Elena tries to remember. Sophie must have lent Elena her phone a hundred times over the year between when she got it and Quinn’s death, since Elena’s mom forbade her from having her own. At some point that number became stored in other people’s phones as “Sophie and Elena.” Sophie never once complained.
Suddenly, a memory sharpens into focus. “I texted him,” Elena says, breathless. “The day of that party, Tanner sent you something really pervy, and I wrote him back, pretending to be you.”
“What?” Sophie has stopped walking.
Elena doesn’t do naked emotions, even though they’re brimming now. She tamps the feelings down and keeps explaining. “I knew he was bullying you, and I was planning to show everyone what a creep he was. That night, I thought I’d lure him somewhere and leave him stranded with his dick out.” She thinks back. She had a half-baked plan. She doesn’t even remember what it was now, but she did intend to humiliate him in front of everyone.
“I just didn’t get a chance to see it through. I got distracted. That night, I got distracted, and…” She looks down at herself, and even now, even after so much time has passed, she has no idea if she’s a good person or a bad person.
Moments pass. They walk. “You’re not the only one who made mistakes,” Sophie says quietly.
Elena looks at her, thinking Sophie is about to offer her forgiveness, and she feels a vehement, almost physical rejection of it. Elena hates that Sophie relentlessly sees the good in people. And yet she also feels a deep sorrow that she has missed out on her optimism for fifteen years.
“I think I’m the reason Quinn died,” Sophie says.
“Of course you’re not.”
But Sophie explains what Marissa Berg told her, that Quinn went to Tanner’s house a couple of days before she died. Then Sophie adds her own analysis. She thinks Quinn threatened Tanner, told him to stayaway from Sophie. Maybe she said she would go to the police or something. Tanner, with his infamously short fuse, was probably enraged by Quinn’s threat and followed her out here.
Sophie thinks Tanner pushed Quinn. She hides her face in her hands and mumbles that it’s all her fault.No, Elena thinks. If this is true, then it’s Elena’s fault. She’s the one who encouraged Tanner that night. She’s the reason Quinn had an injustice to avenge in the first place. So she’s the reason Tanner retaliated. Elena marvels at her three best friends and their ability to take on guilt like they’re pack mules.
“There were more words in the journal today,” Sophie says eventually. “I feel like there will be answers in there.”
“Fair enough,” Elena replies. “But it’s starting to rain. Why don’t you go home and read? I’m going to find Joey and run this by her. We need to find out if our Tanner theory has legs. And we need Joey’s knowledge of that day to do it.”
Sophie agrees. They walk urgently, and Elena shoots a text off to Joey, asking if she’s free. Soon, she sees the buildings of town rising in front of them.
“Oh my god, I forgot,” says Sophie, breathless, at the intersection. “Did you know about Joey and River?”
“What about them?”
“They’re…” She doesn’t finish the thought, just raises her eyebrows.
“No shit.” Elena wonders about the demons Joey must be battling to keep such a thing under wraps. Then, like a forceful wind, she feels an onrushing sense of disquietude. This whole week it’s just been one secret after another. Each secret has pushed the three of them closer to some unseeable cliff.
What happens when they reach the cliff’s edge? Soon, something is going to push them over. She can feel it. And then they will fall.
46Quinn
June 2011
One day before the fall
My dad asked me to come over again.
It’s been so long since I’ve been to his house. I felt bad. He sounded sincere this time. He promised he’d be around all night, and we could play Jenga and watchDie Hard, and that he’d bought a frozen pizza already and mint chocolate chip ice cream.
It was so hard to say no. It was even worse when I lied to my mom. I told her I was going to my dad’s, told her he seemed to be doing better, even detailed what he had planned. She looked so pleased, and guilt tore at me from both sides.
Heis walking next to me now. The woods are quiet all around us. A few evening birds find their way back home but mostly there is just the sound of our boots on earth. He carries a rifle down by his side. Seeing it surprised me at first. I physically recoiled, but then I collected myself.
He grabs my hand as if to tell me this is where we should stop, and I suddenly realize this is really going to happen. A part of me is still squirming internally. I think about asking if we can just stop, but he entwines the fingers of his other hand with mine and pulls me closer. He leans in until our foreheads press together. I feel his breath on myface. He closes his eyes, but I keep mine trained on his face. He’s acting as if we’re soldiers preparing for battle, or lovers about to face an enemy that wants to tear us apart. Us against everyone else. Until a few days ago, I thought we were deeply, inextricably bonded. But now I understand. It’s bloodspell he’s been after all this time.
We wait a whole hour. He asks me in whispers about my friends, my parents. It’s as if he can’t get enough of me because I’ve told him all there is to know already. I ask him to tell me more about his mother because it’s the only thing I really know about him and I want to stall, to keep this from happening. But he doesn’t respond, just changes the subject. He tells me he called his cousin at an alternative medicine clinic in Wyoming to see if a “new kind” of mind healing would be of interest. Only, he called the clinic Blue Valley Recovery Center. The thing is, when he first told me about it a few weeks ago he said it was called Blue Lake. I remember those exact words because I thought of lupine wildflowers and how they look like beautiful blue lakes in the springtime. It’s a small thing, and I don’t know what it means, but I realize I think he’s lying about something.
He toys with my hair, and I try not to tense.
That’s when we see a movement in the distance. Dozens of yards away, I can barely make out a buck bending down to tear at a leaf. Immediately, putrid regret roils through me. I told him that this is how bloodspell works. This was the necessary first step before the spell work.
