I shake my head and back away. “Don’t.” He stops. “I should turn you in. I should call Grange and tell him you helped her.”
“But you won’t,” Asher says. “Because you love me too, I know you do.”
“No,” I say. “No.”
“Yes, you do. And I would spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you if you could forgive me somehow—”
“You were never going to tell me, were you? You were going to whisk me away to Vail and just wait for it to all blow over.” Again, he doesn’t say anything. I just shake my head at him as tear after tear slips down my cheeks. Genuinely surprised that I even have any left. “I never want to see you again.” I move past him, still with the journal in hand, and stop. “You know what, keep this.” I throw the journal at his chest. “I would only fill the remaining pages with your name anyway.”
I leave the house without another word to anyone. I don’t stop when Dani calls after me, or when Wes tries to follow me down the street while I walk somewhere to call for a ride.
Alone in my apartment I stare at Grange’s number on my phone. I should call and say Asher was an accessory. There will be no trial now that Annica is dead. There would be if I did this. Could I stand up there and condemn him to possible jail time forprinting the pages of the journal, for agreeing to initially help her, then standing by while she did it? Can people even get jail time for that? My thumb hovers over the call button, then away. He manipulated me, he used me, he lied to me. I wonder what Ben would do to him if Asher was going to go to prison. And deep down, in some sick twisted part of me, I can’t hurt him. I can’t do it.
Frustrated, I throw my phone at the wall. It leaves a small hole in the plaster before falling into the suitcase that I had started to pack. The one I would have taken with me to Colorado.
I let out a frustrated scream, then another, until my throat is raw. Then I lie down in the dark, still in my graduation dress, and go through the names of the dead again. Jonah, Ryan, Marco, Bryce, Graham. Jonah, Ryan, Marco, Bryce, Graham.
Asher. Asher. Asher.
The following day, I don’t leave my bed. I’m supposed to be packing up my things. Our lease is up at the end of next week.
There’s a small knock on my door before Adrienne opens it. “Hey, were the cookie sheets yours or mine? I don’t remember.”
I lie facing the wall. “Just take them. I don’t care.”
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“No.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
With another person who has lied to me this year? “No.”
“Okay,” she whispers, shutting the door.
My phone buzzes periodically. They’re texts from my family, texts from Dani, texts from Asher.
I shut my phone off.
Chapter 33
Annica wins the short-story competition.
After two days in bed I turn my phone back on to a whole host of messages, including an email from Renner to the class breaking the news. She must have submitted her final story before spring break. But since she’s dead, and a murderer, the second-place story will get the prize.
Whoever that is, because it isn’t me.
I almost laugh at the irony. She wanted so badly to win, to beat me in something, and she finally did. But she’ll never know. Or maybe she will. Maybe she’s looking down—or looking up, rather—at my life now, smug as the hell I hope she’s now an occupant of.
I sit up, watching the small specks of dust float around in the morning sun before I make eye contact with the small trash bin in my room. Miles Holland’s story sticks out at the top of it. He was right about one thing; it is not his story to tell. I look over at my goals still taped to my mirror. The only one not crossed out:Write your first book.
It’s not Holland’s story to tell, because it’s mine.
I take my laptop from my bag and open it up. I won’t write a eulogy for everyone who broke my heart this year. I will write a whole damn book.
I let it all sink in. Adrienne smiling at me while seeing Miles behind my back. Annica’s soothing words after every murder, the onesshecommitted. And Asher. I can’t even think of him without wanting to hyperventilate and crawl back under the covers.
I scroll through what has to now be hundreds of text messages and voicemails he’s left me in the past few days begging for forgiveness. He says he loves me, but it won’t be enough. It will never be enough. He was the biggest liar of them all.
