Chapter 47

Here are my rules:

1. You may run.

2. You may hide.

3. You may apologize.

Oh, who are we kidding? None of you think you've done anything wrong.

4. You may attempt to escape.

5. But you will not.

I run down the cellar stairs and grasp the railing with numb fingers. Mila lies like a broken doll in the eerie beam of light spilling down from the top of the staircase, a dark halo pooling around her head. For a moment, I'm stuck in time, struck by her terrible beauty, and then the reality of what I've done begins to prick at me. Little cuts all over. An overwhelming wave of panic numbs me again, and I tear the cover off the circuit breaker and flip every switch, my hands shaking. The gasoline can is heavy, but I lug it up two flights of stairs, and then another can, along with a large bottle of paint thinner. I coat the solid oak floors of the guest room and master bedroom with one can and close the doors, then hide the other in the upstairs closet with the paint thinner. I rescue my beautiful tarot cards, tucking them gently into my shirt pocket, next to my heart. Then I run back down the stairs and fling open the back door.

"Kennedy! Chelsea's locked in the attic!" I wait in the downstairs bathroom, saturated in darkness, but I know every inch of it. I know the family portraits that cover the walls, and the precise location of the group photo of our family, the five of us in the Summer of Swallows, arranged on the dock. Chelsea and Ryan deep in conversation, Chase attempting to lift Kennedy over his head, Mila laughing. Me in the background, a smile plastered on my face, staring straight at the camera. Camera smiles are always fake. I pull the photo off the wall and smash it against the toilet, then turn to the sink and grab a bar of soap. Even after scrubbing my hands with lavender-scented soap, though, I smell too much like gasoline to go near her. It's almost absurd, the delicate guest towels and handcrafted soaps, and my hands all filthy and coated with accelerant.

I hear the back door open and footsteps slowly walking up the stairs. "Something smells!" Kennedy shouts from the loft.

"Yeah, I don't know!" I yell back. I open the back door again and wave to Chase. Chase, who buried a body. Who buried my brother's body. And lied, and lied, and lied to me, with me, beside me. No more, Chase. No more Chase. "Hey, can you help me with something?"

He jogs inside and looks me up and down, scrunching his nose. "What did you do?"

I shrug and try to grin helplessly. "I spilled a bunch of crap from the cellar all over myself."

He crosses the living room toward the cellar, and I bolt the back door shut and seal it with one of the combination locks the Hartfords use during the off-season. I don't know the combination, and neither does Chase. Nobody but Kennedy does.

Chase whips around and stares at me. "What did you do? Where's Mila?"

I back against the door, out of breath.

His eyes fall to the floor, slick with gasoline, and rise to the flickering candles, the masses and masses of candles, filling the room with a gorgeous, brilliant glow. Heaven on earth, the sky fallen down on us. I hear music in the chaos, the thumping of footsteps above, Kennedy screaming, Chase saying my name over and over, making no sense, no sense at all. He grabs my wrists.

"What did you do to her?"

Laughter spills out. I can't help it. The question is nonsense. A year of lying and hiding what they did to Ryan, and he expects me to tell him about Mila after five fucking seconds?

"It's much too early for answers," I tell him. "Don't you think? What's the statute of secrets? One year. In one year, you'll find out. You made the rules, not me."

He stares at me in horror. "Emily."

I push him away with all of my strength, and he stumbles to avoid a row of candles lining the windowsill by the front door. "You buried my brother?"

"No. Kennedy doesn't know shit." He begins blowing out candles. That's fine. It's fine. He won't get to all of them. He couldn't possibly. There are too many.

"What did you do, Chase?" I pick up one of the taller candles carefully and begin to relight the ones he's blown out.

"I went looking for him. Anyone would. I couldn't accept—you couldn't either." He turns to me, pleading in his eyes. "I wanted to know what happened, just not like that. I didn't want him to be dead."

"But he was." Every step he takes, I follow. Every candle he extinguishes, I relight.

"There was nothing I could do about that!" He gives up on the candles and takes me by the elbows.

I would have fallen for it once, melted into him and disappeared. Instead I hold the lit candle between us, a warning. "You could have told me. You could have saved my family a year of torture."

He shakes his head, and I feel his hands trembling against my skin. Vibrating his fear straight through me. "It would have ruined our lives," he whispers.

"So you chose you," I whisper back. "How did you do it? Bodies don't bury themselves."

