Fenn
Coach had a bug up his ass at practice this afternoon. Had us doing drills and shuttle sprints until we collapsed. The soccer field is now fully fertilized with vomit. I’m still queasy and can barely feel my legs when I get back to the dorm. As usual, RJ is at his computer with headphones on when I walk in our room and throw my bag down.
“Hey,” he says, spinning around in his chair. He takes off his headphones.
“Hey.”
The acknowledgment takes me by surprise. I’m almost startled to hear him speak. Lately, it’s been easy to forget he’s in the room. For almost a week now, he’s been quieter and more withdrawn than when he was the reclusive new arrival with a loner complex and chip on his shoulder.
“We need to talk,” he tells me.
“Yeah, okay. Let me hit the shower first.”
I’m already peeling off my shirt and grabbing my kit to go clean up. I’m drenched in sweat and covered in grass and whatever else I fell in. I smell rancid.
“No. We need to talk now,” RJ says grimly. He hits a key on his keyboard, then gestures to one of his monitors. “Watch.”
“Watch what?” I ask irritably, as a monochrome video begins to play on the screen.
“Just fucking watch.”
For a few seconds, I don’t understand what I’m looking at. Only RJ’s intense attention on me suggests I keep watching.
Then I see it.
The car blurring across the screen. Those taillights still haunt my nightmares, their glow painting the forest and turning the lake’s surface a shiny crimson.
I stand there and watch in real time, my breath a revving engine between my ears, as a couple of minutes later a figure runs from the scene in a hooded sweatshirt, sopping wet, face concealed and turned away from the camera.
The image damn near knocks me over. A gut-punch that reverberates through my limbs and settles into my bones. The shaking sets in and it doesn’t relent.
Without a word, RJ fast-forwards the video until we see me dash through the frame, running toward the lake.
My lungs seize, no oxygen reaching them as the memories of that night crash into me.
Casey wasn’t screaming. There were no pleas for help. If she wasn’t knocked unconscious by the initial impact, she was already succumbing to shock. Or the drugs, maybe. Whatever it was, I didn’t know when I ran into the lake and swam out to the car. I saw her eyes fighting to stay open. How they locked with mine before her head lolled and her body went limp. Blood dripping down her face from a head wound. I remember how fast my heart was beating as I wrestled, with every shred of strength I could muster, against the bitter cold water to pry the passenger’s door open.
It was when I reached across Casey’s half-submerged body to release her seat belt that I saw it. And my mind went blank. Until that moment, I was only concerned with getting her out.
But then I spotted Gabe’s jacket snagged on the parking brake, the pocket seam ripped, as if he’d torn out of it to escape.
Suddenly, a collision of thoughts sent shrapnel flying through my head. And in the noise, a silent moment of clarity struck me like getting smacked across the face.
I took the jacket. Clutched it under my arm while I pulled Casey from the car.
Even soaking wet, she was so light. Frail. Or maybe it was adrenaline. I barely felt the muddy bottom swallowing my shoes as I trudged to shore with her in my arms. Her face was pale in the ruddy darkness when I laid her down.
Everything came quickly to me after that. I searched for pockets in Casey’s dress and found her phone, which was miraculously still working despite getting wet. I texted Sloane where to find her. Casey was unconscious, but breathing and stable. She was out of danger, and it would only be minutes before help arrived.
Before I left, I whispered to her. Told her I was sorry but that she was safe now. Her sister was on her way, and everything would be all right. Because of course I couldn’t stay. I didn’t have any answers to what had transpired there, only that my best friend since kindergarten had apparently left Casey to drown. I had to find Gabe and talk to him. Figure out what the hell had gone wrong and why he’d done it. There had to be an explanation.
But I never got one.
Gabe vanished that night. By morning he’d already been shipped off to military school, and no one would answer my calls. To this day, we haven’t spoken. And he has no idea I’m the one who covered for him.
Or, hell, maybe he has a hunch. After all, nobody’s gone out there to interrogate him, right? Gabe’s smart enough to know that means the cops don’t have him in their sights, and if he knows that much, then he must suspect I’m the one who had his back. Same way he had mine in sophomore year when I needed it. From the moment we met, Gabe has been my ride or die.
And I’m his.
RJ abruptly stops the video. I snap out of my own head to see him staring at me in betrayal and accusation. Nothing less than I deserve, I guess. And even though I’ve known for a long time this day was coming, I thought by now I’d have some answers.
Instead, I’m as clueless as the rest of them and well over my head in guilt and lies.
“You get now why I’m having kind of a problem lately,” RJ says with a tone so flat yet severe, I’m more than a little concerned what he might do next. “What were you even doing there?”
My brain kicks into overdrive. Gabe had texted me to meet him. The prom was lame, and I already had a good buzz on. I thought we were going out to the boathouse to smoke and chill. I had no idea by that point that Casey was missing or that we’d realize later she’d been drugged.
“All right, look. I know it’s not great.”
“Why?” RJ interjects. “Make me understand it.”
I avoid his harsh, questioning gaze. “It’s complicated, okay?”
“No. Complicated is leaving the scene, Fenn. Even if I could wrap my head around that part, you had to go and buddy up to Casey afterward?”
“It wasn’t like some plan I had.”
“Yeah, I bet.” He huffs a sarcastic laugh. “You just accidentally became her best friend.”
“If you’d seen her back then—”
“You’re dating her!” he shouts, throwing himself back in his chair until it bumps against his desk. “For fuck’s sake, dude. That is so beyond messed up.”
