“I can’t.” I’m racing after Tiffany. “Please. Get the police!”
Tiffany slides into Mae’s room and slams the door behind her. I grab the handle, but there’s blood on my hands, and I can’t turn the knob. I grasp it with my shirt and twist and throw it open — Tiffany is standing beside the bed, and she’s retrieved the gun. The barrel points at Mae’s head.
“Hand me your phone,” she says.
When I hesitate, she waggles the gun. I retrieve my phone from the floor, pass it to her. She looks at the screen and snorts.
“No Wi-Fi,” she says. “You’re such a liar.” She shoves my phone into her back pocket. “If it’s any consolation, you should be glad you couldn’t send that recording. Otherwise, I’d have had to make you kill Jesse, too. Now I just need to hide until the cops break down the door and find you beside your aunt’s dead body. Bring that knife here. You have work to do, Skye.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion.” She turns the gun on me. “Step over here —”
“No.”
“I don’t know what new trick you think you have up your sleeve, Skye. Or are you just stalling until Jesse gets help? I’m not going to give you that much time. You have thirty seconds —”
“Shoot me.”
“If you’re calling my bluff, that’s a very stupid move.”
“Is it?” I step toward her. “There’s no one here to pull that trigger for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You. The great Oz. The mastermind behind the screen. That’s what you think you are. Do you know what you really are?” Another step. “A coward.”
“Are you actually insulting me when I have a gun in my hand?”
“You don’t pull triggers, Tiffany. You make other people do it. You have no idea what it’s like to kill someone. You sneer at Isaac for shooting himself. You sneer at Owen for running away. Yes, they broke… because you broke them. You made them do what you couldn’t do yourself, and then you sneered when they couldn’t hack it. That is the worst kind of coward.”
“Do you really think this is a good idea, Skye? Goading me —”
“Fire the gun.”
“You have ten seconds —”
“Stop talking. Pull the trigger.”
Her finger twitches.
She glares at me. “Five —”
“Pull it, you psychotic bitch.”
Her finger twitches. But that’s all it does. It twitches, and her jaw sets, as if she’s struggling to pull that trigger.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “It’s not that hard. Isaac did it. Over and over he did it. For you.”
She grits her teeth, and she closes her eyes, and then she pulls the trigger.
The gun clicks. She pulls it again, but I’m already leaping at her. I drive the knife into her, just enough to make her drop the weapon and try to grab me, but I have her by the wrist, and I’m wrenching her around, and two seconds later, I have her on her knees, arm pinned behind her head.
“You emptied the gun,” she manages to snarl through clenched teeth.
“Duh. You knew I didn’t stay behind to send that recording. What did you think I was actually doing? I guess I’ll have to actually thank my dad for teaching me to how to load them. Now get on your stomach and put your hands behind your back.”
Skye
I haul Tiffany into the bathroom. Even if she’s tied up, I’m not leaving her with Mae. I open the front door, and Jesse’s there, and the police follow, and for once, there’s no need to explain. Like Jesse, the police had already begun to suspect Tiffany’s “kidnapping” story. Come morning, they would have been questioning her again. I just bumped up the timeline.
Mae regains consciousness at the hospital. By the time we leave, the police have found Owen, hiding in a motel twenty miles away. I was right about the argument. He hadn’t planned to stab me. He only bought the knife to scare me. The plan had been to knock me out, “kidnap” Tiffany and blame Jesse and me for it. That’s why the police had been called about Jesse having bomb-making materials – so they’d search and find evidence that he’d helped abduct Tiffany. Except Owen planted the evidence in his locker – easy for a custodian to do – and the police hadn’t checked that. They hadn’t even believed Tiffany had been kidnapped. That’s when Owen had enough. After school, he came home and told her he was done. They fought, and he took off.
Owen and Tiffany had been dating for months. They’d been hiding their relationship until she graduated, so he wouldn’t lose his job. Then I came along, and they found something new to bond over.
As for Vicki, she’d known nothing of Tiffany’s involvement. To her, Owen was just trying to get me out of town, and she’d supplied the tech.
And the three seniors who’d hassled Jesse and me? They had nothing to do with any of it. They were just part of life – everyday assholes with no goal larger than stirring up trouble.
In light of Tiffany’s testimony, the investigation into the shooting will be reopened. Will that prove, beyond a doubt, that Luka was innocent? No. Nothing can.
With Tiffany’s prior statement invalidated – and her confession on my phone – we only lose proof that Luka was involved in the shooting. The police will make a statement. Yes, that means they shot an innocent teenage boy, but under the circumstances, even I can’t blame them. They were expecting a kid with a gun. Luka was a kid with a gun. He failed to put it down fast enough – confused or surprised or just slow to react. A tragic mistake.
The blame, ultimately, lies with Tiffany. She set the shooting in motion. She is responsible for my brother’s death, as certainly as if she shot him herself. I will make sure she goes to jail for it. I will take the stand against her. I will sit in that courtroom every day of her trial. She will pay for what she did to Luka. To all of the victims.
My brother can never be truly vindicated. Some people will still believe he intended to join Isaac and Harley in the North Hampton shooting. I accept that. What matters is that I have my answers, and I know they’re the truth because I know my brother.
Three weeks later, Jesse is leading me someplace. I have no idea where. I’m blindfolded. It doesn’t smell good – I can say that much. It stinks of moldy carpet and body odor and rancid butter and an industrial-strength cleaner that still can’t get rid of the rest.
When he finally removes my blindfold…
“A movie theater?” I say, looking around.
I’m standing at the front of an auditorium. An empty one – not surprising given that it’s ten o’clock on a Saturday morning.
“Private screening,” he says.
“Of what?”
He waves to someone in a projection booth. The lights dim. The screen jiggles to life, showing an image of an empty room. Then a guy walks in.
“Oh my God!” I say. “Is that Duncan? From All-Time Five? Well, I mean, he was with ATF, until he left the group to —”
Jesse lifts a finger to his mouth. Duncan turns to the camera and says, “Hey, Skye,” and I squeal. An honest-to-God tween-girl squeal that has Jesse choking on a laugh as I slug him in the arm with, “It’s Duncan! He said my name!”
On the screen, Duncan continues. “Jesse tells me you guys were supposed to go to our concert three years ago, on your first date. I’m sorry you missed it, but I hear you two finally reconnected, which is awesome. And since you didn’t make the concert, he’s bringing it to you.”
The screen goes dark, and then it lights up again, the first strains of music drowned out by the screaming of the crowd.
The screaming swells as the band walks onto the stage. I grab Jesse’s arm. “It’s the concert. And Duncan. How did you get him to do that?”
“Seems his solo career isn’t doing so hot. I hired him. Pretty cheap, actually —”
I slap my hand over his mouth. “Ack, no!”
He tugs my hand away. “Sorry. Uh, I… I contacted him and told him our story, and he happily agreed. Refused to accept payment. He wanted to do it for you.”