People Like Us(80)
“If you want me to turn against Nola, give me a sign of good faith.”
Brie’s cheeks flush and she bites her sleeve. “You can never tell.”
“I won’t.”
“I was with Lee Madera. Ask her.”
“So it’s not really Justine. It’s me.”
“The timing never worked,” she says in a hoarse voice. “First you told that homophobic joke about Elizabeth Stone right before I was going to ask you out. Then you pulled that Dear Valentine stunt, just when I thought maybe you weren’t like the others. And then the cast party, which I thought was supposed to be a date, when you threw yourself at Spencer. You have broken my heart so many times. When you finally kissed me and then yanked your hand away and went back to Spencer . . . I mean that was it. Even after that, at the Skeleton Dance, when Justine and I had a huge fight, I went looking for you and found you all over that junior. It just never worked.”
The picture rearranges itself in my mind. She hasn’t been holding my heart hostage all this time. I’ve had chance after chance to get things right, and I never did. “I’m so sorry, Brie. I didn’t realize.”
Brie raises her eyes to mine tentatively. “I don’t want to lose you again.”
“I’m not lost. Maddy and Jessica are dead. They have nothing to come back from. Cori has a shield of nepotism and Tai and Tricia will manage to deal with public school. You and I are going to recover. Or not. It’s up to you.”
“I miss you.”
I smile, but my lips feel twitchy. “Me too. You’re my one good thing.”
“You’re my very bad habit.” She grins and brushes the back of her hand over her damp eyelashes. “Tell the police about Nola.” She places the paper outlining her theory of Nola’s guilt in my lap.
I open the window a crack, breathing a wisp of frozen air. “It doesn’t matter what I tell them. There’s no evidence against Nola.”
That means I have until the DNA testing is complete before I’m arrested.
Twenty-four hours or less.
* * *
? ? ?
NOLA RETURNS THAT afternoon. I meet her at the train station, and she fills me in on the rest of her Thanksgiving break. Her parents flipped out and begged Bianca to come home, which she finally condescended to do, and then of course once the other guests arrived, they all acted like nothing happened. The rest was blah: Bordeaux, cliff-side golf, cranberry vodka.
We stop in the village to pick up some food, but she wants to go back to her dorm to eat it. This works out pretty well because I’d love the opportunity to sneak one last look at her journals before making any accusations. Luck is on my side; as soon as we walk in the door, she puts her food down and heads out to use the bathroom and I dive for the journals and start flipping through madly.
It’s mostly pages and pages of boring accounts of daily routines in that practiced calligraphy. There are some copies of poetry and Shakespearean sonnets and speeches. I see one or two famous ones that I recognize, but most are obscure, at least to my eye. I finally find one that’s dated this year and my heart stops when I read the first line in that delicate, studied handwriting:
Tai Burned Chicken
I snap the journal shut, my mind racing. She could be back at any second. I dive across the room and stick the journal hurriedly behind my back and underneath my coat. Most of those pages, nearly all of them, are copies of things other people have written. I didn’t catch the exact date on this entry, just the year. For all I know, Nola used the revenge blog as source material to practice her calligraphy. Even so, how twisted is that? Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare—that’s one thing. But this?
Nola opens the door and floats back into the room. She looks like an old-fashioned doll, dressed in a short black velvet dress with a lacy collar, white tights, and black Mary Janes, her hair tied with a sleek black ribbon and her eyes made even wider than usual with black liner and dark mascara. She’s back to being School Nola.
I hang back by the bed, the journal stuffed into the back of my jeans, hidden under my coat. Part of me wants to take it and run, but I can’t bring myself to do it. After everything we’ve been through, if Nola really did this, I need to hear it from her. To my face. No more guesswork and no more connecting dots. I need a confession or a refusal.
“You want to hear something awkward?”
“Always.” She sets down her tray and drizzles an amber dressing on her salad, then looks up at me with sparkling eyes. “Spare no details.”
“I ran into Brie on my train home.”
Her expression darkens, but she doesn’t say anything, instead taking a prim bite of strawberry and swirling her tea with a plastic spoon. Then she waves her hand as if granting me permission to continue.
“She was actually pretty apologetic about how things blew up.”
“I bet.”
“She sounded like she meant it.”
“Ha!” Nola snorts.
I sit down on the bed hard and bounce my knees up and down nervously. I don’t want to get off subject. “She had her own ideas about the whole Jessica thing.”
“Dare I hope you had an opportunity to record them?”
“Of course not. She ambushed me.”
“Are you okay? Why didn’t you call me?” Nola seems truly concerned, which just makes this all the more painful.