A year since we buried Hartley.
We’re a strange assortment of friends, from all different social groups—we have next to nothing in common but the game, our twisted experience—but somehow we make it work. We have to, for Hartley.
I’m piling a tray high with coffee cups smeared with lipstick when the door swings open. I groan. If it’s a drunk—which happens pretty often, considering that the shop is on a street people come to specifically to get drunk—I won’t hesitate to get my boss.
I look up, and Ethan is there. His hair is still wet from the pool and sticks out in slick ribbons around his ears. He gives me a smile meant just for me, and my stomach turns into a warm puddle.
“I’ll just bring these dishes to the back,” Casey announces loudly.
Ethan hefts his backpack up on his shoulder and crosses the café toward me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
He circles an arm around me and pulls me into a kiss, long and slow and agonizingly perfect. But instead of making me happy, a sad feeling hollows me out.
“What’s wrong?” he asks against my lips.
The acceptance letter burns a hole in my apron. In my heart. I should tell him. Right now. But the words won’t come out. I don’t know how to bring it up. I’m sorry, but I’m leaving you.
I can’t do it. After everything I went through, after all the hard work I put in to get accepted, I can’t do it.
I have to do it.
I swallow the lump in my throat and peck him once more. “Nothing. Now you better stop kissing me before I get fired.”
I twist out of his grip and drag my O2 tank over to a nearby table, pulling out a chair. Ethan gives me a funny look, but he drops his bag and sits down. We both notice the newspaper sitting on the table between us, the headline LYLA GREENE TAKES THE STAND IN NEW ORLEANS DARE CLUB MURDER TRIAL staring up at us in big, bold print.
He raises his eyebrows at me.
“Go ahead,” I tell him. He picks up the newspaper. I’ve practically got the article memorized, but I don’t stop him as he reads it aloud.
Lyla Greene, who is on trial for the first-degree murder of Hartley Jensen in the New Orleans Dare Club scandal, took the stand in her own defense on Monday. Under questioning by her defense attorney, Greene described her mind-set following the suicide of her stepsister, Samantha MacNamara.
“I didn’t understand why it happened,” Greene said. “I blamed myself. But then I started to remember all the things Sam talked about—all the things that made her sad, and I realized it wasn’t me. It was them.”
The “them” Greene refers to are the four girls she pitted against one another in a twisted, sadistic dare game that has riveted the nation.
“Once I realized who was really at fault, it was easy. I knew what I had to do,” Greene said.
The seventeen-year-old, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to one count of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, one count of aggravated assault, and five counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm, has admitted to exploiting her parents’ positions at a local meat factory and swamp conservatory to construct elaborate dares she forced her victims to complete in using threats, bribery, and gifts.
Greene says she didn’t necessarily mean to kill the participants during the dangerous dares, which she admits to carefully picking based on the players’ worst fears, but to “make them suffer.”
“Why should it be easy for them?” Greene said. “It wasn’t easy for Sam.”
Trial continues on Tuesday, when Greene’s mother takes the stand in her defense.
Ethan looks up at me. “Wow. This is…”
“Crazy. I know.” It doesn’t matter how often I’ve seen the story in the news, I still can’t believe that it happened to me. That Hartley is really gone.
Ethan puts the paper down.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I answer.
He drums his fingers on the table. That’s when I notice it. Ethan’s acting different. And not just because of the article.
“Is something wrong?” I ask. He stares at me for a moment, and dread coils in my stomach. “What, Eth?”
“Something came in the mail today.” He pulls a letter out of his bag. My breath hitches painfully in my chest.
He got his letter too.
I knew this moment was coming, that I’d have to confront it sometime. I thought I was ready for it, but now that it’s actually here, I think it might kill me. I try not to cry as he fidgets with the envelope, then slowly peels out a folded paper.
“Well, are you going to tell me what it is or just torture me with it?” I ask.
He looks up. God, his eyes are gorgeous. Golden brown, with flecks of gold around the irises. I love those eyes. I love him.
“I have to tell you something first,” he says. “Something I should have said a long time ago.” He takes a deep breath. “You blame yourself for everything that happened, but…I was the one who was wrong. About Tucker.”