JT blows out smoke and coughs. “Who is Miles Modine?”
“Our next door neighbor. He was at the barbecue on Sunday.”
“Oh shit, how’s your gramma?”
“She’ll live. But Miles is big into true crime. He and Nate have been working on something about his disappearance. I’ve overheard them talking about it a few times, actually.”
Overheard.My face starts to tingle. Easton locks eyes with me and the annoyed look he gives me fills me with shame.
“But it’s weird,” Easton says. “Because he’s not my real brother.”
My jaw hangs open and the world has frozen around me. I don’t feel the wind on my skin, the warmth of the setting sun; I don’t hear the birds or the thunder in the distance.
Only Easton repeating over and over in an endless loop that I’m not his brother.
JT turns to me and scoffs. “What?”
“Tell him, Nate,” Easton says. “Or whatever the hell your name is. Tell him the truth.”
JT takes another rip of his vape, but he seems to think this is all a joke we’re playing on him. And maybe that’s all it is. Easton could be bluffing. Miles was at first, though I panicked and gave myself up. I won’t do it again, though.
So I fake a laugh and say, “He’s pissed off at me because Miles said he was doing a podcast about the disappearance and I was thinking about helping him.”
“You’re right, I am pissed,” Easton says. “Because you showed up here, pretending to be my dead little brother, and now you want to go on some podcast to lie and say, what? You have amnesia?”
“I remember some things,” I say. “Just noteverything.” I hope he doesn’t ask me what I do remember, because I’m kind of limited to the things Miles and the Beaumonts have already told me.
Easton’s eyes go wide but... he doesn’t look like himself. And the longer he looks at me, the more I’m starting to worry he isn’t bluffing.
How could he have found out, though? Maybe he did buy a DNA test online and test my saliva or hair. We share a bathroom. He might have been able to get something there.
If that’s true, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I try one last-ditch effort to call his bluff. “Why do you think I’m not your brother?” I need to see if there’s an easy way to disprove whatever flimsy evidence he might have.
“Because my brother is dead.”
JT is getting bored with whatever’s happening here. He puffs on his vape, letting out smoke as he speaks. “Listen, whatever is going on between y’all, it’s harshing my buzz. So if you could maybe take it elsewhere—” He coughs again and takes out his inhaler.
“Sorry, JT,” Easton says. “I need you to prove a point.”
JT shakes his head but breathes in from the inhaler. “Sure.”
Again, the way Easton looks at me gives me chills. “I’m... not dead,” I say.
“You’renot. Nate, on the other hand, very much is.”
My mouth is dry and my heart is starting to race. “Okay. So if that’s true, how do you know?”
“Because I’m the one who killed him.”
Thirty-Seven
I stare at Easton, waiting for the punch line. Because that’s all this is, right? He’s joking. Easton was the one who came to me and admitted that he’dthoughtI was dead.
Nate.
He told me he’d thoughtNatewas dead.
