Follow Me(88)

I looked down at Audrey, so pale and still in his arms. There was so much blood, even more blood than . . . I had to turn away, a lump forming in my throat.

“Max, it’s too late.”

“What?” he said blearily. “No. No, it can’t be. We can save her. We just have to—”

He began shifting Audrey’s body in his arms, reaching one bloody hand into his jeans pocket for what I assumed was his phone. Panic leapt in my chest. I couldn’t let him make that call, not until we were on the same page.

“Max,” I said as sternly as possible. “No.”

“Are you out of your mind?” he demanded, looking at me incredulously.

“Look at her,” I commanded. “No one could recover from a head wound like that.”

His expression turning vicious, he snarled, “And you know something about head wounds, don’t you?”

“Now is not the time—” I started.

“I know what you did,” he hissed, leaning forward while still clutching Audrey to his chest. “Emily Snow didn’t just happen to fall off that trail. She didn’t stumble and wind up brain damaged. You pushed her.”

I shook my head quickly, automatically. “No, I didn’t.”

“I saw you, Cathy. I saw you.”

Something snapped rubber band–like in my brain, and I struggled to keep my voice level as I said, “That’s impossible.”

He laughed coldly. “Is it? Because I twisted my ankle at the start of that hike and had to wait for the rest of you to finish. Do you remember?”

My stomach dropped because I did remember. We had only been a couple of yards out when Max had tripped over a root and fallen to the ground with a sharp cry of pain. Emily Snow had tossed her white-blonde hair and laughed, saying, Walk much, Max? I’d felt bad for him as he limped back to the trailhead with one of the counselors.

“I was resting in the picnic area,” he continued. “Do you remember where those picnic tables were? Level with the parking lot, above the trail. There was this great view of the river, and I was sitting on one of the tables taking pictures. I heard you all below, so I hopped to the edge with the idea I would take some pictures of everyone. I was doing that when I noticed Emily stop to tie her shoe. You hung back with her, which I thought was weird because you two weren’t friends. And then you pushed her.”

The edges of my vision faded, and for the briefest of seconds, I could feel the fabric of Emily’s camp T-shirt beneath my palms, the sharpness of her shoulder blades as I gave her a quick shove. She hadn’t screamed, hadn’t even shouted. There had only been a sudden, shocked inhalation as she fell wordlessly off the trail and tumbled down toward the riverbank.

I hadn’t meant to cause permanent injury. I hadn’t even meant to cause minor injury. At most, I thought she would roll down the slope and into the river, emerging wet, muddy, and embarrassed.

Which was what she deserved. She should know humiliation for once. Emily Snow had spent the first part of the summer tormenting me, calling me “freak” and “loser,” yanking chairs out from underneath me and slamming doors in my face. As camp wore on, I’d grown numb to her abuse, and so, like the pretty little sociopath she was, she’d changed her tactics. She’d started pouring on the sugar, lending me her fashion magazines and inviting me to play truth or dare with her group of similarly pretty friends.

I fell for it. When she offered to do my makeup one afternoon, I sat eagerly on her lower bunk, thrilled to be welcomed into her inner circle. As she drew circles of pink blush on my cheeks, she’d told me that Dylan Carter, the cute camper from Texas, had a crush on me. In retrospect, I could hear how she was swallowing her laughter, could see her friends hiding smirks behind their hands. But I’d been oblivious, and had taken her advice to approach Dylan that evening in the cafeteria.

He had laughed in my overly made-up face. Everyone had. I spun around, vision blurring with tears, and discovered, to my ultimate mortification, that even the camp counselors were laughing.

Four days later, that humiliation still fresh in my mind, Emily had paused on the trail to tie her shoe. I was lagging behind the group, wanting to fade into the forest, and when she saw me, she asked in a singsong voice how Dylan was.

All I wanted was for people to laugh at her for a change. Instead, she cracked her head open on a jagged rock, and then she proceeded to strike more rocks as she rolled down toward the riverbank, leaving a bloody trail behind her. Freak accident, everyone said. What a tragedy. One-in-a-million chance that she ended up brain-damaged, but that’s what happened.

Emily’s friends accused me of pushing her. It’s the weirdo’s fault! they screamed, pointing pink-polished fingernails as mascara-blackened tears stained their cheeks. Everyone else shifted their eyes away when I insisted she had tripped and fallen. The counselors—the same counselors who had laughed when Emily tricked me—watched me warily and wouldn’t let me be alone with anyone else. Even my father, when I opened my mouth to tell him my side of the story, had shushed me with the admonishment “Some things are better left unsaid.” I knew that everyone thought I pushed her, but no one knew for certain.

Except, apparently, Max.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” I said. “Just like I’m sure you didn’t mean to hurt Audrey. These were both just accidents. Unfortunate, tragic accidents.”