My stomach continues wringing itself like a towel as I crawl through the Narnia hole. I try to calm myself down, reminding myself to breathe, taking a long inhale, but the crisp, cold air feels like knives in my lungs, and I cough it out.
My phone rings, shattering the silence and nearly giving me a heart attack, but it’s only Beth. Weird that she’s calling instead of texting. I hit Accept, and Beth’s face fills the screen. She’s laughing and babbling incoherently.
“What’s going on?”
“—awake!” Beth cries, flapping.
“What?”
“She’s awake!” Beth aims her phone from her face toward a bed. A hospital bed. With Stacey in it. And Stacey is indeed awake, blinking at me.
Her mouth quirks up into the sardonic smile I know so well, and she says, weakly, “’Sup, loser.”
I gasp. “Stacey. Oh my god. Do you—should I come over?”
“Nah, don’t bother,” Stacey says. “I’m pooped, and visiting hours are over in five. Um.” She turns to look at Beth. “Not that I’m saying you should leave, Beth. But like, why are you here again?”
“Oh!” Beth says. “I just came to, um. Um. To see you?”
“Is it because you wanted to make sure your drugs didn’t kill me?”
Beth and I both gasp. “You knew?” we say at the same time.
Stacey rolls her eyes. “That Beth’s a drug lord? I know everything about everyone, when will you people learn this?”
“But how come you never told—” Beth says.
“I don’t know. Because it’s none of my business. Because you always seemed so stressed out. Maybe I should’ve. Stop doing it, okay?”
I don’t see Beth’s reaction, but Stacey gives a small smile. “Okay, talk to you two kids tomorrow. Turn off the lights when you go, will you?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow!” I call out, and Beth waves at me and disconnects the call.
Wow.
I mean.
Just.
My breath comes out in a shaky whoosh. My best friend’s okay. She’s fine, she’s as sassy as ever, and I can see her tomorrow. She’s okay. Tears sting my eyes.
Footsteps crunch close and I look up to see Danny, cheeks red from the cold and hair all tousled, and my breath catches. The sight of him. It’s like a punch straight to my solar plexus. It reminds me of all those times when I saw him and thought he was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. And now he’s still making me catch my breath, but for all the wrong reasons.
“You okay? You’re kind of staring,” he says.
“Oh, sorry.” I break eye contact and stare down at my feet. But then I realize this will probably weird him out and make him realize something’s off, so I look back up at him, except I can’t look him in the eye, I just can’t. I settle for his chin instead.
“How did the meet go?”
“I fell flat on my face and came dead last.”
He laughs, then he sees my expression and stops abruptly. “You’re kidding, right?”
I shake my head.
“Jesus, Lia. Are you okay?”
The concern in his voice stabs through my heart. Surely he can’t be faking that. It’s so convincing. He really does care about me. Which makes this even worse somehow, that he’s not just a monster, that there is a part of him that’s true. “Yeah, listen, I don’t really want to talk about it right now. I just—” I falter. Now that I’m right here, standing right in front of Danny, everything I thought I could just say falls apart. Every word I come up with sounds ridiculous.
“What’s up?” Danny says, moving closer to me, reaching out to hold my hand. I flinch away, and he frowns.
How do I broach the subject?
Stacey. Yeah. I lift my face and look him in the eye and say, “Stacey’s awake.”
And there it is. I thought I was prepared for it, but in the beat of silence that follows, the glimpse of rage that I catch in Danny’s eyes breaks me in two. I want to beat him, punch that beautiful face of his and shriek at him until he tells me everything.
He smiles and says, “That’s great. I’m happy to hear that.”
I stare at him. How does he manage to look so innocent? What’s truly lurking underneath that warm smile? “Did you hear about Mandy?”
He shakes his head. “I’ve just been playing Fortnite.”
“No one’s messaged you?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. I put my phone on silent mode.”
“Then how did you get my messages?”
He suddenly looks shy. “I may have put you on my favorites list, so my phone beeps whenever you message.”
Before, this would’ve made me melt. Now, it just makes me want to vomit all over his face.
“So, the meet?”
“It was interrupted because the cops came and arrested Mandy for drugging the drinks at Sam’s party.” Again, I stare hard at him, not daring to blink for fear of missing any minuscule reactions.
Danny’s mouth drops open. His eyes widen. Then they narrow. He starts to say something, stops, closes his mouth. Eyes go wide again. This goes on for a while, then he finally says, “Whaaa?”
Such a great actor. It makes my skin crawl. Actually, it makes me want to rip off my skin and fling it at him. I can’t back off now. I need to forge ahead. Tear that mask off. “But Mandy didn’t do it, did she?”
“Huh? She didn’t?”
“No, because she never even knew she had drugs in her locker.”
Danny’s eyebrows crash into each other. This reaction is at least genuine. “I don’t get it. You just told me she did.”
“No, I said she got arrested for it. But she didn’t do it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I planted the drugs in her locker.” Boom. There it is. My breath comes out all ragged. The truth didn’t come easy; it came up clawing and ripping at my windpipe, fighting to stay inside.
