28. Kira

28KIRA

Thunder shakes the house like it wants to come in. We’re all in the living room, gathered like we were on the first day, when Tilly told us she was leaving, when I should have listened to my gut and followed her out of here, except now, everyone’s quiet. Eyes darting around the room, smelling like rain and fear, the same thought beating through us all: one of us is a killer.

“Okay.” Corinne steps in front of the TV. “Okay, this is how it’s going to work. We’re all going to stay together. No one goes off by themselves.”

I have to work to keep my breath steady, like I’m on a long run. I’m too aware of Max next to me on the couch. Everything good about last night is twisting, all tangled up with the only thing I can think of: Max took the knife. Max found Graham. Max didn’t kill me, but maybe my instincts were right all along. I can’t trust him.

“Hold up,” Elody says. “We’re all going to stay in one room, like, with the person who’s killing people?”

She glances at me and Max. Does she really think we did this? Aaron’s whole Bonnie-and-Clyde idea? I tense, crossing my arms over my stomach.

“I’m with Corinne,” I say. “We should stay together. If they wanted to kill everyone, they would have done it already.”

I can’t believe those words are coming out of my mouth, that it’s an applicable piece of logic. I can’t believe this is real.

Corinne nods. “It’s not just about killing us. It’s about exposing us one by one. Making us pay. Whoever the ‘Sponsor’ is—” She stops, glancing around the room as we’re all reminded that the ‘Sponsor’ isn’t just some shadowy figure anymore, or Tilly hiding behind the watches. Only one of us could have killed Graham. Only one of us could have taken the gun. And right now, one of us is pretending they’re not planning to kill again.

“This is their twisted game,” Corinne continues. “They make the rules, and they want us to follow.”

“So how do we stop it?” Max asks, foot bobbing. “We can’t just sit here and wait for whoever it is to come forward. That’s—”

“Not what we’re going to do,” Corinne says, something just short of excitement in her eyes. “We’re going to beat them at their own game.”

“How?” Aaron’s face bunches up. “This isn’t a Twitch stream.”

A half smile flickers on Corinne’s face, almost sarcastic. “You guys ever played Among Us?”

I did once, with Alex and some of our cousins. It was like a fun puzzle, trying to figure out whose cartoon avatar was a killer. Now, the idea that we’re living in a real-life version of the game makes me sick to my stomach. But I can’t focus on that now. Corinne has a point: maybe seeing this as a game to beat is the only way through it.

“We have to find the impostor,” I say.

She nods. “And the first rule is, we stay together. If we stay together, no one gets killed.”

Max’s eyes meet mine, and I look away, heart thudding. It could be him. He could have killed four people, and I let him hold me while we slept.

“Next step,” Corinne says. “We talk it out. Look for suspicious behavior.”

“Oh, I get it.” Elody eyes me. “Like sneaking around at night, right? That’s pretty sus.”

“Sure,” Corinne says, with a hint of irritation. “Things like that.” Her gaze settles on me and Max for a moment, and my heart sinks as I wonder if she suspects us, too. “We also need to build a timeline. Figure out when we last saw Graham. When it could have happened.”

Max shifts. “I saw him last night in our room, around eleven thirty. Before I went downstairs.”

“Why’d you go downstairs?” Aaron asks, dripping with suspicion.

“I heard someone on the stairs, like they’d been listening at the door. They were moving down the steps, but I couldn’t see who. And then, when I went down…”

“I was going outside,” I jump in. “He followed me out.”

“What were you doing out there?” Corinne asks.

“I thought I saw someone.” I try to conjure it up again, the flash of movement I caught in the shadows beyond the patio. Can I be positive it wasn’t just the waves or the trees shifting in the storm? I swallow. “But now I’m not sure.”

Aaron slow-claps, the sharp sound making me jump.

“Amazing,” he says. “Great alibi. You both heard mysterious people go bump in the night while you just happened to be creeping around the house.”

“We were in the pool house all night,” Max says. “We can vouch for each other.”

He looks at me, and the truth starts to creep in. Max can vouch for me, but I woke up alone. I woke up to a missing knife.

