“What happened? Are you okay?” Nicola asks.
“It was you.”
30
CORA
I resort to taking a muscle relaxant. After the last few days, sleep refuses to come, and I feel like if I’m forced to know one more horrific thing against my will, it could literally kill me if I can’t get at least a small amount of sleep first. The ceiling fan is off, and Finn is gone, and I feel more desperately alone than I ever thought possible. They say feeling alone with someone else is worse than really being alone, but right now, I don’t know.
After just a few hours of sleep, my anxiety wakes me up. My mind is racing, but the medicine makes me feel sluggish and groggy. Still, I force myself to the coffee maker and start a pot, then I text Mia to come home right away. When she responds asking why, I just text back,Now, and to my surprise, by the time I finish my first cup of coffee, she’s pulling into the driveway.
She sprints into the house, dropping her stuff, and stops cold when she sees me at the kitchen island, looking her up and down.
“What’s the freakin’ emergency?” she asks, and I look at her in her stupid pajamas and beautiful, unkempt hair she got from me, and her innocent face, and I wish I could take away what she saw that night, but I can’t, and she’s almost an adult, and she needs to answer for what happened. I ask her to sit down, and she does. Then I turn my phone around and play her the video. Her face goes pale and ghostly.
“Oh, my God! Why are you going through my stuff?” she says, and I see her eyes dart, her mind racing for an explanation.
“No. You don’t get to say that now—not about this.” I smack my phone down on the counter and look at her. “Why, after all we’ve been through with Paige searching, with Caleb, with—Why would you hide this?”
She stares at the floor.
“Mia,” I say. She keeps her head down.
“I wanted to help him. We were just coming home and saw him. I was gonna call the police, but we heard them coming, so...”
“Who’swe?” I ask, sharply.
“Ryan,” she says. The boyfriend I thought she was moping over all this time after they broke up. I guess she was carrying something much bigger than that.
“You didn’t call the police or tell me or anyone else because you heard sirens coming? That doesn’t add up.” I think about Caleb in the video. Unmoving, eyes open. The fear he must have felt. Even though I know he was high, and I know Nicola had to protect herself, it wasn’t the real him. Maybe Finn could have helped him instead of buying drugs off him. My heart breaks for Caleb, and I’m furious at how so many secrets built this fortress around the truth.
“Ryan got some pills. Some...”
“Some what? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Some Molly,” she says, not making eye contact.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Mom.”
“It’s a drug. You’re telling me you were on drugs?”
“I promise, I never did it again. I hated it. I was so sick the next day. He had a party in his basement. He said it would be fun just one time. Mom, if we called the police, my life would be over!” Now she starts to cry. “The police were coming, and there was nothing I could do, so I listened to him when he said we had to get out of there.”
“So you not only took the drug, but let a completely high kid drive you home?”
“Mom, I’m sorry. It never happened again. That was almost a year ago, and I’ve never touched anything since then. I promise. I thought I’d never go to college, I’d have a record—I didn’t know what would happen, but I couldn’t tell. And I didn’t know Ryan recorded it. He sent the video to me. He thought it was cool he had it, and I broke up with him—that’s why, ’cause he was such a creep about it,” she says, and then walks over to the sink and pulls a paper towel from the roll to wipe the streaks of mascara from her cheeks.
“Why did you keep the video?” I ask. She throws the towel away and takes another, blotting it under her eyes, then sits back on the stool and sighs.
“I didn’t know if Ryan would try to get revenge. He was angry about the breakup. I didn’t even know what he would do—give details about the scene, somehow point the finger at me. I just kept it, I guess, because it proves I tried to help and that he was the one trying to leave the scene and the one driving in case anyone thoughtwehit Caleb...” She’s rambling. I pick up my phone and find the video.
“Look at this again,” I say, and she does.
“Okay? What?”
“That car. Do you remember seeing it drive off?” I ask, and she watches it again.
