“A kitchen knife,” he says quietly. “They’re saying it must have been swiped from the party.”
The hall sways. Brianne grabs hold of my arm, keeping me upright.
“Who—who do they think…?” she asks Ryan, her voice trailing off.
“Please tell me this means they found and locked up the killer for life,” I say, nearly choking on the words.
Ryan shakes his head.
“It was only forensics that determined the weapon. Now the cops are on a mad search for it. I just hope it leads them to the bastard who did this, and then the nightmare can be over.”
“It won’t ever be over for the people who loved him, though,” I say. “It’ll never be over for us.”
Ryan nods, reaching his arm over my shoulder.
“I know.”
Brianne raises an eyebrow at me, and I wince as it dawns on me what she’s thinking. You confided in this guy about you and Chace and kept me in the dark? I clearly have more explaining to do.
And then I sense someone else approaching. I feel the heat of her stare before I see her. I can smell the floral perfume, a scent I once loved that’s now turned sour. Do I dare look up?
I meet her eyes. There she is, Lana Rivera, her face pallid against the curtain of dark hair, her red-rimmed eyes flashing with fury. Ryan drops his arm from my shoulder, and even Brianne steps back an inch.
“Lana.” I reach my hand toward her—for what, I’m not sure. Maybe I want to end this; maybe I only have energy for one fight. But she flinches as if I’ve struck her. And then she spits on the floor in front of me.
“Hey!” The security guard springs into action, yanking her away from me. “I’m reporting you for this.”
She laughs bitterly, pushing the guard’s arm off her. And then she’s gone.
I turn to Ryan and Brianne, shivering.
“You guys probably don’t want to be seen with me.”
“Maybe not,” Ryan says, forcing a grim smile. “But Chace would want us to stick up for you.”
The security guard returns, planting himself at my side.
“You okay, miss? Do you feel up to going to class?”
“Of course not,” I say. “But I don’t have a choice, do I? So let’s just go.”
I thought my first day back after my accident last semester was as bad as it could get. Back then, I couldn’t imagine anything comparing to the gasps of classmates seeing my face for the first time, or the many conversations that cut short the second I walked past. But oh, was I wrong. At least in those days, people pretended to care about me. Today, the moment with Lana is just the tip of the iceberg. I might as well have a scarlet letter branded across my chest, or something worse. Because, as Brianne murmurs to me during Shakespearean Lit, there’s a sick rumor going around that I killed Chace out of anger when he refused to dump Lana for me. It’s ironically clear who must have started that rumor.
Brianne asks if I want to join her and the girls from orchestra at lunch, but I can tell she’s just being nice. She doesn’t actually want to sit with me in the eye of the storm, surrounded by all those blatant stares and pointed fingers. Who would?
“Thanks, but it’s okay,” I tell her. “I have so much work to catch up on. I think I’ll just go to the library.”
On my way there, at the top floor of Academics Hall, I run into Stephanie, Lana’s best friend—someone I once called a friend myself. She’s walking alongside the guy I remember as her on-again off-again fling from last year, Ben Forrester, and she pushes roughly past me, the sharp end of her binder jabbing me in the ribs.
“Hey, Ben, did you hear the cops are searching all the rooms in the school right now for the weapon?” she says loudly, clearly for my ears and not Ben’s. “I’d be real nervous if I were a certain Nicole Morgan.”
My cheeks flame. By the time I reach the library, I’ve lost my barely-there appetite, and I toss my sandwich. It feels wrong, anyway, to think of things like eating, drinking, studying, and sleeping—it’s not right that we should be going about the mundane details of our lives, when Chace doesn’t get to anymore.