I toss it in.
Thousands of chairs are placed in the middle of the field and the stands are full of everyone’s families. We walk out sorted by college, and in alphabetical order. I can only hope the ceremony goes quick as the sun beats down on us. The dean briefly glosses over the deaths of the would-be graduates this year and I can’t help but look down the row at where Annica would be sitting. Did she not even care about graduating? Did she even think she would? We turn our tassels and some people toss their caps into the air, but I don’t.
I go out to eat with my family after commencement and my mother talks about moving me back home until I find a job. I nod along, but I think about Asher. What if I did move out to Coloradowith him? Would he even still want me to? We haven’t spoken in the two weeks since he left. He could be with Brandy now for all I know.
After a lot of convincing, my mom and Don drop me off at the boys’ house after dinner, where everyone is already outside drinking. Wes sits on the railing of the porch, and I take a mental note, because this is the last time I’ll ever see it. If senior year was a book, then this would be the last chapter. This is where the main character would realize that everything she went through made her better in the end. She would have a job lined up or an internship, and she would walk up onto that porch and kiss her boyfriend, the one she worked so hard to win over. Her friends would cheer, someone would pop champagne. In a Netflix series, some indie pop song would play in the background as the camera zooms out away from the house. The credits would roll.
But instead, Jake throws up in the bushes by the porch.
I sigh, walking past him and up the porch steps. Wes brings me in for a long hug and kisses my cheek. Dani comes out holding a bottle of champagne. So there’s that at least. She shakes it up and holds it out over the railing.
“To graduation!” Dani yells, more like half slurs, and I know she’s already drunk. She pops the bottle, and it sprays into the yard. Dani hands it to me and I take a sip. She does too, before pouring some out into the yard. “And one for Annica.”
Maybe she’ll be able to taste it in hell.
I walk inside, looking for Asher. People are all around the living room, jumping on the couches, smoking, spilling champagne everywhere. He said he’d be here. I walk up the stairs toward his room and stop at the door.
I know my answer.
I open the door, looking at the boxes all over his floor. His bed is gone, his piano is gone. I hear the sink running in the bathroom and give a sigh of relief knowing he’s here. I take a deep breath, preparing to see him. But before he comes out, something catches my eye. A half-packed box lies open where his bar cart used to be, and inside is a small brown leather book. But those are common, right?
I walk over to the box, bending down to get a closer look.
“Sloane?” Asher comes from the bathroom and spots me crouched over the box.
And I don’t have to open it to know what it is. I’ve carried this journal around for four years: I know how the leather cover feels on my fingertips. The exact weight of it in my bookbag. The way the bottom left corner has started to wear away.
“Sloane, wait.” This time there’s worry in his voice. I untie the side and open it to find Ryan’s eulogy, with the torn-out page that was once Jonah’s overlapping it. “I can explain.”
My hands shake and my shoulders slump. “Why do you have this?” I look at him now, and Asher is pale under my gaze, likely deciding if he should lie or tell the truth. “Answer the question.”
“Can we go back to your place and talk about this?”
“Tell me why you have it.” I stand with the journal in hand.
“I didn’t know she was going to kill anyone,” he says quietly, and I almost don’t hear it over the music blaring downstairs.
My breath hitches in my throat at his words, his admission. That he had any part in this. “You knew? You knew this whole time it was her?”
“You have to understand, everything I did, I did to protect you.She asked me to take the journal, scan the pages, and help her distribute them. She said it was a prank, something to just throw you off. She said she wanted to win that stupid essay competition and she needed you to spiral. And in return she’d talk Wes out of the resort—”
“You let people die, for yourresort? Oh my god, Asher.” I put my hand to my mouth, shaking my head in disbelief.
“When she told me she killed Ryan I told her I wasn’t going to help her with whatever this was, and she said if I turned her in I would go down with her. You have to understand, Sloane, I was going to go to jail with her if I said anything. I was trying to help you the best I could.”
I suddenly think of how Annica laughed when I mentioned Asher’s name before she died. And how she gave me plot advice for my story, saying... the main character should find out that the character based off Asher had been deceiving her the whole time.
God, she basically told me.
“Help me? You let me run around formonthstrying to pin murders on an innocent man! We broke into his car and his house, fornothing! You let people die, over and over again, instead of just going to the police after Ryan!” I feel the panic rising in my throat as my breathing becomes shallow again. It all makes sense. How much Annica had hated him this year, questioning everything he ever did or said to me. She thought he would tell me the truth, that he’d turn her in. She never believed for a moment that he had any feelings toward me, because he never did. He can’t say he loves me because he doesn’t. He just needed to distract me long enough for him to get off scot-free. I feel myself start to hyperventilate now, the room growing smaller. “I can’t, I can’t believe this.”
“I didn’t care at the start. I just wanted what she promised me, but I really did fall for you—you have to believe that. I love you, and I’m so sorry.”
I cut him a look, one that makes him shut his mouth.
“I trusted you,” I say. “I trusted both of you.”
“I love you,” he says again, like it’ll take it all away. Like the words will wash it all away. He steps toward me.
