“Jack, it’s not your fault.” She gently took away his hands and held onto them. “All I want is to know who hurt me. I’ve given up on the person being punished for it. And I don’t want to marry any of them, or even know them anymore, to be honest. The thought of any of those jerks being in my life, making decisions for me or my baby, is not only terrifying. It’s disgusting.”
“I want to find out, too.” Jack used his arm to wipe his tears. “What about your Columbo Investigation? Is there anything new?”
“I thought it was Blake for a while,” she admitted. “He’s so transactional, isn’t he? He manipulates people like game pieces around the board. He was so quick to offer a solution that would get him all of the glory and none of the blame.”
Jack nodded. “What made you rule him out?”
“He’s the least popular of the three boys. I honestly don’t think that Clay and Nardo would protect him. Like I said before, they feed off each other. Clay needs Nardo’s adulation and Nardo needs Clay’s coolness, if that’s what you want to call it. Blake is the obvious sacrificial lamb.”
“It’d be the easiest way out,” Jack agreed. “I mean, if they blamed Blake, it would take the heat off them.”
Emily shrugged, but she had come to the same conclusion. Until she talked herself out of it and the circle started to spin again. “Sometimes I think it could have been Nardo. He’s so merciless and selfish. He always takes what he wants. But I figured if it was him, Clay would turn on him, right? Clay always protects himself.”
“Nardo saw me and Clay together,” Jack reminded her. “They’re both holding loaded guns on each other.”
“There’s no guarantee with Nardo. He is very bad at keeping secrets,” Emily said. “It’s almost pathological. If he sees an opportunity to hurt someone, the poison spills out before he can stop it. The thing inside his brain that warns him about consequences is broken.”
“That’s a good point,” Jack said. “It’s why Clay is graduating early, heading out west as soon as he can. He said he can’t trust Nardo to keep his mouth shut.”
“What about Clay? You said he’s into girls, too.” Emily felt her face flush, but she had come this far. “I thought that maybe I—I could’ve done something to provoke him? Maybe I threw myself at him? And he gave in, but he was angry after the fact.”
Jack gave her a look. “Emily, you weigh about a hundred pounds, even pregnant. I think Clay could fend you off. And he’s had plenty of opportunities before.”
Emily felt heat coming off her skin. Clay must have laughed about the crush with Jack.
“What about Wexler?” Jack asked. “He’s a creep. The way he looks at the girls at school is gross. And he’s always trying to find ways to talk about sex stuff with them, even in class.”
Emily didn’t want to think about being in Dean Wexler’s car the night of The Party. She had been nearly comatose. He could’ve done anything. And Nardo probably had known that when he’d loaded Emily into the car.
She told Jack, “Remember, Dean told me that he can’t father children.”
“No offense, but that sounds like something a guy would say so he doesn’t have to wear a condom.”
Emily laughed. “I think you know as much about condoms as I do.”
Jack looked at the ground. The joke had hit too close. “I told you I’m invisible. I hear them talking in the locker room about sex and girls all the time. It’s not nice what they say. Nardo especially, but Clay always laughs at his jokes, and Blake’s usually there to twist the knife.”
Emily had seen this happen in real time. The more Clay could push Nardo toward acts of maliciousness, the happier Clay was. And Blake was always a willing participant in the destruction, alternately egging Nardo on and despising him for his cruelty. She supposed she should add Ricky to the depraved cabal. In many ways, she was the most vicious of them all.
She asked Jack, “Why did I never see that they’re all such reprehensible human beings? I loved them so much. They were my best friends. I trusted them completely.”
Jack suddenly turned bashful.
“Say it,” she told him. “We literally have no secrets between us.”
He nodded because it was true. “I’m sorry, Emily. Nobody ever understood why someone as nice as you was hanging out with them.”
Emily didn’t understand why herself. Or maybe she didn’t want to admit the reason. Clay had made them all feel so special, so cool. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I mean—” Jack shrugged. “It was pretty obvious that they were terrible.”
Emily could only see that in hindsight, which was doubly depressing because, just weeks ago, Ricky had accused her of being a Pollyanna.
Still Emily felt the need to defend them, at least partially. They hadn’t all started out bad. Only Nardo had shown signs of his later brutishness, always yanking Emily’s hair or snapping Ricky’s bra strap. Clay had once been kind. Long ago, Blake had been sensitive. Even Ricky had been sweet, taking up for Emily in third grade when someone had ruined her art project. Though, looking back, Ricky was probably the person who’d ruined it in the first place. She was such a spiteful bitch.
“Emily, you’re not going to be alone in all this, okay? I’m going to be here if you need me. When you need me,” Jack said. “I’ve already been accepted into the police academy for summer term. I only applied to get my dad off my back, but Clay doesn’t want me to go with him and I don’t have any other options. I’m going to stay in Longbill and work for my dad when I get out of the academy.”
Emily’s heart sank. If anybody ever needed to get out of this place, it was Jack Stilton. He needed to go to Baltimore or some other big city where he could find people like himself who were living happier lives.