Chapter 46

Chelsea and I sit facingeach other in the attic. Everyone is gone and the house is empty. The cold from earlier has dissipated. Heat from the closed windows and doors has begun to accumulate in the house, and it's concentrating itself in this room. Beads of sweat cover Chelsea's face, and she pulls off her sweater and scratches the linen tank she's wearing underneath.

My eyes go to the band around her wrist that she never takes off, the worn hospital bracelet. "Why are you still wearing that?"

"As a reminder," she says.

"Of what?"

"Of what happens when you're not careful." She plays with it, slides it up and down her forearm.

"What weren't you careful about?"

She smiles with her mouth only. "Words. Friends. Trust."

"You mean the note." I rest my chin on my knees. Let her say it.

"It wasn't a suicide note."

"You wrote that you weren't sure how you could live with yourselves anymore. Those were your exact words."

"It's a phrase," she whispers.

I believe her. It was never a suicide note. It was an admission of guilt. That's why I turned it in when I found it in Chase's jacket pocket. I don't know how no one else saw it that way. But people believe what they want to believe. See what they want to see.

"I guess the ‘live anymore' part made people worried, you know?" I paint my concern. Thick, with deep lines of chiaroscuro. I want her to keep talking.

"But who?" She takes me in. My colors and strokes. My effort.

"Guidance, obviously. Your parents."

"No." Her expression tightens. "Which one of you passed that note to the school? It was a betrayal."

It's almost too much to handle. The idea that of all things, this was the betrayal. "Chelsea, none of us would have betrayed your confidence. It probably fell out of one of our pockets."

"It wasn't an accident." Her voice is sharp and severe. "One of you didn't trust me. They made me leave school, Emily. They told me I was suicidal, and when I told them it was a mistake, they didn't believe me. They made me see a therapist, and when I told him it was a mistake, he didn't believe me either. They locked me in a hospital for two weeks, forced chemicals into my body without my consent, and every hour of every day was filled with questions that weren't really questions because no one ever believed a word I said."

"Questions about what?"

She stops abruptly and stares at me. We both know about what. Come on, Chelsea. Now or never. Why couldn't you live with yourselves?

But her face goes blank, then smooth. "It was a nightmare. I was the only one who knew the truth, and they didn't believe me. They looked right through me like I wasn't there. Like a criminal. And they started taking things. School, and then home, and then my clothes and phone and privacy." She's shaking, and for a second I forget what Chelsea did and I start to feel horrible. "It was a mistake." Her voice is flat, hollow. "That's the truth."

I stare at her, breathless. "Whoever turned you in probably knows that. She wanted to make sure you were okay." Keep talking, Chelsea. Don't stop now.

Her shoulders drop. "She. Kennedy did it?"

"I have no idea. But I did wonder. What was the mistake? Why did you write the note? If everyone is so convinced Ryan ran away." I pause. "Dove into the water, faked his own death. If he's really okay, why would it be hard to live with yourselves?"

She picks up a candle and lets a drop of wax fall onto her shoe, then presses her fingertip into it. "I don't know. I guess part of me feels responsible."

"How?"

She raises her eyes. "You don't remember last year?"

I nod. "Sure. Chase and Ryan were at each other's throats. So?"

"It was more than that. Things were falling apart. You were fighting with Kennedy, too. Mila was… there. Ryan said he wanted to be with me, and I told him it couldn't happen."

"So? Why would that drive him to fake his own death? That's ridiculously extreme."

Chelsea drips a drop of wax straight onto her hand, and I cringe. "Maybe he didn't fake it."

My heart begins to pound. "Why do you say that?"

"Forget it." Her voice goes quiet, distant.

"Chelsea." I inch closer to her, my hands shaking a little from the sudden jolt of adrenaline. "You've been lying to me for a year. Everyone has been lying to me for a year. Your note wasn't the mistake and you know it. You wrote that note about a mistake. That's why you still wear the bracelet. That's why you can't sleep. No one is supposed to carry this kind of secret. It's poisoning you, Chelsea."