“Hold on.” Aaron has this look of sick delight on his face, and I know I messed up. My face gave me away. He looks from Max to me. “Kira doesn’t look so sure.”

I search Max’s expression, my mind feeling like the blank chaos of TV static. “I…”

“Okay, fine. There’s one more thing.” Max takes a breath. “I had a knife.”

I open my mouth to tell him I don’t need him to lie for me, but the look in his eyes stuns me into silence. It’s a warning.

“Kira knows, obviously, but yeah,” he says. “I had a knife. I took it with me outside in case I needed to protect myself. It was with us in the pool house all night, and then I took it back to the house this morning. But when I went to put it back in the block, there was another knife missing.”

Wait, I was right. The knife was in a different spot. Someone else took a knife last night, too. But why would Max tell everyone we had a knife with us at all? They didn’t need to know. He didn’t need to lie for me. Unless …

Unless that’s not what he’s doing. Max could be bluffing, trying to look less suspicious by laying his cards on the table. Maybe Max isn’t lying for me. Maybe he’s covering for himself.

For a second, Aaron’s forehead is lined in confusion, like he’s trying to do the math. Then, he breaks out into a laugh. “Oh, so now we have two people running around the house with knives last night? Makes sense.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Max says. “I’m not lying.”

Corinne furrows her brows. “Maybe we’re going down the wrong path. I mean, we were all asleep or separated last night, so it’s not like anyone has a real alibi. What happened to Graham … any of us could have done it.” She starts to pace. “Same with Zane. We were all in the room, right? Anyone could have had access to the peanut oil.”

“It was in Graham’s bag,” Logan argues.

“Yeah, but Graham didn’t stab himself, did he?” Elody says. “That kind of rules him out as the murderer, babe.”

Corinne stops pacing. “With McKayleigh, there was what—an hour between the last time anyone saw her and when we found her? So, again…”

My stomach clenches as I think of the sun hat floating through the wind. McKayleigh on the rocks, eyes open, like she was scared. Of someone.

“It could have been any of us,” I finish. “Same with Cole.”

“Wait, Cole,” Corinne says. “We never voted for him. And we never saw an Instagram post exposing him.”

Logan picks nervously at her cuticles. “Yeah, but he was canceled already. Everyone already knew about his shit.”

“We didn’t really vote for Graham either,” Max points out. “He just voted for himself.”

Corinne sinks into a chair, her hand closing around her necklace. “They’re changing up the rules.”

“Wait, let’s go back to the alibis,” Aaron says. “Not to be a downer, but if any of us could have killed anyone, then doesn’t that make this, I don’t know—impossible to figure out?”

“We have to think about the motive,” Corinne says. “That’s what we’re missing.”

Elody rolls her eyes. “We already have it, babe. Whoever brought us here clearly has something against influencers. I think murder is, like, probably a little far, but what do I know?”

“But it’s not just influencers.” My mind starts to race, thoughts coming together faster than I can keep up with them. “It’s us. The ten of us who came here. Nine, if you don’t include whoever … whoever’s doing this.” I glance around the room, at these five faces, and it’s in my head again like an awful refrain: one of us. “They picked us for a reason, right? They want to expose us for something. Whatever’s in those folders. Something specific for each of us.”

I stand up and walk to the storage closet. I need to organize my thoughts, get them out of my head and onto paper.

“What are you doing?” Aaron asks, his sarcasm replaced with distrust.

“I just need to…” I stop, spotting a stack of printer paper. Some pens, too. I take them back to the coffee table.

Aaron groans, back to his usual charming self. “What is this, an art project?”

“We’re getting organized,” I say, counting out pieces of paper. When I have ten, I write one of our names on each.

Elody leans forward to see. “Sorry, but how is this helping?”

“We need to think about why we’re here,” I say. “So far, two people got ‘canceled,’ right? McKayleigh for stealing the designs…”

I grab the paper with her name and write designs on it.

Corinne reaches for another paper and another pen. “And Zane, for…”

“For what he did to me,” Logan says. “To those girls.”

