The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(21)

The basement’s dark edges bled out beyond us. Footsteps, above, on the ceiling. We would be found. They were an audience in search of a play.

I don’t know them, I whispered back. Do you?

I watched her mouth, the site of every bad decision. She’d light a cigarette and put it between her lips. She’d take a fistful of pills. She’d kiss me. She’d say something unforgiveable, she’d do any of the wretched things she did, this girl who existed only to be in opposition to the world, and she’d wait for me to tell her to stop and I never would, ever, I would have myself shot in the snow before I told her to stand down.

You wanted it both ways, she said, so you get nothing. No. You get to spend the rest of your life waiting for permission. The spotlight flickered. It did that when she told the truth. When it steadied, it was so everyone could watch us. The audience had arrived, but it only made her that much more intimate. Her hand stole up to my cheek. She whispered, Even now, you want permission to be a victim. It’s all you’ve ever wanted. Someone to come and save you.

She said it like she was reading a love letter.

Charlotte, I said.

That isn’t my name. The light flickered. Jamie. Jamie. Jamie—

“—WAKE UP.” SOMEONE WAS FLICKING THE LIGHT ON AND off, on and off. Were we still in the basement? Where were the windows? The exits? I’d been taught to look for the exits. I’d had it drilled into me.

No. I was in my room. I sat up so quickly I saw spots. “Who’s there?”

“Wow, you’re really out of it.” Elizabeth was leaning against my closet door. Her red blazer was startling in the dim light. Was it nighttime? Was it even still the same day?

“Sorry,” I said, rubbing my face. “Sorry, I was— I’m awake now. Um. Is it dinner?”

“You slept through dinner.” She crossed her arms. “I came to check on you. Mrs. Dunham said she hadn’t seen you since this morning.”

I swallowed. “I missed the rest of my classes,” I said.

“You missed the rest of your classes.”

I’d never heard her use this voice with me. Ever. The last time she spoke to someone this flat, it was when she eviscerated Randall for making a sexist joke.

And then what she was saying sank in. “Shit. Oh, shit. I can’t—” AP calc. I’d missed AP calc. Did I have anything due? Would Miss Meyers notice? She never even looked up from her notes, and I never raised my hand anyway, did I—

“Jamie,” Elizabeth said, low. “Seriously.”

I couldn’t account for the murderous look on her face. “Did I do something?” I snapped. “Why are you pissed? Last I checked, you weren’t the one who blew an entire class day because of a nap.”

She stalked toward me with a sudden intensity. “You emailed me,” she said. “You emailed me, which is already super weird, and you told me that you needed to talk to me, but not until after dinner, and I’m supposed to come in at this specific time, so I show up—I blew off my English study group, by the way—I come in to find you, what, pretending to be asleep, whispering your ex-girlfriend’s name? Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte. You’re covered in sweat, and your room is disgusting—why are your walls sticky? What the hell is going on? Is this some kind of horrible joke? Why would you do this to me?”

She was inches from me now, her finger up like she wanted to stab it into my eye, or my throat, and she seemed seconds away from crying—I had never seen Elizabeth cry, I didn’t know that anything could push her this far out of control—and I should have been horrified, stumbling to deny it, to explain.

I didn’t. Because, as my eyes adjusted, I could see the wall behind her, sprayed down with brown liquid that ran in winding lines to the desk below. To my laptop, open, my email inbox visible on my screen. The top half of my screen, anyway. The bottom half was flickering between black and static. The keyboard was dripping wet, the desk chair, the corkboard, the end of my bed. The King’s College London pennant above my desk.

Beside it, a crumpled can of the Diet Coke I kept in my fridge for her. I brought it to her every day at lunch like an apology. For liking her, liking her so much, and for still loving someone else instead.

Someone had shaken it and sprayed it all over the laptop my mother had bought with the money she’d been saving to buy herself pottery classes. My mother, who never did anything for herself.

Guilt on guilt on guilt. It closed its hand around me, tightened.

“Jesus, Jamie,” Elizabeth was saying. Louder now. Loud enough to be heard in the hall. “What is going on? I know you’re having panic attacks, I know you’re feeling like shit about something. Is it something else, other than what you’ve told me? What’s happening?”

All I could think about was how, earlier, I’d been so certain that a Moriarty was after me, that this was their new ploy. Punishing me until Charlotte reappeared to save me.

Either that, or my girlfriend was punishing me for something. It had been funny when I thought it last night. Not today, with her standing in the middle of the wreckage of my room.

“Did you do this?” It slipped out of my mouth like a curse. I hadn’t meant to say it, to think it—I hadn’t ever wanted to feel this scared again.

“Are you serious?”

“You heard me. Did you do it.” It was like I couldn’t stop. “Did you wreck my laptop to get me back for something?”