Expelled(42)

I hold my breath. Her eyes, the color of the sky in winter, look directly into mine.

“I’m not innocent,” she says. “I took the money.”





39


I inhale sharply, and I can see the camera wavering in Jude’s hand.

“I took it, and I’m not sorry,” Sasha says.

“This is an unprecedented and scandalous admission from the female Homo sapiens,” Jere7my chirps.

“Shut up,” I hiss. I glance over at Jude, who’s trying to keep the camera focused on Sasha’s pale, defiant face. He’s not mouthing I told you so at me, though obviously he was right about her. But he looks as stunned as I feel.

Nobody says anything for a few seconds, and then Jude blurts, “Why? You don’t even need the money!”

She’s not looking at me or the camera anymore. She’s picking at her fingernails. “It was an act of protest,” she says.

“Were you protesting against Arlington student consumption of sugary carbonated beverages?” Jere7my asks.

“It was a protest against that entire institution,” Sasha says. “They act like it’s a place of learning and understanding, but it’s just a jail with geometry homework. A cinder-block monstrosity populated by teenagers dull—witted from snapchatting and adults bitter from spending the last twenty years watching their dreams slowly die, suffocated by Scantron forms, illegible algebraic equations, and plagiarized, subliterate English essays.”

“Riiiiight,” Jude says.

“My affection for her only grows stronger,” Jere7my says under his breath.

“So what did you do with the money?” asks Jude.

“Nothing,” Sasha tells him. “It’s under my bed.”

Jere7my blinks at her. “My experience with females is limited, so tell me, my beloved, are you all this batshit?”

Sasha ignores him. She turns to me, as if expecting me to say something. But I’ve got nothing. All I can think is: She lied to us.

She lied to us over and over and over.

“It was so stupid,” she says. “It wasn’t an act of protest at all in the end—I realize that. It was just petty theft.”

“Well, depending on how many quarters are in the bags,” Jere7my offers, “it could be grand theft. That would be approximately…”—he does a quick calculation—“twenty-five pounds of quarters.”

“I don’t know how much it is,” Sasha says. “I never even opened the bags.”

Suddenly the words are coming out of me in a flood. “How could you just pretend you were innocent? Were you just going to keep lying to us forever? Lying to everyone? You’re such an asshole! You accused me of not finding out who framed you, when the fucking money was in your bedroom!”

Sasha flinches, but her expression immediately goes cool and hard. “Maybe I thought you ought to focus on someone else’s problems for once. You were always so concerned about yours.”

“Yeah, maybe because no one else gives a shit about them,” I say.

“Says who? You have no idea. You spend so much time thinking about yourself you don’t even know what’s going on.”

“Are you kidding?” I yell. “I think about other people—I think about you—the majority of my waking hours. Do you know how hard I tried to make you smile, keep you happy?”

Sasha’s crying now, and she wipes the tears angrily from her face. “Well, I guess you just haven’t done a very good job, Theo Foster,” she says. She stands up. Kicks at the doughnut box. “And by the way, I never said I was innocent. You just wanted so badly to believe it, you stupid, romantic, oblivious idiot.”





40


I’m lying facedown on my bed when I hear the bedroom door open. I don’t roll over, because I don’t give a single shit who it is. I’m not in the mood for talking.

“You missed the good part.” The voice is Jude’s.

I can’t imagine what he’s referring to. How could there be a good part to betrayal?

“All right,” Jude says when he sees that I’m not moving, “you’re going to act all pissed off and silent. That’s cool. I get it. But I think you ought to know what happened after you stormed off.”

He nudges me, and I swat his hand away.

Jude sighs. “Really?”

Still I say nothing.

“I could just leave you here to slowly asphyxiate in your pillow,” Jude says. “But because you’re my best friend, I will tell you this before you succumb to sulkiness and lack of oxygen. After you left, I kept filming, and Sasha kept talking. And I brought you the video.”

I can’t help it—I want to know what she had to say. I turn over.

“He lives!” Jude cries. “Theo Foster will not suffocate on my watch!” He holds out his phone.

But I can’t make myself take it.

“You’re being really difficult, you know.” Jude puts the phone down on the bed and pats it like a pet. “So I’ll just leave it here for you. But bring it by later, or else I’ll go through Candy Crush withdrawal.” And then he stands up, gives me a weird, awkward salute, and hurries back out.

Whatever excuses Sasha has, I tell myself that I really shouldn’t care anymore. But of course, after staring at the phone for a minute, I pick it up. I can’t help it. I open the video.