Afterparty(89)

But it’s possible that our compatibility lies in him being a similarly bad person, because he says, “This isn’t why I came, and we don’t have to get into this, but are we still broken up?”

I say, “I don’t know, but if I said we are, I take it back.”

Dylan gets out of the vanity chair that he’s too big for and sits down next to me on the bedspread. “Your dad’s not going to shoot me, is he?”

I lean my head against his shoulder.

He says, “Did you tell him what happened yet?”

What they say about soldiers in trenches with their mouths tasting like metal, that’s exactly how my mouth tastes. Like metallic terror.

He says, “You’re going to have to go public pretty soon. You’re going to have to tell him. I’ve got your back, but we can’t just not tell anyone what happened.”

Closet, closet, closet. Where it is silent and dark.

“It’s already started,” he says. “Facebook. YouTube. Pictures of people going up the stairs. The bed collapsing under Paulina is going viral.”

“Emma kills Siobhan. How many hits do you think that would get?”

He says, “What are you talking about?”

I just look at him.

“I was up there,” he says. “I saw what happened. I thought, God, I’m sorry Emma, I should have figured it out, but you were under her and she was squirming around and I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I’m sorry. And then, it was so fast but it was pretty clear she wasn’t kissing you. When she was trying to kill you.”

I am trying to stay on point. I am trying not to think about the fact that my boyfriend thought I was getting it on with my former BFF when, in fact, something quite different was transpiring.

“She wanted us to jump together.”

Dylan straightens up and shakes his head. He looks very grave, completely serious, no irony, no movement at the corners of his mouth, only a thin, tight line where his lips are pressed together.

“She was trying to push you off the roof. If you hadn’t grabbed that drainpipe and thrown her off-balance, you’d be dead.”

I am dizzy with the possibilities. If this is what he saw, or if this is what he thought he saw, or if this is what he’s making up to save me. If he just saw what he wanted to see, which was not me killing Siobhan.

I look into his face.

He is telling the truth. He thinks he is telling the truth.

Maybe it is the truth.

Maybe Siobhan was trying to kill me and I was so down for being friends for life, I didn’t notice just how short a life she wanted me to have.

Maybe my best friend wanted me dead. Maybe she wanted us both dead, or maybe just me.

Maybe my best friend was trying to kill me on the roof of the Camden Hotel.

Maybe I killed her instead.





CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO


MY DAD IS OUTSIDE MY door, and as he opens it, Dylan literally jumps off the bed, which makes it appear that we were doing something my dad wouldn’t approve of. Beyond sitting on my bed with the door closed.

My dad says, “Emma.” He nods toward the living room. “Now.”

I get up, smoothing my hair, smoothing my uniform (because I got dressed for school but didn’t go), looking incredibly guilty, although probably not of homicide.

My dad nods toward the living room couch and it’s pretty clear that now that I’m out of the closet, we’re back to the fairy tale with the princess who is expected to do as she’s told. My dad looks shell-shocked. I would no doubt feel guilty as hell about this if I wasn’t already feeling guilty for so many other, worse things.

He says, “Why is that boy in your bedroom?”

I don’t say anything. Surprise, Dad, I’m a killer liar sex fiend and sitting in my bedroom is Exhibit One?

Maybe not.

I sit down on the couch, as far away from him as I can without perching on the armrest. Cradling a cushion in my lap, but I still feel unprotected, as if I’m being showered with embers and my uniform is melting off and here I am, uncovered, with no sign of being a student, or in high school, or the best of the best of the best.

At his end of the couch, my dad says, “Emma, are you pregnant?”

This from the man who wouldn’t sign the parental waiver to get me out of Issues in Modern Living, where I was forced to learn to roll a condom onto produce.

“No! Why is it always about girls getting pregnant? Is that why you tried to keep me locked up here, so I wouldn’t get pregnant?”

“I take it I didn’t do a very good job of keeping you locked up, eh?” It’s that Canadian “eh?” thing that gets to me, it still so gets to me. I feel so sorry for him, stuck with me, so sorry for what I am about to put him through.

“Emma,” he says. “We’ve always been very honest with one another. You can talk to me about anything.”

It is the moment of truth. Or of no truth. In the moral hierarchy, where does lying stack up next to shredding your father? With the corollary issue of my insides and the shredder, when he knows, and he gives me that look, only gone exponential, and there’s nothing left of me but bad genes and poor impulse control.

I say, “No, I can’t. We’re not honest with each other at all. And everything we don’t talk about just exploded.”