“I know. Shit.” I sink onto the couch and drop my head in my hands, tugging at my hair.
It’s not like these thoughts haven’t occurred to me before. All I do is beat myself up over how far out of hand this had gotten over the last several months. How many times I should have stopped myself but was too scared to admit the truth. Too weak to stay away from her.
I’m well aware that I’ve made a lot of bad decisions since prom night, that I had other options available to me, if only I’d been thinking more clearly. At the very least, I could’ve given Casey the partial truth. Admitted I was the one who saved her, and just left Gabe’s name out of it altogether. I could’ve kept the part about finding his jacket to myself while I discreetly tried to piece together his role in all this.
“I wanted to tell her,” I confess. “Maybe not right away, but the moment she and I got closer, it was always on the tip of my tongue. Every time I saw her, I almost blurted it out, but I could never get the words out because I was buried under a mountain of guilt for leaving her there, and I didn’t want her to hate me. And then days went by, and months, and now…” I groan under my breath. “I waited too long. Now if I say something, so much time has passed that it looks like I did have some shady plan.”
Dread squeezes my chest tighter. The moment I tell Casey I’ve been lying by omission, she’ll be gone. I have no doubt about that. And the notion sends me into an agony spiral.
“I wish I didn’t feel this way about her,” I mumble. “It’d be easier if I could leave her alone, but—”
“Stop, man. Listen to yourself for a minute. This isn’t a choice anymore. You’ve had time to figure your shit out and tell her the truth, but it’s not in your hands anymore. Sloane’s seen the video.”
Fuck. There are few things in this world I’m truly afraid of. Sloane is high on that list.
I slowly raise my eyes to his. “What’d she say?”
“Seriously?” RJ is incredulous as he shakes his head. “She’s on the warpath. I’ve kept her at bay so far, but she’s had it with sitting around. She’s talking about telling her dad and turning you in to the cops. Letting them figure it out.”
Another spike of anxiety screams through my chest. A sharp, stabbing sensation that nearly chokes me. Without being able to talk to Gabe, I can’t face an interrogation. I wouldn’t know where to begin, but I can’t throw my oldest friend under the bus.
At the same time, Casey deserves my loyalty too. She’s waited all this time to find out what happened to her. After I kept chickening out each time I felt the urge to come clean, I sort of convinced myself it would eventually soften the blow if I knew the whole story before I told her. Only that hasn’t happened, and it’s looking less likely that it ever will.
Unless I give up Gabe’s name.
And I can’t do that. I owe him, damn it.
“I convinced her to let me talk to you first,” RJ says. “You have to give me something here, Fenn. Otherwise, she’ll run right over me to get to you.”
He’s watching me. Waiting. RJ and I only just got back on good terms, and already I can sense that trust shattering. I hate this. Keeping secrets and lying. I’ve wanted us to have a real relationship as stepbrothers, but here I am again, my loyalties tugged in all directions and feeling like I’m failing all of them.
But I can’t give him what he wants, and it’s making my stomach churn. It doesn’t feel right pointing the finger at Gabe when all I have is a dirty jacket. Because as much as I do trust RJ, I don’t believe for a second he wouldn’t run to Sloane with that information. And Sloane, without a doubt, would give Gabe’s name to the cops in a heartbeat.
“You have to give me more time,” I beg him. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but trust me on this.”
RJ glowers at me. “That’s not good enough. Do you get what I’m saying? She’s ready to pin the whole thing on you. At the very least, you’re getting expelled. At most, the cops charge you with I don’t know how many counts. Leaving the scene, withholding evidence…”
He’s right. What I did was technically a crime, no matter how well-intentioned. Not like I haven’t considered it.
“That’s if Sloane doesn’t kill you herself and ask me to help her dump the body,” he finishes, sounding defeated. “So please, help me out here.”
I gulp down the lump of sheer misery in my throat. “There’s more to this than you understand. I’m still piecing it together, but I need—”
“What does that mean?” he asks, exasperated. His patience is well exhausted at this point.
“It’s comp—”
“Right, complicated.” He sighs, rubbing his forehead. “Listen, I’ve kept Sloane from telling her dad or the cops for now, but she’s going to tell Casey. That’s a given. I’m here as your brother asking you to tell me the truth. You can’t keep it to yourself anymore.”
My gut clenches harder, frustration and panic warring inside me. I’m nowhere near close enough to a good explanation. I’ve spent months badgering Gabe’s family for a way to contact him, and to no avail, because his parents hate me. I spent hours online compiling a list of every military school in the goddamn country, then proceeded to call each one asking if a Gabe Ciprian was enrolled and was either hung up on, laughed at, or politely told to fuck off. Turns out, schools don’t offer students’ names and information to random callers. Who would’ve thought.
If I had more time, maybe I could figure out a way to get to Gabe and ask him what happened that night. I’m sure it would all make sense if I had the missing pieces. There’s no way he would just abandon Casey to die. He’s not a bad person. Something went wrong, and I simply need to find out what it is.
“Let me talk to her,” I insist, grasping at any sense of charity RJ has left. “Casey should hear it from me.”
His expression is wary. He’s understandably reluctant to put himself out on a ledge for me again.
“Please,” I say hoarsely. “I promise. I’ll tell Casey myself. Let me have this.”
He goes silent for what feels like forever. Then he curses under his breath and says, “I’ll try, but I can’t make any promises on Sloane’s behalf. My advice: beat her to it.”