Corinne writes it under Zane’s name. “Cole had the tweets.”

I add it to Cole’s paper.

“But what about Graham?” Max asks. “It’s the same as Cole. We didn’t see an Instagram post exposing him.”

“But he’s connected to McKayleigh and Zane.” I take Graham’s paper and slide it next to theirs, making a little triangle. “Maybe he’s guilty by association.”

Corinne taps her pen on the table. “There’s also the conversation Max recorded. Something was definitely going on there.”

“Right,” Max says. “But we still don’t know what that was about. Unless Logan has any idea.”

He looks at her, but she just shrugs.

“Whatever,” Aaron jumps in. “Logan’s still connected.”

He takes Logan’s paper and turns the Bounce House triangle into a square.

Logan frowns at the table. “This is a murder board. We’re making a fucking murder board.”

“Um, what’s a murder board?” Elody asks.

“Like in murder investigations on TV,” I say, realizing Logan’s kind of right. “With the index cards and the string connecting things.”

“Wait. Hold on.” Corinne walks to the kitchen, where she starts opening drawers. She comes back with a roll of tape and picks up the four Bounce House papers, sticking them to a bare spot on the wall next to the TV.

“Might as well commit.” She squints at the wall. “I’m guessing no one has string or something we could use to connect them, so we can visualize?”

Elody reaches into her pocket and pulls out a tube of lipstick. “Like, close enough?”

She tosses it over and Corinne catches it. “Guess we’re vandalizing, then.”

Uncapping the lipstick, Corinne draws lines on the wall, connecting all four of their names. The peach-pink shade looks way too upbeat for the purpose it’s currently serving, but it does help to visualize it, the web of links.

“How else do we connect?” I ask.

“Well, you and McKayleigh were on Dance It Out together.” Corinne picks up my name and sticks it to the wall.

“And you totally boss-ass-bitched her right before she died,” Elody adds.

Suddenly, it’s a lot harder to be into the murder-board idea. Until now, I forgot I’m technically a suspect, too.

“Right,” I say, trying to sound normal, “but I was twelve. She was fourteen. I was mad at her, but that doesn’t mean I—”

“Draw the line, babe,” Elody tells Corinne, shrugging at me. “It’s not personal.”

She does, and then steps back to look at the interweaving lines, giving me an apologetic look. “We can’t count anyone out.”

“Well, I think you’re forgetting something pretty big.” Aaron snatches Cole’s paper from the table and slaps it onto the wall with a jagged piece of tape. He holds out a hand for the lipstick, which Corinne warily hands over, and draws a messy line from Logan to Cole.

“Wait,” Logan starts. “Why are you—”

“You threw a plate at Cole’s head, like, twelve hours before he ended up dead.” Aaron steps back, admiring his work. “And would you look at that? Now, Logan’s got a line to all four dead people. Boom. Murder board over.”

Aaron drops the lipstick like a mic, and Corinne catches it, scowling at him.

“That’s not fair,” Logan says.

“Sorry,” Aaron shrugs. “But you’re the only person here with a reason to kill all four of them. It’s obvious. I don’t know why we’re even doing this.”

I bite my lip and look at Logan’s lines, harsh against the white wall. As obnoxious as he’s being, Aaron has a point. Logan’s face when Zane was choking flashes through my mind again, but in a new, warped light. When she shook her head at me after I looked at the bottle, I thought it was denial. Pure shock. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe she was asking me not to tell.

Logan’s hand darts out, and I tense, but she’s only snatching another name off the table. She slaps Aaron’s paper onto the wall, takes the lipstick, and draws angry lines between his name and the rest of the Bounce House.

Aaron sputters. “What—?”

“Graham told us. Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean. You’re connected, too.”

Adrenaline jolts through me as I remember Aaron’s fist swinging at Graham. Pathetic, Graham called him.

“What are you talking about?” I ask Logan.

“Aaron was up in Graham’s DMs, like, constantly.”

His neck starts to blotch. “That’s not true.”

“I’ve seen the messages.” Logan turns to the rest of us. “Aaron was basically begging Graham to let him into the Bounce House. It was really fucking sad.”

