“Get. Out.”
He doesn’t need to tell me twice—I’m already going. I stomp down his stairs and slam the door behind me.
Wes comes out of his room at the commotion. “What’s wrong, what happened?”
“Nothing, I just forgot who I was talking to, that’s all.”
“Ugh, don’t tell me these characters are who I think they are,” Annica says after reading through my story.
“You wanted to read it,” I remind her as we sit in Renner’s Tuesday-afternoon senior seminar. The first of the semester.
“I mean, it’s an okay story, I guess,” she says. “I just think the end is really obvious.”
“How so?”
“She chooses the soldier, like you knew from the beginning that she would. There’s no twist and there’s just something about it that doesn’t feel genuine. It feels like a lie.” She looks up at me when she says the last part. “I have an idea for it, though. What if the letters that she’s been getting, the ones that help her and the medic find the missing soldier, you find out that the medic had been writing them all along as some pathetic ploy to be with the main character longer. That’s a twist.”
Huh, it is a twist. A good one, I think to myself, making a note.
“I think I’ll use that actually... thanks.” I almost want to ask her what the catch is. Because I know I’m not forgiven yet, so giving me plot advice for nothing in return feels out of the norm for Annica Labrant. I take the papers from her and start to put them back in my bag. We stand and pack up before heading toward our next class, publishing.
“So have you heard anything from the detective? Did they catch Holland?” Annica asks as we make our way to the other end of the English building.
“Grange says he can’t give me details on a case when I’m still technically a suspect. That or he just won’t answer me at all. I’m starting to think I need to take matters into my own hands again.”
“Because that worked out so well for you before,” Annica mutters.
We pass a group of girls, and they move out of the way, whispering. That’s what most people have done so far now that school has started back up.
“Tristan doesn’t come back from Europe until the end of February, so I have a month before I really have to worry again,” I say. But then mentally chastise myself because that’s the kind of thinking I had about Graham, and look how that ended.
Graham.
His raspy breath and blood-soaked mouth pop into my head and I flinch.
“And what about Wes? Does he even know he’s on some crazy broken-heart hit list?” she asks.
“No, and I’d like to keep it that way. There’s no need to stress him out; he’s got enough going on as it is.”
“So more lies?”
“Are we all going out tonight for Ladies Night? Last first one of the semester,” I say, trying to change the subject as we file into the row for our next class.
I have only six credits to complete before graduation, which means only three classes this semester: the other half of seniorseminar, publishing, and sociolinguistics. I spend the rest of my free time at the gym, working on my short story, looking up jobs and internships for the summer, and going back through the murders. I bought a bigger corkboard than the one Asher stuck on my wall, because I ran out of room. I printed more names and photos, the cities where each murder happened, and the news articles from the web. I got more red yarn and put it all together, staring at it most nights waiting to find a connection. One that doesn’t point to Miles Holland but rather to Kate Holland. I just can’t find one that makes sense.
“Sloane?” Adrienne says in my doorway.
It makes me jump. I toss a blanket over the board as I stand up to face her. “Adrienne.” I cross my arms. She’s been MIA since the gallery.
“We should talk,” she says.
“We should.”
She stands in the doorway waiting for me to invite her into my room. But I don’t.
“I didn’t know who he was at first,” she explains. “I never saw a picture of the professor you told me about last year. I met him at a bar in Ivy Gate and we hit it off. When I realized he was the same guy, I was too scared to tell you.” I don’t say anything; I just stare at her, jaw clenched. “I’m not seeing him anymore. And I’m sorry I ever did it in the first place.”
“Why aren’t you seeing him anymore?”