"I made a phone call," he says, his voice thick with shame. Of course he did. Boys like Chase can make phone calls. There were always whispers about his father. Entanglements with the sort of people who make problems disappear. Just like in the movies. Isn't it glamorous? I picture him deep in the woods, all alone at the cell spot, desperate to catch a single bar of cell service, his phone glowing in his hand. He made a phone call. That's all. With a phone call, he buried a body. One more puzzle piece. Another snapshot. Another image to immortalize. The last tarot card, and the rest writes itself.

I run back upstairs just as he's discovering Mila. Who led my brother to his death, and kept the secret like a promise. No more. His scream is exquisite.

I wait outside Kennedy's room, the princess tower, pink gauze and wood carvings and the memory of shattered glass. Someone should have told the Hartfords to read the Grimm brothers. Fairy tales never end without bloody revenge or haunting defeat. The mermaid dissolves. The stepsisters are savaged by birds.

The witch in the woods is burned in her own enchanted home.

Kennedy is halfway up the attic stairs to a panicked Chelsea, a mistake, but not her first. I pull her down and push the stairs back up.

She stares at me, stunned, from the floor. Untouchable Kennedy. Kennedy, who will always come out on top. Looking up at me. Even now she doesn't look afraid. Just desperate. Searching. What to say to get out of this mess. I almost enjoy it.

"Don't do this," she says. Calm. Measured. "Everything will be different. We'll go to the police. We'll tell the truth."

But I don't think any of them know the whole truth anymore. They're so tangled up in their own lies. The only thing left to do is destroy it all and start over.

"Is this what it was like?"

She shakes her head. Playing stupid. As if she didn't know.

I grit my teeth. "When you killed him."

A hard, cold burst of air escapes her lips. It's not a gasp. It isn't shocking, what she did. Not to her. She's just cornered. Every breath she takes is stalling. "Emily. Please think. None of us would kill a friend. We had ups and downs. Sometimes small ones." She almost shows an emotion and it disgusts me. "Sometimes bigger. But our history was bigger than that."

"Bullshit. You didn't like him."

She looks at me accusingly. Me. Like I'm the bad one for saying it out loud, for seeing the ugliness in her. "People grow apart. That's life. It doesn't mean he wasn't important to me or that I stopped caring about him. Or that I haven't relived that day over and over and over in my mind, trying to figure out what any of us would have done differently if we had a second chance. You were there too. Would you have been nicer to Mila? Because if you had, maybe she wouldn't have felt like she had to leave the house. Would you still have smashed my head with a mirror? Because if I hadn't been stuffed full of drugs, maybe I could have saved him. And if you hadn't held us to that unforgiving standard of loyalty, you might have been there on the boat, and maybe he wouldn't have gone into the water. But every second of our lives led to that moment. We have always been doomed for this. There was no other way, and Emily, you played your part too. You pushed."

And that's it. Kennedy Ellis Hartford has played her last card. I step past her wordlessly and pull down the attic door. She looks at me distrustfully and then turns and rushes up the stairs to Chelsea. There are sounds of joy. Reunion. Love. Chelsea rushes down the stairs first, and the relief on her face is palpable. Then her eyes fall on me.

My eyes trail up the ladder. Kennedy is still up there. Extinguishing candles. Breathing a massive sigh of relief. She should be leaving. Protecting herself and the one she loves. But she protects the house. I fold the ladder back up, push the trapdoor closed again, then grab the hair-trimming scissors off Kennedy's neat, meticulously organized vanity, and snip the pull string off.

Chelsea stares at me with a look of mixed horror and betrayal. "Why would you do that?" She jumps, straining to reach the lock on the attic door as Kennedy calls down to us in vain, but we both know it's too high up.

"You know why." I turn away from her, but she blocks my way out of the room. "If you don't get it now, you're never going to."

"I loved him too, Em." She pushes past me and positions herself behind the bed, throwing her weight against it. But with its heavy oak frame, it's not going to move an inch. "You know why I wrote that note."

"Because you didn't save him. You didn't call for help. You didn't even admit he was gone. You may not have pushed him, but your silence held him under, Chelsea. You killed Ryan too."

"I still loved him."

"But you chose Kennedy." I can't say her name without bile rising to my tongue, venom.

She tries the vanity, straining from the effort, then pauses, gasping for breath. "I loved her more."

I glare at her. I know she loved Ryan. Anyone knew who saw them together. And it hurts more that she let him die. That she buried him even before that. That she wouldn't admit that she loved him until he was dead, because she wouldn't dare risk Kennedy finding out. Wouldn't risk losing the bigger prize.

