People Like Us(18)

“So that gives Greg a motive.” She makes room for me on the bed.

“And me.” She combs my knotty hair with her fingers. “Of every person in the universe, Spencer had to have sex with a dead girl.”

“That’s a morbid way to say it.”

But when I picture Jessica, I see her as the body in the lake, and now I see Spencer there with her, her cold, white arms locked around his back, his hands slowly lifting her waterlogged dress.

I can’t picture her alive. I don’t remember seeing her around campus very much. After first year, we get to choose many of our own classes and Jessica probably took most of her electives in the STEM departments along with Nola and Maddy. Cori, who has been premed since kindergarten, also takes mostly STEM electives. Poets like Tricia and people like me who want something new every day tend to stick to the humanities. Tai’s parents also force her to take what they’ve decided are all pre-prelaw courses, in case a pro career falls through. Brie has an overloaded course schedule because she’s determined to pack it with humanities and STEM classes. It’s part of how she manages to be friends with so many people without going out as often as the rest of us.

So even though it’s a small school, it’s still possible to miss someone. I try to blink the images away.

“Greg also showed me some pretty damning texts from the night she died. Between him and Jessica, I mean.”

“What were you doing with Creepy Greg?”

“I’m not going to sleep well until this murder thing is dropped.” It’s never been easy to lie to Brie, and I hope I’m pulling it off. I do want the murder investigation to be dropped. I still need athletics to start back up. I need to earn a scholarship and keep my parents sane and at a manageable distance. But if I don’t follow through with the revenge blog, none of that even matters. Because what Jessica had on me will destroy everything I’ve worked so hard to get.

I switch a light on and Brie shields her eyes. She wears sky-blue Ralph Lauren pajamas, and her hair is held back from her face by a matching headband. The light reflecting in her eyes makes them look even rounder and brighter than usual. Even in the middle of the night, Brie is beautiful.

She sighs loudly and pauses the movie. “Kay. You need to stop obsessing over this.”

“Well, I think it’s weird that you’re not more interested in the murder of a fellow student. Whose body we discovered. And who we might be suspected of killing.”

She touches a finger to my lips. “You’re being paranoid again. No one suspects anyone of anything, and if they did, it would be Greg. Or maybe Spencer. We’re golden.”

The thought of Spencer doing it makes my skin crawl. “Why would Greg give me all that information if he was guilty? He said he wanted to rehearse for the police, but—”

“That’s reasonable. Lawyers rehearse their clients and witnesses over and over to get their stories straight.”

I shiver and pull my bare legs up under the sheets. “They had a huge fight right before we found her. Like two hours before.” My hair is more or less smoothed now, and Brie is stroking my neck. I turn to look up at her.

“That fits the timeline pretty well. But we can’t assume she was murdered without evidence.”

“Greg did. She had everything going for her.”

“No one has everything.”

Our faces are close and I wonder how long she’ll stay like this with me. My heart stops. My lungs stop. I am paralyzed this close to her, poisoned by longing, and for an aching instant I think she’s going to kiss me. It’s our broken record, the moment we are doomed to relive over and over. There’s no outcome except to stop and start over.

She stands suddenly and begins folding the wet clothes I’ve discarded on her floor. I squeeze my eyes shut and force myself back into the role I’ve been assigned.

“You never know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. Sometimes people are just unhappy.”

“You don’t think she would have told him if something was wrong?” I pick up the towel I’ve drenched and roll it into a neat ball. She takes it from me, shakes it out, and hangs it up.

“Sometimes people don’t feel like they can.”

I take Brie’s hand, a wave of fear washing over me. “You would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

She hesitates only for a split second. “Yes.”

“You said you couldn’t tell me what Tai said that made you cry.”

She gazes at my hand in hers and I follow her eyes down. She’s taller and more muscular than me, but her hands are smooth and graceful while mine are dry and too big for my tiny wrists. I always feel self-conscious holding hands. “That’s different.”

“It’s not. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you and I could have stopped it.”

She looks at me for a long time without saying anything. “If I didn’t talk to you, I’d talk to Justine.”

My eyes feel like needles are poking at them but I nod and stand abruptly.

“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, Kay. I’m just saying we all have safety nets that cross over different people. I tell you some things and I tell Justine some things. You don’t tell me everything, do you?”

Almost. Almost everything.

Brie is the only one at Bates who knows my best friend and my brother died, though she doesn’t know how. She knows my mother tried to commit suicide, though she doesn’t know it was my fault. She knows just about as much about me as you can reasonably know and forgive. And somehow, she makes me feel like my freak-show life is totally normal. I guess that’s what I love about Brie. She makes me feel like everyone has secrets, and hiding them is just part of the human experience.