People Like Us(81)

“It was fine. I went to Spencer’s just in case.” She gives me an uncertain look. “He’s out. Multiple alibis. And he slept on the couch. He thinks it was Greg.”

She relaxes. “I should have come back sooner. My parents are so obsessed with my sister, they wouldn’t have noticed if I left.” She shakes her head and waves her hand.

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It’s never enough. They want me to be Bianca,” she says with a sad smile.

I’m getting sidetracked. I look at her, determined. “Brie had a really interesting theory.”

She sighs loudly. “Will you shut up about Brie?”

“Excuse me?”

“I get it. You’re in love with her. You always have been. You always will be.” She adopts a mocking tone. “She says the sky is yellow and you say, gosh, I never realized that, Brie. You’re so brilliant.”

My mouth drops open. “You don’t know the first thing about my heart, Nola. And that doesn’t shock me because I’m not sure you have one. You act like we’re so close and then you say things like that to my face?”

She laughs, completely undisturbed. “Kay, get over yourself. I’m just speaking your language. This is how you talk to people.”

“Not anymore. I hate that I was such a bitch to you.”

“And . . . ?”

“And I apologized.”

“Did you?” She tosses her empty salad bowl in the trash can and starts on an oversize chocolate chip cookie. She holds it out to me, but it doesn’t feel like a peace offering. More like a ritual that marks the beginning of a brutal competition, a coin toss at the start of a game.

I shake my head uneasily. “I thought I did. I’m getting way off track. I need to just get this out of my system and have it over with and done.”

“Rip the Band-Aid off, Donovan,” she says, smirking.

“Brie is pretty convinced—no, she’s almost positive,” I correct myself. “She thinks there’s only one person who fits all the pieces of the puzzle. The cat, the website, me, the investigation. Everything but Jessica.”

“There goes your brilliant theory.”

“I know. We’ve been thinking of Jessica as the central piece. But when you’re solving a puzzle, you can’t get obsessed with a missing piece. You connect the pieces you do have, and then sometimes the picture emerges.”

“So what if the other pieces are unconnected?”

“The thing is, they fit together pretty well.”

She pauses for a moment. “Okay. Hit me.”

I take a deep, shaky breath and knot my fingers together. My heart is fluttering and I feel light-headed. This must be what it’s like for those doctors or police officers who tell family members that their loved one just died. It’s unreal and dreamlike and I’m afraid of what comes next. “Brie thinks the only person who could possibly have done all of those things is you.”

She looks at me, perfectly still, mid-bite, like a deer who’s just heard something out of place and doesn’t know if it is in danger yet. She swallows, takes a delicate sip of her tea, and folds her hands on her desk. “What do you think?” she asks.

I don’t know for sure until the words leave my lips. “I know she’s right.”





29


Nola doesn’t move a muscle. “Go on.”

My heart is beating so fast now, it feels like a humming in my chest. “What do you mean?”

“Tell me. Tell me how I did it. Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re the one going to prison.”

I draw a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re not denying it?”

“I’m asking you to tell me what you think. And how you’re going prove it.”

I slip my hand into my pocket and hand her the recording device she bought me. It isn’t turned on, of course. She wouldn’t speak to me if it were. She eyes it curiously. “I think you’re a liar. I think your parents can vouch for that. I think you’re capable of cruelty and killing. You proved that when you stole Hunter from Dr. Klein’s house and killed him and then buried his body in the woods. You didn’t find him kidnapped and tortured by someone else. You tortured him yourself. Just to see what it felt like to torture a cat.”

“Wrong,” she says, sounding bored. “I didn’t torture Hunter.”

“But you did take him. And you did kill him.”

“So?”

“Some people would say that’s pretty twisted. Some would even say killing animals is the natural precursor to killing people.”

“Well, for the record, Kay, I didn’t plan to kill the damn cat. The original plan was to heroically find him and return him to Dr. Klein. But he was such a jerk about it.” She speaks so casually, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Violent little freak.”

“So there’s that,” I say. “Then there’s me.”

“It’s all about you,” she says softly. She smiles a marionette smile, as if strings have lifted and then immediately dropped the corners of her lips.

“I think maybe this time it is. The revenge blog. You blackmailed me into turning the entire school against me. Jeopardizing Tai’s chances of going pro. Forcing Tricia out. Humiliating Cori, if that’s possible. Almost sinking the soccer team. And I don’t even know if you ever had anything on me.”