28

We’re halfway to Laura’s house when my phone rings. Sheriff Henderson. “Cassidy?”

“Yes, Sheriff?”

“I’m at the Gellman place, and Laura’s fine. She’s sitting here watching television. Guess she didn’t hear her phone.”

I exhale and mouth to Gideon that she’s fine. “Okay, but you can’t leave her there alone.”

“I’m still out front. Why don’t you come by here and make a statement? The detectives are on their way, and they’ll want to know exactly what’s going on.”

“Already on my way.”

A few minutes later, Sheriff Henderson leads us inside the Gellman residence, where the detectives are waiting in the living room. Laura is seated on a cushiony beige chair, eyes large and elbows tucked in front of her. The entire house reeks of that perfume she wears.

“Go ahead and have a seat,” says Detectives Reyes. “Let’s start from the beginning. Miss Pratt, what gave you reason to believe that Miss Gellman here was in danger?”

“I received a threatening text message.” I hand my phone to the detective. He looks over it before passing it to his partner.

Detective Sawyer shows Laura the message. “What is this in reference to? Keep her mouth shut about what?” She looks at Laura, whose shoulders slump.

Then her shoulders rise. And fall. “I have no idea, Detectives.”

My eyes stretch wide open and I jump out of my seat. “Laura, tell the truth!” I turn back to Detective Sawyer. “She’s lying. Look at the text.”

“Honestly, it’s a bit odd,” she says, examining the message again. “And vague. It doesn’t say what Laura is supposed to keep quiet about.”

I glare at Laura again, and her lips twitch. At least, I think they do. Was this a setup? Did she purposefully not answer her phone in order to mess with me? “Someone is just trying to make me look crazy,” I say as the room spins around me. “Laura, please don’t do this. You’re letting the real killer go free. Seth—your boyfriend—is going to jail for the rest of his life.”

Laura flinches and looks to the detectives for help. “My boyfriend? Gross. Seth wasn’t my boyfriend.”

Or maybe I am crazy.

“Detectives,” Laura continues, “I don’t know what’s going on here. Cassidy, as you may be aware, has a pretty sketchy past, so—”

“Shut up, Laura,” I growl. “You told me not two hours ago that you were with Seth on the day of Melody’s murder. That he was your secret boyfriend.” At the words secret boyfriend, Sheriff Henderson lifts a skeptical brow. “But you couldn’t tell anyone else because you were threatened! Show them the cards!”

Laura’s doe eyes divert back to the detectives.

I look at Gideon. “Tell them about the cards.”

“I didn’t see the cards, Cass,” he says, wincing. “You told me about them.” I fall back into my chair with a thud. Gideon wasn’t there when Laura told me about Seth.

I blink to find the white ceiling beneath me and the cream-colored carpet above. “I don’t know why she’s lying.” I blink again, looking up to find Sheriff Henderson’s eyes drifting. I can’t even look at Laura, or I’ll tear her to pieces right in front of the law.

“Okay, okay, Miss Pratt,” Detective Reyes says, standing up. “You girls obviously don’t get along, but this is a murder investigation.”

“But it’s—” I lob another panicked glance Gideon’s way, but his eyes are on the carpet. He thinks I imagined it all.

And he might be right.

I stand up, fist curled. “This is wrong, Laura, and you know it. You really are a coward if you keep quiet now. You’re letting the real killer go free.”

Detective Reyes takes a few careful steps and places a hand on my shoulder. “Miss Pratt, I think you should go home and get some rest. We’re confident we’ve got the guy who did this.”

“You’re wrong,” I say. But my voice is timid because I’m not sure he is. I hasten out the front door and down the porch steps, Gideon close behind. At the bottom of the steps, I pause, twisting around to view the Gellman residence one last time.

No, I’m not sure anymore. The only thing I’m really sure of is an itching in my fingers. It’s a familiar sensation. I rub my fingers together, but it’s still there. That itch to feel the click of the lighter. The sensation squirms up through my veins, all the way to my eyes. My eyeballs are actually itching.

They’re itching to see this place go up in flames.

* * *

Gideon and I get back into the car and begin the drive to my house in silence. He stares straight ahead, hands rigid over the steering wheel.

“Cass—”

“You don’t have to say it,” I interrupt. “I am now officially crazy.”

“That’s not what I was going to say. But, I do think you need to let all of this go. I don’t know what’s going on—”

“Come on, Gideon. Everyone else in this town gets it. My entire life I’ve been Fire Girl. The girl who killed Sara Leeds and almost killed her own brother. Everyone loves talking about how it wasn’t really an accident. That I started the fire on purpose and I’ll do it again.” I breathe in, allowing my fingernails to dig into my palms. “And deep down, they were right. I might as well have killed Melody Davenport myself. I’m dangerous.”

Gideon is silent.

My face crumples. My entire body crumples. “You see it now too.”

