You'll Be the Death of Me(72)

As I head for the front door, two girls with black ribbons in their hair wrap their arms around one another while a third girl snaps their picture with her phone.

    “Make sure you hashtag it RIP Boney,” one of the girls says.

I open the door and step inside, the loud beat of rap music washing over me as I scan the crowd for familiar faces. Charlie St. Clair lifts a bottle in greeting, and I wait while he makes his way toward me. He’s still wearing the puka shell necklace I almost strangled him with, but he’s changed his shirt for something less blood-spattered.

“You made it,” he says, gazing over my shoulder. “Where’s Ivy and Cal?”

“Not here,” I say. “How’s your house?”

“Empty. My parents are totally freaked. They went to a hotel and they’re gonna, like, have a whole new security system installed. They’re talking bars on the windows, even.” Charlie rubs his eyes, which look a few shades clearer than they did in Ivy’s living room.

“You sober yet?” I ask.

“Yeah. Pretty much.” Charlie scratches his chin. “I don’t usually drink that much. But I was so freaked about Boney, and then I saw what happened to my house, and I—I needed something to take the edge off, you know?” He raises his bottle again, twisting it to reveal the Poland Spring label. “Nothing but water tonight.”

“Good idea.” I contemplate telling him about Autumn heading for the police station, but before I can, Charlie adds, “I can’t stop thinking about it, though. Like, this morning Boney must’ve figured it was gonna be a normal day, and now he’s gone.” He takes a long sip of water. “Could’ve been me who got the call about that deal. Could’ve been you, right? If somebody mixed you up with Autumn.”

I wouldn’t have gone, I almost say. But maybe I would have; if I’d gotten a random message about some big deal in Boston, I might’ve shown up to see how bad of a mess my cousin had gotten herself into. Besides, I know that’s not Charlie’s point. His point is that Boney got the rawest of all possible deals today, and on that we fully agree.

    “Boney didn’t deserve this,” I say.

Charlie lowers his voice so that I can barely hear him over the music. “I know Cal wanted to tell someone about the drugs and everything. Maybe that was the right call. I don’t know.” He scrapes a hand over his jaw. “I told Stefan what’s been going on, and he says no way. He says I just need to lie low and keep my head down for a while. And everything will work itself out.”

That sounds exactly like something Stefan St. Clair would say. “Is Stefan around?”

“Outside,” Charlie says, jerking his head over his shoulder. “There’s a deck off the kitchen.” I go to leave, but he steps in front of me. “Hey, listen. Is there something going on with you and Ivy?”

God. We don’t have time for that conversation, and even if we did, I wouldn’t know what to tell him. “Later, Charlie, okay?” I say, pushing past him.

I make my way into the kitchen, where bottles crowd every square inch of the counter and a line for the keg snakes into the dining room. “I didn’t really know him all that well,” the guy manning the keg is saying to the girl beside him. “But we have to celebrate life, right?”

“Right,” the girl says somberly, tipping her cup against his. The sleeve of her shirt lifts just enough to display the black ribbon on her wrist. “Boney taught us that.”

A sliding glass door leads to the deck. In the distance, I see both actual pine trees and their reflections mirrored in the glassy shine of a pond. I knew this neighborhood looked familiar; Stefan’s backyard runs up against the new golf course. Ma laughed when she saw listings for these houses online. “They’re calling them waterfront,” she said. “I guess a pond is as close as you’ll get in Carlton.”

    Stefan St. Clair is sitting on the edge of the porch railing, holding court with half of Carlton High’s dance squad. He ignores me as I approach, because of course he does. Stefan might have graduated last spring, but he still considers himself the king of the school. The guy who knows everyone and everything, who’ll throw a party every night of the week. Even the night that his former classmate died.

Stefan shakes his hair out of his face the same way his younger brother does when he laughs at something one of the girls says. I wind my way through his audience, until I’m so close that he can’t ignore me any longer. “Hey, man,” he says, tilting his head to guzzle the last of his beer. “What’s good?”

“Have you seen—” I start, and then I break off as I catch sight of someone hovering at the edge of Charlie’s yard, near the bushes that separate it from the golf course. Someone who’s taking a leak, from the looks of it. “Never mind.”

“Good talk,” Stefan calls as I turn abruptly and head for the stairs that lead from the deck into the backyard.

I don’t try to be stealthy about it. I want him to see me coming, because I need to see his face. He’s weaving a little, though, and doesn’t notice me until I’m almost halfway across the lawn. Then he stops in his tracks and snorts out an irritated half laugh. “Well, look who it is. What the hell are you doing here?”