AMANDA
TUESDAY, JANUARY 23
“Hey, man. Look, there’s a problem.”
Ben’s on the phone with Carter, but I’m not really listening. I’m not really feeling much of anything, which probably means I’m in shock. Not gun-to-your-head shock, although that happened. But Carter-is-Private shock. Carter-is-dangerous shock.
I grab Rosalie’s hand, pull her aside. I have to say the words out loud. “Carter is Private.”
She nods slowly. “Why did these guys get involved?”
“David just needs the cash. I’m sure Ben thought he was earning a bump up the social ladder by doing Carter’s bidding. Or repaying him for all his goodwill.” My mind is still reeling, but everything’s starting to pull together. “Carter gave Ben that gun,” I say. “On purpose.”
Rosalie frowns. Her headlamp is shining right in my eyes.
“He’s coming here.” Ben’s off the phone, standing in front of us. “I told him the deal was off, that Amanda knew, and he kind of freaked.”
“Let’s get out of here.” David holds up the keys to his truck. “I’ll drive you girls home.”
“You’re bat-shit if you think I’m getting back in your truck.” No chance. I slip my feet back into my heels, but I’m not going anywhere.
“Look, I don’t blame you for not trusting me, but believe me you don’t want to wait around for Carter. You can drive. Okay?”
“No, thanks,” Rosalie says. “Amanda’s car’s two blocks away. We’ll be fine. But we need your phone.”
“What?” Ben asks.
“Phone.” She holds out her hand. “We don’t have one, so give me yours. And clear your password.”
David nods toward Ben’s Android. He adjusts his settings, then extends it out to Rosalie. “Now get out of here,” she says.
“Can I, um . . .” Ben reaches toward the gun, which Rosalie’s still holding in her other hand.
“Get out of here,” she snaps. He pulls back his hand. Ben and David stare at each other, clearly at a loss.
“Look,” Rosalie continues. “No promises that we’re not reporting this. But you need to leave. So get in your truck, and go home. Understood?”
A minute later, the guys are gone.
“Thanks. You’re kind of my hero.” And I mean it. Rosalie Bell is the most bad-ass person I know.
She smiles. “No problem. Now let’s go.” She slips the phone and gun into her messenger bag and holds her hand out toward me.
“Hold on.” Things are moving too fast. “I need some air. I just need a minute to think.”
At first, I think she’s going to protest, grab my hand and drag me back to CVS. But I must look as messed up as I’m feeling because she nods and lets me step outside, into the moonlight. I draw in a big gulp of cold night air and try to clear the fog out of my brain. The truth is in there, submerged, and I need to claw my way through, drag it into the light.
I squeeze my eyes shut and start with New Year’s. Wouldn’t you look better without a cheater on your arm? Carter sent that text. A piece of truth. I hold it up to my mind’s eye, examine it. Carter was warning me about himself. Because he thought . . . I try to see that night through his eyes. He thought history would repeat itself, that I’d break up with him again, just like I had after the apple-cheeked freshman. That night, Carter must have thought this would be easy—I’d dump him, he’d be free, and I’d be the one to shoulder all the Kelly-Shaw blame. The thought makes something inside me collapse, a table crashing to the floor. All this time, Carter was setting me up.
Did he ever really love me?
Almost as painful is the realization that he assumed winning would be a snap. When the anonymous texts didn’t work, he stepped it up. One by one, snapshots of truth emerge from the fog, show themselves for what they are: The bloodbath at my locker. Carter. The January 24th ultimatum. Carter. The photos he’d grabbed from Trina’s memory card, scattered in the rock garden. All Carter.
But why? I breathe in and out and wade deeper into the fog. Examining the past three weeks is like staring at one image superimposed on another. On top, there’s the boy he let me see: Carter with his arm around me, pulling me close, smiling wide. Carter punching the whiteboard after someone messed up my locker. Carter brimming with promises at Verde, making me believe we could really have a fresh start. Blameless, Loganville’s golden boy. If I’d given in, he would have stayed that way. Flawless and charming, betrayed by Amanda.
The first image is an act, a mirage. The fog parts, and underneath I see the true Carter for the first time: liar, coward. A trapped animal, desperate to escape from his life and keep his reputation intact.
I let my thoughts travel then to Ben, and the fog lifts a bit more. You’d have to be really down on yourself to do Carter’s dirty work, and I have to admit I’m more than a little to blame for Ben’s banged-up self-esteem.
I press my fingertips into my temples, and Ben’s role comes into focus. It probably started that day at the track—Carter wasn’t getting anywhere, so he brought Ben on board, just to keep tabs on me. I was distracted by David, brain sluggish with pot, but if I had thought hard about it, I would have remembered Ben was there, inside the school. Saturday debate practice. I can see him now, breaking away from mock trials to look out the window. Texting Carter, letting him know. Amanda’s on the field—looks like she’s taking a nap?
