I wonder where he got the climbing rope, and why I can’t feel my arms.
And then I lose the rope, and I lose my arms, and I lose my whole body. I fall down into a hole so deep it swallows me up completely.
—
I wake to a slosh of water, and to the steady vibration of an engine. I’m on a boat.
The sky is scattered with stars. A high moon burns through the cloud cover.
Brent is captaining slowly, probably so we don’t make too much noise, and trailing the stink of exhaust behind us on the water.
He’s humming.
Fear rattles through me but I can’t move. There’s a screaming pain in my head, and the burn of vomit in my throat. My clothes are soaked, and my wrists chafed from the nylon cord lashed around them. He’s bound my ankles, too, and wedged me down between the bench seats.
In the distance: the thud of pounding music. The smell of wood smoke carries to me. Someone is having a bonfire.
I need to get out of the boat. But I’ll never be able to swim with my hands tied. I’m not even sure I could tread water, even if I get free—my body feels like a sandbag.
Still, I have to try.
Brent turns away from the wheel, cutting the engine. I can’t begin to reach the side of the boat to roll over. I aim a weak kick with both legs and miss him entirely. The effort blackens my vision. The thud of the music, even from a distance, makes my head throb.
“This would have been a lot easier if you’d just finished your drink,” he says.
“Please.” My voice sounds foreign. I’m not even sure what I’m asking. “Please don’t hurt me.”
I’ve been so stupid. All along I had the answer: Kaycee gave it to me. She left it for me in my locker.
Chestnut’s collar, poor Chestnut, the dog she’d poisoned. She wasn’t gloating. It wasn’t about hurting me. It was about asking for my help. It was a code.
Someone was poisoning her, and she didn’t know who or why, and she couldn’t trust anyone she was close to.
So she trusted me—because I was friendless, because I was innocent, because she thought I would be able to help if something happened to her.
Brent shakes his head. Dismissive. Annoyed. “You didn’t have to come back here,” he says. “You could have left it alone. You could have forgotten all about Barrens. So why didn’t you?”
“She was my friend once,” I croak out.
Brent stands there, staring down at me. “You’re an idiot. She wouldn’t have pissed to save you. You know that, right?” He has to raise his voice above the noise of the engine, and I have a brief, stupid hope that the people at the bonfire will hear us.
Why isn’t he worried that they’ll hear us?
But immediately I know: he must have built up the bonfire and blasted the music himself. He’s not worried because there is no one there to hear.
He turns away again. Panic seizes me, bringing a fierce tide of nausea: Whatever he drugged me with, it was strong. I need time—to talk to him, to convince him to let me go, to find a way to escape, to get the drug out of my system.
“Why did you do it?”
“You know why,” he says. “You explained it to me tonight. You just got the details wrong. Mitchell never had anything to do with it.”
So Condor was right after all. I should have listened to him. “You were the one who proposed selling the pictures to Optimal, weren’t you?”
“Wrong again. They were the ones who proposed it to me.” He smiles. But he’s not as cool as he looks; when he angles his face to the moon, I can practically see tension oozing off him. “Everyone knew I hung around with all the hottest high school girls. So once I landed the internship, some of the older guys came after me looking for a piece of the action. Everyone loves hanging with pretty girls, and they’re even more fun the drunker you get them. I’ve always believed in sharing.”
I can’t believe I kissed him. I can’t believe I ever found him attractive. I wonder how much Optimal has given him, promised him for his continued loyalty—what final tally of promotions, kickbacks, and perquisites has outweighed all that he’s done.
And even as I think it, another piece of the puzzle falls into place. That must have been why Kaycee threatened to go to the police. Not because she felt bad. Not because she began to regret it. Just another thing I’ve misunderstood. “Kaycee wanted a bigger cut, didn’t she? She and Misha were sharing in the risk, but you were the only one getting all the perks.”
Brent’s smile is like a predator’s: shiny in the dark, all sharp teeth and hunger. “She was always a greedy little bitch,” he says. “That’s why I liked her so much.”
I swallow the taste of vomit. “Did you kill her, or did Misha?” I ask, even though I think I already know the answer. I bet Misha has barely blinked in the past ten years without worrying what Brent will say about it.
And now I remember thinking that Misha’s baby, Kayla, was surprisingly blond. Almost as blond, it occurs to me, as Brent.
Does Misha really believe that she might make Brent love her, by doing everything he says, by feeding girls into some sick program where they can be abused and passed around, by covering up for Brent? Does she think he’s even capable of love?
“It was Misha’s idea to put mercury in Kaycee’s paint,” he says calmly. “She thought it would be funny to convince Kaycee she was going crazy. And like I said, she always had a thing for me.”
No wonder I’ve been so sick. Kaycee’s old paintings have been shedding mercury all this time and I’ve been inhaling it.
“We weren’t thinking of killing her then, though.” He sounds bored. “Just making her look like a nutjob, to keep her from going to the cops, and to make sure they wouldn’t listen even if she did.”
Whenever he glances away, I work my wrists back and forth, to loosen the restraints. If I can just get my hands free I can jump, and worry about my ankles once I’m in the water.
I can almost slip a hand free. All I need is another minute.
“So why kill her, if you were convinced no one would listen to her?”
“You,” he says, and I almost forget where we are and what he’s come to do. “The last day of school, you remember what happened? Kaycee put that stupid dog collar in your locker.”
I stop moving. I never knew he knew.
He looks at me as if I’m on the other side of a telescope. “You told Misha that Kaycee had left it there for you as a clue.”
“I didn’t,” I whisper.
But of course I did. I remember now: flying at Misha, trying to hit her, trying to claw my fury at Kaycee out on her best friend’s face. What the fuck is your problem? A cluster of students gathered in the hall to stare. Misha drove me backward against the wall, I wasn’t strong enough to fight her. Are you deranged?
I was screaming at her. Inches from her face. Trying to bury the words inside her skin, trying to cut her with them. It wasn’t enough she poisoned my goddamn dog. She had to leave me a clue, just in case I forgot?
I remember Misha’s look of blunt shock, and thinking, for a second, that I’d finally gotten through to her.