“What?”
“I—she was spreading all these lies about me, making it seem like I have something to do with Mr. Werner’s death, and I don’t know—I got so angry, and I had to get the cops off my back, and so I looked for the drug dealer and I found them and I stole the drugs, then I thought—you know, this will shut Mandy up for a bit, so I planted the drugs in her locker and called the cops, but when they came, there were no drugs. Mandy looked so confused. She couldn’t have been faking it.” It’s all coming out now, and there’s no stopping the torrent. And now it’s down to him to fill in the rest.
Danny blinks and shakes his head. Runs his fingers through his hair. “I don’t understand. Wait, but. The drugs don’t belong to—” He stops and shakes his head again, like he needs to clear it. “Why’re you telling me all this?”
“Because I know you did it, Danny.” The words come out as a harsh whisper. “I don’t know how you got your hands on those drugs, but you did, and you drugged Stacey. Why?”
Danny laughs, a horrible, cracked sound. “You’re talking crazy. You’re not thinking straight. Is it ’cause you’re so sad about the meet? Come on, we can talk about it.”
“Stop talking about the fucking track!” I snap. “Just tell me why you did it. You drugged Stacey and then got your parents to close up the investigation, didn’t you? I overheard Henderson talking to them. She was so grateful.”
This time, it hits home. Danny blanches. He tries to smile, but it doesn’t stick. It falls away, leaving him looking tired and broken and—
He frowns, looking at me in a different light. “Why were you so scared of what Mandy was telling the cops? I mean, sure, she spread all those rumors about you, but so what? It’s not like you had anything to worry about—”
I swear I’m about to puke up my heart. “Stop trying to change the subject. Why did you do that to Stacey?”
Danny ignores the question and cocks his head to one side. I feel something shift behind his gaze, like a dark beast lurching awake. “When my uncle died, you stopped eating. You used to be all about food, and then…”
Shit. I take a step back.
“Did you have something to do with—” He chokes on the next words. Gives a weird little laugh that doesn’t sound like a laugh at all.
I can’t take this anymore. “Why did you do it?” I scream it so hard, the words rip us apart.
Danny laughs, and now it sounds deranged. “Why? Why do you think? Because she killed my uncle! Everyone here’s out to get Uncle James. First there was Sophie, ranting about him, she had a whole freaking vendetta out against him, and I had to take care of it, and then there was Stacey, and you, and what the hell is wrong with you girls?”
“Wait.” I blink, trying to sort through the jumble of words he’s just said. “Sophie?” Something dark unfurls deep in my belly. “What do you mean, you had to take care of it?”
He gives another one of those cracked laughs that sends goose bumps sprouting down my arms. “Oh, I thought you’d figured that one out too, Miss Nancy Drew.” He snorts bitterly. “When my parents cut me off, I had to earn money some way, just to get by. I tried to get into the drugs business—it’s so lucrative here, isn’t it?—but I didn’t know how to get in. The Draycott dealer didn’t want any partners. I didn’t even know who it was. So, in the end, I just bought a bunch of drugs from the online shop and I cut them with other stuff to bulk them up a bit, earn some money doing that.”
“Cut them…what?” I whisper. No, this can’t be real. I’d solved it. I’d discovered Draycott’s drug dealer, and it was Beth. There wasn’t supposed to be more than one dealer.
Danny shrugs. “It’s not a big deal, god.” He sneers at me. “Always such a suck-up, aren’t you? God, can’t believe I thought I was in love with you at one point. Sophie caught me dealing, and she wasn’t gonna do anything about it at first, but when she got expelled because of Uncle James, she decided to take some revenge. Told me she was going to expose me as a drug dealer unless I dug some dirt up on Uncle James. You know what would’ve happened if she’d exposed me? That selfish bitch. Just because she’d thrown her life down the drain, she wanted to take me down with her.”
I gape at him with numb horror. “How did you dose her?”
“She was such an addict by then. She never went anywhere without carrying a stash on her. I just met up with her and switched out her stash for one I’d laced. I didn’t think she was gonna go nuts and break into Uncle James’s office.” He laughs a little. “Crazy bitch.”
I feel sick, but more than everything else, I need to know what happened to Stacey. I can’t not dig. I’m so close to the truth. “And what about Stacey? Why her?”
“Like I said, she was out to get my uncle. She’d done all that stuff, hacked into his computer, so I searched her room, know what I found? I found the fucking drugs, Lia.” He laughs again. “I don’t know how they got there after everything you’ve told me, but at the time, I thought she was the school dealer. And know what else I found? A USB drive with his name on it. She was collecting dirt on him. She wasn’t hacking for fun. She was out to get him.”
What? Why would she have done that? Why—
Again, those words swim through my head. You know I’ll always have your back, right? No matter what you’ve done.
She knew. She knew about me killing Mr. Werner. And maybe she thought collecting dirt on him might help me somehow. Might become important evidence if I ever got caught.
