27
I glance back desperately atChase and Mila, but the door swings shut behind them.
Ryan stares down at me coldly. “I didn’t think you’d break so easily.”
“Break?” I take a nervous step backward toward the house.
“I trusted you, and you sided with them.” He laughs bitterly. “Why would I expect any more from you? Kennedy says jump, and you sprint for a cliff.”
I feel frozen. This isn’t the Ryan I know anymore. He was never cruel. “That’s not fair. You were the one who lied to me about the gas leak. Why, Ryan?”
“Maybe I did it to test you. If you bought the lie, you couldn’t have known the truth, could you?”
“But why play all these games? You know none of us would have hurt Emily on purpose. Every one of us was destroyed by her death.”
“Then what did happen?” he pushes.
I struggle for an answer. “The house. There’s something wrong with it.”
“Houses don’t set themselves on fire. They don’t murder their friends.”
“Neither do we.”
His jaw tightens, and for a moment, I can feel the sharpness of his pain. I want to be able to comfort him. To make everything okay. But things have become too damaged.
He looks up at me. “Face it, Chelsea. You picked sides a long time ago. And you chose the wrong side.”
Tears sting my eyes. “There are no sides.”
“There have always been sides. Long before now. Before the fire, before the boat.”
I think back to what Mila said. “You mean the Summer of Swallows? I don’t….” I haven’t thought about that summer in ages. I’ve been laser-focused on last summer. But before I can pick through my memories of lake-house summers to separate it out, Ryan interrupts me with a glare of impatient disappointment. “Stop testing me. Whathappenedon the boat?”
He laughs dully. “Come on, Chelsea. You know this one.”
But I don’t. I hate sailing, the unsteadiness. The feeling of standing on a tilting, shifting earth, like trying to balance on a spinning top.
“You were there, weren’t you?” He stares intently.
“No, I wasn’t.” I wouldn’t have gone out the night of the fire. Chase said I didn’t. I don’t remember it because it didn’t happen.
“There’s a difference between not being able to remember and not being able to admit the truth,” he says quietly.
“You’re lying,” I say. Ryan, my Ryan, is lying to me. “You lied about the gas leak.”
“And it worked.”
“Because I believed you?” I feel sick. “You betrayed your friends.”
“Did I?” He looks at me sharply. “When did you startthinking you were better than me?” His voice is chilling, whisper soft. “You’re the one who turned on me.”
I search for something familiar in his eyes, but I’ve lost him. My Ryan is gone. “If I’m the traitor, tell me why you came back for Mila instead of Emily?”
“Instead of you, you mean,” he says. “Right?”
“No.” Yes. No. The guilt is razor-sharp, ice-cold. I hate that I want to be the one he came back for. Emily died, but we were both left behind. We were both left behind.
“I didn’t,” he says. “It was some Boy Scout fireman. I didn’t come back for any of you. Feel better?”