“So? Why would that drive him to fake his own death? That’s ridiculously extreme.”
Chelsea drips a drop of wax straight onto her hand, and I cringe. “Maybe he didn’t fake it.”
My heart begins to pound. “Why do you say that?”
“Forget it.” Her voice goes quiet, distant.
“Chelsea.” I inch closer to her, my hands shaking a little from the sudden jolt of adrenaline. “You’ve been lying to me for a year. Everyone has been lying to me for a year. Your note wasn’t the mistake and you know it. You wrote that noteabouta mistake. That’s why you still wear the bracelet. That’s why you can’t sleep. No one is supposed to carry this kind of secret. It’s poisoning you, Chelsea.”
She drips more wax onto her hand and then seems to suddenly realize what she’s doing and cries out and drops the candle, the flame flickering out as it hits the floor. I pick it up quickly and relight it with another. She peels the wax off her skin. “I need to run this under cold water,” she says.
“Tell me what happened.” I block the door.
She looks exhausted. “It was a mistake. Okay? I wasn’t there, Em. I wasn’t on the boat. They all went out together like tonight. I saw him go into the water. It didn’t look like he jumped in. It looked like he fell. Or maybe…”
“What?” I can barely breathe. In my ears, there is a pounding beat, a warning. A terrible warning.
“Maybe he was pushed.” She covers her mouth with her unburned hand. The words are electric. They stop my heart. A beat. Restart.
“Who?” My voice is scratchy and dry. Heat damaged.
Panic flares like a wildfire in her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I probably imagined it. I don’t believe it.” She takes a step forward, but I grab her wrists and force her to stay, to face me, to face the truth.
“Then why are you telling me?”
“In case it’s true!” She tries to push past me, but I shove her backward. No backing out. Not now.
“I need to know the rest. All of it.” My head is throbbing. My heart is pounding, offbeat, arrhythmic. Stop. A beat. Restart. But faster. And faster. He’s dead. They lied. They killed him and lied.
Tears glisten in Chelsea’s eyes. “I swear, that’s all I know. I was on the dock. I jumped in and swam after him. But I didn’t make it. I panicked and couldn’t breathe, and Kennedy had to come for me.”
I try to make sense of it. He’s dead. “Who came for Ryan?”
“Chase tried. Kennedy tried. I tried. No one could find him.”
“So you pushed him in, and then had second thoughts.” My brain is pulsing in my skull. They lied.
“No. No. I didn’t push him. I wasn’t even on the boat.” She grabs my hand. “Emily, I’m probably being paranoid. Chase swears he’s getting emails from Ryan.”
Lightning flashes. I don’t know whether it’s through the sky or in my brain. I don’t care. They killed him and lied. “When? Why didn’t he—anyone—tell me?”
“He said Ry didn’t want it getting back to your parents. He doesn’t want to be tracked down. Chase only told me after the note incident because he was worried.” Her voice falters. She’s lying. Or Chase was lying and she knows it. I can’t trust anyone anymore. He’s dead and they lied; they killed him and lied.
My mind is too busy. I have no time for arguing. Chelsea is not my friend. I look her up and down, too overwhelmed byall of this information to think clearly, then shove her hard, run down the ladder, and lock her in the attic. Attics are places for secrets. Attics are places to hide. Attics are places to set traps.
For creatures that creep inside.
I walk downstairs in a fog and pace back and forth in the kitchen, waiting for the others to return.
I can hear Chelsea in the attic, stomping around and shouting. That’s going to be an obvious problem. I’ll never hear the other sides of the story if they immediately come in and find that I’ve locked Chelsea in the attic like Mrs. Rochester. Shit. What did I do? I think back to last year. Sangria. I slice the fruit with shaky fingers, use the second bottle of chianti, try to remember the way Kennedy does it. Brandy. Ryan was drinking brandy too. I pour myself a glass and begin to feel warm and steady.
My eyes fall on the glass decanter, and Chelsea’s words swirl around my head. Someone pushed him. I pour half of the sangria into the decanter and mix up a little more, so I have a full pitcher and a full decanter. Then I dump half of the bottle of Chelsea’s pills into the decanter and begin stirring before I can change my mind. They dissolve slowly, turning from pill to powder to nothing. It’s impossible to tell the difference by looking at the two pitchers. I take a sip. You almost can’t taste it, but there is a tiny sweetness to it, like saccharin. I dump in a little more brandy and taste it again. Perfect. I carry the pitcher and the decanter outside and set them on the stone table along with four glasses. Then I go inside, down to the cellar, and turn off the power in the attic. That way there will be much less of a chance that anyone will glance up and see Chelsea in thewindow. The candles will give off some light, but the light in the rest of the rooms will draw the eye downward. No one will even glance up at the attic, and the single tiny window doesn’t open. But as a final touch, I scroll through my playlists, and choose Ryan’s favorite album,Kid A. All of that banging and stomping fades into the sounds of the forest out here, anyway. But under the sound of warm synth bleeding out of the speakers, it’s no more discernable than someone else’s heartbeat.
I wait at the table as the boat returns just at sundown and watch as Kennedy, Chase, and Mila step offSummer’s Edgeone by one. There is a glass set out for each of us, the pitcher and decanter at the center of the table. Every place setting is identical. Everyone will start out with a glass from the pitcher. The decanter is reserved for the person who pushed Ryan. Four glasses, four settings.
Chelsea likes to think she has a place among them, that she could get away with being the odd one and somehow not be the odd one out. That I was always the extra chair at the table.
A twin is never the extra chair.