She drips more wax onto her hand and then seems to suddenly realize what she's doing and cries out and drops the candle, the flame flickering out as it hits the floor. I pick it up quickly and relight it with another. She peels the wax off her skin. "I need to run this under cold water," she says.

"Tell me what happened." I block the door.

She looks exhausted. "It was a mistake. Okay? I wasn't there, Em. I wasn't on the boat. They all went out together like tonight. I saw him go into the water. It didn't look like he jumped in. It looked like he fell. Or maybe…"

"What?" I can barely breathe. In my ears, there is a pounding beat, a warning. A terrible warning.

"Maybe he was pushed." She covers her mouth with her unburned hand. The words are electric. They stop my heart. A beat. Restart.

"Who?" My voice is scratchy and dry. Heat damaged.

Panic flares like a wildfire in her eyes. "I don't know. I don't want to know. I probably imagined it. I don't believe it." She takes a step forward, but I grab her wrists and force her to stay, to face me, to face the truth.

"Then why are you telling me?"

"In case it's true!" She tries to push past me, but I shove her backward. No backing out. Not now.

"I need to know the rest. All of it." My head is throbbing. My heart is pounding, offbeat, arrhythmic. Stop. A beat. Restart. But faster. And faster. He's dead. They lied. They killed him and lied.

Tears glisten in Chelsea's eyes. "I swear, that's all I know. I was on the dock. I jumped in and swam after him. But I didn't make it. I panicked and couldn't breathe, and Kennedy had to come for me."

I try to make sense of it. He's dead. "Who came for Ryan?"

"Chase tried. Kennedy tried. I tried. No one could find him."

"So you pushed him in, and then had second thoughts." My brain is pulsing in my skull. They lied.

"No. No. I didn't push him. I wasn't even on the boat." She grabs my hand. "Emily, I'm probably being paranoid. Chase swears he's getting emails from Ryan."

Lightning flashes. I don't know whether it's through the sky or in my brain. I don't care. They killed him and lied. "When? Why didn't he—anyone—tell me?"

"He said Ry didn't want it getting back to your parents. He doesn't want to be tracked down. Chase only told me after the note incident because he was worried." Her voice falters. She's lying. Or Chase was lying and she knows it. I can't trust anyone anymore. He's dead and they lied; they killed him and lied.

My mind is too busy. I have no time for arguing. Chelsea is not my friend. I look her up and down, too overwhelmed by all of this information to think clearly, then shove her hard, run down the ladder, and lock her in the attic. Attics are places for secrets. Attics are places to hide. Attics are places to set traps.

For creatures that creep inside.

I walk downstairs in a fog and pace back and forth in the kitchen, waiting for the others to return.

I can hear Chelsea in the attic, stomping around and shouting. That's going to be an obvious problem. I'll never hear the other sides of the story if they immediately come in and find that I've locked Chelsea in the attic like Mrs. Rochester. Shit. What did I do? I think back to last year. Sangria. I slice the fruit with shaky fingers, use the second bottle of chianti, try to remember the way Kennedy does it. Brandy. Ryan was drinking brandy too. I pour myself a glass and begin to feel warm and steady.

My eyes fall on the glass decanter, and Chelsea's words swirl around my head. Someone pushed him. I pour half of the sangria into the decanter and mix up a little more, so I have a full pitcher and a full decanter. Then I dump half of the bottle of Chelsea's pills into the decanter and begin stirring before I can change my mind. They dissolve slowly, turning from pill to powder to nothing. It's impossible to tell the difference by looking at the two pitchers. I take a sip. You almost can't taste it, but there is a tiny sweetness to it, like saccharin. I dump in a little more brandy and taste it again. Perfect. I carry the pitcher and the decanter outside and set them on the stone table along with four glasses. Then I go inside, down to the cellar, and turn off the power in the attic. That way there will be much less of a chance that anyone will glance up and see Chelsea in the window. The candles will give off some light, but the light in the rest of the rooms will draw the eye downward. No one will even glance up at the attic, and the single tiny window doesn't open. But as a final touch, I scroll through my playlists, and choose Ryan's favorite album, Kid A. All of that banging and stomping fades into the sounds of the forest out here, anyway. But under the sound of warm synth bleeding out of the speakers, it's no more discernable than someone else's heartbeat.