“I wasn’t—” Aaron stops and almost growls, running his hands over his face. “Yeah, whatever. I tried to get into a couple Bounce House parties. But if you think I actually gave a shit about hanging out with you guys, you’re insane.”

Logan folds her arms. “Yeah? Then why’d you want to so bad?”

“Because I wanted to get something for my channel. Give my subscribers an inside look at all of your crap.”

“Sure.” Logan laughs.

“Whatever. You know what’s really sad?” Aaron takes a step toward her. “You acting all superior, like your career isn’t totally failing without the Bounce House to back you up.”

Logan surges forward and shoves him in the chest. Aaron reels back into the murder board, knocking a few of the names so they drift to the floor like leaves. With a grunt, she lunges again, but Max pulls her back. She doesn’t fight him—just goes limp, like she doesn’t have the energy.

Aaron winces, rubbing his collarbone. Corinne sticks the fallen names back up on the wall, and he shoots her a smug look.

“Appreciate the effort, but we don’t need the murder board anymore. I don’t know what other proof you need.” He waves a hand at Logan. “She’s clearly psychotic.”

“No, she’s not,” I tell him, even though I’m not sure if it’s true. All I know is that I can’t stand back and watch everyone call Logan a murderer just because she’s an angry girl.

“Let me go,” Logan says, pulling out of Max’s grip.

Aaron squints at me. “What’s your diagnosis, then?”

“My diagnosis is you’re a jerk,” I tell him.

He snorts at that, and my face goes hot.

“She’s right,” Max says. “You’re being an asshole.”

I shoot Max a look to tell him that I don’t need him to be my knight in shining armor.

Aaron grins at Max. “Your little girlfriend doesn’t look so interested in what you have to say.”

Anger flashes through Max’s face. He reaches for the lipstick.

“What now?” Aaron rolls his eyes.

“Aaron has this whole vendetta against me because I wouldn’t collab on his channel,” Max tells us.

“Sure,” Aaron says, sarcastic. “Because you’re the peak of filmmaking talent and everyone is just dying to collaborate with you.”

“You seemed pretty insistent,” Max tells him, turning back to us. “Aaron was acting like he had this huge story that would change everything, but it’s just like the rest of his channel. Bullshit.”

I tense at the rough edge to Max’s voice, a side of him I’ve never seen before. The side of him that could pick up a knife and creak open the bathroom door …

“What was the story?” I ask Aaron, pushing those other thoughts down.

“Dirt on some big Hollywood agent,” Max answers for him.

“Wait, who?” Logan asks.

Aaron looks away. “Doesn’t matter.”

“We’re on the same page, for once.” Max shrugs. “I’m pretty sure it was fake anyway.”

Something comes over Logan’s face, a slow realization. “Scott West.”

Aaron makes a noise like something’s caught in his throat.

“Holy shit,” Logan breathes. “It’s Scott West, isn’t it?”

“Who’s Scott West?” Corinne asks.

“A big Hollywood agent,” Logan says. “More importantly, Graham’s dad.”

Oh my god. Looking at Aaron’s face, I know Logan’s right. Aaron’s eyes dart back and forth, frantic, until finally it bursts out of him.

“He’s a piece of shit! All he cares about is turning a profit. Drops clients left and right for no reason. And I don’t have proof yet, but I’m pretty sure he’s been covering up some really shady stuff.”

Max reaches for his camera. “Let me guess. You happen to be one of those dropped clients.”

“Can you put that thing away?” Aaron hisses.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

Aaron growls. “Fine. Yes. But I didn’t do anything!”

I take a step toward him. Aaron flinches.

“You have a motive.” My heart pounds. “We’re not attacking you. We’re just trying to—”

“Why the hell would I kill four people just to get back at Graham’s dad?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. But I can’t ignore the adrenaline surging through me, the possibility that Aaron did this.

Aaron’s hand flies out. I jump. He grabs Max’s name, slapping it on the wall.

“I don’t know why you’re all looking at me when Max literally makes his living exposing people. He had a knife!”