He shakes his head. “No. This is Laura, like always. She’s messing with you. The text message, the cards. She’s having one more round of fun at your expense.” One of his hands lifts from the wheel. “It’s not fair that everyone targets you, Cass. This Fire Girl, I don’t know her. I know you.” He turns to me, narrowing his eyes. “But I’m worried you’re letting this other girl take over your life. It’s like you’re becoming her.”

Gideon parks in the driveway. He leans over, pressing his lips to my head and peering down at me. “Let’s get you inside so you can rest. Tomorrow, we’ll put all of this behind us.”

I let him walk me up the porch steps and through the door. He grips my hand like I’m a small child crossing the street. Like I can’t be trusted not to run into oncoming traffic.

Inside, I bat away the tears as he runs a hand over my shoulder. “I can stay if you want, but you should probably rest.”

I shrug. I should try to sleep all of this off. Maybe I’ll wake up to find Laura laughing with the rest of the team about how I spouted off a bunch of insane nonsense in front of two detectives and a sheriff.

“Cass, look at me.” I try, but looking him in the eyes is physically painful. It makes me feel like I could just collapse onto the foyer floor and never get up again. He gives my hand a squeeze, then nudges my back. “I’ve known you since second grade—more than half of our lives—and you’re not crazy. Get to bed. I’ll tell your mom you’re not feeling well. We’ll sort this Laura stuff out tomorrow. If she lied to you, I won’t let her get away with it.”

“Thanks,” I mumble, trying and failing to smile. I walk down the hall, closing my bedroom door behind me. I dive into bed and pull the covers all the way past my head. There, in the suffocating darkness, the confusion and guilt envelop me.

I rack my brain for one thing I know for certain. Any one thing I can hold on to with confidence. But there’s nothing. All I have is a scenario disturbingly similar to the one written in the notebook I handed to Brandon Alvarez. And a muffled voice.

Even that has faded over time. I know the words, but the trace of a voice is gone. I hear the rushing water, the rustling leaves, the birds.

If Laura was messing with me, then Seth is the killer. He’s behind bars where he should be, and Maribel is safe.

But if she got scared off and lied to the detectives, it only means one thing.

A killer is still out there.

The feeling of being watched crawls over me and I lower the covers. My eyes dart to the shelf on the wall. There, sitting in her place as she has been the past eleven years is my porcelain doll, Edna. Her gigantic blue eyes stare straight ahead at the opposite wall, not at me.

I exhale and look at the framed photo of Sara and me beside it on the shelf. We were so small, so happy. We wore coordinating dresses with white polka dots that Sara’s mom made. Mine was pink and Sara’s was green. Those were the dresses we wore the day of our tea party. Sara’s last day. My dress was scorched so badly my mom had to throw it away. As usual, the photo makes me achy inside.

I hear a ding and grab my phone from the nightstand. Gideon.

Cass, feel better. I’ll talk to Laura in the morning. If she was telling the truth about Seth, we’ll look into it together.

I text a quick Thanks and open the threat from this afternoon. I read it over and over again. These texts likely came from burner phones. Anyone could have sent this one. Gideon’s probably right. It’s Laura’s elaborate plan to make my life hell. Why did I take everything so seriously?

I can’t trust myself. How can I know what I heard in the woods? How can I know what happened the day of the fire?

Maybe everyone’s right. Maybe I meant to start that fire. I told Melody to knock it off in the portable classroom, but when the fire erupted, something inside me came alive. Something wanted to let it grow. To see it wrap its molten fingers around her.

Despite the warmth of the covers, a shiver pulses through my body.

I’ve grown up knowing the story of how I knocked over the candle, how Asher tried to open the door. How by the time he opened it, it was too late for Sara Leeds. But the memories have always felt distant. I see the series of events like pages in a picture book, not like pieces of my own life. My parents always batted away my questions, and eventually I knew the story so well I stopped asking.

I’ve never had the guts to do this, but I need to know the truth. I toss the phone back onto my nightstand. Then, I tear myself from my bed and retrieve my laptop. Nestling back against the pillows, I start a search on the one topic I’ve tried to erase from existence since I was seven years old.

Articles about Sara Leeds pile onto the search results. I click on one about her funeral, and close it. I scroll down, clicking and skimming articles. But I pause when a black-and-white photograph pops onto the screen. It’s a little girl on a stretcher. She’s wearing a mangled polka dot dress. The title of the article is “Girl Survives Fire, But Remains Eerily Silent.”

The little girl is me.

I scroll through the article. The subheading “Investigators find no evidence of foul play” should be settling, but as I read further, the lines electrify the hairs on the back of my neck.

I keep reading until a knock on my door rattles me. I slam the laptop shut and slide it onto the bedside table.

“Come in,” I call, lying back onto my pillow like the sick patient I’m supposed to be.

Asher steps into my room. “Hey, Cass. I heard you weren’t feeling well. Just wanted to see if you needed anything.” He nears the bed, squinting down at me like I might break.

“Thanks. I’m fine. I know I shouldn’t keep sleeping this close to bedtime, but I can’t get up.”

