21
When we reach the driveway, Mila is sitting in her car, her face ashen, violently yanking at the ignition and slamming on the gas pedal. The car is still, lifeless. Kennedy drifts to her car as if in a trance, opens the door, and flicks at the headlights. Nothing happens. She slides the key into the ignition and turns it, then shakes her head. Both cars are dead, and Ryan’s is gone.
“Holy shit,” Chase murmurs under his breath. He tries his own car, with the same result.
“What does this mean?” I try to avoid looking at my car. There’s something sinister about a dead car at a dark house. Like a warning. We should not be here. The headlights stare like lifeless eyes, like that shot inPsychoof the dead woman in the shower. I blink and turn away.
“Someone either drained the batteries or removed them,” he says.
“Someone?” Kennedy gets out of the car. “Well, fuck Ryan and his horrible, no good, very bad year.”
I glare at her. “There is zero evidence that this was him.”
“There is plenty of evidence.” She ticks the reasons off on her fingers. “He shows up and disappears. He stalls us with a note, allowing him to tamper with the lights and the carswithout anyone noticing. He probably got that creepy book from Emily’s room.”
“Not necessarily,” I say. “Emily wrote the last message. Which means it ended up in my hands.”
Kennedy looks at me, irritated. “Well, did you do it? Because unlike you, Ryan has a motive: we didn’t save his sister. According to him, we killed her with our own bare hands.”
Chase cringes. “Come on. Negligence, maybe.”
Kennedy stares at him. “I’m glad you’re warming up to the idea.”
“I’m not,” he protests. “Just…” He looks uncomfortable. “You don’t feel guilty at all?”
“Oh mygod.” Mila jumps out of the car, slamming the door behind her. “Emily died. It was a terrible accident, and granted, the circumstances don’t look good for any of us. I don’t even blame Ryan for being suspicious. We all haveexcusesfor not knowing how the fire started. But they’re not alibis. And Kennedy.” Mila looks straight into her eyes. “I think you know more than you’re saying, and I don’t want to know what you’re hiding.” She whips her phone out of her pocket.
Kennedy sighs. “No cell service.”
“Shit.” Mila drops her hand to her side and looks to Chase desperately. “What do people do around here when their car breaks down?”
He scratches the back of his neck. “There’s usually a landline. When it’s busted, hike to the cell spot or walk to town. Preferably in the morning.”
She shakes her head. “No way. Something is happening, and you know what? I’m the outsider here. I have the mostunbiased perspective. And it could be any of you torturing us right now. Chelsea says she wants the truth. How far would she go to push her friends into confessing? Kennedy won’t talk about what happened last year. Maybe she really does want to find out what we know and eliminate whoever knows too much. Chase—sorry, babe—you make mistakes, and you don’t like to be called on them. What would you do to cover them up? And the elusive Ryan? He didn’t even try to save Emily. Maybe we were never supposed to know about that. And now we’re being punished for it.” She shrugs. “It could be any of you. And I’m not going to be next. Two dead girls don’t make a right. So I’m out.” She walks toward us briskly, and I have to jump aside to avoid being knocked over. And then she walks right back into the house.
“Did she sayout?” Kennedy’s forehead creases.
I turn to Chase. “Do you know what she has that the rest of us lack?”
He stares at me, speechless.
“Spirit.” I can’t help it. I don’t know why I am the way I am. I need to joke when I’m fizzing with fear. To smile sometimes when the world is crumbling. I need to silence the room. I wish I was a better person. But I’m not. I survive and let my friends fend for themselves.
Chase sighs and launches himself after her.
Kennedy pauses at my side, looking beaten down. “You can’t even entertain the idea that it might be Ryan, can you?”
“I can entertain it. That’s what makes me sure it’s not him. He’s our friend.”
“What if he wasn’t the person you thought he was?”
“You really believe he would do all of this? Trap me in the attic, kill the car batteries?”
She shoots me a wary look. “Do you really want to know what I think?” I study her. Kennedy wears a hard, polished exterior. But it isn’t the real Kennedy. Not the one I fell in love with. I may have always been in love with Kennedy a little, but the summer between ninth and tenth grade was when I fell, and kept falling, and never really stopped. She’d been whispering about her secret crush for weeks, building it up to be the revelation of the year. And then one night after a fish fry, Kennedy and I took out a boat to watch fireworks, and out of the blue, she told me it was me all along. I was the secret. I was stunned, she was nervous. That made her so much cuter—she was carelessly oblivious to the fact that half of the class had a crush on her. I’d never kissed anyone before and I was too scared to do it, so we just agreed that we liked each other, and sat there awkwardly in the boat with all these explosions startling the fish and forcing us to shout at each other. You think, middle of the lake, starlight, fireworks, first kiss, how romantic. But it wasn’t. It was scary and awkward and important.
But eventually we agreed that kissing is customary in these situations, so she promised not to laugh, and I squeezed my eyes shut and clambered over the emergency gear, and we found each other. It was too short. Every kiss with Kennedy was always too short. We kissed all weekend, in every private moment. She laughed every time. I always opened my eyes before the end.
But when summer was over, she showed up at my doorstep and said she wanted to make sure we were still best friends,and Emily too. And my heart shot itself to pieces, because I understood. Emily felt left out. And starting high school with a girlfriend would be “limiting” in a lot of ways. We were back together by the end of the year, but I was still devastated, and it stuck with me. It still does. Kennedy always held all the cards.