“Kidding around aboutwhat?” I demanded. “The guy is in a fucking coma. Like, whatever the hell else you think about him, what part of that is funny to you?” I shook my head. “All of you walk around treating life like one of your weird, fucked-up family games, only apparently, there are no rules and none of you care who loses.” I turned back to Wells. “Is having an affair with his mom part of the joke too, PS? Or do you guys have a real connection?”
The words were out before I could think better of them. Wells’s face went purple as an end-of-summer eggplant; Jasper opened and shut his mouth like a fish. “Um, I’m sorry,” he managed finally, turning to his older brother,“what now?”
“Fuck you, Linden.” Wells’s expression was nasty. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You and Helene Holliman?” Eliza asked, sounding sincerely caught off guard for maybe the very first time since I’d met her. “Seriously?”
I expected Wells to deny it, but he only set his jaw. “It’s not like that,” he insisted. “It’s—”
“Holy shit,” Jasper interrupted. “Holyshit,I didn’t actually believe it until right this second, but not only is he fucking Greg’smom,he’s going to try to convince us it’s love and I’m going to have to go fling myself into the fucking sea.” He shook his head,rasping out a brittle smoker’s laugh. “You’ve got some nerve, bro. All year long all I’ve heard from you is how you’re the only one with any loyalty to this family, and the whole time—the whole fucking time!—you’re dicking around with—with—”
“Helene!” Eliza was laughing now, like she was tickled by the dark absurdity of it.“Helene.”She looked at Jasper. “Remember that one summer she thought she had, like, invented mojitos? And every night at cocktail hour it was like, ‘Who wants—’ ” She broke off, popping up from her perch on the step and doing an exaggerated mom-shimmy.
I stared at her for a moment, unable to keep my lip from curling in disgust, and Eliza dropped her arms. “I’m sorry,” she tried—looking a little bit wounded, reaching for my hand. “I know it’s not actually funny. I just—”
“Don’t,” I ordered. It felt like her touch might scald me, and I jerked away. “Honestly, you’re even worse than the rest of them. How can you stand there and act all innocent when you’re the one who—who—”
“Michael.” Holiday had been silent up until now, but all at once she was on her feet, crossing the room in my direction and shaking her head. “Don’t do this.”
But Eliza held her hand up. “No,” she said, regal and imperious as a house cat, “let him talk.” She looked at me curiously. “When I’m the one who what, exactly?”
Even through the haze in my head, there was something about the tone in her voice and the way that Holiday was looking at me that made me think something was deeply, deeply wrong here. Butit was too late now. I’d come this far. “When you’re the one who pushed him in the pool in the first place.”
Wells laughed out loud at that, the sound of it halfway between a bark and a chuckle. Aidy’s mouth dropped open; a scoff escaped the back of Doc’s throat. “What the fuck, dude?” Jasper said softly. Eliza wasn’t smirking anymore.
“Michael,” Holiday said again, but I shook my head and pressed on. “It all fits,” I insisted, turning back to Eliza. “I know you sent those texts to Greg the night of the party. You told me yourself you’re an insomniac—after I went back to my room, you must have found him lurking around in the yard. Maybe he came back here to talk to Meredith, maybe he was looking for a fight with one of your brothers, I don’t know, but whatever happened, he wound up in the pool with a giant gash in his head. That’s why you were the one to find him. You didn’t get up to let Whimsy out. You were already there.”
Nobody said anything for a moment after I was finished. I was breathing hard. The room was spinning, though I wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline or the liquor. It was possible I was drunker than I thought. The rain had stopped, I realized belatedly; someone had turned the music off, the only sound my own heart thudding wildly in my ears.
Doc was the one who spoke first. “Bro,” he said. “She was at my house, you fucking idiot.”
Eliza shook her head, an expression on her face like she’d already decided it wasn’t worth it. “Don’t,” she said faintly.
“I’m not going to just sit here and listen to him shit all overyou,” Doc countered. He was looking at me like I was something he’d stepped in in a darkened parking lot and was now going to have to clean off the bottom of his shoe. “She woke up and you had bounced and she needed someone to talk to, so she came over. That’s where she was. With me. Talking.”
I blinked. “About what?” I asked dumbly.
“None of your fucking business, Linden!” Doc was almost laughing.
“No,” Eliza said, “it’s fine. You know what? I’m not actually going to sit here and let him shit all over me either.” She raised her chin, defiant. “We were talking about my family, Linden. We were talking about the fight, and Wells’s preternatural inability to control himself for five seconds, not to mention my dad’s PTSD and my mom being real cute with her meds and the fact that half the time I can barely will myself to get out of bed in the morning. You know, the kind of shit you might ideally want to talk about with the person you’re fooling around with, except for the part where most people don’t want to hear it. God knows you didn’t.” Her eyes flashed as she nodded at Doc. “At least I have one friend in the world who’s actually interested in who I am and not whatever fantasy they can hang on me.”
“That’s not—” I started reflexively, then broke off as I choked on the shame. “I mean, I didn’t—”
“Didn’t you?” Eliza fired back. “How many times did I leave the door open for you to walk through? And how many times did you run in the opposite direction?” She shook her head. “I left Doc’s right before the sun came up,” she told me. “I walked up the beach, let myself in through the gate—and that’s when I foundGreg in the pool. I didn’t want to tell you where I’d been because you were already being such a fucking weirdo about Doc that I didn’t want to accidentally push you away.”
“But—you broke your brother’s arm,” I insisted helplessly, looking around for anyone who might help me shore up the ground I was rapidly losing. “You left Walden because that girl got hurt.”
“I left Walden because I was depressed, you absolute dipshit!” Eliza was laughing now, a disbelieving shriek. “I was one uncontrollable crying jag from the funny farm, so they sent me home to the warm bosom of my family, for all the good it fucking did me.” Her whole body was suddenly sharp and angular as a crane’s. “Nice to know you’ve been digging into the boarding-school gossip circuit for my sake, though. Makes a girl feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”
“You’re trash, Linden,” Wells said, arms folded in front of him. “Truly.”
I looked around the room then: from Doc, who was clearly enjoying the spectacle of me getting my comeuppance, to Jasper, who looked faintly sick, to Eliza, whose eyes were bright with fury and tears.I’m sorry,Holiday mouthed when I got to her.
“The whole time we’ve been hanging out, you’ve been tallying up some imaginary score against me,” Eliza accused. “You’re so obsessed with whether or not everyone else is playing by some arbitrary set of rules you made up in your head—who’s winning, who’s losing, who’s got how many points. But the only one treating anyone’s life like a game isyou.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again, at an utter loss forhow to respond. But in the end I didn’t have to: The front door of August House swung open just then, all of us startling at the interruption. Meredith appeared in the front hall a moment later, wet and bedraggled in a bright yellow slicker, her red hair dark with rain and plastered to her pale forehead.
Jasper found his voice first. “Shit,” he said, more sincere than I’d heard him sound toward her since the day I’d gotten to the island, “are you okay?”
Meredith shook her head. “He died,” she announced, then turned around and disappeared up the stairs.
