“I just want to fill in the blanks about what happened.”
“You don’t remember?”
I hesitate. “Not everything. But even if I did, I wouldn’t know the whole story. I’m just one witness out of five, and I don’t know what the rest of you know. What you saw, heard… Any evidence that came out while I was away.”
“You didn’t think to ask until now? Your parents, your doctors, pick up a newspaper maybe? Did youtryto find out what happened all of this time?”
I shrink from her accusing gaze. Of course I didn’t. I didn’t want to think about it. In a haze of grief and sedatives, it isn’t hard to set bad memories afloat, and in the wake of the tragedy I pushed those details as far away as I could. Because thinking about it meant images and sounds like a newsreel, occupying every moment, every space in my head. No sleep. No peace. Just the attic door stuck shut, billows of smoke pouring in from the hallway, the sound of screaming, and then, almost the worst, the moment my gaze swung away from the fog of smoke and toward the open balcony doors. The terrible moment my eyes zeroed in on the sky, the lake beyond, all of the little living things outside, and I knew I was going to leave her behind. And I was never going to forgive myself.
“Why do youwantto revisit that night?” Kennedy says.
“I need to in order to make peace with it, Kennedy! You weren’t the one who abandoned her. Can you for once please think of what it feels like to be someone other than you?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “What do you want to know?”
“How did the fire start?”
She shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. I was outside when Emily went in. Something must have happened while I was out in the yard. You were the last one to see her alive, Chelsea. If anyone saw anything, it would be you. But I accept that you didn’t because it was an accident.”
“But why was I the last? No one thought I was worth saving either?”
She flinches. “That’s not fair. The doors were locked.” Were they? I frown. I couldn’t have known—my escape route was Kennedy’s balcony. “I pounded and shouted until my voicewas shot,” Kennedy continues. “And no one would ever say you didn’t think Emily was worth saving, because everyone understands that you had to let her go.”
“Are you sure about that?” I try to ignore the guilty feeling that overwhelms me whenever I start to think too hard about last summer. I bet a lot of people would say that about me. I bet the Joiners would. How do you forgive your daughter’s friend for letting her die?
“Everyone who matters, anyway.”
“If you were outside…” The tarot card comes back to me. “Did you take the boat out?” I picture her on the bloodred water, radiant in the moonlight. There has to be some significance to the tarot card. Unless Kennedy is right, and Ryan and I are grasping at straws, searching for meaning that doesn’t exist.
She looks at me oddly. “Why?”
“Just… I want to know.”
She starts biting her nails again. “I don’t recall.”
“That’s convenient. Is that what your dad told you to say?”
“I don’t recall,” she snaps.
I stare at her. That’s coached speech. It’s what lawyers tell guilty clients to say to avoid admitting something that could lead to their guilt, without telling an outright lie. It’s a very specific phrase. Who saysI don’t recallin everyday conversation?
“Look, Chels. If you need to process your grief with this… game? Go for it. But I don’t want to be part of it. It’s not funny to me.”
“Does it look like I’m joking?”
“It looks like you think one of us could have actually killed Emily. Why would I kill one of my best friends?”
“I don’t know why you do a lot of things you do, Kennedy. Or don’t do.”
She stares at me. “If that’s true, either you really have changed or you never knew me as well as I thought you did.”
I stand unsteadily, grabbing a pillow and throw blanket. “Maybe I didn’t.” My head is swimming now. The images are floating before me, blinking in and out of dreams, the jagged crown, the golden sails, the lake of blood.
She looks at me, perplexed. “Where are you going?”
“I’m sleeping on the couch.”
I stumble downstairs, and when I sink onto the couch, I feel like I’m sinking down and down and down through layers of soft, soft, earth, an endless descent, as if the world is bending inward and changing shape, all time and space destabilizing to open an eye for sleep. But I immediately regret my decision. This is where I heard Emily speak. I glance up the stairs and consider apologizing. But I’m so tired I can’t think without glittering crowns, or breathe without gallons of blood, or dream without yards of golden silk, billowing in the lavender wind, carrying me through the in-between. I sink my head into the deep, downy pillow and close my eyes.
A voice whispers in my ear, “Don’t think you’re going to get away—”
Darkness falls.