Big Summer(106)

I wanted to tell her that it hadn’t been shiny or perfect at all, that Drue had been lonely, had been rejected by a parent; that Drue had walked away from a man who had loved her, that Drue had suffered, but the words froze and crumbled in my mouth. Besides, Leela wouldn’t have believed me. How could my words outweigh the evidence of Drue’s happiness, her perfection, her wealth and her power, all of it just a click away on Instagram, for Leela and the entire world to see?

Leela smoothed her hair. She smiled. “And then I realized that I did have something to live for. Revenge.” She raised her head. “I decided I was going to take everything away from her. And make a fortune while I did it. Easy-peasy one-two-three. Change my hair.” She touched her silvery-lavender locks. “Lose some weight, get a few new piercings, and contacts instead of glasses. I wondered if she’d recognize me, but by the end, I barely recognized myself. Then all I had to do was suck up to a few dipshit rich kids, which was something I’d gotten very good at when I was at Croft. Get a few of them to think that you’re their friend, and they introduce you to their friends, and the friends of their friends. By the time she announced her engagement, I was ready. All I had to do was buy a bunch of followers and pay someone to design some clothes that I could sell.” She looked at me, one businesswoman to another. “Woke rich people will buy any stupid thing, as long as you tell them it’s environmentally correct, or upcycled, or that it’s made by indigenous people. And then I found you.” Her smiled widened. “That was the cherry on top. Knowing that every time someone clicked on a story about her murder, they’d see your picture. They’d see my clothes.”

“You know, she’d changed,” I said. Even though Leela would never believe me, it seemed there was a part of me that was determined to try to convince her.

Leela made a rude sound and gave a very Drue-like eye roll.

“No, really. I think she was actually trying to do better. She knew how she’d hurt people. She was trying to make up for it. She volunteered to tutor kids. She left money to her father’s kids, even though she’d never even met them. She fell in love…”

“And then dumped that guy, and stole Stuart Lowe away from Corina.”

“But it wasn’t real.” As Leela had been talking, I’d been looking around, trying to calm my thundering heart. Name five things you can see. The floor. The walls. My trembling knees. And there was the X-Acto knife, peeking out from under the wallpaper sample books on my craft table. It would be bringing the proverbial knife to a gun fight, but it was all I could think of: the only weapon in sight. I kept talking. “She only hooked up with Stuart because she needed money. Her father’s business was going bankrupt. She needed to get married to get her hands on her trust fund. She was going to try to bail her dad out. And help Stuart with his business.”

Leela made a face: big deal.

“That was all she wanted. She was trying to get her dad to care about her. You and I, we both had parents who cared.” I’d hoped to appeal to Leela’s sympathies by pointing out what we’d shared. From the look on her face, reminding her about her parents and how she’d lost them had been a mistake. “And look at you!” I said, changing course. “You’re a success! A self-made woman. You didn’t need Drue, or Harvard, or any of it, after all. You built an empire, all on your own.”

I thought I saw her face soften, just enough for me to feel a tiny flicker of hope. Then Leela shook her head.

“It’s not real,” she said. Her voice was almost regretful. “The clothes aren’t mine. Most of the followers are bots. And just because it looks good doesn’t mean it feels that way.” She shook her head, sighing. “I should have been a doctor. That was what my parents wanted. That was what I wanted for myself. And now I’ll never get the life I should have had. Can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. And honestly,” she said, looking at me slyly, “you can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it a little when Miss Shiny Perfect actually experienced a consequence?” She giggled, her expression turning malicious. “I wonder if she knew she was dying! That was my only regret: that I couldn’t be there to watch it, or tell her that I was the one who’d done it. I thought about asking the guy to tell her, ‘Kamon says hello.’ But that would have given it away.”

I made myself look as appealing and as frightened as I could. The frightened part, at least, wasn’t hard. “Please, Leela. If you do this, you’re no better than she is,” I said. “You have so much to live for! If you’re not happy doing”—I gestured, briefly speechless—“what you’re doing, then try something else!” As a last, desperate Hail Mary pass, I said, “I’ll bet your parents are proud of you now!”

“They never forgave me.” Her voice was very soft. “Every year I send them letters, on their birthdays and mine. I send checks. And every year, the envelopes come back, with ‘Return to Sender’ written on the front.”

It occurred to me, in the faraway part of my brain that was still thinking, how both Drue and Leela had wanted the thing that I’d had and had taken for granted—my parents’ love and approval. But before I could try to convince Leela to spare me, to tell her that there might be better days ahead, she waved the gun, gesturing toward the hallway. “C’mon. Let’s get going. You’ll write your note, and we’ll get this over with. I bought you some really great bath oil.”