Pulling my body in, I curled up on the floor—tears leaking from my eyes as the last traces of the dream faded away.
“WHY ARE WE HERE AGAIN?” Alex stopped the car in front of the house, parking on the street.
We eyed the pink one-story bungalow and the overgrown, brown lawn it sat on. I didn’t know what I was expecting from the Finley house, but this wasn’t it.
The lawn was dead. The porch was desperately in need of repainting. The wheelchair ramp was rusted and barely keeping it together. And one of the windows was boarded up like it was broken at some point, but no one got around to fixing it.
“I’m here to see an old school friend.”
Titan Prep was a prestigious academy that welcomed elite and academically superior students from all over the East Coast and abroad. They were also known to give out one, and only one, scholarship per school year to a student who couldn’t afford their obscenely expensive tuition.
The scholarship competition was extremely competitive, but Colin won. Thanks to that, he, me, and Courtney were the only students from Lantana who got into Titan Prep that year. Something the three of us bonded over, but the principal used as further “proof” that I pranked Colin. According to him, I was jealous of the scholarship kid who beat me out for everything, when in actuality, the only one who was jealous was Sue.
The main reason I chose Titan Prep was because it was so exclusive, it took a lot more than money to get you in. And that was what I wanted—to go to a high school full of strangers, and no Sue.
Surprise to no one, Sue made middle school a nightmare for me. She was constantly spreading false rumors about me, trying to turn my friends against me, or picking fights with me only to burst into tears and say I started it whenever a teacher broke us up. I wantedawayfrom her, so I applied to Titan Prep.
The minute Sue heard about it, even though she knew exactly why I chose a different high school than her, she applied too—and got rejected.
Cue the sobbing and wails to our mother that it wasn’t fair for me to go to a fancy prep school while she was stuck at our local one. She tried hard—and I meanhard—to get our mother to change her mind and stop me going to Titan Prep. The girl fired every manipulative weapon in her arsenal, but it didn’t work.
So yes, it was true jealousy plagued me all four years that I attended Titan Prep, but it wasn’t mine. That came from the monster my egg split into.
“Would you mind waiting here for me?” I unbuckled my seat belt and grabbed my things. “I don’t want her to feel ganged up on. This is going to be a difficult enough conversation.”
“Whoa, whoa.” A hand on the arm stopped me. “What’s going on? Does this have something to do with your mom or Mrs. Prado?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said honestly. “But whether it does or it doesn’t, I realized last night that this conversation is long overdue. Mrs. Finley deserves to know the truth about what happened that day, and I was always going to be the only one who could’ve told her—that’s why I should’ve done this a long time ago.”
The man looked even more confused than before I opened my mouth. “Finley? Wait.” His brows snapped together. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Don’t be afraid to get out and stretch your legs.” I hopped out of the car. “I might be a while.”
“Sue, wait, who are you—? Hold up, is it Colin Finley?” Alex rolled down the window to call at my back. “Tell me this isn’t Colin Finley’s house!”
I could not tell him that, so I didn’t bother trying. I came clean as much as possible to Micah the night before, but I hadn’t had the chance to do so with Alex or Rhodes. All the same, something told me Alex would learn all during the car ride home, and Rhodes would be next that night.
I knocked on the door, psyching myself up. Did I think Mrs. Finley killed my mother? Of course not. Micah had a solid point. If Mrs. Finley was going to do any stabbing, she’d have done it ten years ago. Why wait until now, and why my mother?
Omma emptied out my trust and college fund and gave it to Colin’s family. It didn’t make up for what Sue did to him, but Omma literally paidfor a crime she didn’t commit. Why track her down a decade later and kill her when the person responsible had to be the one Mrs. Finley truly hated?
The door flew open, stopping my musing in its tracks.
Omma had us when she was forty, which meant the fellow mothers in the school pickup line were about ten to twenty years younger than her. Mrs. Finley was one such younger mother—in her early fifties compared to Omma, who was bumping up against seventy. But looking at the woman standing before me, no one would’ve guessed which one was younger.
Dry hair heavily streaked with white escaped the many clips haphazardly stuck on her scalp. Deep wrinkles competed with the stress and frown lines etched in her face—both trying and winning their mission to age her twenty years. She wore a large, purple muumuu that completely swallowed her figure, and ratty house slippers that were falling apart on her feet.
She wasn’t smiling when she opened the door, but the minute our eyes met, I got the sense she’d never smile again.
“What the fuck do you want?”
A lump lodged in my throat.Okay, not off to a promising start.
“Hello, Mrs. Finley,” I rasped. “I’m not sure if you know who I am—”
“Soo Min Kim.” She spat the name. “I know exactly who you are. I repeat, what the fuck do you want?”
“To talk. We’re long overdue for a conversation, Mrs. Finley.”
