Mac nodded and started out of Julie’s room, hating that she was leaving Julie inside such a small space. She navigated around the boxes and the cats, and soon enough she was outside again, breathing fresh air. But her chest was still heaving, and she knew why. It was all the talk about the list, and that terrible conversation.
She wondered, suddenly, what Claire was doing right now. Was she at home? Was she safe? Should Mac worry about her? It was ironic—the girl she hated, the girl who hated her, might be the person who needed her the most right now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AFTER DROPPING CAITLIN OFF, AVA gripped the steering wheel hard, her vision steady. Instead of turning off toward her house, she took a left up a steep road that wasn’t regularly traveled. Unless you were going to the Upper Washington Correctional Facility—which Ava was. It was where Alex was being held. Bail was set at twenty-five thousand dollars, and his parents, two teachers, were still trying to raise that kind of money.
There were all kinds of things she should be doing this evening, like studying for a history exam or updating her Lady Macbeth Facebook page—a project for AP English.
But something inside her had cracked today. It was something she couldn’t really explain, a trigger she couldn’t put her finger on, but all of a sudden she’d realized, she had to go see Alex in prison. No matter how many newscasts she watched of kids saying how Alex had violently beaten up that kid at his old school, she needed to hear him tell her that. More important, she needed him to tell her that he wasn’t guilty, that he hadn’t killed Granger.
Her phone buzzed, and she looked down. Hey, I still have your lip gloss, Caitlin texted. Wanna swing back for it?
Ava had let Caitlin borrow the lip gloss in the car, but there was no way she was going back now—or explaining what she was about to do. I’ll get it at school, no biggie, she replied. It was weird: She probably could tell the girls that she was visiting Alex. But she wanted to keep this to herself, until she figured it out a little more.
When she pulled into the police complex fifteen minutes later, she was still trying to figure out what she was going to say. Rolling back her shoulders, she walked through a door marked VISITORS and wrote her name down on a clipboard.
After a terrifying check-in and pat-down process, during which Ava was pretty sure the female officer gave her an extra squeeze or two while no one was looking, she sat in the visitors’ room. The concrete floor was mottled and stained by mysterious substances, and the cold metal tables and chairs were bolted to the floor. The air had a sharp tang to it, as if urine and toxic cleaning fluids had melded together to create a new brand of oxygen. Ava’s nose burned. The thought of Alex alone in this place sent a pang through her.
A heavy metal door creaked open at the back of the room, and Ava reflexively jumped to her feet. A linebacker-sized guard lumbered through first, then stepped to the side, revealing a pale, exhausted, and handcuffed Alex. Ava’s heart leaped into her throat, and she choked back a sob.
Alex raised his head and looked up at her. His gaze was so intense, so desperate, and so sad. He seemed heartbroken. Ava resisted the urge to run over and wrap her arms around him.
“Alex—” she started.
“I’m sorry,” he said at the same time. “Ava, I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. I know you didn’t do this—any of it.” He held his breath, trying to stem the tide of emotion. Ava suspected he was trying hard not to cry. Alex was the emotional one in their relationship: God, he’d cried during Toy Story 3. That memory made her want to cry, suddenly, but she held it together.
“You didn’t do it, right?” she whispered.
Alex shook his head fiercely. “Of course not. I would never—Ava, I could never kill someone. You know me better than that.”
Ava nodded. “I know. I just needed to hear you say it.” She plopped down into the hard seat. “But why did you go over there? Why did you text Granger? And what happened at your old school?”
Alex sat across from her and leaned over the table toward her before continuing. “Well, I’ll start with the easiest one. I texted Granger, Don’t touch my girlfriend again or I’ll kill you because you told me he’d hit on you, and then the police didn’t even believe you.” He lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry. It was stupid. I just . . . felt so, helpless, you know?”
Yeah, Ava thought. I do know.
“I’m sorry I never told you about what happened at my old school,” he went on. “I couldn’t, really. But I beat up that guy because he raped my ex-girlfriend.”
Ava gasped.