“You could’ve killed us all,” I whisper. Now that I’ve got the truth out of him, I feel hollowed out. This is no victory. And why is Danny so ready to spill everything? Why is he so willing to tell me every revolting act he’s done? Unless maybe—
“I even came clean about Uncle James’s ledger to Mrs. Henderson. All because I was in love with you. That was before I found out my girlfriend’s a fucking murderer!”
I’ve made a mistake. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own heartbreak that I don’t notice he’s moved forward until he suddenly catches my wrist in an unforgiving grip. I cry out, but he doesn’t let go.
“And all this time, while I was going nuts trying to find enough evidence to put Stacey away, it turns out it was you all along. My own fucking girlfriend.” He gives a vicious yank and I stumble forward with a cry. I crash into him, his chest granite-hard and radiating a sick heat. His breath is hot in my ear. “You killed him, Lia? You killed my uncle?”
Fear slams into me. This is why. He didn’t hold back, didn’t bother hiding anything, because he’s going to kill me. “Let me go.”
His grip on my wrist tightens so hard, it makes me yelp. I swing my other arm back to hit him, but he catches it easily, as though I were a child. I can’t fight him, not in this state, not when I can barely stand without my legs quivering.
“Why?” he says, his eyes bright with tears. “Why’d you do it?”
“I didn’t mean to. I only wanted to—I just. I wanted to talk.”
Danny shakes me and my head snaps back like a whip. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I was going to blackmail him!” I cry. “Okay? He was making me fail his class, and I tried to blackmail him, and he took me to Orange Point and tried to kill me. I ran away. He came after me. We struggled—” The memory of it flashes in broken, jagged pieces through my mind. The shock of Mr. Werner’s weight on me. The animal struggle. “I pushed him, and he fell on that—that thing. I didn’t mean to kill him. I really—” I’m still talking, but the words aren’t coming out.
Danny’s wrapped his hands around my throat, and there’s no pain, but the words aren’t coming out and I don’t understand it and I can’t breathe, and I ask him to let go, but nothing comes out and the edges of my vision get fuzzy, and I don’t know what’s going on. I claw at his hands, but they’re solid steel and my hands may as well be seaweed flopping at him, and as they fall, they catch on something.
My necklace. The kris pendant. Me joking to Ibu that one day the cap will come off without me knowing it and I’ll accidentally stab myself. I rip it off. Only the size of my pink finger. It won’t do any good. But I don’t have any other choice. Stars burst in my vision and black spills out of them. Quickly now. My fingers are sausages. Danny’s face is red, his teeth gritted, his eyes that of a beast. I don’t recognize the boy I love. My fingers scrabble at my necklace and rip the chain off my neck. I pull off the cap. Unsheathe the blade. He doesn’t notice. I will the last dregs of energy I have and push my hand forward. Everything goes dark.
I thud to the ground. Air rushes in, sparkling, cold, electrifying. I gasp it in, cough it out, gulp more in. Light filters through my eyes, crowding out the black stars. I look up, and Danny’s just standing there, staring at the tiny dagger sticking out of his midsection. It looks ridiculous, so small, too small to be of any consequence, but when Danny pulls it, a thin stream of blood pours out.
“You bitch!” he roars.
I scramble up to my feet and run. Just as I’d feared, the dagger’s too small to do any real damage, but it’s bought me a few more precious seconds. My windpipe still feels like it’s crushed, and I can’t seem to catch my breath, but I push myself to move my legs. Run as fast as I can. Run like a hunted rabbit. Behind me, I hear Danny’s ragged breathing. I reach the Narnia hole and pounce, crawling through the dark space. Something closes around my ankle. I shriek and kick back frantically. My left shoe connects with something and I hear Danny’s curse. I kick again, and the grip loosens. I squeeze through the hole, coming out the other side at last, and don’t spare a second to look behind me before I dash toward the buildings ahead.
I don’t even realize I’m screaming until doors open and people come running out toward me. Someone appears in front of me, and I collapse into their arms, and dimly, I hear them asking, “What’s happening? Are you okay?”
It’s over. There are enough people about now that Danny can’t possibly hurt me like he meant to. I turn my head now, and I’m right. He’s just standing there, holding the wound in his stomach, and he looks defeated, the furious light going from his eyes, leaving him sagging. He’s no longer recognizable to me.
As I open my mouth to answer, a myriad if-onlys spin in the air, glittering with a thousand different possible outcomes.
If only he hadn’t sat on evidence of Mr. Werner’s cheating ring.
If only Mrs. Henderson had believed me when I told her about the cheating ring.
If only I hadn’t snuck into Mr. Werner’s car.
And, of course, the last one: If only I hadn’t come to Draycott in the first place.
But we all made the choices we made, and every lie that slips out of our mouths brings us that much closer to this moment in time, with my boyfriend and I standing in front of the whole school, phone cameras out, every single one of them aimed toward us.
It’s forever before red and blue fill the sky, and our Narnia hole swarms with cops and paramedics, and they take the boy I love away.