“Oh my god,” Courtney breathed. “You literallywereHeather’s stalker.”
“Did you stalk me?” Mint asked, horrified.
“I didn’t stalk anyone!” Caro grabbed at her hair. “I just needed you all more than you needed me, and I was ashamed of it. Growing up, I was the freak kid, the one with super-religious parents. And then I came to college, and all of a sudden, I had you guys, and I was part of something. But no matter how hard I tried, you always left me out. I was always at the bottom. Just like Eric said. It drove mecrazy.”
“Caro,” I started. “You don’t have to say all this—”
“No—I want to know.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “Why not me?”
No one said anything. I tried to remember times we’d left Caro out, or times she’d seemed unhappy, but I couldn’t. She’d just been…there. Reliable, dependable, good-natured Caro. Someone I took for granted.
I was supposed to be her best friend.
“You can’t even think of a reason, can you?” Caro looked around at us, dark eyes rimmed with red. “That’s how little you thought of me, when you were all I ever thought about.”
“I think about you,” Coop said softly.
Caro glared at him. “Not then.”
“You’reverygood at playing the victim, I’ll give you that.” Eric stepped forward, clutching the photographs. “Poor, pitiful Caro. None of her friends loved her enough. Why don’t you get to the part where you threatened my sister a week before she died?”
Caro darted glances at the rest of us, waiting for something—to be defended, maybe. For protests thatCaro couldn’t possibly. But when none came, she swallowed hard. “I found out Heather scheduled a meeting with Frankie’s coach.” Her eyes flicked away, ashamed, and we all knew then how she’d uncovered it. “So I confronted her. I said if she did, I’d tell everyone she leaked Amber Van Swann’s sex tape sophomore year because she was jealous Amber was getting all the attention.”
Oh god.What had we done to Caro in the space of two years to turn her from the girl who’d refused to leak Amber’s tape to the one who used it for blackmail?
“Heatherleaked it?” Courtney screeched. “She leaked the tape ofmyAmber, the girl who was supposed to be my little sis?”
Caro closed her eyes. “No. But I told her I had access to the original file, and I could make it look like she did. It was a bluff. A halfway bluff. But she believed me. I told her if she went to Frankie’s coach and ruined his life, I’d ruin hers back.”
“Damn,” Mint breathed. “Ice cold.”
Caro opened her eyes and found mine, her hand drifting to her bare neck. But what was missing was bigger than a necklace. It was the laughing girl I’d met when we were eighteen, in the East House quad. It was the girl the rest of us had killed slowly, over the course of years.
“So itwasyou,” Eric said, growing calm again, now that he had Caro in his crosshairs. “Heather must’ve stepped out of line, and you were following up on your threat.” He shook the photographs at her. “Was this supposed to be a message?”
“No!” she shouted. I could see heads in the crowd turn to look at us, a strange tableau: the crying woman on the football float, a group of people gathered around her in a tense circle.
“I didn’t touch those pictures,” Caro insisted. “I never would’ve cut up our memories. I just wanted to scare her with the threat. And it worked. She never told. I had no reason to hurt her.”
“It wasn’t Caro,” Coop said, his menacing voice back. “She’s not perfect—none of us are—but it wasn’t her.”
“Well, in that case”—Eric jerked his head in my direction and grinned, like everything was going exactly according to plan—“we have one other possibility.”
My back hit the railing and I gripped it, tight.
Eric held up the photographs. His eyes glinted. “Tell me, Jessica. What did Heather do to make you want to kill her?”
Chapter 28
January, senior year
Dr. Garvey didn’t take me out of town. He didn’t try to hide it. We sat in the middle of a crowded restaurant across the street from campus—the nice steakhouse, the one Mint’s parents took him to every Parents’ Weekend. I wondered if Dr. Garvey knew somehow that no one would catch us—like he’d struck a deal with the restaurant—or if he simply didn’t care.
The professor insisted I call him John. He tipped the wine bottle and filled my glass, over and over, speaking at length about the new book he was writing, which was sure to make a splash, earn him yet another offer from the White House. He never once asked me a question. Didn’t inquire about the fellowship, why I wanted it, or where I would go if I won. I knew within five minutes of sitting down that Dr. Garvey didn’t care about getting to know me.
But I was glad he didn’t stop talking, because I couldn’t have managed a word. I was an automaton, moving in the ways I was supposed to, doing things I could see other people doing in my peripheral vision: unfolding my white napkin, laying it across my lap. Taking sips of water. Allowing the waiter to scoot my chair close to the table, cage me. I ordered fish by pointing blindly at the menu, then ate two bites.
What was I doing? I wanted to be somewhere safe. I thought of Coop’s apartment on instinct, before remembering the two men shattering the glass, the hand untwisting the lock. Maybe there was nowhere safe. Still, every instinct screamed at me to leave as fast as I could.
