"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.
THE RIGHT THING
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.
MY DEATH
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. "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."
CONFESSION
"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.