As she fumbled for her keys, she thought of times when Kamala had gone full Lakehaven princess and she and Jane would exchange the subtlest of eye rolls, and it had made Amari think that perhaps the real friend she should cultivate was Jane.
“There’s glass on the floor,” Vasquez said, shifting the flashlight around, and she saw it then, thought of the noise she’d heard—and some basic instinct told her to get into the apartment, now.
She unlocked her door and pushed it open, when a shadow rushed from the stairwell. She heard a hiss of air as something swung toward Vasquez, and he dropped in silence, the lit phone skittering along the concrete. A spray of wetness struck the back of her neck. She didn’t scream, her focus on just getting inside and slamming the door. But then she heard the hiss again and a sudden agony exploded her between the shoulders. She fell to the tiled floor of the apartment, the air driven from her lungs. She rolled, trying to face the threat, the light from the fallen phone catching the crowbar as it was raised to deliver another blow.
45
JANE HURRIED AROUND to the back window of Adam’s room. Raised the window. Looked in at the stranger who was sitting on the bed she normally slept in, propped up on pillows, watching a movie on a tablet.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi,” he said, looking up with a smile. “Aren’t you a cute peeping tom?”
“Um, are you Adam’s new roommate?”
“Yeah, just got assigned, I was in off-campus housing, put in a special request.” She noticed he had a leg in a cast, with crutches. “I’m on the lacrosse team, took a bad spill during a game two days ago. Just easier to be on campus for the rest of the semester while I heal up.”
“Of course,” she said. Which meant now she would be on the streets, or in the house with her mother, who had kept secrets from her. “I’m in Adam’s study group, I left some clothes.” She pointed at the bag where she kept her gear. “Would you mind handing it to me?” She didn’t want to climb through the window in her dress.
He hopped over to the bag and gave it to her with a friendly, flirty smile, and she remembered she was still in her nice dress, with her combed hair and her makeup. “I’m looking forward to meeting Adam. What’s your name?”
“Jane. He’s not here a lot. It’ll be like having a single.”
She turned and walked away, not waiting for his question on how she knew Adam’s living habits.
She had someone else to go see.
*
Apartment 23. She knocked. She saw the dot of light through the peephole dim, and brighten again. She waited, and Kamala opened the door with a saccharine smile and an equally artificial greeting. “Did the party not agree with you, Jane? Me neither, once I saw you there.”
“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m sorry. I’m sorry for whatever David and I did to you.”
It wasn’t what Kamala wanted to hear. “It’s easy to say when you don’t remember it.”
“Don’t you want to say anything back to me?”
“Like what?”
“An apology.”
“What the hell for?”
“You planted that note at the car crash scene. My suicide note.”
Kamala stared at her but took a step back. “You are legit crazy.”
“No, it’s the only explanation that makes sense to me.”
“Nothing makes sense to you, damage.”
A hot darkness rose in Jane’s chest.
“The note was written long before the crash. The Halls did a chemical analysis and they kept that quiet. I didn’t write it that night. I didn’t write that because I wanted David dead, because I was pining for him. I wrote it because I missed my dad so much. So much.”
Kamala started to shove the door closed and Jane pushed in and showed her what she’d brought from home: the gun from her mother’s safe. She didn’t aim it at Kamala, she kept it by her side.
Kamala froze. “Jane, oh please, put that away.”
“I just want you to listen. Nod if you will.”
Kamala nodded.
“If when my dad died, I wrote a note like that, and I didn’t destroy it, I wonder: Who is the one person I might have shared such a note with?”
Kamala averted her gaze.
“There’s my answer.” She could barely speak. “How?”
“It was inside your favorite book. A Wrinkle in Time. You always loved it, but you read it obsessively after your dad died. Except the girl in the book loses her dad and then wins him back.” Her voice broke. “You had shown it to me when you wrote it a few months after your dad died. I told you to tear it up, don’t let anyone see it, but you didn’t. Because it was about your dad, in a sad way, and so you kept it.”
“So you put it to”—Jane paused—“good use.”
Now Kamala looked at her. “I was at both your houses the morning after the crash. Bringing food, doing laundry for your mom, helping Mrs. Hall. So I took the book with the note inside from your room and then I planted the note at the scene. No one saw me, it was easy, I’d brought flowers to lay there. No one looked twice at me. And then I drove back to your house, and a bunch of parents were there cooking and cleaning the house for your mom while she was at the hospital with you, so I went to the Halls’ and I put the book on David’s shelf. I couldn’t bear to keep it. We all thought you would die. No one knew you would wake up, and then you did, but you didn’t remember. Then I never got a chance to put it back.” Her voice was very small. “Of course the police found the note the same day I planted it. And that was that.”
“How could you do that to me?”
“How could you be with David?”
“The lake house. Trevor said you went to the lake house. That’s where you saw us.”
Now the shame was gone from Kamala’s face. Now there was only misery. “I found you both. I watched you through the window. You were crying. David took you in his arms. He kissed you, but like he’d never kissed me. He picked you up in his arms. You kissed him back. You—you wrapped your legs around his waist.” Here her voice wavered. “He leaned you back against the wall…kissing you like you were everything to him and I was nothing. My best friend I’d given so much to after her dad died. The boy I still loved. I suppose if I’d stood there and watched, you would have had sex right in front of me.”
The words were like a slap across the face.
“You couldn’t wait to take him from me. Me, the friend who’d been best to you. Who’d let you tag along and be socially acceptable when everyone else found you a bit odd and strange and not that much fun to be around.”
“Well, you’ve paid me back,” Jane said. “Congratulations.”
“Why do you think everyone believed the suicide note? Because you were that person. The depressive, the complainer, the nobody. Sorry your dad died, but life goes on…”
Jane slapped Kamala before she thought about it. A good, hard slap, the kind the giver feels all the way up her arm and the kind the recipient feels in her spine, even though it’s her face that took the blow.
“Clearly we’re both awful,” Jane said. “But you don’t ever talk about my dad that way.”
Kamala said nothing, her shame-dulled eyes on the gun.