In My Dreams I Hold a Knife(32)

“I just do. It’s an instinct.”

“Great,” Frankie said. “An instinct totally trumps finding Caro’s bloody scissors under Jack’s bed.”

Caro flinched at Frankie’s words, looking at Eric. But the shy, skinny freshman had grown into a solid block of a man, one who could withstand mention of his sister’s murder weapon without a change in expression.

What her death must have done to him. His whole life—the person he’d been growing into—reshaped around his sister’s death. Like a vase at a potter’s wheel, smoothed and molded around the dark, hollow space of her absence.

Eric faced Frankie. “Like I said. The cops didn’t tell the public everything. You want to know the truth? They couldn’t pin the murder on Jack because the evidence didn’t add up. And I mean all the evidence, not just what you’ve heard. For instance”—He took a step forward, somehow looming over Frankie’s linebacker build—“I know your secret.”

The blood drained from Frankie’s face. Eric knew Frankie’s secret? The one he’d kept for all these years. But what did that have to do with—

“I know where the cops found you the night she died.” Eric spun to face the rest of us. “Do you know? How close are you all, really?”

“Eric.” My voice was unsure. “Don’t…” I met Frankie’s eyes. They were filled with fear.

“Ten years you’ve gotten a reprieve, but now your time is up.” His voice rose an octave. “Hours after Heather was killed, the cops pulled young Mr. Francis Kekoa here off the top of Brooksman Bridge.”

I sucked in a breath, thrown off-kilter. Frankie had been on Brooksman the night of Heather’s murder? Why? I remembered now: he’d been absent from the crowd outside our suite that terrible morning. Jack had been gone, too, but everyone knew Jack had been in an interrogation room, the police’s top suspect in the stabbing.

“What did you confess to the cops, Frankie?”

Frankie’s face paled.

“Hey, listen, Shelby,” Mint said, trying to rise to Frankie’s defense, but Eric plowed on.

“You said you were so racked with guilt that you were going to kill yourself, didn’t you? You were going to jump off that bridge, but you wouldn’t tell the cops why. Tell us now, Frankie. What did you do that made you feel so guilty?”

Courtney gasped, like a light bulb had gone off. “I know!”

How?

“Courtney,” I gritted out, “I swear to god, shut your mouth.” But my warning only made it worse. She gave me a look of pure pleasure. Oh, she hated me all right. She hated that I’d had Mint first, that when everyone remembered college, they thought of Mint and Jessica.

“Remember how Frankie always joked about wanting to steal Heather away from Jack?”

“That was harmless, right, Frank?” Mint stepped in front of his friend, as if he could physically shield him.

“Heather went home with Frankie,” Courtney said. “The night of the Sweetheart Ball, he took her home. I never told the police because they were so sure Jack did it. But if Frankie was the last person to see her, and then he was trying to off himself…”

It was so far from what I’d expected to hear that the breath left my lungs all at once.

“Is that true?” Coop took a step forward. Apparently, domestic life—lawyerly life—hadn’t bled the tough out of him yet.

Instead of rising to Coop’s challenge like the old Frankie would have, he screwed up his face. A tear ran down his cheek. Right there in front of us, in the middle of the Phi Delt basement, Francis Kekoa cried.

“I did it,” he sobbed. “I hurt her.”





Chapter 12


May, junior year

It was late, even for us. We were drunk and tired, but still high off the sheer absurdity of everyone’s costumes for the Nineties party. Frankie was carrying Heather down from the second floor of Phi Delt—the only one of us strong enough, as usual, after we’d all had too many tequila shots, and Jack walked beside him, monitoring. Caro and I led the pack down the stairs in coordinating Cher and Dionne miniskirts. We couldn’t stop looking back at Coop and laughing.

“I will never be able to look at you the same way again,” Caro wheezed, clutching the banister. “Seriously, this is the picture of you in my mind, forever.”

Coop grinned and fingered the glittery butterfly clips holding his hair back. He wore a pink baby-doll dress that I couldn’t believe he’d found in his size, with knee-high white stockings and black Mary Janes.

“You know, if I’m being honest,” he said, “there’s probably always been a twelve-year-old girl inside me, waiting to get out.”

“Please don’t talk about coaxing out twelve-year-old girls when you’re in the Phi Delt house, Coop, or I’ll have to reinstate your ban.” Jack, in Kurt Cobain flannel, watched Heather over Frankie’s shoulder. She blinked sleepily.

It was strange to want Coop when he looked like a mirror image of myself in middle school, but here I was. I caught his eye, and he grinned.

“Uh, guys?” Caro’s voice shifted as we came to the bottom of the stairs. “What’s going on here?”

In the foyer, a group of brothers a year older than us huddled over the large composite pictures lining the walls. I stepped closer and realized what they were doing: drawing thick, vicious X’s over Danny Grier’s face.