Caitlin pulled off her warm-up jacket and threw it onto the grass behind the bench. She had to focus on the game. She bent down to tighten a shoelace on her cleat, and suddenly something caught her eye up in the stands. Jeremy was sitting all alone, his face painted in Beacon High maroon and white. He held a giant poster board sign with GOOOOO, CAITLIN! handwritten in big, sloping letters.
Caitlin’s mouth fell open. Despite the fact that the game was going to start in only a few minutes, she dashed off the field and up the bleacher steps, straight toward him. “Look at you! Oh my god!”
Jeremy smiled sheepishly. “I had to come and support my girl.”
Caitlin felt tears appear in her eyes. “Really?”
“Well, yeah.” He grinned at her, but then his face grew serious. “I thought about what you said, and you were right, Caitlin. I should love you for exactly who you are—and that’s a soccer player. A girl who goes to parties. A really hot girl who plays soccer and goes to parties, by the way.” He touched her arm. “And you know what?” he went on. “I love that girl. Every inch of her.”
Caitlin thought her heart might burst. She broke into a gigantic smile and jumped into Jeremy’s arms. She squeezed him as tightly as she could, breathing him in. It felt so good—so right—to be with him, then and there.
Caitlin could have stayed there all night, just holding him, but she needed to get back to her team. Just as she pulled away from Jeremy, she saw Mary Ann running across the soccer field, headed straight for them. For a millisecond, Caitlin thought her mom was angry about her Jeremy PDA, but as Mary Ann got closer, the look on her face was tense and weird—even worried. It was, Caitlin realized, the same look she’d had when she’d found out Taylor was dead.
Mary Ann reached her side and, winded and panting, grabbed Caitlin by the arm and pulled her away from Jeremy. “What is it?” Caitlin cried. “What’s happening?”
Mary Ann caught her breath and locked eyes with her daughter. “It’s Julie. She broke out of the mental hospital. She’s . . . gone.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
FLAT, BRIGHT SUNSHINE ILLUMINATED THE landscape outside Julie’s hotel room window. Palm trees dotted the horizon, and cars glinted on the freeway overpass as the afternoon rush hour swung into full gear. Julie leaned back in the stiff upholstered chair and gazed into the cloudless blue sky. Her whole body—arms and legs, fingers and toes—was relaxed. Her mind was still for the first time in as long as she could remember. The absence of stress, of fear, was beautiful and invigorating.
The last twenty-four hours were a blur. Julie had no idea exactly how far she’d traveled, but it didn’t matter. All she needed to know was that she was as far from the secrets and cruelties of Beacon Heights as possible, where no one would find her. She had left them all behind, shaken them all from her trail—even the doctors and nurses at the facility, even the cops. They were smart, there was no denying that, but she had still executed her plan to perfection. There was no way she was going to stay in a mental institution, for god’s sake—there were limits, after all, to how far she’d go for Parker.
Julie felt no remorse for lying to the hospital staff. She did the right thing, telling the doctors and cops and attorneys that she was sick, letting them work themselves into a tizzy over her very rare, very severe case of dissociative identity disorder. After all, escaping a mental hospital was a hell of a lot easier than escaping from prison. How else would she have been able to get away? Lying to them, telling them that Parker was a figment of her imagination, was her only choice. And she had done it for both of them, for herself and for Parker. But Julie knew the truth: Parker was as real as she was. And Parker was the one who had committed those crimes. Not her.
It had been Parker, though, even before she’d turned herself into the cops, who’d laid the groundwork for the plan. Julie had found her in the woods when she’d fled from that party, and Parker had taken her shoulders and said, “It’s going to be okay. For both of us. I have an idea. We should use Fielder.”
“Fielder?” Julie had frowned. “I thought you hated him.”
And then it was Parker who’d come clean: She’d been seeing Fielder, both as a patient and, sort of, as a friend (she’d lowered her eyes when she said this, though). She told Julie that she’d really bonded with him, and it seemed that he had a soft spot for her, considering what had happened to his mom. “He’ll come and see you in the hospital, I promise,” Parker had said. “And then . . .” She whispered the rest.