I look up, dazed and nauseous.
“They’re over here!” Nikki shouts. She bursts through the leaves, causing them to rustle around her. Marla, Henry, andRobert are quick on her heels and they all tumble into the circle beneath the willow. Nikki’s eyes dart to the clipping in my hand. “He showed her.”
My head spins and I find the ground with my hands. “You all knew?” I stammer.
“I tried calling you earlier today, but...” Nikki’s voice trails off.
“When she couldn’t get you, we thought it’d be better to talk about it in person,” Marla says softly.
“You okay?” Henry whispers. He rests a gentle hand on my shoulder and his boozy breath is hot on my ear.
“What does this mean?” My voice is hoarse and I can’t make sense of the words.
For a beat no one says anything, and all we can hear is the party raging on without us.
“He’s a liar,” Robert finally says, his fist wrapped tightly around a cup. “We were there. We all know he did it.”
Everyone is quiet for a moment. I wonder if they’re trying to push memories of that night away, too. How the fire smelled like burning rubber. Shaila’s hard, steady gaze before everything started. My hands around her wrists. Her fierce gait as she walked away for the last time.
“Such bullshit,” Nikki says, toeing the dirt with her combat boots. “Of course he has to come back and ruin our senior year.” She wrinkles her nose like the whole thing smells like shit, which it does. “As student council president, I’m going to talk to Headmaster Weingarten about this on Monday. No way this is going to interfere with the rest of our semester!”
“We can’t get involved. It’s not worth it,” Quentin says. He shakes his head and picks up a stick, dragging it over the ground. “Not with college applications coming up.”
“But what if Graham’s telling the truth?” I say under my breath.
Five pairs of eyes turn to me. “You can’t be serious.” Henry laughs.
“You’re the journalist,” I say. “Aren’t you the least bit curious? Don’t you want to know what happened?”
Henry’s mouth forms a straight line. “We already do.”
“Can we all just agreenotto think about this?” Nikki pleads. “Let’s just drop it, okay? If we ignore him, the rest of Gold Coast will, too. That’s just how it is and you all know it.”
Heads nod around me and one by one, they stand and leave.
“C’mon, babe,” Henry says, extending his hand.
I shake my head. “Just give me a sec, okay?”
He nods and walks back to the house. Huddled against the tree alone, I can almost forget about the party around me, the other Players, the undie wannabes, the countless vile pops we completed to get here. I watch as my friends trail back inside. We’re all we have. I want to wrap my heart around them and hold them close. I want to tie them to me to keep them safe. To do what we couldn’t do for Shaila.
Maybe they’re right. It’s not worth rehashing the past.
But there’s something I just can’t shake.
I reach for my phone with an unsteady hand and pull up Rachel’s texts.
Graham didn’t kill Shaila. He’s innocent.
My phone feels heavy in my hand, too heavy to hold, and the sky begins to swirl above me.
“Jill, you okay?” Henry returns and kneels down next to me. His hand slinks up the back of my shirt. It burns my bare skin.
I muster a nod. “Just drank that too fast,” I say, pointing to my cup.
“I’ll get you some water.”
“Thanks,” I mumble.
