The movie was in black and white, with a booming, old-fashioned sound track. It was about eight strangers who were all called to an island by a mysterious host—but when they arrived, their host was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a recorded message accused each of them of murder.
One by one, the guests on the island started to die: the general who ordered his wife’s lover into a suicide mission. The servant who’d killed his crippled employer. The crusty old maid who had her nephew locked away in the reformatory until he committed suicide. Someone was punishing them for their crimes. By the end of the movie, Julie was perched on the edge of her seat, wide-eyed. It was weirdly satisfying to watch each person get what he or she deserved. Could you even call it murder?
When the lights finally came up, Julie had blinked in the sudden brightness. Granger assigned the discussion groups immediately, and she’d found herself facing Parker, Mackenzie, Ava, and Caitlin. Besides Parker, she barely knew the others except in passing.
Caitlin had stretched her muscular arms over her head. “That was kind of intense.”
Ava opened her notebook to a blank page, pushing her dark hair off her face. “But it makes sense. It’s all about the rule of law, right? How dangerous it is for judgment to come from a vigilante.”
Mackenzie chimed in. “I didn’t think some of those people deserved to be punished. What’s-her-name, Miss Brent? She didn’t kill anyone. She just had her nephew put in jail. It wasn’t her fault he killed himself.”
“Sure it was.” Caitlin’s voice was sharp. Her lips were a straight, rigid line, her jaw tight. Julie thought about her brother’s suicide—everyone knew Nolan had teased him relentlessly, and then her brother had killed himself.
The other girls seemed to remember Taylor at the same time. Mackenzie wrapped her chunky knit sweater tighter around her body. “I didn’t mean . . .”
“In fact, she’s one of the worst of them,” Caitlin went on. “Because she didn’t even care. She didn’t even feel bad.”
An awkward silence fell. Mackenzie stared miserably down at her hands. Julie glanced from one girl to the next. Ava clicked her pen, again and again.
Then Parker took a deep breath. “I know it’s kind of sick,” she said, her voice low, “but sometimes I think the judge was right. Some people deserve to be punished.”
Tears almost formed in Julie’s eyes—it was the first time Parker had spoken in class in ages. But then she glanced around at the shocked faces. Okay, maybe what Parker said was a little harsh, but Julie didn’t want her to recede into her shell again.
“Right?” she piped up. “I mean, I know some people who deserve punishment. Personally, first on my list would be Parker’s dad. The judge let him off too easy.”
The girls’ muscles stiffened, the way everyone’s always did when Parker’s accident came up. The whole school knew what Parker’s dad had done to her that night—the evidence was all over her face, for starters, plus he’d ended up in jail, which never happened in a place like Beacon.
They continued talking, mentioning people in their lives who’d wronged them—each of the girls had someone who had hurt them, too—when suddenly Caitlin leaned forward.
“You know who I’d get rid of?” Her eyes glinted as she looked across the room, toward another group’s table. Nolan Hotchkiss leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest. He laughed loudly at something, a mocking sneer on his handsome face. “Him,” she said in a dark voice.
The table went silent again. Admitting that Nolan was a jerk seemed dangerous somehow. If he ever found out, they’d be his next targets.
“Nolan is an asshole,” Ava breathed. “He started rumors about me. Awful ones.”
Mackenzie’s cheeks were blazing red. She stared down at her hands, picking at the edge of her cuticles. “He’s got . . . something he’s been holding over me, too.”
Julie nodded. She hated Nolan for his role in Parker’s incident. If it hadn’t been for him, maybe none of it would have happened. Parker would still be her old self.
Ava scratched her pen along the table. “How would you do it? If you were going to kill him, I mean?”
A light came on behind Caitlin’s eyes. “You know how I’d do it? Oxy. Everyone knows it’s his drug of choice.”
“And then he’d be . . . gone,” Parker said wistfully.
“Or cyanide,” Caitlin had continued. “Just like in the old movies. It’s completely odorless and colorless. Difficult to detect. He’d be dead in minutes.”
Mackenzie had snickered. “That certainly would do it.”
“Finally.”
Julie looked up. She and Carson had reached the front of the line, and Carson was pumping beer into a red Solo cup. He handed it to Julie. “Well, cheers, Julie Redding,” he said, touching his cup to hers. “I hope to get to know you better.”