"You kept him a secret," I whisper. "That's not real love. Loyalty doesn't have two sides."

She tries the last piece of furniture, the heaviest, the bureau, and starts to cry. I want to break her in half. "You were the one who convinced me I had to keep Ryan a secret or lose Kennedy. You always want us to choose sides. You don't understand loyalty, Emily. I don't think you understand love. All of us have loved you. You made the rules too strict. I'm sorry I broke Ryan's heart, and I can't forgive myself for not saving him. But we don't deserve this. No one does. We've fought and made mistakes, but it's still love that ties all of us together. Not Ryan's death." She believes all of this. I know she does, truly. But Chelsea lives in a fantasy. It is a murder that ties the rest of them together. And I have no love left in me.

She looks at me imploringly. "Let Kennedy go."

"I am. I just wish you had." I flee the bedroom, slamming the door behind me and pushing a decorative table in front of it. Chelsea screams, kicks the door, pummels the wood with her fists. I ignore her.

Chelsea. The willing witness. No more. Kennedy, the executioner, no more, sealed in with the melted wax and locked in with a cut cord. Your turn, Kennedy.

When I flipped the switches on the circuit breaker, I turned off the power to every room in the house. If they do blow out the candles, they'll be in almost total darkness.

Power is a funny thing.

When you have it, you take it for granted. When you don't, it's the only thing you think about. I'm going to take yours before you die.

It's the least I can do. Maybe not the least. But I can do it. That's the whole point of power.

Every one of them will be stuck in a different place. Every one of them will die alone, like Ryan did. Kennedy is in the attic, and there's no way out. Mila will never leave the cellar. Chase will be in the living room when he realizes there's no saving Mila, and Chelsea is in the bedroom. If I know my friends, and by now, I think I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I do, Chelsea will panic and run for it, like she did while my brother drowned. But there's only one way out for her, and that's straight down from the balcony. Chase will play the hero, like he did when he covered up Kennedy's inconvenient little murder. But I won't let either of them get far. I can't. It's already gone too far. We have all gone too far.

Six candles burning in the dark

Find them fast before they spark

One is in the living room

One in the garden where the flowers bloom

One on the boat that bobs on the lake

One in the room where we sleep and wake

One in the attic over your head

One in the cellar where you'll find one dead.

It occurs to me that I haven't thought of a way out. There are still pills in my pocket. But I didn't come here to die. I didn't come here to kill, either.

I came here to learn the truth.

But the truth was murder.

The truth was lies.

So I leave Kennedy's room. One last time before I go. There's a sudden flare of light from downstairs, and I run to the balcony overlooking the loft. The candles on the living room table have finally burned to the bottom, and I watch in fascination as the cards from the board game ignite as if made of some hyperflammable substance. A sudden wind blows the front door open, and the cards go swirling into the air like leaves lifted from a bonfire. As each card makes contact with a surface, a brilliant blaze blooms, spreading with almost supernatural speed. Everything is light and heat. Everything is sick and strange. The smoke is poison, the fire is ruin, but the house is dying. There is nothing left to save. I focus on the door, the one I was sure I locked. This is the one chance to turn back. Chase is still in the cellar, administering CPR like the Boy Scout he is. He has a shot at escape, if he were smart enough to take it. By some miracle or act of god, almost a supernatural force, the fire hasn't come into contact with a gasoline-coated surface. But I find myself running, unable to stop myself, down the stairs, to the front door, padlocking it, and sprinting back up again, my lungs bursting, out of breath. I lift the can of gasoline and spill the rest over the side of the balcony. There is no turning back.

Chase runs back up from the cellar and stares up at me from the living room. "What did you do?" He looks at me like a stranger. But he's the stranger.

"Don't ask me that." I don't like the way it makes me feel. I don't like the way he's looking at me. Like I'm the villain.

He looks around helplessly. "The fire extinguisher's missing."

"Bad luck."

A wall of fire rises behind him, and he backs away from it. "You killed Mila."

"You killed Ryan."

"It was an accident. This is so fucked up, Emily. This is so fucked." He whips his head around, looking for an out. It's almost comical, like a cartoon. But he's smart. Smart-guy Chase. If there is a way out, he will find it. So I search the room too, surveying the scene from above. "You planned this."

Remain calm. Focus. Look. There's still room for him to edge sideways to the bookcase. He could possibly climb it and pull himself up to where I'm watching him from the loft, or it could fall over and crush him. Flatten him like a pancake. I don't see another way. Two walls of fire are now blocking his exit, and there are no windows in the cellar.

