People Like Us(58)
“What?”
“The only missing piece is an encounter on the night of the murder. If Jess fought with someone that night, I think that’s enough evidence to arrest.”
“She did fight with someone. You.”
“Or maybe Brie.”
18
I’m so shocked I laugh. “Brie didn’t kill Jessica. She’s not even capable of yelling.”
“So maybe she did it quietly.”
“I can’t believe you’re serious.”
“Dead serious.” He shows me his phone, and I see a picture of Jessica and Brie wearing Bates Academy orientation T-shirts, arms linked, grinning into the camera.
I cover my mouth with my hand. “Brie barely knew Jessica.”
Greg shakes his head. “They were best friends for the first month of school, and then they had an epic falling-out.”
“You didn’t know her then.” But I didn’t know Brie then, either.
“That’s how bad it was. This thing saturated Bates for Jess. That’s why she was never there. She sent me this picture when we started dating and told me, ‘This is Brie Matthews. She comes to cast parties. Never speak to her.’”
“What happened?”
He shakes his head. “They got really close really fast. Told each other all their deepest, darkest secrets, swore to be best friends for life. I think Jess may have had feelings for Brie but I kind of got the sense that it maybe wasn’t reciprocal.”
I nod, trying to ignore the weird hot sensation that creeps up the back of my neck. “Not outside the realm of the imagination.”
“Then Brie started hanging out with some other girls, and I guess Jess maybe wasn’t cool enough for them or something. The next year, Brie apparently pulled some unspeakably mean shit that Jess wouldn’t go into detail about.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“People never believe someone they love could do something cruel.”
I’m glad I didn’t tell Greg about Todd. But the way he’s looking at me, it almost seems like he knows.
“Jess was really upset, so she went to Brie’s room and found the door unlocked, and her computer unprotected, and she forwarded a bunch of Brie’s emails to her parents. I don’t know who they were to, or what was in them. But, suffice it to say, there was resulting animosity between Jess and Brie.”
“There’s no way,” I say simply. “I would trust Brie with my life. Even if she decided never to speak to me again, I’d take the fall for her.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
“Because I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that she’s innocent.”
He smiles sadly. “It’s things like that, Kay. It makes it hard to believe you’re a killer.”
I stand. “I’m sorry I can’t get on board with your theory.”
“She made my girlfriend miserable and now Jess is dead. There’s no one else I think could have done it.”
“Maybe your girlfriend lied.”
He shoots me a warning look.
“Sorry.” I stare into my cup, afraid to look him in the eye. “Whatever Brie might have done to hurt Jessica’s feelings, what I did was worse.”
He looks at me blankly. “What did you do?”
I tell him the truth about Dear Valentine, the one thing that connects me and everyone on the revenge blog to Jessica.
Dear Valentine was supposed to be a fund-raiser where students could purchase a flower to be delivered to another student during classes and the money would go toward the Spring Gala. But it usually served as something of a popularity contest. Tai, Tricia, Brie, and I always ended up with enormous bouquets of roses, while the majority of students generally got two or three flowers from their besties.
Two years ago, I got a really beautiful, expensive white orchid plant from an anonymous sender with a note that said Be mine. It had been months since the Elizabeth Stone incident, and Brie had been acting cutesy and flirty again, so of course I assumed it was from her and humiliated myself by thanking her with a badly written (rhyming) poem. But she swore up and down that it wasn’t her in front of the entire dining hall. It wasn’t any of the rest of our friends either. I had been so sure it was Brie, and that this was finally going to be our big cinematic love-story moment, that I just kind of started hating those flowers. They sat on my desk in the generic glass vase from the village flower shop, taunting me with their presence every night while I tried to sleep. And they were there in the morning, still stubbornly alive, pale and perfect and undying.
Because they were sent anonymously, I couldn’t figure out who they came from, but I hated the sender, too. How cruel did you have to be to send flowers with an unsigned note that says Be mine to a person who is so obviously head over heels in love with someone else? Of course I’d assumed they were from Brie. And of course I was crushed when they weren’t. I thought the sender was taunting me for some random bitchy thing I said or did to them. Let’s be honest. There were too many to narrow it down.
I was sure it was done out of malice by someone who watched me repeatedly break my own heart with Brie and wanted to torture me. So I decided to torture them.
With Tricia’s financial backing, I bribed the students running Dear Valentine to deliver a set of gifts back to the sender. They wouldn’t reveal her identity. But they were happy to arrange a series of deliveries. One for every bloom on the orchid she sent me. The twelve days of valentines, Tai called it. She and Tricia helped me brainstorm, and Tricia alone dealt with the messenger. The first day was a simple note—I’m yours—with one of the orchid blooms enclosed.