“I needed his heart,” I said, looking back at her. There were parts of my life she knew so well, but she deserved to know everything. “The king of the demons was coming for us, and Nathan had already thrown in with it, so he was holding us until it came. I knew I could kill the Withered if I had a heart I could poison, so I killed Nathan and poisoned his.”
She paused again, watching me while she formulated an answer. Eventually she just said, “That sucks.” I wasn’t sure if she meant the situation itself, or what I’d done to get out of it.
“You never really knew who I was,” I said. “I wore a facade back in Clayton, and sometimes I still do, trying to look normal and act normal and pretend to be the person everyone thinks I should have been. That’s who you liked, not me.” I shrugged and looked away again. “Not the real me, at least.”
“The John I liked was never normal,” said Marci. “That’s what I liked about him.”
“He was still a lie.”
“Maybe you’re not as good a liar as you think you are.”
“So you fell in love with a psychopath?” I turned toward her again, feeling angry for reasons I couldn’t pin down. “Out of all the boys in school I was the only one with those dreamy, soulless eyes, and you said to yourself ‘I want to date a boy who might kill me.’”
She pursed her lips before answering. “Maybe you’re not as dangerous as you think you are, either.”
“You want my resume?”
“I was an attractive teenage girl,” said Marci. “No offense to Brooke, I think she’s beautiful, but I’m not being arrogant when I say that a lot of boys lusted after me. A lot of men, too. Maybe because my boobs came in so young, maybe because my mom had a nice butt and the genes were on my side. Maybe because I liked the attention sometimes, so I learned how to do my hair just right and wear my clothes just right and talk to boys saying just the right words in just the right ways. One time in seventh grade—I was twelve years old—I turned in some homework late to Mr. K., and he told me he’d give me full credit because he liked my eyes.”
“You gave me this speech before,” I said. “You liked me because I didn’t stare at you all the time like some kind of creep. Well, not staring doesn’t change the fact that I’m a creep, that I’m worse than a creep. I didn’t stare at you because I had rules designed to mimic the behavior of a normal, well-adjusted person. I actually counted the times I looked at you, per day: five times at your face, two times at your chest, one time at your hips. Is this really what you want to hear? I had dreams about killing you and Brooke and half a dozen other girls in school. Recurring, nightly dreams about cutting you open and listening to you scream. I set those rules because if I didn’t, I’d start to obsess over you and then maybe I’d start following you, and then maybe I’d start thinking it was okay to act on some of those dreams. I’m not a good person, and you were a fool to ever think I was. And I was evil to ever make you think I was anything else.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” she said softly. “Do you remember the first time I called you?”
“It was … during the trial,” I said. “After Forman kidnapped me and the others, and Curt tried to convince everyone I was an ally instead of a victim.”
“My father heard you testify in court,” said Marci. “He told me what you did, that you saved those women’s lives and hurt the man who hurt them. Brooke turned away from you, but I called you the very next day.”
“Because you liked the danger?” I spat. “The thrill of thinking I might snap and attack someone who hurt you?”
“Maybe a little,” she said. “After all the crap I’ve had to deal with I admit that has some appeal. But the real truth is that I knew you were the safest boy in that whole town.”
“Have you not been listening—”
“Every girl gets leered at,” said Marci, her voice fierce, Brooke’s eyes practically glinting with inner steel. “Every girl gets harassed. In American high schools sixty percent of all girls get directly propositioned for some kind of sexual behavior—I did a report on it—and the only thing surprising about that number is that it isn’t higher. One in eight teenage girls will be groped, and one in fifteen will be raped, usually by someone they know and often by the boys they trusted enough to date. One in fifteen: that’s one girl in every class you ever had in school. I’ve listened to boys brag about what they’ve done to my friends, so loud and careless they didn’t even look to see who was close enough to hear them.” She shook her head. “I didn’t date you because you were dangerous, I dated you because you were the only boy in school who knew he was dangerous, and was actively trying to stop it.”
I looked back out at the highway and didn’t say anything.