White Rabbit(65)
“Holy shit!” April claps a hand over her mouth, squeals, and does a weird little dance; then she tosses her arms out wide, and announces, “Welcome to the family!” Pulling Sebastian into a totally unexpected hug, she makes a conspiratorial OMG face at me behind his back. “I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out when we were riding around and you two were arguing like old ladies. My head must’ve been, like, two miles up my own ass.”
“You had a pretty good excuse.” My cheeks still feel ridiculously warm.
“Well, I won’t tell anybody if you don’t want me to,” she swears. “We all know you guys are keeping enough secrets for me.”
“It’s okay.” Sebastian takes a breath. “It’s okay if you want to tell people.”
And then all of a sudden, she seems to register what we said earlier. “Wait. You guys went back to Arlo’s?”
“Yeah.” For some reason, I don’t want to tell her about the agreement I made with Isabel, so I just say, “We knew there was something Lia was holding back, so we talked to her again—and when we told her what happened to Fox, she finally admitted that she and Arlo had returned to the cottage after everybody else left.”
“Apparently, Arlo saw something in the kitchen while they were there,” Sebastian continues. “The reason we went over to his place was to ask about it, but…”
“But he was dead?” April predicts dismally, and Sebastian nods. My sister’s forehead ladders with anxiety and she tosses her hands out, smoke twisting off her cigarette and melting into the mist. “What the hell is going on?” She rubs her eyes, and then asks, “Is Lia doing okay?”
“Yeah, more or less. She flipped when we told her about Arlo, but she was holding it together when we left.”
“Did she know?” April studies our faces, her tone shrewd. “About Fox, I mean. If Arlo saw something, then he must’ve—”
“He didn’t.” I cut her off. “Or, she says he didn’t. She heard it from Hayden.”
“Hayden? Why the hell was he—” She interrupts herself this time, waving the question off into the night. “Never mind—I don’t wanna know. Nothing about tonight makes any sense.” Then, with a mirthless smirk, April mutters, “She must’ve been thrilled when she found out, though.”
I frown. “What do you mean? Why would she be thrilled?”
April freezes up, flustered, like someone who’s just been caught out. “Well, Lia wasn’t exactly … She was really pissed at Fox tonight. That’s all.”
“Okay.” My scalp starts prickling again. “Care to elaborate on that?”
April sighs unhappily. “Sometimes Fox and Lia rubbed each other the wrong way, you know? They’d bicker or whatever, and then get over it. But tonight…” She trails off, pursing her lips and glancing to the side. “Tonight she found out that Fox had been selling pills to Javi, and she kinda went apeshit on him.”
“Javi?” Sebastian blinks so fast it’s like he’s trying to send a message in Morse code. “You mean ‘Javi’ as in ‘Javier Santos’?”
“Lia’s brother?” I hazard.
“He’s fucking thirteen years old!” Sebastian explodes. “He’s in the eighth grade! Fox was seriously selling drugs to middle school kids?”
“I didn’t know anything about it,” April declares firmly. “Arlo was still pissed after he and Fox finished pounding on each other, so he told Lia the whole story, and she went fucking bananas on Fox; hitting him, calling him names in Spanish … the whole deal. Anyway, he just laughed her off. Told her to, and I quote, ‘Go suck a few dicks and calm down.’ That’s why she made sure I knew all about what happened between Fox and Peyton. Another little secret Arlo had decided he didn’t have to keep to himself anymore.”
“April.” I stare at her in disbelief, trying to figure out what the hell is going on behind those guileless blue eyes of hers. “Why didn’t you tell us any of this? We were supposed to be trying to prove that somebody else might’ve done it—you paid me two grand to find proof that somebody else might’ve done it—and you didn’t think to point out that Lia had a really good reason to hate Fox?”
“She was pissed off!” April exclaims. “That doesn’t mean she killed him. She got her revenge by making me want to kill him, remember? If I’d told you about the one thing, I’d have had to tell you about the other, and that part makes me look guilty.” She sucks in some air. “Besides, I was sure it was Arlo. You were sure it was Arlo.”
I shake my head in disbelief. Her reasoning doesn’t make sense, and there’s a defensiveness in her tone that’s causing my hackles to rise. “She had a motive, April. Why the hell wouldn’t you want us to know that?”
“I had a motive, Rufus, remember?” she retorts sarcastically, chucking her cigarette to the ground. Then, squeezing her eyes shut, she leans back and exhales through her nose. “When I found out that Peyton had fucked my boyfriend, I really lost it, okay? I mean, really. Way more than Lia. I went for Peyton, just like I said, but after she ran out of the house—like a damn coward—I … I went for Fox, too.” She opens her eyes and sets her jaw, defiant. “I threatened him. With the butcher knife.”