I wait at the table as the boat returns just at sundown and watch as Kennedy, Chase, and Mila step off Summer's Edge one by one. There is a glass set out for each of us, the pitcher and decanter at the center of the table. Every place setting is identical. Everyone will start out with a glass from the pitcher. The decanter is reserved for the person who pushed Ryan. Four glasses, four settings.

Chelsea likes to think she has a place among them, that she could get away with being the odd one and somehow not be the odd one out. That I was always the extra chair at the table.

A twin is never the extra chair.

Now there's only room for one of us. Mila has taken Chelsea's place, and I drink for Ryan and for me.

Let the game begin.

Kennedy begins to walk past me toward the house, but I whistle and wave her over. She looks less than enthused, shoulders sagging and hair tangled in knots, but she slides into the seat next to me and reaches for the decanter. I study her, copper hair gleaming in the dying light, the lake almost the color of blood behind her, and last year comes rushing back to me, the moment the mirror smashed against her skull and all of those beautiful silvery fragments glittered around her like a crown. If this were an ordinary night, I would add those finishing touches to my tarot card. But I can't. Another day. I place my hand on top of hers to stop her from drinking the decanter wine—that wine is reserved—and pour her a glass from the pitcher instead.

"I thought it would be nice to have sunset cocktails," I say.

"We missed it by a few minutes." She takes a sip. "Mmm. Did you use tomato juice or something?"

"Does it taste like tomato juice?"

She takes another sip. "It's fabulous."

Chase downs one glass immediately. "Definitely needed that."

I eye the pitcher. I hope he doesn't drain it too quickly. I pour him half of a second glass, and make Mila's three-quarters full. "So how was the sail?"

"Fine," Kennedy says flatly. "Good wind."

"How was your séance?" Mila asks. She plays with a cigarette.

"I thought you were quitting?" Chase asks her.

"It's a nervous habit." Mila taps it against the table. "Everyone has one. Don't judge me. Sitting is the new smoking. We're all doing it right now." She sighs. "My cousin got out of prison, and my mother forced me to hang out with her. She doesn't do anything but smoke, play Scrabble, and tell prison stories. That place scares the shit out of me."

"Sorry I asked." Chase takes another long sip.

"Did the sail bring back any memories?" I ask.

Kennedy's eyes go to me briefly. "Of?"

"Last year. Ryan."

"No one wants to remember that." Mila stands. "You keep obsessing. It's not healthy." But Mila was the one who wanted to go out on the boat in the first place. If it hadn't been for Mila, Ryan would still be here. My last glimpses of my brother are like a slideshow, snapshots from the attic window. Mila on the boardwalk, running out to the boat. Turning back toward the house, beckoning. To follow her, into the darkness, the uncertain depths of the lake at night. Ryan sprinting after, a little while later. He never turned to look back. I saw him run, a swift pale figure darting down the boardwalk, from the safety of the lake house to Summer's Edge, and then he was gone. I'll add a final touch, an inscription, a warning, to Mila's card too. To all of the crucial moments. The puzzle pieces.

"He's my brother."

"That doesn't make it healthy."

"Says the chain-smoker." I grab the cigarette out of her hand and throw it on the ground. Kennedy covers her mouth with her hand. "Don't you laugh about it. I want answers."

Kennedy puts a hand on my arm, and I try not to visibly cringe. "Emily. Did you really think we were going to get on the boat and go out there and suddenly have some kind of epiphany about what happened to Ryan? It's not logical." I can't stand the look of pity. It makes me want to scream. "It's out of our control."

"What about last summer? When you pushed Ryan into the water and watched him drown, and then lied about it for an entire year. Was all of that out of your control, too?" The album ends, and I was right. You can't hear Chelsea at all out here. Time slows down. A chill descends. The last of the sunlight is drowned in the dark, the sun sinking into the lake with a swift and silent sense of finality. The windows of the house glow with the light of the dozens of candles. I place the last unlit one at the center of the table and light it, and each of us becomes a flickering glow in the dark.

"That never happened," Kennedy says with a practiced calm.

