“We got Thomas in the backseat and we drove out to this farm on the outskirts of Easton. . . .”
Noelle trailed off. The muscles around her mouth twitched. She didn’t want to go on.
“What did you do to him?” I said. My voice sounded cold and strange, like it was coming from somewhere outside myself.
“All we wanted to do was humiliate him, Reed,” she said. “We just wanted him to feel how you felt that night, so he would understand.”
I couldn’t believe this was happening. That I was sitting here, in the room I had once so longed to step into, listening to . . . this.
“What did you
do,
Noelle?” I demanded.
“We . . . we . . .”
Noelle’s eyes filled with tears.
“We took his shirt off. . . .”
This wasn’t real. This was a nightmare. A horror movie. A horror movie about a nightmare that I was never going to wake up from.
“We—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Ariana said, stepping into my line of sight. “We took his shirt off and put this black mesh bag over his head. Something one of Kiran’s many purses had been wrapped in.”
“Versace,” Kiran whispered, still half out of it.
“Then we dragged him over to this old scarecrow pole and tied him up there.”
Ariana’s voice sounded crisp and detached, like she was telling a story about how she’d changed a tire to someone who was too stupid to understand the mechanics of it. Like people tied other people to scarecrow poles every day of the week.
The cruelty of it—the very incomprehensible callousness—brought bile into my mouth. I tried to swallow and glanced at Noelle. She wiped under her eyes and shook her hair back.
“We woke him up,” Noelle continued.
“How?” My voice wasn’t there, but my mouth formed the word.
“Josh had some bottled water in his car,” Ariana said. “We dumped it over his head and shoulders.”
A few tears squeezed from my eyes. “So he wakes up with a black bag over his head, tied to a pole,” I spat.
“Yes. I know. It sounds bad—”
“It sounds bad, Noelle?” I said, standing. “It
sounds
like you tortured him!”
“Shhhhh!” Noelle put her hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me down again. “We didn’t torture him. He was just a little scared, that’s all.”
“Oh, really?” The tears flowed freely now. “I wonder why.”
I thought of Thomas tied up out there in the middle of the night. Drugged. Confused. Unable to defend himself. He must have been
so
scared. So alone. Petrified. These people were evil. I was sitting here letting three evil people describe their crime to me. All the misery, all the confusion, all the bone-crushing sorrow of the past month and a half—it was all thanks to them.
“Reed, we did all of this for you,” Ariana said angrily. Angrily. As if she was annoyed by my horror. “We were trying to help you.”
“Gee, thanks, Ariana. So when did you start beating him to death?” Her eyes flashed, and for a split second I honestly thought she was going to strangle me. But then, Noelle stepped in front of her.
“Reed, get this through your head. We did not kill Thomas Pearson,” she said.
I stared up at her and I wanted to believe her. God help me, I really wanted to believe her.
“Then what did you do?” I managed to say.
“We taunted him,” Kiran said, her voice full of exhaustion and tears. “Disguised our voices and asked him how it felt to be
exposed. Humiliated. Asked him how he liked it. We wanted to freak him out, so we poked him with some branches and . . . and . . .”
“And Josh’s bat,” Noelle said.
My stomach heaved and my hand flew to my mouth.
“But that was all we did, Reed. I swear to you,” Noelle said. “We did
not
hurt him.”
Kiran looked up at us blearily. “He said he wanted to get down. That he couldn’t breathe in the hood—”
“But that wasn’t true,” Ariana said, crossing her arms over her chest. “There were so many tiny holes in that bag he could breathe just fine.”
“He was fine when we left him there,” Noelle said. “We even loosened the ropes so that he could get free. Once he sobered up some, he should have gotten out of there. He should have been able to find his way back to campus.”
“But he never came back,” Kiran said.
There was a long moment of silence. I had no idea what to say. What to believe. I just wanted to get out of there. Get away from these people. I just wanted to get away and be able to think.
“There was a while there when Taylor and I thought we might have been responsible,” Kiran said. “You know, maybe he really
couldn’t
breathe. Maybe—”
“But then they found the bat and determined that it was the murder weapon,” Noelle said. “That was when we knew for sure that it had nothing to do with us.”
