You Owe Me a Murder(76)

Her light tone threw me until I checked the postmark. She’d sent it the day that Connor had died. She’d had no idea what had happened when she’d written it. It had passed the bad news somewhere over the Atlantic. I stroked the paper. I wished I could go back in time with the letter—?a time before all of this had happened. Where her discussion of getting sick of eating hot dogs, how she had to pull a kid out of the water who went down during swim class, and how she’d kissed one of the other counselors behind the canoe shed seemed like idealized perfection. A tear trickled down my face as I read the final lines.



Anyhoo, I have to go if I’m going to get this out in today’s mail. I can’t wait to see you in a few weeks and hear all the deets of your trip. I know you didn’t want to go—?but I hope it’s going well. Everything happens for a reason. Maybe you’ve met a prince! You don’t need a science award—?you’re one of the smartest people I know. Here’s to doing great things.

Love, Em





I didn’t feel like the smartest person. Nicki had been one step ahead of me every step of the way. I chewed on the apple and started to break down the problem. I had to face what I’d been running from all night.

Was it possible that Nicki was just a figment of my imagination?

I’d blown the relationship with Connor into more than it had been, but this was a totally different level of delusion.

If Nicki had never even existed, that was seriously messed up. That made me messed up. She seemed real to me—?not like a voice in my head, but three-dimensional. As real as anyone else. Imagining a relationship is one thing; imagining an entire person is something else entirely. But it could be done. Didn’t people who had multiple personality disorder black out and then operate as someone else? Had I been wandering around thinking I was Nicki? The realization of all the missing time I’d had—?time I couldn’t account for—?boiled over in my mind.

I mentally went through every encounter I’d ever had with Nicki and tried to pinpoint any occasion where she’d interacted with other people. I was a hundred percent certain she had been there at the duty-free store. She was the one who’d tripped on the bags. She argued with the clerk about if she’d have to pay for the perfume. That wasn’t all in my head. I repeated that thought over and over, finding it comforting.

But what about since the airport?

Talking to her on the plane had been a bit surreal. There had been a lot of vodka. Was it possible I drank it by myself and just pretended she was there? Taken a girl I’d hung out with for a couple of hours and then spun her into a friend? I’d convinced myself Connor really liked me. It was possible I had made up a friend so I wouldn’t feel so alone.

There had been so many times on this trip where I’d been distracted. I’d chalked it up to stress and lack of sleep, but it might have been more than that. I quickly went through every meeting Nicki and I had had since I’d been in England and came up blank.

Wait! Yes! My fist jammed into the air. Alex had met her. She’d talked to us at the bar after we’d gone on the Eye. Except she hadn’t called herself Nicki that night, but Erin. Alex seemed certain she was another student living at Metford. I pinched the bridge of my nose. What if there was an Erin here and I’d superimposed my idea of Nicki onto her? How would I know if Alex had met the real Nicki or simply someone who looked a bit like her in my mind? She hadn’t said anything about Connor in front of him.

But if Nicki wasn’t real, then what had happened to Connor?

I closed my eyes, trying to put myself back onto the Tube platform. I evoked the smells of metal, mildew, and old coffee that filled the space. The stale breeze coming through the tunnel like a ghost. It had been so crowded. With the canceled train it had been a sea of people all packed together. Connor had been near me.

Was it possible I had pushed him? He’d threatened to tell Alex about our history. I squeezed my eyes together even harder, as if I could teleport through time. Maybe. I had hated him. Perhaps it had been an instinct, a momentary chance to lash out, and then the instant it was over, my brain fabricated Nicki to cover what I’d done.

My imaginary friend had killed my imaginary boyfriend. A hysterical giggle escaped from me and I slapped my hand over my mouth. I had to keep it together. I had to stay logical. Approach this like a scientist.

I sucked in a deep breath, trying to clear my head. If Nicki was real, why would she tell me she wanted me to kill her mom if it wasn’t really her mom? That didn’t make any sense at all. My eyes skimmed over Em’s letter. Everything happens for a reason. Action, reaction. Having me kill a stranger didn’t make sense, which seemed to lean toward Nicki being all in my head, perhaps a way to deal with the guilt of what I had done to Connor.

An idea struck me. How had I known the door would be unlocked and the light would be out? I had a vivid imagination, but I wasn’t psychic. That was a point for Nicki being real, unless . . . Oh god. What if I had gone door to door trying knobs, looking for a place that was unlocked, and then forgotten I’d even done it? What if, during the times everything had seemed fuzzy because I was overtired, I’d been wandering the city, breaking into people’s homes until I found one that fit the delusion my brain had built?

Shit, I really should have taken that psychology elective in junior year. I’d always made fun of psychology and sociology as pseudosciences. Too wishy-washy, no right or wrong answers. Now I’d kill to know a bit more about how the mind worked.