But at the exact same time, Chase blurts, "It was an accident."

And Mila says, "Kennedy did it."

I refill Kennedy's cup with the decanter, a low buzz beginning to hum in my ear. We face one another, a circle of players—a killer, a liar, an accomplice, and half a twin.

She takes a nervous gulp. "That's bullshit. You weren't even there, Mila. You were belowdeck."

"How else?" Mila's voice shakes. "How else did he just disappear? He didn't randomly go for a swim fully clothed. Chase, you know it's true. Why do we keep lying to protect her?"

"Because it's impossible! Kennedy is not a killer." He looks at me. "Emily, you know that. We're not monsters. People don't just kill their friends."

Mila looks at him sharply. "But we did. Own up to it. Every one of us was an accessory when we covered it up, because we knew what happened. She did it. And we went along with it because there are no consequences for people like Kennedy or you, and that made it feel like if we didn't say it, it didn't happen. But that's your world, not ours. Chelsea isn't okay. I'm not okay. You should not be okay with this."

"I'm not," he shouts.

I stare at him, taken aback for a moment. Kennedy sits silently, her lips pressed tightly together. She looks like she's holding in a scream. A long, high-pitched, endless scream. I can hear it in my head, a mourning, keening wail. I need to hear it. I need to know that she cares about what she did. That she mourns Ryan, that every day the knowledge of what she did to him is a howl in her throat begging to be released. That she regrets killing him.

But she says nothing. Nothing.

"Pushing someone into the lake isn't necessarily intending to kill them," I say, my voice blending with the hum. "We used to do it all the time. Accidents happen." I look at Kennedy, her pale, frozen expression. "Did you push him?"

She shakes her head jerkily. "I didn't mean to. I don't know. I was startled. Why does it matter? We all know he ended up in the lake. We all tried to pull him out. We tried everything."

Lies. Always more lies.

"The only thing you tried to do was cover your tracks. You made us believe he ran away. My parents are convinced—I half believed—he's going to walk through the door any minute. They're torn in half, believing he's alive and dead at the same time. It's destroyed them."

"It wasn't malice," Chase says. "We were trying to protect you." And right there it hits me. That thing between us. That I haven't been able to put my finger on. It's not guilt after all. It's a lie. And it's not to protect me.

"You were trying to protect yourselves." I fill his glass from the decanter. Because I no longer believe that Ryan was killed with a mere push. In a hit and run, it isn't the hit that's the crime. It's the run. The crucial moment when people—bad, twisted people—choose not to do the right thing. Choose to preserve the convenience of their lives over the hope of saving someone they were supposed to care about. Ryan wasn't killed by a little shove. He was killed by abandonment. Betrayal. Lies. Because the push wasn't the end of the story. There was a world of potential paths that branched out from the push. The path where Chase dove in after Ryan right away, and he was saved. The one where Kennedy radioed in for help. The one where Chelsea held me while I cried because there was a terrible accident and we didn't know what was going to happen, but I wasn't alone in this. She wasn't going to let me go through it alone. None of them were going to abandon me to go through this alone. But that's not what happened. None of it is. And Ryan wasn't the only victim. All of my friends are equally guilty, because they all watched Ryan die, then looked me in the eye and lied to me. And whatever happened that night, it's clear that they all made a conscious choice to go all in on it together. All of them vs. Ryan and me. No, I don't believe I care who did the pushing anymore at all. They're all guilty as hell.

Chase downs his glass all in one long gulp, and I refill it.

"We were scared," Mila says. "We didn't see what happened, we wanted to believe, and yes, we wanted to protect ourselves. There was no time to think. And then Kennedy told us what to say, and it was that or dive headfirst into a nightmare, and we didn't know. At least, I told myself I didn't know. But every second that passed, I was more sure that Kennedy pushed Ryan into the water."

"I didn't—" Kennedy protests.

"I think you did," Mila says. "Chase and Kennedy tried to go after him. Even Chelsea tried to swim all the way from the dock." I wonder if I've been too hard on Chelsea. But she played her part too. It's too late to take any of it back. "I was the one who wanted to take the boat out. I've been blaming myself for a year. But there's nothing we can do about any of it now. That's the truth. Do what you want with it."