Then Ben behind the wheel in the snowstorm—because I was right about that, I’m sure of it—but not because he had it in for Carter. Because Carter paid him, told him to stage the accident so he could play the victim. He thought Rosalie would come crawling back to him out of pity, not that it worked. Ben buying the second burner for Carter while he was in the hospital. Ben spying on me at the gala, drugging my drink. Ben doing it for Carter.
Because in the end, it was all Carter.
The fog is almost cleared away. I’m on the edge of understanding everything, but when I think about Private and I think about the boy I used to love, who I thought loved me, the two images hold stubborn at the edges of my sight. Even now, I can’t quite make them merge.
A Mercedes passes in front of the high school and pauses at the light. Carter’s here. I spin around and run back inside.
“I need to talk to him. Alone,” I say. Rosalie’s sitting on the metal folding chair in the middle of the floor, waiting for me. “Give me the gun.”
“What?” She hugs her messenger bag protectively to her chest.
“He’s about to pull into the lot; he’ll be inside in a sec. I’m only going to talk to him, promise. But give me the gun, just in case.”
For a moment, Rosalie studies my face. Then she reaches into her bag and pulls it out.
“Just give it to me,” I insist.
“You don’t need to do this tonight,” she says. “Why not wait until tomorrow. Broad daylight, public place? Right now, you don’t know how he’ll be.”
“He’ll be angry,” I say. “And that’s what I need. Tomorrow, Carter’s going to find a way to explain this all away. Right now is my only shot at the truth.” I cringe at the word shot on my tongue, but Rosalie doesn’t seem to notice. A few yards to our left, a car door slams.
“Fine.” She places the gun in my hand, still looking wary. “But I am not leaving you alone with him. I’ll be right outside. Leave the door propped open.”
“Obviously,” I agree.
“If you need backup, say something about Culver Ridge.”
“And then what?” I ask.
“And then I’m calling nine-one-one.”
Rosalie switches off her headlamp and tosses it to me, then she slips out the door and into the darkness. I wrap the headlamp’s band around my wrist. The skin is still sore where the plastic dug into it, but I am not putting that thing on my head. I walk over to the open doorway and stand next to it, out of sight. My back presses into the wall, and for just a second, I’m strangely calm. I wait for the sound of my heartbeat to fill my ears, but there’s nothing. Then two shoes crunch across the gravel outside, and he’s here.
“Hello?” Carter steps through the door, into the gym. I still have the lamp switched off, so except for the light spilling in from outside, it’s dark in here. I let him walk a few feet inside, then I move into the open doorway, blocking it, allowing the light to black me out in silhouette. He spins around.
“Amanda?” he asks. “Where’s David and Ben?”
I ignore him. I switch on the headlamp, hold my wrist up so it’s shining right in his face.
Carter flinches. “Is that my gun?”
I’m not going to use it. I would never use it. But it’s his turn to feel scared.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I thought it was your dad’s.” My mind flashes to Mr. Shaw’s antique gun room. Carter had an entire gallery of deadly options at his disposal. I shudder.
“Give me the gun, Amanda. You’re going to hurt yourself.” He takes a step forward, and I raise it up, point it right at his chest.
“No.” A surge of adrenaline rushes through me. I’m in control. “Here’s how this is going to go. I’m going to ask the questions, and you’re going to answer. Got it?”
Carter looks like he wants to protest, but he crosses his arms across his chest instead. His uninjured arm cradles the one in a cast. “Fine.”
“Admit you sent those texts. The ones from the blocked number.”
“You’re being crazy, Amanda. I’d really feel better if that thing wasn’t pointed at me,” Carter says.
My hand wavers. If anyone has a right to throw around stigmatizing diagnoses in this scenario, I’m pretty sure it’s not Carter. But the gun is heavy and strange in my hand. Maybe I’m not being rational. I am pointing a gun at Carter.
“Fine.” I lower it to my side, but don’t release my grip. “But you still need to answer.”
For a moment, he’s silent. My hand twitches, and his eyes lock in on the gun. Suddenly it hits me. When he gave it to Ben, he knew it was loaded—but he told Ben it wasn’t. He actually hoped Ben would shoot me. The realization rockets through every muscle in my body, turning them to rubber bands, and it’s all I can do to keep from buckling over.
“I haven’t wanted to be Carter Shaw for a while now,” he says finally. I force myself to stand tall, meet his eyes. “It’s not personal, Amanda. This is so much bigger than you.” He laughs, but there’s no humor there. I shiver. “So yeah, I sent those texts.”