Aaron snatches the lipstick away from Max and scrawls lines between Max’s name and everyone else’s. As theatrical as Aaron’s being, I know he’s right. Exposing people is Max’s MO.

Max reaches for the lipstick, and Aaron pulls away. Max grabs his hand and wrestles it back, leaving a gash of pink on the wall that leads nowhere.

Aaron wipes sweat from his forehead, breathing hard. He smiles. “Why so defensive, Max?”

“It wasn’t me,” he insists. “I put the knife back. Someone else took it.”

“Yeah, but, like … did they?” Elody grimaces. “No offense, but it just kind of seems like you’re a liar, babe. Two people taking knives is a little convenient, right?”

“Kira knows I didn’t do anything.” Max looks at me, pleading, and I freeze.

I want to believe Max. I do. But …

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m sorry. All I know is that the knife was gone when I woke up.”

Elody raises an eyebrow at Max. “Ouch.”

Max looks at me, hurt coloring his face. Then he marches over to the murder board, jabbing a finger at Elody’s name so forcefully I jump.

“Where are all of your lines, then?” Max asks her.

Elody blinks. “Um, I don’t know?”

“And Corinne.” Max’s tone softens, and he steps back, running a hand along the angle of his jaw. “Everyone’s so connected, but you guys don’t fit.”

It’s true. There’s at least one line coming from everyone else’s name, but so far, Elody and Corinne don’t have any. I look back and forth between their two papers, like it’s one of those optical illusions where you look long enough and one thing turns into another, two faces into a skull.

Max turns to Corinne and Elody. “Why are you here?”

“I don’t know.” Corinne’s eyes track over the murder board. “That’s what I don’t understand.”

Aaron takes a step toward her. “You have the least followers of anyone here, right? Maybe this was your plan to, like—”

“What?” Corinne gives him a disgusted look. “Get followers? Organized murder is kind of a weird way to try to accomplish that goal, isn’t it?”

Aaron shrugs. “Still. You were the last one to see Cole alive, too. It’s weird.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Corinne fires back.

“What about Elody?” Logan asks.

She folds her arms. “Um, excuse you?”

“You’re the one who supposedly heard Graham scream, right?” Logan says. “You could’ve made that up to cover your tracks.”

“Okay, but why would I do that?”

Logan throws up her hands. “I don’t know, why would anyone do any of this?”

“The murder board doesn’t lie,” Aaron says. “Elody and Corinne are the odd ones out.”

I press my hands to my temples, the names and lines blurring together. Think. It’s like a math test: focus on what I know. Underline the undeniable. Three names, and the crimes written below them.

“But we still don’t know why the rest of us are here,” I say. “I mean, we know how we’re connected, but we don’t know why we’re here. Why we’re ‘canceled.’” I look around the room, meeting Max’s eyes. “Unless we’ve all been keeping some pretty huge secrets.”

Thunder claps outside, and all six of our heads turn as rain starts to slam the windows again.

“It still doesn’t make sense,” Corinne says. “Why wasn’t there an Instagram post for Graham? They broke the rules of the game.”

“Maybe there aren’t any rules.” Elody’s getting agitated now, losing her cool demeanor. “Like, maybe the murderer was just super jealous of all of us. I don’t know. Does there have to be some big plan? Maybe they’re just crazy.”

“Well, they’re here, aren’t they? Let’s ask.” Aaron clears his throat. “Hey, murderer. Want to just clear this all up for us really fast?” He looks around the room, an overexaggerated performance of waiting. “No? Well, darn. Guess we’ll just have to wait for the next body then.”

“Shut up!” Elody stifles a whimper with her hand. “Can you just, like, shut up? You’re freaking me out.”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what one of us wants.”

Lightning flashes. We all jump again, our heads darting toward the door. I look around the room, trying to catch any hints, any cracks in the exterior that would give the killer away. The impostor. But it’s just like the mess we made on the wall. Nothing except the feeling that the answers are staring us right in the face, if only we could make sense of them.

On the wall, the cameras blink their steady rhythm, watching.