Friends Like These(58)

Pain shot through my knees as I hit the floor. On top of Finch, fists flying. I could see them. I could hear the meaty thud of them making contact. But I couldn’t feel them. The face I hit only once— faces were too much to explain, I’d learned that from my dad.

Finch tried to roll away, to block. But he was useless in a fight. Even back when we were kids—

Kids. When I almost killed a boy. Bam. Back in my body. Right there. On top of Finch. I froze.

What the fuck was I doing? How long had I been hitting him? My hands were on fire.

I pushed myself off, panting. Finch was completely, terribly still. After an endless second, his chest finally rose and fell. He coughed.

I leaned back against the bed, trying to catch my breath. My hands burned as I picked up the pictures scattered across the floor. I wondered if I’d broken a finger.

I looked down at the photos in my hands. There was one from freshman year, back when Maeve wasn’t all that she was now— very pretty, yes, I thought even then. But much less noticeably so, with pixie hair and glasses obscuring her fuller face. Even after she got contacts and grew her hair long, she still seemed attainable to me, a stealth kind of beauty. These days, though, she was impossibly gorgeous— totally out of reach.

Maeve would never look at me the same way now, not after what I’d just done to Finch. This wasn’t something in the distant past.

“You’re a fucking psycho,” Finch grunted as he lifted himself to a seated position. His mouth was bleeding, his lip already swollen. “I mean, you really fucking are.” He winced as he stood and headed unsteadily for the door. “This shit better not look as bad as it feels.”

I tucked the pictures into the envelope of contracts. It wasn’t until I’d sat back on the bed that I looked down at my throbbing hands. The knuckles of two fingers were broken open and bleeding. I checked Jonathan’s nice sheets. Blue, at least. I grabbed some tissues, pressing them against my hand. One after another they turned bright red. I balled them up and tossed them into the garbage can.

When Finch didn’t return, I got up to look for him. For all I knew, he was showing off his wounds to Maeve.

There was no one in the hall. Maeve and Stephanie’s bedroom door was closed. I crossed over and put my ear to it. I heard quiet talking. Couldn’t be Finch, he was always loud. Keith’s door was open, but just slightly. The bathroom door was closed, the light on inside. Maybe Finch was in there cleaning up. But then the door swung open suddenly and Peter stepped out, bare-chested in a pair of snug briefs.

“Oh, hi,” he said, eyes darting away nervously. Peter was always nervous around us. He motioned to the bathroom tentatively, like this was my house and not his. “Sorry, were you waiting?”

“No,” I said. “I was, um, just checking to see who was up.”

“I’m not sure, except for Jonathan. Oh, and Maeve. I saw her out the window like an hour ago,” he said, motioning behind him. “Leaving for a run.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, feeling a rush of relief. Finch couldn’t have told her anything yet. But was it even safe for her to be out there, with the contractors so pissed off?

“I’m sorry for the mess with the contractors,” Peter went on. “That was definitely my fault, not Jonathan’s.”

“Yeah, they’re, uh, angry,” I said, motioning to the side of the house. It didn’t seem like it was my place to mention the fire. But I hoped Jonathan had.

Peter took a breath. “I know, the fire. Thank God no one was hurt. Still, I’m sure it was— ”

“No! No! No!”

The screaming, growing louder and louder with each word, was coming from down the hall. Keith’s voice. I ran past Peter.

When I threw open Keith’s door, he was on the bed, on top of Crystal, shaking her. Her head was flopping side to side, her limbs lifeless.

“Fucking breathe!” Keith screamed as he shook her even harder.

“Keith, stop!” I shouted, rushing closer. I worried he might be hurting her.

But she was ice cold when I reached to check for a pulse.

“Oh my God, what happened?” Maeve was in the doorway in her running clothes, her skin shiny with sweat.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Keith said over and over, still on top of Crystal.

“Here, I know CPR,” Maeve said. “Let me try. Move, Keith, move.”

Keith climbed off Crystal, stumbling back into the wall as Maeve took over, alternating between compressions and mouth-to-mouth. On and on. She continued for five minutes at least, maybe more. It was endless. And awful. Crystal’s body was so limp and lifeless. Finally, Maeve stopped. She moved off Crystal carefully, like she was afraid of hurting her.

“I don’t think . . .” She looked from me to Keith and back again. “I mean— I just learned CPR to volunteer at the Boys & Girls Club. But I think she’s dead.”

“Oh my God.” Stephanie was in the doorway now. “What happened?”

“I have no idea!” Keith shouted, eyes locked on Crystal. “I just found her like this.”

“What do you mean, you just found her?” Stephanie asked, a hand pressed to her stomach like she might be sick. “Weren’t you in the room with her?”

“I was downstairs with Jonathan,” Keith said. He put a hand over his mouth. “Holy fucking shit. I did a line on that fucking nightstand next to her after I got up. Maybe if I’d checked on her instead . . . I didn’t— I didn’t even look at her, really. . . . And she could have been lying there still— holy fuck.”