“Somebody must have found him out there after we left,” Ariana mused. “Somebody who really didn’t like him.”
“Or somebody who was just psycho,” Kiran added.
“We could never have
killed
him, Reed,” Noelle said, her expression disgusted. “You know that, right?”
“Let’s say I believe you,” I said. “Let’s say I believe that you didn’t actually kill him. That doesn’t change what you just admitted to. How could you do something like that to another person? Drag him out of his home . . . scare him like that . . .
leave
him? What kind of people are you?”
“We’re the kind of people who care about you,” Ariana replied. “We’re the kind of people who would risk everything to do this so that you wouldn’t have to be disrespected and spat upon by the guy who was supposedly in love with you.”
My head shook. “I never asked you to do this. Don’t act like this was somehow a
good
thing. You took him out there. You left him there. Whether or not you swung the bat . . . it doesn’t even matter. If you hadn’t done what you did, he wouldn’t have been out there to get killed. He would still be alive right now!”
Tears spilled over onto my cheeks in waves. I grabbed up my coat and turned to go, but Ariana grabbed the hem and I nearly tripped.
“None of that changes the fact that we only had you in mind,” Noelle said, stepping in front of me. “You have no idea what the last few months have been like for us. We did all of this for you, Reed.”
“Stop saying that!” I shouted.
“But it’s the truth,” Noelle continued. “We did it for you. And now you’re going to do something for us.”
“Oh, am I?” I blurted sarcastically.
“Yes. You are. You are going to keep your mouth shut,” Noelle said. “You’re not ever going to tell another living soul what you saw, what we just told you.”
“No one will believe you even if you try,” Ariana added. “Noelle deleted the evidence.”
“Don’t forget who we are, Reed. What we can do,” Noelle reminded me. “If you go to the police or anyone else, you’re just going to sound like an insane liar with an active imagination. No one will ever believe that
we
could do something so heinous.”
I glared at her, wishing more than anything that she was wrong, but we both knew that she wasn’t.
No one would believe me. No one would care.
“I have to go,” I said finally.
Noelle smiled kindly, almost pityingly. “Go ahead. Get some rest. We’ll talk about this more later.”
I took my coat and walked out of the room, knowing that for once, Noelle was wrong. We weren’t going to talk about this later. I was never going to speak to any of them again for the rest of my life.
Natasha was passed out in her bed when I returned to our room. I moved slowly to my bed and sat down, then turned and lay back on the pillows, letting my coat slide to the floor. I could feel this thing looming over me. This huge, thick, dark shadow. It was the truth of Thomas’s death. The truth of who these people were. The truth of the people I had worshipped, the people I had followed, the people I had admired more than anyone I’d ever known.
The shadow started to descend. If I let it overtake me, there would be no turning back. I had to do something. I had to keep it from swallowing me whole.
I grabbed my coat off the floor. Every inch of me shook as I dug in my pocket for my cell phone. It wasn’t there. I checked the left pocket. Empty. I could have sworn I’d shoved it back in my right pocket earlier. I grabbed my purse. Nothing but a lip gloss and some blotting papers. I checked the floor. The bed. My desk. All the while, my mind was racing and my blood throttled through my veins.
I turned around. Natasha’s phone was on her desk. I crossed the room in two steps and grabbed it. I was shaking so hard at this point, I was sure I’d never be able to dial.
Deep breath, Reed. You’re doing the right thing.
I opened the phone. No signal.
Of course no signal. Natasha never got a signal in the room. I grabbed up my coat again, shoved my arms into the sleeves. I looked down at my high-heeled sling-backs, which had been slapping against my heels like flip-flops all night. I slipped out of them. My feet were going to freeze, but I didn’t intend to be on the roof for long. I opened the door. I thought about not closing it behind me to avoid the noise, but if anyone happened to peek out into the hallway, they’d realize I’d gone. Ever so slowly, I pulled the door closed, then released the knob with a tiny click. I tiptoed down the darkened hallway, past Noelle and Ariana’s room, and over to the stairwell. Another door. Another click. And then I was flying up the stairs toward the sky.