"Only a little." I hold Mila's unlit lighter over the railing. It's going to burn my fingers, and if I'm not careful, it could set the rest of me on fire. I have to do it quickly or not at all. There's pure terror in his eyes, but I see sedation there too. The pills work quickly.

"Emily. Em. You don't need to do this." His eyes focus on the bookcase, and he flattens against the wall and begins to inch toward it. It was only a matter of time. He begins tearing books off the shelf, leaving the bottom row filled. Clever. That will weigh it down, make it less likely to topple over as he climbs.

"Why do people always say that?" It irritates me. Does he think I don't know that? Like I'm a child with no sense of agency? "I choose to do it. You made your choices, I get to make mine. And you made a lot of bad choices, Chase. Let's be honest, this isn't just about Ryan. You ignored me for years. You brought Mila to our place not once but twice, you had sex with her behind my back, and then you paraded her in front of me after…" I can't even say it. The words stick in my throat like something rotten.

I watch little sparks of hope die in his eyes as he begins to climb, looking up at me, stricken, reaching one arm over his head and finding his footing. "Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you?"

I open my mouth but swallow a cloud of smoke and choke for a moment, gasping for breath. "Nothing is wrong with me, Chase," I gasp. "You are a toxic friend. All of you are toxic friends. I am cleansing my life of toxic friends. Like I should have years and years ago." I double over, coughing, as he continues to climb. I shouldn't let him. But I'm angry. He shouldn't be allowed to say these things to me.

I can hardly make out his words at first through the sound of the fire, but I lean over the side of the balcony, straining. He's coming closer. "Not like this."

I struggle to see him through the smoke. It's getting harder and harder to breathe. Chase is an athlete, but I don't see how he can climb through this. I can barely stand. My head is beginning to swirl. The smoke is poisoning my senses, pouring in through my eyes, ears, and nose. And then his hands sweep out toward me, grasping only air. Again, embracing nothingness. Once more, so close, and I can't breathe, and then his fingertips brush against the balcony, and my heart stops. Chase, who I loved. Chase, who I adored. Who I spent summer after summer, year after year, reaching and grasping and longing for, to have him slip through my fingers. I grab his hands, lace my fingers through his, feel the electricity surge through them, the warmth, the need. He needs me. In the most fundamental sense. But I don't need him. Not anymore. I let go, gently, lovingly, pushing him firmly away, feeling his weight shift back and over, into the thick, poisonous air, feeling the crunch of his bones as sharply as I hear it.

There's something I should tell you, before it's too late.

"I really do love you," I whisper. "Every last, damned one of you."

And you are all damned.

Every last one of you.

I kick the bookcase over, just to be sure. Goodbye, love. Goodbye.

I ignite the lighter, and it burns my fingers. I snap it shut. Chase is quiet now. Chelsea is kicking the door. The smoke is so thick, I couldn't find my way back downstairs if I wanted to. But I know what would be waiting for me. Rivers of fire. Blood red, electric. The heat is incredible. It scorches and comforts me at once. It will burn out all the parts in me that don't belong anymore. The soft parts, the decay. The sadness and longing. It burns. The longing burns. It's almost gone. I know now where my brother is, and how it happened. I'm finally done with Chase. I'll never be second in Kennedy's eyes, or third in Chelsea's. I'm ready to let go. I grasp the railing dizzily and nudge the can of gasoline over the edge with my foot.

This is how I'll say goodbye:

Not with words.

Not with a kiss.

But with a promise.

You will remember me forever.

I light the lighter one more time and drop it.

Flames leap up and I step back, humbled by their strength. The desire to not die hits me so hard it takes my breath away, and I run to the one place I haven't been able to secure, the balcony in Kennedy's room. I stagger to the table that's blocking Kennedy's room and push it aside to find Chelsea tearing the room apart, searching for a tool to open the attic.

She turns to me frantically, weak and coughing. "Help me."

I smile. "The only way out is down." It's not a friendly drop, but it's my only shot. I slide my legs over the railing and drop down, landing safely, then look up at the house.

Goodbye, friends.

I'll leave you with this thought.

Before you ask about second chances,

Remember the Summer of Swallows.

Remember.

Remember.

Because it's never, ever, ever going away.

Not after what you did.

So if you think this is over?

Think again.

And again.

And again.

Your very best friend,

Emily Joiner