“If you keep fighting me, this is going to get messy,” Ariana said through the ringing in my ears. “Is that what you want?”
Messy. Blood. My blood. Thomas’s blood. Ariana had killed him. She’d taken that bat and she’d killed him. Suddenly my body went limp. My legs buckled from underneath me and I hit the ground, weeping.
“You killed him,” I wailed, tears streaming down my face. “Why? Why did you kill him?”
Ariana was crouched down next to me, still holding onto my coat. She rolled her eyes. “Who knew you were such a drama queen?”
She tried to yank me up again, but I used my body weight against her and only slid back a few inches. “Tell me! You at least owe me that. You’re going to kill me anyway, right? So just tell me!”
“Shut up!”
She struggled to lift me again, managed to slide me back far enough so that my back slammed into the low wall. My head collided with the brick and I winced.
“No. Just tell me why, Ariana!” I shouted. “Why did Thomas have to die?
Why?
Why did you take him away from me?”
Something shifted in Ariana’s eyes. I could see all the blood rushing in under her milky white skin.
“Why did
I
take him from
you
!?”
With one, huge burst of adrenaline, she yanked me to my feet again. I had just made one huge mistake.
“I didn’t take him from you! You took him from me!” she shouted.
“What are you talking about?” I whispered without meaning to. “You hated him. All the Billings Girls hated him.”
“He loved
me,
Reed!” Ariana shouted, as though I hadn’t said anything at all. “Me! We were supposed to be together this year! For real! No more sneaking around behind his girlfriends’ backs. No more coming in second to all his ridiculous whores! He promised me! He promised me that when we got back to school we would tell everyone. He
promised
! But then
you
had to come along! You came here and you seduced him!”
She nudged me back toward the wall. The fear was paralyzing.
I glanced behind me to see how close I was to my death. My eyes landed on Bradwell. My first dorm here at Easton. The place I’d been so quick to leave in favor of Billings. If only I’d just stayed there, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe I would have been cozily asleep in my bed in Bradwell right now. But instead I was here on the roof, looking down, about to die.
And then, the rooftop door opened silently behind Ariana. Noelle. For a split second, Noelle’s eyes locked with mine. I was just about to scream out for her help when she shook her head. She emerged the rest of the way and I saw that she had a lacrosse stick in her other hand.
“I should have just killed you in the first place,” Ariana said through her teeth. “If I had just killed
you
, then Thomas and I would be together now. Together. Like we were supposed to be.”
Noelle crept across the rooftop, trying not to make a noise. From the corner of my eye I saw the flashing blue and red lights of the Easton police cars. So far below. So very, very far below.
Ariana backed me up, holding the knife point to my chin. The ground loomed beneath me. My blood rushed through my ears, and all I could hear was the beating of my heart. Just two more seconds. If I could just stall for two more seconds. But what could I do?
“Thomas did love you, Ariana,” I blurted. “He told me he did.”
Her eyes immediately softened and her jaw dropped. “He did?” Her voice sounded hopeful, and suddenly eerily sweet.
And Noelle slammed the lacrosse stick down across her back.
Ariana fell to her knees and dropped the knife. I grabbed it
without even thinking and moved away from the edge of the roof. Moved behind Noelle. My heart was pounding so hard, every beat hurt. But that was because I was alive. I was still alive.
On the floor, Ariana rolled over onto her back. “Noelle,” she said. She sounded confused, like she couldn’t quite figure out what Noelle was doing up there with us.
“I knew it,” Noelle said, narrowing her eyes. “I knew it.”
“You don’t know anything,” Ariana spat, pushing herself up off the ground.
Noelle reached out and took the knife from my hands, seeming perfectly in control.
“I knew you were up here, didn’t I?” Noelle challenged. “I saw you lift Reed’s phone from her coat earlier. You knew she’d have to use Natasha’s crap phone, and you knew that meant coming up here, where she’d be vulnerable.”
Ariana stood there silently. I instinctively took a step back.
“And I also knew you were in love with him,” Noelle continued. “Didn’t keep that particular secret very well.”
A flash of confusion crossed Ariana’s face. “H—how?”
“All those pathetic love poems on your computer, Ariana? Please. You saved them under ‘TP.’ Not the hardest code to break.”