Outside, the rooftop was grainy under my feet. And very, very cold. I hugged my coat closer to my body and lifted the phone. That was when I realized I didn’t have the number for the local police. Dammit. Should I call 911? Did this qualify as an immediate emergency? I took a chance and checked Natasha’s contacts. God bless Miss Responsible. She had the Easton Police Department programmed in.
I hit the send button and held the phone to my ear. As it rang, I could feel my knees shaking. I walked over toward the scalloped
wall that lined the roof and looked out across the campus. There was Ketlar, where Thomas once lived and where Josh now slept. There was the quad, where I had first seen Thomas, almost tripped over him, on my first day of school. There was the bench where we’d sat that day he’d fought with Noelle—the day I first realized how deeply I understood him. There was Gwendolyn Hall, where Thomas and I used to meet when we wanted to be alone together in the middle of the day.
On the other end of the phone, a female voice greeted me.
“Easton Police Department, how may I direct your call?”
My grip on the phone tightened. My heart flew to my throat. “Detective Hauer, please.”
“One moment, I’ll have to track him down.”
There was a click and the line started to ring again. Another click. I opened my mouth to speak. To finally let it all out.
And the phone was ripped out of my hand.
I whirled around. Ariana stood before me, Natasha’s phone in her hand. A grim smile contorted her beautiful face.
“What are you doing?” I said, grabbing for the phone.
Ariana shoved me hard with her free hand. I stumbled backward and slammed into the wall as I fell.
“Detective Hauer,” a faint voice said. “Hello?”
I tried to suck in air. Tried to cry out for help. Nothing. I’d had the wind knocked out of me before on the playing field. Knew in some recess of my brain that it would come back soon. But it didn’t help. I was sick with fear.
“Hello?”
Ariana brought the phone to her ear.
“Oh my God! You have to help me!” she cried, staring coolly into my eyes the entire time. “It’s my friend, Reed! She . . . she jumped from the roof of our dorm!” She let out a wail. “I think she’s dead! Come! Quickly! Please!”
I could hear Detective Hauer sputtering questions at her as she slowly closed the phone. As the terror clutched my gut, my throat finally opened and my breath came back. I doubled over on the ground, coughing and gasping, even as I was paralyzed with fear.
Ariana placed the phone in her pocket and withdrew a small blade with a pearl handle. She stepped toward me and crouched down, her knees together, ever the lady. The blade was directly beneath my chin. One quick swipe and she could end me.
“Did you really think I was going to let you call the police?” she asked, the venom dripping from her teeth.
She grabbed my coat at the collar and yanked me up off the ground with one quick motion. Her strength astounded me. I tried to throw her arm off, but she just clutched me harder, twisting the collar up under my chin until I could hardly breathe. All the while the knife was there. Right there.
“You did it, didn’t you?” I said with a cough. “You killed Thomas.”
Ariana’s smile widened and she laughed. Slowly she turned me and pushed me backward. I struggled for traction, but my cold feet found only silt.
“No, Reed.
You
killed Thomas,” she said. “I have your confession right in my pocket. In your suicide note.” A lump the size of a soccer ball lodged in my throat. “It seems poor little Pennsylvania Reed just wasn’t cut out for the lifestyle of debauchery here at Easton. According to your note, you snapped once when your perfect new boyfriend cheated on you—just like he did on every other
girl he ever dated. That’s what rich boys do, after all. And now you’ve snapped again, from the guilt, of course. But this time, you’re just taking your own life.”
“No one will believe that,” I sputtered.
“Why not? You signed the note,” Ariana said placidly. “I’m very good at forging signatures—did I ever tell you that?”
I twisted awkwardly and looked over my shoulder. She was taking me to the part of the wall on this side of the building where the wall had crumbled. It was far lower here than anywhere else on the roof. All the easier to shove me over.
I was about to die. I was about to
die
.
I grabbed at Ariana’s coat sleeve, struggling to pull her off of me. She flipped the blade around so that the handle was hidden in her fist, then slammed that fist right across my jaw. My head whipped sideways and I saw actual stars.