She cut her eyes to Bree and said, “I didn’t do it alone.”
Bree let out a moan and Krista stretched an arm toward her, but she couldn’t reach. So she said, “Listen to me, Bree. We’re going to be fine. Again. But you have to listen to me.”
But Bree wasn’t listening. I knew Krista was losing her, and Krista could sense it too.
“Bree,” she said again. “I love you.” And Bree lifted her head up.
But I thought of the things Krista was doing for Bree and Taryn, and I thought of the things Colleen had done for me, and I knew it wasn’t even close to the same.
“No, Bree,” I said. “If she cared about you at all, she would’ve warned you about him. She would’ve kept you away from Jason to begin with. She hates you. She hates you all.”
Then I took a risk. I ran for Bree, grabbed her around the waist, and dragged us both into her room. I slammed the door and locked it.
Bree stared at the locked door and started to shake. “She has a master key,” she whispered.
Of course she did. Jason must have too. Easy to get when his father was the dean of students. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. Someone had to break into my room to take the sleeping pills. Someone had to break into my room to kill him there.
So I walked to her dresser, bent over, and put my weight behind it. “Help me,” I said, and Bree pushed against the side with me until it was in front of the door.
“Where’s Colleen, Bree? What happened?”
She shook her head and her face went even more pale than normal. She moaned and started pacing the room. “Oh God,” she said.
Bree crumpled to the floor and put her head in her hands. Then she looked up, higher than where I was and choked out, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I almost cut her off, told her it was too late for that. That those words meant nothing. That there was no going back now. That she’d made her choices and now she had to live with them. But instead I crouched down in front of her and said, “I know you are.” Then I put my hands on her shoulders and said, “You can help. This doesn’t have to be all of you, you know?”
She broke in my arms, as the realization of everything crashed down on her. And I held her. Until we heard the lock turn and the door push against the furniture. The dresser held, but I wanted to shake Bree. Make her talk. I guess she sensed my urgency because she gritted her teeth and then the words came tumbling out. “She was looking for me, I guess. Because she found me on the way to breakfast. We walked toward that old student center, I guess for privacy, I don’t know. But she just kept heading that way. She didn’t know that Krista and Taryn were watching. Following. And she kept talking. It was so obvious she knew something. So Krista . . .” She stopped talking. Krista was pounding on the door, calling Bree’s name, and Bree was staring at the dresser, like the whole situation was just some curious thing happening to some other person.
“Krista what?” I said louder.
Bree looked anywhere but at me. “Hit her with a brick.” Then she dropped her voice even lower. “She had to hit her twice.” Everything inside of me went dark. I felt like that day in the lifeguard shed when Danielle called Colleen a slut and I wanted to hurt her. Only this was a thousand times stronger. And the only one in the room was Bree.
I made myself back up toward the window. “Where is she?”
“We took her down the path past the old student center. There’s a dropoff. It’s pretty far, though.”
No, I thought.
“Like a ravine really.” No, I thought again. “We—” Bree took a big breath and said, “She’s at the bottom of the ravine. So it would look like an accident.”
No.
I pushed her window open just as Krista wedged the door open a few inches. “Bree,” I said. “I’m going to find her. Get help. Now.”
She glanced at the door, then went to her desk and pulled out her pink lighter. Then she climbed on top of the desk, flicked the top, and held the flame directly under the smoke detector.
I opened the window and straddled the sill. And before I dropped out into the night, I said, “Remember that you did this too.”
And then I ran.
God, how I ran.
Chapter 22
I was vaguely aware of the tree, of the half-standing walls, now just dark shapes, as I sprinted by the old student center. A few bricks dislodged and scattered under my steps, and I almost tripped twice, but I caught my footing and found the path. I ran until the path narrowed and I couldn’t tell where to move next. I froze.
“Colleen!” I shouted, expecting to hear an echo. But the noise fell flat. Swallowed up by the trees or the dirt or the heavy air. “Colleen!” I screamed even louder, and then I listened to the sounds of the forest for any trace of her.
Bree had said there was a dropoff past here—some sort of ravine—but I couldn’t see far enough ahead of me. The ground sloped upward, since Monroe was situated in a valley, so I figured I’d keep heading up until I hit it. I kept moving. Every once in a while I felt the ground shift, like I was heading down again, and I readjusted until I was moving up. Not exactly a precise navigation system, but it was better than doing nothing.
“Colleen!” I kept calling, hearing nothing in reply.
Then I tripped over a root and face-planted. I heard the rocks I’d kicked up echoing somewhere below. I crawled forward to the edge and saw blackness. The ravine. A gaping splice through the hillside. Problem was, it stretched side to side in front of me as far as I could see. “Colleen?” Only my voice echoed back to me, and the panic I’d been avoiding crept up into my stomach. Too late. I was too late.
I crawled along the edge until I found a lower spot with a gentler slope, and I half walked, half skidded my way into the ravine. Which was pitch-black. Looking up, the sky looked unnaturally light compared to where I was. I put my left hand on the side of the ravine, and I started walking. It rose and dipped, the sky getting nearer and farther. And I kept saying her name. At first in a whisper, because everything felt so enclosed here. And then, with a panicked ferocity, with tears and anger, with rage. My hand tore at the side of the ravine as I ran.
I almost didn’t hear it at first, over the sound of my panicked breathing.
But I thought I heard my name.
I listened again. A gasp of air from somewhere ahead. And then a hoarse word. “Mallory.”
I ran forward and nearly tripped over the dark shape on the floor of the ravine. I was laughing because I found her, but then I pulled her into my lap and I stopped laughing. Her hair was damp with a thick liquid. Blood. I knew that feeling. And she barely had a voice. But I held onto her and I started laughing again.
“I found you,” I said.
And she said, “My fucking legs.”
I looked down, trying to see in the darkness, and immediately recoiled from the way her right leg twisted out at an unnatural angle. Then I took a breath and looked again. Her left looked okay to me, but obviously it wasn’t since she said legs. Plural.
“I can’t get out,” she said. “I tried. But I can’t.”
“I can. It’s not too steep.” I crouched beside her and said, “Okay. Ready?”
She pushed herself onto her elbows, then a sob escaped her from the shift of weight. “Ready for what?”
“It’s probably going to hurt. When I pick you up.”
Colleen collapsed back onto the ravine floor. “You can’t. I’m too heavy. And you’re—you can’t. Go get help and come back.”
“No,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t know how to go get help, or how to come back after. She had no idea how far into the woods we were, and how much of a miracle it was that I’d found her in the first place. But all I told her was, “I won’t leave you.”