He straightens and moves toward the light switch. “Go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to bother you. Yell if you need anything.”

“Okay. But Asher,” I say before I can change my mind. I sit up.

“Yeah?” He drifts closer.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Sure, anything.” He bends over the bed.

“It’s about the fire.”

Asher’s eyes meet mine questioningly, and then his face falls. His fingers go straight to the scars on his left hand. “Why are you asking?”

“I just thought if you told me what happened, I might remember more.”

“Why would you want to do that?” He’s solemn as he sits down on the edge of the bed.

“My whole life I’ve been told I knocked over the candle that burned down the place. But I don’t remember doing it.” I shut my eyes, letting the image of the playhouse crashing around me flicker in the darkness. “Maybe I’m not remembering because”—my fingers twist the edge of the bedsheet—“I did something horrible. Like everyone says.”

“Cass, no. In the hospital, you did have some trouble talking about what happened. But then you told the doctors, the police, Mom and Dad. It’s possible Sara knocked it over, and you were covering for her. You might’ve felt bad that she didn’t make it, so you took the fall. But it was an accident either way. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

I scrunch my lips. “Did you have to choose? Who to save, I mean.”

Asher’s eyes drop to my comforter. “Thankfully, no. You were closest to the door, so I got you out first. But you know all of this.”

“I should’ve been on the other side of the table. Then you could’ve saved Sara.”

Asher exhales forcefully. “It wouldn’t have mattered, Cass. Why are you making me relive this?” He keeps rubbing the scars. “You want me to say I would’ve jumped over Sara’s unconscious body to save you?”

I reach out to take his hand, to stop it from ripping his flesh apart. “No, no. Asher, I’m sorry. I-I’m asking because I found this.” I release his hand and grab my laptop, opening it. I spin it around, showing Asher the article with my photograph at the top.

“Why are you reading about this?”

“I told you. I wanted to remember. I wanted to know why the people in this town have always treated me like a criminal, instead of like a seven-year-old would-be victim. And I guess this explains it.”

His fingers move for the scars again, but he catches himself, lowering both hands carefully to his sides. “The trouble you had talking after the fire… It wasn’t a little trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

Asher’s eyes glaze over. “When they took you to the hospital, physically you were fine, apart from some minor burns on your legs. But you weren’t acting fine. You asked a couple times about your doll, but you weren’t exactly lucid. And then you didn’t speak again. You refused to talk about the fire.” His shoulders sink. “For days. You were silent for days. You didn’t cry about Sara. You wouldn’t answer any questions from the cops. Not one. People started talking. It got around town, in the papers. A shrink came to see you. Mom and Dad were worried you’d get taken away.” Asher’s eyes veer from me to the carpet, and his voice drops. “I was outside the door to your room the night Mom and Dad fed you the story about how you knocked over the candle.” He takes a breath. “Over and over again.”

My fingernails dig back into my palms. Breaking the skin.

So they thought I’d done it. My family fabricated the candle story to keep me out of some mental hospital. “What do you think happened, Asher? You were the first one through the door.”

“Don’t ask me that, Cass.”

Tiny needles prick my eyes. “I need you to tell me. Please. Something is happening to me, and I…I just need to know.”

Asher takes a long breath. His lips purse tightly before he releases it. “I thought I was going to lose you—not just to the fire. To yourself.”

“What?” I blink, like maybe it will restart this day. But it doesn’t.

“I told the cops that the door was stuck. But Cass, you were on the other side of the door.” He bites his lower lip. “You were holding it shut.”

I’m sick for real now. I fight back a gagging sensation and blurt, “Why didn’t anyone tell me this?”

“We were protecting you.”

“What about everyone else? Didn’t Mom and Dad wonder if I’d do it again?”

“We all kept a close eye on you for a long time. And eventually, you started talking again. You met Gideon and went back to normal.”

I’m anything but normal.

“I didn’t want to tell you.”

“No, I’m glad you did. I’ll be fine, really. I just need to sleep.”

Asher tries to smile, but it’s forced. “It was a long time ago, Cass. Whatever happened, it’s best you forget it. You’re not that little girl anymore.” He takes the laptop from me and places it on my desk. “Get some rest.” He turns the light off, shutting the door behind him.

I lie back down, letting the truth expand in my brain until it strangles every other thought. I’m capable of horrible things. Much worse than letting Melody die. Maybe when I wrote the murder plan out in that notebook, some part of me hoped it would come true. That Brandon really would work up the guts to go through with it. Or maybe I wanted to carry it out myself. Only someone else got there first.

No one should be protecting me. It’s only a matter of time before I give in to that blazing impulse again.

Get it together. If I continue unraveling, my family’s efforts—this decade-long charade to keep me out of a mental hospital—will have been for nothing. This is exactly what Laura wanted. To witness Fire Girl’s return.

I tell myself that it was Seth Greer’s face that Melody Davenport saw before she was taken from this world. Not Brandon’s. Not anyone else’s. I repeat that over and over as I try desperately to sleep.