“You could have come to me, Carter. We could have talked about this.” My empty hand reaches up to my neck, dances across the skin where his heart used to be.
“Talk to you?” he spits. “You must be kidding. You have this whole plan for us. You have since we were kids.”
“It wasn’t just my plan,” I spit back. The fact that I don’t even want that anymore is beside the point. “It was everyone’s plan. Mine, yours, our parents.”
Carter shrugs. His face is blank, cold. “So you see? I couldn’t just break up with you, or tell Winston I didn’t want to work for him anymore. Gracefully bowing out of my future wasn’t exactly an option.”
I think about my mother’s expectations, and for a second, I feel a stab of sympathy for Carter. In a way, I understand better than anyone. But then I remember everything he did to me, the loaded gun he gave Ben, how he hoped Ben would use it, and my hand tightens around the handle. “So you made up a stalker to scare me into dumping you in front of everyone? I’d look like the bad guy, and you’d be the victim. And who would blame you for not going back to me after that.” All my synapses are firing now. There’s no fog, not anymore. This all makes perfect, sick sense. “And then what? You knew I was never going to keep quiet about what you did to me tonight. So you gave Ben those documents, whatever you have on our parents, and you told him to blackmail me into shutting up. You were just going to throw our families under the bus if I talked. Light a fire, get out, watch everyone around you burn.”
He shrugs. “You have to admit, it was a pretty good plan.”
“You harassed me!” I practically shout. “You had me kidnapped!”
Carter’s eyes narrow. “It’s your fault it went this far, Amanda. I tipped you off about Rosalie back on New Year’s. But then you had to resist, didn’t you? You pushed me. I gave you so many chances. You brought tonight on yourself.”
His words land like a slap. I want to scream, you’re wrong, and I’m not the one to blame here, but I should have known better than to leave the Shaws’ house tonight. To fall for his kidnapping scheme after I fell for the drugged champagne last night. I’ll give him that, but that’s the last thing I’ll ever give him. As I stare at Carter, the figure of Private and the figure of my boyfriend blur before my eyes. The image leaves me cold.
“Let’s just go home, okay?” he says, voice softening. “We’ll clean your prints off the gun, pretend this never happened.” He’s almost cooing. He walks toward me, slowly, his hand reaching out. “No one ever has to know about any of this. You do understand how bad it would look for me, if people found out? How bad this would look for you? Just give me the gun, and we’ll leave.”
He’s three feet away from me now. One more step, and he could make a swipe for the gun. His voice is gentle, but there’s something not right about his face—it’s hard, like stone. I step back.
“You sure you want to go home?” I ask. My heart starts pounding in my chest. “I thought you’d want to drive out to Culver Ridge. You know, make things right with Rosalie. In Culver Ridge.” I repeat our signal, louder this time, but I can’t hear anything outside, where Rosalie should be.
“Give me the gun, Amanda.” Carter steps forward, reaches for it. I yank it back, away from him, but he grabs my other arm above the elbow and squeezes tight.
“You’re hurting me.” I stare right into his eyes, but there’s no softness there. Only cold. Where ambition and desire—for me, for our future—used to shine, now there’s only hate. Something inside him has snapped. My skin breaks into gooseflesh. As he stares back at me, a fresh realization dawns across his face. There’s no way out of this for him now. No easy departure from me or his future. There’s just Carter, me, and a gun.
He twists my arm behind my back, and I curl over at the waist. Even with one arm in a cast, Carter is bigger and stronger than me. He used to make me feel safe. Now the only thing I feel is sickening, twisting fear. The jolt of pain shoots all the way from my wrist to my shoulder. I cry out; my arm feels like it’s going to snap.
“Carter, stop!” I scream, but he doesn’t. He throws me to the floor, and my hands reach out automatically to cushion the fall. The gun clatters to the ground, and Carter dives down after it. When I hit the floor, something sharp jabs my thigh. Glass or a piece of broken brick. I bite back the pain and grope around for the gun, but it’s lost somewhere in the rubble. My hands are torn up, blood sliding down my leg. I shake my wrist, but Rosalie’s headlamp is broken.
Above me, something moves. I look up, tears stinging my eyes. Carter’s standing over me, the gun pointed straight at my head.
“Wait.” I rub my coat sleeve across my face, but I can’t stop the tears. I’m not going to die crying. “I won’t tell. I want good things for you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. I’m not going to ruin that now, promise. We’ll go home, just like you said. We’ll get cleaned up, and tomorrow’s a new day. For both of us.”
For a second, I think he’s going to take the bait. His face softens, and his arm drops a bit. I force myself to smile up at him. Sweet. Sincere.
“But you will tell,” he says. “I know you, Amanda.” He lifts his arm and pushes back the hammer. His finger twitches against the trigger, and I scream.