I don’t have long to wait. As soon as I send Danny the message telling him to meet me outside of the Narnia hole, he says he’ll be right there.
I put on a jacket and walk out of my room. Girls are coming back from dinner, so I put my head down and walk quickly, hoping no one notices me. Someone bumps into my shoulder. Elle. She rolls her eyes at me when I look at her and then shares a knowing smile with Arjuna, who’s walking next to her. I ignore them, but my heart is thumping, leaping with paranoia. Do they know? Can they sense my guilt?
Wrapping my arms around myself, I hurry across the quad toward the Eastern Gardens. For the second time that evening, I crawl through the Narnia hole. The twigs and leaves brushing against my face bring about flashbacks of running through the woods, Mr. Werner coming after me, calling my name. Bile lurches up my throat and I almost start dry heaving. I squeeze my eyes shut and push myself through.
Maybe all these awful thoughts will fade after I tell Danny the truth. Even though it’ll mean that I’ll go to prison straight after that, maybe it’ll stop the guilt from boiling through my entire being.
There’s a rustling from the hedge, and my whole body tightens like a violin string. I stand there, practically quivering. God, I hope it’s not kids on their way to some off-campus party. I can’t handle small talk right now. I hold my breath.
Danny’s head pops out of the tunnel. My breath releases in a huge sigh, then I recall why we’re here, and I go back to quivering like a squirrel on speed.
As soon as Danny climbs out and stands up, brushing twigs and leaves out of his hair, I hug him and close my eyes and inhale the scent of him on a shuddery breath. This is it.
“I need to tell you something.”
I blink. We both said it at the same time.
“Wait—” I have to tell him now, before I lose my nerve. “Danny, I—”
“You were right about Uncle James’s cheating ring.”
All thought screams from my head, cutting me off midsentence. “What?”
Danny’s face is tortured. His gaze flits guiltily from my face to the ground and back to my face again. “I’m so sorry, Lia.”
What just happened? What is happening? “I don’t—I’m not following.”
He clears his throat. “The night I had dinner with Uncle James, I found something. I picked the lock on one of his desk drawers open and I found it. The ledger. It’s, um. It’s a record of everything. It has price lists of grades for every test paper and every student who’s ever bought a grade from him. And it has a record of his lawyer’s fees and how much of the money’s going to pay the lawyer and the divorce proceedings, and—fuck. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know how bad things have been financially for him, and it scared me. I don’t know.” He looks away.
A small voice in my head is shouting, It’s not like that, Danny! He tricked you. He tricked me too. He made it seem like he cared about his kids, but he was only fighting for custody to make everyone as miserable as he was! But thinking about this sours my stomach. I can practically feel the acid eating me away from the inside. Because who cares what Mr. Werner’s motivations were? I killed him. Nothing else matters. I’m the guilty one here.
“I felt so shitty for him,” Danny continues. “I—all summer, I’ve been living off him, whining to him about my parents cutting me off, and there he was, struggling to pay everything off. He never told me any of this stuff. If he did, I would’ve talked to my parents. Apologized. Begged them to help him. But I didn’t know. And he let me stay at his place rent-free and eat his food, and all this time—” His voice cracks and he looks at his feet for a while, scuffing the grass with the toe of his shoe. “I didn’t know what to do. I took pictures of the documents in the ledger, and when I left the room, he told me he’d gotten a call from the school about Sophie, and it was all just a mess. I thought I’d show it to you so you could—I don’t know—clear your name, but then I just—I couldn’t do it.”
“But.” I’m trying to process this, but his words aren’t computing. “That night, I asked you if you found anything, and you said you didn’t.”
“I know!” His face scrunches up like tissue paper. “I’m so, so sorry, Lia. I didn’t know what to do. I sat on it.”
He sat on it. While I went and got expelled and then killed his uncle. Danny looks like he’s about to jump in the river.
“I’m so sorry,” he says.
I pull my hand away, and he doesn’t try to take it back.
“You can hate me all you want. I deserve it. But, um. After what happened to Sophie that night, I couldn’t get over the fact that my uncle’s cheating business kind of caused her death. Because she wouldn’t have gotten kicked out without it, she wouldn’t have gotten depressed, she wouldn’t have turned to drugs, wouldn’t have…” His face scrunches up and he takes in a sharp breath. “Anyway. I just thought I’d let you know that I, uh. I emailed the pictures of the ledger to Mrs. Henderson today. She called me immediately. It took a while to convince her; she seemed really certain it’s all your fault.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “But she accepted it. Can’t really argue with the evidence.”
My mind’s a blank. No, wait, it’s not. It’s full. And what it’s filled with is rage. Yes, I still feel intense, indescribable guilt. But surging fast, torpedoing through the blanket of guilt, is anger. Because, oh god, none of this had to happen. I could’ve been free. And though I had killed Mr. Werner, I’d done so out of self-defense. Because if I hadn’t, he would’ve killed me. And all of it—every single terrifying, violating moment—was avoidable. Wouldn’t have happened if Danny hadn’t sat on information I so desperately needed.
I want to shriek into the night sky and rip the world apart.
“She said there will be a formal investigation into my uncle. The grades from Mr. Werner’s class are going to be voided. You’ll be reinstated on varsity.” He gives me a hesitant smile.
Varsity. The word shatters through the turbulence, and despite everything, it grounds me. Wrenches me out of the chaos and takes me home. Already I can feel the feel the track underneath my feet. I can smell the rubber, feel the plastic ribbon straining against my chest right before it splits. The weight of gold medals dangling from my neck.
But. But I can’t. I came here to tell Danny the truth. And the truth is—
The truth is I want to stay. I want to stay so badly, I would give anything for it. My soul, if I still had one.
I stare at him, and I don’t say anything. What happened with Mr. Werner lies thick on my tongue, waiting to spill out, and still, I don’t say a word. It was self-defense.
Danny takes my hand, and I let him. He looks into my eyes and says, “You’re safe, Lia.”
I burst into tears.