“I told him not to,” Briggs says. “Not until we figure out how to handle this.”
“Just tell her you were drunk and made it all up,” I say.
“That might work if the story wasn’t all over the news,” Parker mutters, leaning back in his chair. “If Ariel sees the story, she’s going to know he didn’t make it up.”
“Wait — when was it on the news?” I ask.
“Last night,” Briggs says. “And this morning. The cops are doing an investigation. The guy’s in critical condition. There’s a good chance he could die.”
“Oh, God.” I slump back in my chair. “We killed someone. We actually killed someone.”
“We didn’t kill him,” Briggs says. “He’s not dead yet. And that’s not what we’re here to talk about.” Briggs looks over at Finn. “If Ariel asks you about what you said last night, tell her you made it up. Tell her you heard the story on the news right before you left the house so it must’ve been in your head and that’s why you said it. Ariel’s not going to question it. You may not have even told her. I’m guessing she wanted you to take her out and you said something about your car not working and that was it.”
“So are we done here?” Finn says, continuing to toss the pen in the air.
“You could at least pretend to take this seriously,” Parker says, sounding angry. “It’s your fucking fault we’re in this mess.”
“It’sherfault.” Finn points to me. “If we hadn’t stopped to pick her up, I never would’ve hit the guy. He probably showedup there right as we were driving by. If we’d been there a few minutes earlier, this never would’ve happened.”
The three of them look at me, and the room gets quiet.
“Wait — this isn’tmyfault!” I say. “I didn’t ask you to stop.”
“You flagged us down,” Parker says.
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to stop.” I look at the three of them. “Are you seriously blaming me for this?”
“Finn’s right,” Parker says. “If you hadn’t stopped us, we wouldn’t have—”
“Okay, I’m leaving.” I race to the door, but Briggs grabs me around the waist and sets me on his lap. “You’ll leave when we say you can.”
“Let me go.”
“Did you not just hear me?”
“Yeah. I heard you. I meant let me go sit on my chair.”
He lets me up and I give Finn and Parker evil looks as I return to my seat.
“About tomorrow,” Briggs says. “If anyone at school asks where we were Saturday night, the three of us hung out at Finn’s house and Ella sat in her room alone, like she always does.”
“I do not!” I say, although I usually do spend Saturday nights in my room.
“Nobody even mentions us being out on that road,” Briggs says. “Got it?”
Parker, Finn, and I nod.
“If anyone gets asked something and doesn’t know what to say, call me and I’ll figure something out. Don’t be putting anything in a text that could end up getting us in trouble. If the cops ever came after us for this, they could use our texts as evidence.”
“I still don’t know why you get to decide this shit,” Finn says, sounding annoyed.
“You want to take this on?” Briggs says. “Be in charge of this?”
“No,” he mutters, looking down.
“How about you, Parker? You want to be in charge?”
He shakes his head.
