In My Dreams I Hold a Knife(53)

I shut the door softly, slowly, feeling as though I was locking myself in a prison of my own making.

Behind me, the mattress springs squeaked. When I turned around, Caro looked at me from my bed: a small, sad face and halo of dark hair against a sea of white linen.

“Jess,” she choked.

My heart seized. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. With my back against the wall, I slid to the floor, unable to take my eyes from her, waiting for the strike.

“I have to tell you something.” Her voice was urgent. “I can’t keep it a secret any longer.”

It took me a second. “What?”

She hid her face in her hands and shook her head, as if the action could ward something off. “It’s really bad.”

I could do nothing but watch her, tensed, a lump in my throat.

The room was dark, save for silvery light from the cracks in the blinds that told me we were nearing morning. Coop must have slipped back into his hotel room only hours ago, and now Caro had slipped out of it, like two ships in the night. The sight of her sitting on my unmade bed, the sheets still warm with the heat of my body—her lashes wet, her hair catching silver, her face wide open—was surreal. After everything I’d done to keep her at arm’s length, here she was, so close.

Just the two of us, watching each other.

I spoke carefully. “Caro, I don’t think you’re capable of anything bad.”

It was the wrong thing to say. A tear dropped down her cheek. “I was so tired of being left out. Afraid of losing everyone. Especially you.”

“I don’t understand.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s the real reason I think it’s him.”

I thought about walking across the room and brushing her hair from her forehead, then felt a stabbing guilt.

“Him who?” I asked instead.

Caro opened her eyes, and even in the dark I could see the shame. “Frankie. It’s why I think he killed Heather. She was going to ruin his football career.”

“Caro, we already know about Parents’ Weekend and Heather’s plan.”

“No, not that. Something else. Something I’m not supposed to know about.”

I sat up straighter. “Tell me.”

It was a long moment before she spoke. When she did, she watched me warily, like she was waiting for me to grab her, shake her, push her away in disgust. “Frankie started using steroids in college. He said it was a temporary thing, just to take him over the finish line. Get him into the NFL.”

“There’s no way,” I said. “He’d never.”

“Jack helped him. Whenever Frankie had to take a drug test, Jack would pee in a cup.”

Jack? Rule-abiding, church-boy Jack? He wouldn’t dream of it. Unless…unless he’d really loved Frankie. Enough to risk not just scandal but expulsion.

Caro’s voice turned soft, her gaze drifting to the wall above me, like she was looking through a porthole into the past. “Senior year, Heather found out. You remember what she was like. Everyone always had to do the right thing. Or whatever she thought that was. She told them they had to stop. Frankie begged for a little more time, just one more test. But she told them they had to quit, or she was going to tell Frankie’s coach. She was so mad at Jack. I’ll never forget the look on her face.”

I started to speak, to ask about Heather, but then the strangeness of her words caught me. I’ll never forget the look on her face. A frost spread over my body, my hands turning cold, as if the blood was slowly draining from them. “Wait…Caro. How did you find out?”

She paused, those dark eyes and that silvery hair making her a surreal creature—Caro, but uncanny. Close to the person I remembered, but just a hair off. And I knew in that moment that whatever came next was the real secret, the truth that had launched her across the night, from her hotel room to my doorstep.

“Sometimes I used to watch you,” she said. “When you didn’t know I was there.”





Chapter 24


December, senior year

Caro

Here was the truth, no matter how much Caro hated it: even within the East House Seven, among supposed equals, there were hierarchies. Mint was at the top, of course, and then Heather and Jack, well known and liked by everyone. Frankie, a little less high, but he had the shine of an athlete. Jess, squarely in the middle. She was Caro’s best friend, but also Mint’s girlfriend, so she was caught in between, always on the verge of plunging or ascending. There was Coop, who didn’t care about things like hierarchies. And then, at the bottom, there was Caro.

It didn’t used to be that way. Freshman year, when she’d suggested they build their dorm’s Homecoming float together, each and every one of them had thrown themselves into it, working day and night, rallying around her idea, even after Courtney complained about it being a stupid arts-and-crafts contest. And look what happened—the East House Seven was born as a direct result. Secretly, she’d always believed it was her doing and felt a certain possessiveness: by right, they were hers.

If she was being truly honest, sometimes it felt like the lonely girl she’d once been had dreamed them into being: Mint and Frankie, the perfect brothers; Heather, preternaturally confident, just like the girls she used to stare at in high school; Jess, the sister she could tell secrets; Coop, the one who gave them all an edge; and Jack, the one who understood, whose upbringing seemed so painfully close to hers.