I gape at him with numb horror. “How did you dose her?”
“She was such an addict by then. She never went anywhere without carrying a stash on her. I just met up with her and switched out her stash for one I’d laced. I didn’t think she was gonna go nuts and break into Uncle James’s office.” He laughs a little. “Crazy bitch.”
I feel sick, but more than everything else, I need to know what happened to Stacey. I can’t not dig. I’m so close to the truth. “And what about Stacey? Why her?”
“Like I said, she was out to get my uncle. She’d done all that stuff, hacked into his computer, so I searched her room, know what I found? I found the fucking drugs, Lia.” He laughs again. “I don’t know how they got there after everything you’ve told me, but at the time, I thought she was the school dealer. And know what else I found? A USB drive with his name on it. She was collecting dirt on him. She wasn’t hacking for fun. She was out to get him.”
What? Why would she have done that? Why—
Again, those words swim through my head. You know I’ll always have your back, right? No matter what you’ve done.
She knew. She knew about me killing Mr. Werner. And maybe she thought collecting dirt on him might help me somehow. Might become important evidence if I ever got caught.
“You could’ve killed us all,” I whisper. Now that I’ve got the truth out of him, I feel hollowed out. This is no victory. And why is Danny so ready to spill everything? Why is he so willing to tell me every revolting act he’s done? Unless maybe—
“I even came clean about Uncle James’s ledger to Mrs. Henderson. All because I was in love with you. That was before I found out my girlfriend’s a fucking murderer!”
I’ve made a mistake. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own heartbreak that I don’t notice he’s moved forward until he suddenly catches my wrist in an unforgiving grip. I cry out, but he doesn’t let go.
“And all this time, while I was going nuts trying to find enough evidence to put Stacey away, it turns out it was you all along. My own fucking girlfriend.” He gives a vicious yank and I stumble forward with a cry. I crash into him, his chest granite-hard and radiating a sick heat. His breath is hot in my ear. “You killed him, Lia? You killed my uncle?”
Fear slams into me. This is why. He didn’t hold back, didn’t bother hiding anything, because he’s going to kill me. “Let me go.”
His grip on my wrist tightens so hard, it makes me yelp. I swing my other arm back to hit him, but he catches it easily, as though I were a child. I can’t fight him, not in this state, not when I can barely stand without my legs quivering.
“Why?” he says, his eyes bright with tears. “Why’d you do it?”
“I didn’t mean to. I only wanted to—I just. I wanted to talk.”
Danny shakes me and my head snaps back like a whip. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I was going to blackmail him!” I cry. “Okay? He was making me fail his class, and I tried to blackmail him, and he took me to Orange Point and tried to kill me. I ran away. He came after me. We struggled—” The memory of it flashes in broken, jagged pieces through my mind. The shock of Mr. Werner’s weight on me. The animal struggle. “I pushed him, and he fell on that—that thing. I didn’t mean to kill him. I really—” I’m still talking, but the words aren’t coming out.
Danny’s wrapped his hands around my throat, and there’s no pain, but the words aren’t coming out and I don’t understand it and I can’t breathe, and I ask him to let go, but nothing comes out and the edges of my vision get fuzzy, and I don’t know what’s going on. I claw at his hands, but they’re solid steel and my hands may as well be seaweed flopping at him, and as they fall, they catch on something.
My necklace. The kris pendant. Me joking to Ibu that one day the cap will come off without me knowing it and I’ll accidentally stab myself. I rip it off. Only the size of my pink finger. It won’t do any good. But I don’t have any other choice. Stars burst in my vision and black spills out of them. Quickly now. My fingers are sausages. Danny’s face is red, his teeth gritted, his eyes that of a beast. I don’t recognize the boy I love. My fingers scrabble at my necklace and rip the chain off my neck. I pull off the cap. Unsheathe the blade. He doesn’t notice. I will the last dregs of energy I have and push my hand forward. Everything goes dark.
I thud to the ground. Air rushes in, sparkling, cold, electrifying. I gasp it in, cough it out, gulp more in. Light filters through my eyes, crowding out the black stars. I look up, and Danny’s just standing there, staring at the tiny dagger sticking out of his midsection. It looks ridiculous, so small, too small to be of any consequence, but when Danny pulls it, a thin stream of blood pours out.
“You bitch!” he roars.
I scramble up to my feet and run. Just as I’d feared, the dagger’s too small to do any real damage, but it’s bought me a few more precious seconds. My windpipe still feels like it’s crushed, and I can’t seem to catch my breath, but I push myself to move my legs. Run as fast as I can. Run like a hunted rabbit. Behind me, I hear Danny’s ragged breathing. I reach the Narnia hole and pounce, crawling through the dark space. Something closes around my ankle. I shriek and kick back frantically. My left shoe connects with something and I hear Danny’s curse. I kick again, and the grip loosens. I squeeze through the hole, coming out the other side at last, and don’t spare a second to look behind me before I dash toward the buildings ahead.
I don’t even realize I’m screaming until doors open and people come running out toward me. Someone appears in front of me, and I collapse into their arms, and dimly, I hear them asking, “What’s happening? Are you okay?”
It’s over. There are enough people about now that Danny can’t possibly hurt me like he meant to. I turn my head now, and I’m right. He’s just standing there, holding the wound in his stomach, and he looks defeated, the furious light going from his eyes, leaving him sagging. He’s no longer recognizable to me.
As I open my mouth to answer, a myriad if-onlys spin in the air, glittering with a thousand different possible outcomes.
If only he hadn’t sat on evidence of Mr. Werner’s cheating ring.
If only Mrs. Henderson had believed me when I told her about the cheating ring.
If only I hadn’t snuck into Mr. Werner’s car.
And, of course, the last one: If only I hadn’t come to Draycott in the first place.
But we all made the choices we made, and every lie that slips out of our mouths brings us that much closer to this moment in time, with my boyfriend and I standing in front of the whole school, phone cameras out, every single one of them aimed toward us.
It’s forever before red and blue fill the sky, and our Narnia hole swarms with cops and paramedics, and they take the boy I love away.
Epilogue
Three months later
“Ready for the surprise?” Stacey says.
I shrug.