I fill her glass from the decanter.

She takes it and heads back toward the house. "I need a cigarette."

Kennedy's face flushes crimson. No. Blood red. "Chase is the one who hid the body."

The silence is stunning. Chase turns to her, his lips twitching, stuck between laughing and crying, perfectly cubist. Mila freezes, her bare shoulders tense, like all the world has turned to ice.

"You did." Kennedy's voice is steady, but her glass shudders in her hand. "You went back on the lifeboat that night. I saw you."

"So?" Chase whispers.

"So if you had nothing to hide, why didn't you tell us?" Tears glisten in Kennedy's eyes, and I want to smash her into the earth. How dare she cry.

Chase looks at me helplessly, and his silence says everything.

I run after Mila, leaving the others behind. "Is all of that true?"

"Of course it is. My part anyway."

I try to block the door into the house. "Stay. We can talk some more. It's not your fault. Accidents do happen. You couldn't have foreseen any of it. Don't worry."

She shakes her head. "I have to go to the bathroom."

"Go in a bush."

Mila looks at me out of the side of her eye. "What are you hiding?"

"Nothing." I shrug, but it's unconvincing; I can hear the rising panic in my voice.

I have to let go. They say letting go is hard. That it will come with time. That forgiveness is key. Forgiving the others for surviving, and most of all, forgiving myself. For remaining. But I don't buy it.

Because the others didn't just survive. Survival is passive. It implies clean hands and a clear conscience. It implies innocence. It assumes that survival is something they earned, or were destined for, or just happened upon. That they deserved life more.

And that would be a lie.

Survival is something they stole.

Because Chelsea and Kennedy and the others created the tragedy they survived. They're killers. And I can't wait any longer.

She opens the door into the house and I hold my breath and walk in behind her, leaning back against the door and locking it behind me. Please, Chelsea, be quiet. I realize, though, with a sinking feeling, that Chelsea has to come down sooner or later. I haven't thought any of this through. I've just poisoned four people with a drug I know nothing about. My eyes go to the cellar door.

Mila follows my gaze curiously. "What's down there?"

"Paintings. I made portraits of everyone." It slips out on its own. "It was a surprise."

She hesitates. "That's so nice. It's too nice."

"It was before." I pause. "Maybe you should carry them up. It's the least you can do."

She draws closer, reluctantly. "Now?"

"No. A year ago, before you slept with my boyfriend and watched my brother drown." I watch her bite back a sharp response. He was never your boyfriend. No. He sure as hell wasn't.

She approaches the door cautiously. "I just want you to know, Emily. None of this is who I am." The living room is lit up with candles, and the effect is dazzling. It's like Christmas in summertime.

"But it is. You did it."

"We had no choice." Mila places a hand on the lock. Slowly her fingers twist the metal. A soft click. A draw of the doorknob.

I stare down into the darkness, remembering. This is where we found the rabbit. I had nightmares for months afterward. It was the first time death forced its way into my life, and Ryan was the one to make me look away. I would have stared for hours. I was helpless not to. It was like the whole world stopped. It stuck in my head during sleepless nights, during summer swims, over breakfasts and during class. It never really went away. It's never left me. I had some hope that Ryan was still out there, some hope that death was not all that there was. But it's never left my side. And now I don't think I'm going to fight it anymore.

"You had a choice." I go to Mila slowly. Breathe in and out. Imagine Ryan by my side. But he isn't here to hold my hand, to make me look away.

Mila flicks the light on and peers down. There's nothing down there, and she hesitates. "I don't see any paintings."

"They're there."

She turns to me, a deeply unsettled look on her face. "I feel like there's something you're not telling me," she says.

I pause at her side. "Trust me, I know the feeling."

I take a deep breath and shove her down the stairs.

She lies motionless at the bottom. I don't look away. There's no going back now. If it weren't for her, Ryan would still be alive.

And as I stare down at the broken body at the bottom of the stairs, my heart pounding, I have a moment of clarity. This house. The house is poisoning me. The house has to go. And everyone in it.