I brought my hand to my head. Ariana’s computer. Those files with initials for titles. Had there been a TP among them? If I’d just
opened that file back then . . . could I have somehow prevented all of this?
“You were always pushing to get Reed into the house,” Noelle continued. “Saying we could change the rules for the right girl, setting up Leanne. What was that, Ariana? A keep-your-enemies-closer thing?”
I took a deep breath. It was all so insane. All so completely, totally, beyond insane—but at the same time, it all made such perfect sense.
“Oh, Noelle. You’re so very smart,” Ariana said, and choked out a laugh. “But you have no proof of anything, so you can drop the high-and-mighty act now. I think we should all go back downstairs and forget that any of this ever happened.”
And then
I
almost laughed.
“Come on, Ariana. Indulge an old friend,” Noelle said. “Let me tell you what I think happened that night.”
“Fine,” Ariana said, slowly crossing her arms over her chest. She glanced at me, then returned her gaze to Noelle. “Go ahead.” Her attempts to sound calm were no longer working.
“I think that after we came back to school, you lifted Josh’s keys from my desk and went back out to the cornfield,” Noelle said. “I think you were pissed off at Thomas for being so obviously head over heels for Reed, so you took Josh’s bat out of the back of the car and attacked Thomas. You just couldn’t stand that he was with yet another girl who wasn’t you. So you killed him and then you forged that note to Reed to throw her off your trail.”
My stomach clenched. The note. The goodbye note Thomas had left me the night he’d disappeared, in which he’d said he was going somewhere to recover. Thomas hadn’t written that note. He had never said goodbye to me. Had never had the chance. “You’re already wrong,” Ariana said with a smile. A smile. I could have killed her right then myself.
“Please. We all know that’s what happened,” Noelle said.
Ariana just stared at her with those icy blue eyes. I felt a chill rush right through me. Noelle dropped her lacrosse stick on the floor and stepped forward with the knife. She held the point right beneath Ariana’s nose.
“I have spent this entire semester covering your ass, Ariana,” she said. “It’s over now. I think I deserve to know the truth.”
Ariana smirked. “Or what, you’re gonna kill me?”
In one swift motion, Noelle pressed the knife blade to Ariana’s throat. Ariana gasped.
“No!” I shouted automatically.
I could see the indentation of the blade in Ariana’s skin. For the first time since I’d known her, there was fear in Ariana’s eyes.
“Now we know what
you’re
capable of,” Noelle said quietly. “Do you really want to find out what
I’m
capable of?”
One fat tear rolled out of Ariana’s eye and down her cheek. “Okay,” she said. And then she breathed a heavy sigh. “I’ll tell you.”
Noelle stepped back and Ariana covered her face with her gloved hands. Her tiny shoulders shook as she sobbed, her cries muffled by her gloves. Somewhere on campus a door slammed.
“It wasn’t like that!” Ariana cried, letting her hands drop. “I didn’t just attack him! I went back to untie him. To let him go. I loved him, Noelle. I
loved
him. I couldn’t just
leave
him there in the cold all scared and alone. I loved him!”
“Oh, really? Then how the hell did he end up with his head bashed in?” Noelle demanded.
“He
made
me do it!” Ariana wailed. “When I took his hood off, he freaked out, screaming and yelling. He spat in my face. He was calling me a whore. Saying I would never be good enough for him. He was saying he was going to turn us in. I couldn’t have that! I couldn’t let him do that to us!”
She was sobbing as she shouted. Her face was blotched and red and soaked with tears. She held her stomach and bent at the waist as she gasped for breath.
“So you killed him,” Noelle said flatly.
“No! I . . . the . . . the bat was still on the ground, and I was just going to threaten him with it. That was all! I never meant to hurt him. But he just kept screaming at me and calling me these filthy things and I . . . I had to make him stop! I had to make him stop!”
Ariana doubled over, incoherent. She braced one hand against the ground for a moment, but then she just collapsed. She just collapsed at our feet and cried. Behind us, the door opened. Detective Hauer emerged with his gun drawn, followed by three men in uniform. His eyes were relieved when he saw me.
