“Stop fiddling with your monitor.”
I look up from my ankle. “Easy for you to say, you’re not the one who has to wear one of these twenty-four/seven.” Though I can’t complain overmuch. In the end, it all worked out sort of okay for me. Well, for a given value of okay, anyway. I’m not in prison, for one. The cops still don’t know much about Mr. Werner’s death, and after the freakishly huge mess of a case, all the school’s benefactors—Danny’s parents included—have swooped down and called in all of the favors they can call in, and the case got shut down before anyone could say, “Drugs?”
I’d waited, in excruciating anxiety, for Danny to tell the cops how I’d killed his uncle. I’d waited for them to come charging into my room and arrest me. But days passed, and nothing happened. And it became clear, then, that Danny hadn’t told anyone. Probably because he realized that if he did, I would tell them that he’d killed Sophie, and he would be put away for actual murder, something which even his affluent parents wouldn’t be able to wipe away.
For days after that realization, I grappled with my own conscience, wondering if I should tell the cops that Danny had killed Sophie. But in the end, my own selfish needs and sense of self-preservation overcame everything else. I don’t want to battle Danny. I just want to move on from all of this.
In the end, nothing could be pinned on me, not without Danny coming clean. The cops slapped Mandy with a one-year probation and moved on to other cases. Who knows, maybe I’ll get another shot at Stanford, though to be honest, the thought no longer lights the same kind of fire it used to inside me. The thought of being in a school full of rich, entitled kids has lost its appeal to me.
I sigh and shake my head. “I’m not in the mood for a surprise.”
“Aw, come on, don’t be such a wet rag, I worked on it all through Christmas break.”
“Pretty sure it’s wet blanket and not wet rag.”
Stacey stares at me. “Why would a blanket be wet? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why would a rag be wet?”
“Because you wet it under the tap before you use it to wipe down the table.”
I take a deep breath. “As riveting as this conversation is, what’s the surprise you wanted to show me?”
Stacey’s face splits into a huge smile, her eyes shining, and despite the gray haze that’s blanketed me the past three months, despite the nightmares and the crying and the too much of everything, I can’t help but smile back at her. Because every day, I thank the universe she’s still here, alive, next to me. And Stacey’s not above using that to get her way, the asshole.
“How are things going with Laura?”
“Don’t change the subject,” she scolds, but she can’t hold back the smile from taking over her face. A month ago, she started dating someone from the robotics club, and they’re painfully adorable together. They’ve even got matching blue streaks in their hair now. Laura’s all right—she treats Stacey like the queen she is and, unlike everyone else at Draycott, doesn’t ever bother asking me for details about Danny.
“Behold,” she declares, brandishing her laptop at me with a flourish.
“What am I looking at?”
“God, you caveman. This is an HTML code. Now, if you’d come forward and hit the Enter key…”
I narrow my eyes at the screen, trying to make sense of the jumble of symbols and numbers, but I may as well be reading an alien language. The last line says: <Execute?> The cursor blinks expectantly at me. I’m too tired to argue with Stacey, so I hit Enter. The screen scrolls up by itself and is replaced with balloons and streamers and confetti. The words YAY! You did it! appear.
“Sorry, that’s just a little effect I added for your benefit,” Stacey says. “Laura suggested it.”
“What did I just do?”
“Open Draycott Dirt.”
I groan. “Do I have to?” The past few months, it’s all been about Danny, excited, scandalized whispers about Danny in juvie, Danny’s parents scrambling to pay the right people to get him out, Danny who apparently tried to kill his girlfriend, Danny, Danny, Danny. And, of course, about me, the evil parasite-slut-whore-witch-bitch who corrupted Danny the golden boy and pushed him into trying to kill me.
“Trust me,” Stacey says, and her voice is soft, her face earnest. And I do. There’s no one I trust more than her. So I take out my phone and click on the Dirt app icon. I brace myself for the onslaught of notifications of people tagging me in hateful posts, but there’s only one new post, pinned to the top of the page.
Posted by: @SiliconBrains
Hiii assholes! Guess what? I broke the app. Oops!
Why did I do it? Because it’s nothing but a cesspool of—okay, you guys know exactly what the app is. Anyway, so I broke it. And I’m sorry but I’m totally one hundo percent NOT sorry, betches. Go out and enjoy the sunlight or whatever. Get a fucking LIFE. Bye!
A smile spreads across my face, slow like honey. Just as I finish reading Stacey’s message, a window pops up on the screen, and I can’t help but laugh.
Warning: App is unstable and might corrupt your device. Please uninstall and reboot your device.
Acknowledgments
Thank you, as always, to my husband Mike, who is an unwavering source of support and encouragement. Without your help, I would have given up writing approximately ten years ago. Thank you for watching the kids so I could do anything and everything writing-related.
A big thank-you goes to Uwe Stender, for believing in me as a writer and for being one of the first people to read the early iteration of this book so many years ago. Over the next few years, the novel changed from Sharp Edges, to Dirt, to The New Girl, and through it all, Uwe was stoic in his belief that it was a story worth being told.
I’m so happy and grateful for the team at Sourcebooks who has made my journey with The Obsession and The New Girl so incredible. Annie Berger, my editor, can always be relied on to give valuable, sharp, and brilliant feedback. Thank you also to Cassie Gutman and Jackie Douglass.
My menagerie family, as I call them, is my chosen family. I love each and every one of you so much: S. L. Huang, Toria Hegedus, Maddox Hahn, Tilly Latimer, Rob Livermore, Elaine Aliment, Lani Frank, Emma Maree, and Mel Melcer.
To the folks at Absolute Write, a place where I learned so much about publishing and writing: MacAllister, Lisa, Calla, and Nicole Lesperance have all made my stay at AW so wonderful and brilliant.
To my family, especially Mama and Papa, for being so proud of me, for always telling me to dream big. Thank you for showing me off to your friends; it is just so massively adorable seeing how much pride there is!
And of course, to my dear readers, thank you so much for sticking with me through my publishing journey. Thank you for reading my books and leaving reviews and posting about them. All of your messages have meant so much to me, and I will cherish all of your words.