“No more than anyone else.” I shift uncomfortably.
Before she announced her book deal and moved out, Sage got me into the habit of downplaying the bad stuff. She would always get annoyed or upset whenIwas annoyed or upset. In order to make Sage happy, I started to mute any feelings that weren’t positive when I was around her.
“Manifest good things!” she’d say when I bemoaned how hard it was to break into publishing or start drafting. “Don’t drag yourself—or me—down with that negative energy, girl! Get to work and get it done. Trust me.”
“You should tell them,” Rachel says, suddenly.
“What?” I try to decipher the look on her face, but I’m distracted; Viv has perked up like a dog who sees a squirrel. She moves forward, closer to the love seat I’m sitting on, clutching her phone tightly. There’s a distorted reflection of my body on her sleek, reflective black phone case.
“Tell us what?” Ashley asks, finally acknowledging my presence. There’s a note of suspicion in her voice, and I can’t look at her, flashes of Ashley’s mouth glued to Carl’s running through my mind.
“Go on, Charlie. We’re family. You can trust us. Tell them about Sage,” Rachel encourages me.
“Yes, Charlie,” Piper says, flouncing back with a glass of clear liquid that I’m fairly positive isn’t water. “You can definitely trust us.” But she doesn’t look at me, and her tone is wrong. Like she’s suppressing sarcasm, pitching her voice higher than it needs to be.
It’s the first time she’s addressed me, and it makes my skin burn.
“Oh, I know about Char’s friend,” Viv says, pulling back slightly, as if she’s disappointed, pointedly ignoring Piper. “She already told me about the death.”
Rachel looks at me. “Tell them the whole story.”
Viv cocks a shaped brow and moves closer again, fingers wrapping around her phone in anticipation.
A bolt of unease goes through me. I told Rachel my full story in confidence. Why is she making me tell the others? It was hard enough to spit out once.
Rachel lifts Ashley’s legs off her lap and gets up from her spotnext to her sister, walking over to me, sitting down and brushing a hand against my shoulder. “It’s okay. Didn’t it feel good to let it out yesterday? This is a safe space. I promise, they’re going to be able to help you way more than I could. Trust me.”
She is asking for trust. Something I don’t give out freely anymore. But the other girls are sitting around, waiting, expectant, and this feels like a test. One I need to pass.
I take a deep breath. “Okay. I told Viv that my friend…died. It was a freak boating accident on Lake Michigan.” I pause, trying to gather myself, blanking out any and all memories so I can stay focused. “But the truth is that Sage and I were both writers. And Sage stole my idea. Wrote the book I was going to write. And then sold it for six figures. She got a movie deal, and people were already talking about awards and sequels. But it wasn’t hers. She went behind my back and took everything I had worked on.”
“Wait,” Fiona says, recognition dawning. “Your Sage is Sage Tartnet? Author ofA Song of Scales and Salt?”
“I wasn’t going to call it that,” I grumble.
Piper bites out a laugh. “Oh yeah? What, then?”
I can’t tell if she’s holding my gaze behind the sunglasses, but I lock eyes with her anyway. “I called itThe Last Time We Drowned.”
“Oh, that’s way better,” Ashley murmurs, so softly I’m not sure I hear her right.
“Hell no! She stole your idea?” Fiona says, face red with indignation. “Why didn’t you sue her?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t have the money. She did. And stuff like that is notoriously difficult to prove. Cases get thrown out constantly.”
“But after she died…” Viv points out, trailing off like she doesn’t want to actually say it.
I bow forward, a tree pressed down by the wind. “I didn’t see the point. It would have been petty. She’s gone. She left behind a family. A father. A mother. Friends. What good would it do for me to come out of the woodwork now? Sage isn’t here to defend herself or explain or even tell the truth. The book isn’t mine anymore. It died with her.”
Ashley’s face twists. “Bitch,” she spits, but there’s a harshness in her voice that sounds…put-on. As if she’s injecting a bitterness she doesn’t really feel.
I can’t tell if her insult is directed at me or Sage.
Rachel chides her twin. “Hey, she’s dead, remember?”
“Listen, sometimes it’s okay to speak ill of the dead. Like when the dead are thieving assholes,” Fiona grunts. She glances at me, amends her words. “Sorry, Charlie. I’m sure there was a reason you were friends with her. But she did act like an asshole.”
“She didn’t deserve to die,” I whisper. “I would never have thought…never have wanted…”
