the path, narrowing her eyes, like she was making sure the coast was clear. “On the plus side, the cops must know she was involved.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “They’ve got nothing on her. No prints. Nothing. They’ve got a hell of a lot more on me. And she’s about to get her rich-girl lawyer. Bet they won’t even let her open her mouth. I know mine didn’t.”
“That was different.”
“Not really.”
She spun around in the path until she was facing me. “Yes it was, Mallory. It was different. You didn’t drug him and slit his wrists and leave him to die.” She threw her hands up and said, “Argh,” like she was so irritated with me, and then she kept walking.
I followed her, but kept my distance, because she was wrong. I did leave Brian to die. That’s exactly what I did.
“Why did you go to the funeral?” I asked, and every muscle in her body appeared to go rigid.
She spun around and pointed her finger at me. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about Reid? Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving for this place? You didn’t think about me. You just . . . left. I snuck out to see you and you were just gone.”
I didn’t know. I didn’t know why there were things I kept from her, that I thought belonged to me and nobody else. Or why I didn’t call her before I left for Monroe or why I kept Reid to myself back then. “I asked you first.”
“I can’t do this, I can’t. I’m going to be sick, Mallory.” And for a second I thought she was actually going to be sick. Her face turned pale, and she had her hand on her stomach. And then she started marching down the path, swiping at the low-hanging leaves in her path. I had to jog to keep up.