“It’s your fault, Reed,” Ariana choked out, sputtering at the
floor. “I killed Thomas, but you made me! Why did you have to come here? You ruined everything!”
That was all Detective Hauer needed to hear. He brushed past me and Noelle and grabbed Ariana around the forearm, hauling her to her feet.
“Ariana Osgood, you are under arrest for the murder of Thomas Pearson,” he said, as one of the officers came forward to handcuff her. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. . . .”
Ariana continued to weep as they walked her past us. She tipped her face forward and her blond hair fell over her cheeks, hiding her from sight. Ariana was the first of the Billings Girls to really talk to me. She had been my first friend here. The skin on my face prickled and the rest of me felt numb. Two hours ago we were all laughing and chatting in the limousine, warm and cocooned together. Friends.
“What just happened?” I said to Noelle, tears spilling down my cheeks. “What just happened?”
She stepped forward and put her arms around me. I crumpled into her, my whole body shaking with sobs.
“It’s okay, Reed,” she said quietly. “Everything’s going to be okay now.”
“Miss? Could I have the knife, please?”
One of the officers held his hand out to Noelle. We both looked up. I hadn’t even realized she was still holding it. She turned it so that the handle was forward and handed it to him. He nodded his thanks.
“Anyone want to try explaining what happened up here?” he asked.
I dried my eyes with my hands. Noelle and I looked at one another. Who knew where or how to start? Then Detective Hauer returned and dismissed the other officers. They scurried off obediently.
“Good to see you alive,” he told me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Are you all right, Ms. Lange?” he asked Noelle.
She nodded. “You’re going to want to arrest me, too, Detective,” she said. Her voice had this odd detachment I had never heard before. Like she was talking to us from some other plane. “I have a confession to make as well.”
His eyebrows shot up.
“Noelle—”
“No, Reed. It’s enough. I’ve had enough. It’s time to end this,” she said. She looked at Detective Hauer and her playful smile lit her eyes for a brief moment. “Got any more handcuffs?”
He eyed her warily but then placed his hand on her back. “I don’t think that will be necessary just yet,” he said. “Why don’t we all go back to the station and you two can tell me the whole story? Then we can decide who gets cuffs and who doesn’t.”
Noelle took a deep breath and shook her hair back. Always poised. “Sounds fair to me.”
She walked ahead of us, and Detective Hauer touched my arm lightly, holding me back. “You gonna help me sort all this out?” he asked.
I looked around the roof, at the spot where Ariana had knocked the wind out of me, the crumbling wall where I’d almost met my death, the lacrosse stick that had saved me, still lying on the floor. The hands that had killed Thomas had almost killed me tonight.
The hands that had killed Thomas.
I looked into the detective’s eyes and whispered, “I’ll try.”
I was exempt from finals. When everything was taken into account—one boyfriend dead, another falsely accused, and an attempt on my life by a supposed friend—it all resulted in me finally being deemed a charity case. So on that Monday morning, when the rest of my history class was scratching away in their blue books, I was packing my bags.
The room looked bare without my stuff. My sheets shoved into my laundry bag, my books stuffed into my backpack. By leaving everything the Billings Girls had ever given me in the closet, I was able to fit all my clothes back in the one suitcase I’d brought with me in September. I wanted to start over. And if that meant going back to being the old me—cotton instead of cashmere, nylon instead of silk—I was fine with that.
I picked up my cell phone and stared at the blank screen. I’d taken it back from Noelle and Ariana’s room the day before, but I’d yet to turn it on. There would be messages on there, I knew. From
my brother, whom I’d e-mailed. From my dad, whom I’d asked my brother to talk to. From Josh? Maybe. Hopefully. But part of the reason I hadn’t turned it on was that I didn’t want to find out if he hadn’t called.
My digital watch beeped, startling me. The history exam was over, which meant it was time to meet Constance for lunch. I pushed myself off my bare bed, pocketed the phone, and paused at the door. Would I ever see this room again? I had no idea. There was a decision to be made about my future, but I didn’t feel remotely ready to make it yet. As I looked around the room, though, I felt nothing at the thought of leaving it behind forever. Not that I was surprised. Since wrapping up my interview with the police on Sunday morning, I’d been numb. I’d barely felt anything at all.