Chapter Thirty Piper

Chapter Thirty

Piper

Now: Saturday, 9:49 p.m.

Silva is dead, and that means one of us is a killer.

The storm is raging outside, the power's out, and we're trapped on this mountain. Truly alone, and totally fucked.

We crowd onto the safe zones of the big U-shaped couch, flanking Declan's body spot, which is still marked off with a towel. The fire crackles and sparks with high-kicking flames. Our devices, thoroughly wiped with several fluffy towels, sit in a row on the coffee table.

Camille has her knees tucked to her chest, and she rocks, rocks, rocks back and forth. We've aged ten years in one day.

Liam makes a fresh round of cocoa and hands the drinks out, passing Willa a mug with extra marshmallows before curling under a throw blanket, his teeth chattering. He repeats the plan from earlier. "We'll take the snowmobile down the mountain as soon as the storm slows down, at first light. It'll be okay."

"Who?" Wyatt asks him. " Who will take the snowmobile down the mountain? Because from where I'm sitting, one of us here is a murderer. "

He's right. It's the elephant in the room. I catalog my mental-suspects list. Everything everyone has said and done over the past forty-eight hours.

This isn't a podcast, though. No, we're in a horror movie, and those never end well.

I clear my throat. "Do we think the phones are safe to poweron?"

Camille stops rocking to glare at me. "I don't see the point. Silva wasn't the one sending threatening DMs to Eden. Not if she's dead. This doesn't make any sense."

"Probably not," Liam says, ignoring Camille. "I dropped my phone in a pool once, and I had to dry it out for forty-eight hours."

"We may not last forty-eight hours!" Willa practically wails. "Who is doing this?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Delaney says with unnatural calm. She reaches for something under the coffee table, then slides the purple journal onto the table. "Silva planned this trip. Look here. There's a list on one of the earlier pages." She flips to it, holding the book aloft to show us. "We're all on it. Except for one."

Delaney snaps shut the journal before we can glimpse the full list. She stands and begins to pace before the fire. She clutches the journal between her hands, and I itch to snatch it from her. Even if I already know who isn't on that list.

"Our counselor colluded with one of us to get everyone here. And now she's dead."

Camille sputters, but everyone else is silent. We all know it's true.

We are being hunted by someone in this room.

But the question isn't only who—it's also why.

"You think I'm the killer?" I take the bait. I know I wasn't supposed to be on this trip. And I know Delaney. "Go ahead, say it."

"Yours is the only name not on the list, and Silva wouldn't put down the name of the student she colluded with to make this whole trip happen, now would she?"

The seeds of doubt sown, everyone looks at me with new eyes. Camille in particular is perturbed. All those years of heated competition will finally be my undoing.

"You were all alone in the house for hours yesterday while we were skiing," Camille says slowly.

"That's right!" Wyatt sits up, now alert. "You joked about going through all our stuff. You could have hidden Declan's EpiPen and rigged the sauna easily."

"You knew the door code to the garage," Delaney adds.

Willa gasps. "The wet floor. There was an icicle missing from the garage door. That's how you jammed the sauna shut."

I work to keep my voice steady. "You guys are ridiculous. I was here, reading, all afternoon. You saw me."

Delaney shakes her head. "We weren't all together the whole time. It was hours and hours and plenty of opportunities for you to slip away unnoticed."

Everyone nods vigorously, and I give her argument a moment to sink in. Then I parry with, "Doesn't that mean we all had the chance to sneak downstairs without being missed? I wasn't the only one who knew about the garage. Liam got the Solo cups from there. And Camille had the welcome book this morning."

"Don't act like you don't hate us, Piper. Like you won't play dirty." Camille sneers. I know she's thinking about that night, the party. But she doesn't say it. "I've been besting you for years. Now you're mysteriously injured because you knew you weren't good enough to get recruited. Is your broken arm even real? Maybe you're faking it."

She shoots across the gap in the couch and grabs me by the sling.

My vision goes white with pain. "Get off me." I wrest away with a grimace.

"You mean you didn't push Piper off the balance beam to break her arm?" Wyatt pretends at shock. "And here I thought you were a baller."

"Seriously, Wyatt?" Camille glares in accusation at the group. "You all think I did it?"

"If people have been saying that, it's because it's easy to believe," I shoot back, massaging my arm. My blood boils in my veins. Years of Camille's competitive bullshit rush forward in my mind. "And I did get recruited. I just had the decency not to run my mouth and brag all over the place like you do."

"But you quit gymnastics. And I heard you've been stalking the front office, begging Ms. Silva for a last-minute recommendation to Indiana University, which doesn't even have a gym team."

My teeth grind of their own accord. "I was good enough, Camille. Better than you. And unlike you, I didn't need to target anyone before a competition in order to win."

I know I should just tell them why I'm here. It's simple for me: a very basic reason that now doesn't matter at all. Our college counselor is dead, so no longer do I need to suck up to her.

I'm here because of my stupid, fragile body. It's a ticking time bomb, waiting to go off. My secret weapon and my Achilles' heel.

"Piper's so flexible!" my coaches would exclaim, and their eyes would glow with calculated delight. Oh, the ways they could use me to their own ends. A coach lives or dies by their athletes, and who doesn't love a prodigy? But if you bend too far, eventually you'll break. My elbow dislocated twice in succession last fall, and was the final straw.

"You should see a specialist," said the gym's PT, frowning. "This is bizarre."

Because a year earlier, it had been a knee. And a left shoulder dislocated half a dozen times. There's such a thing as being too flexible, even in elite gymnastics.

"I'm here because I'm sick," I spit out.

They sit there in stunned silence. My humiliation is almost worth the shocked looks on all of their faces.

"Oh my god, are you, like, dying? Cancer? This is some murderous last hurrah?" Camille asks with dawning horror.

My skull is not big enough to contain my eye roll. "This isn't a Lifetime movie, and I'm not dying. I have a genetic disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, or EDS. The doctors scared the shit out of my mom and told her it's not safe for me to do competitive gymnastics anymore. I have to wear this now—"

I yank down the neck of my hoodie and the shirt underneath, revealing the top of my heart monitor. I don't show them the accompanying phone I use to track my heartbeat. When we finally have Wi-Fi again, it'll send a progress report to my doctors.

"It could affect my heart, apparently. That's why I'm here." Iswallow hard, laying it all out for them. "My teachers don't know me, and my coaches won't advocate for me. Silva was my last chance at getting a college recommendation letter for a halfway-decent school with some financial aid, since I lost my gymnastics scholarship."

I watch as the calculations change. Suspicion turns to pity. This is what I was hoping to avoid. Being seen not as a person but as a disease. Being sidelined further than I already was.

Triumph flashes across Camille's pretty face. At long last, she's bested me. She's going to be a decorated college gymnast, and I won't be a competitive athlete ever again. My dream is over.

"What if it's Willa?" Wyatt suggests, sudden and cold.

Apparently, we're done with my sob story.

"Wh-what?" Willa stutters out. They're listening. I cannot believe how quickly their attention has turned.

Wyatt's not done. "I saw someone in the kitchen last night, after everyone else had gone to bed. Eden and I were in the hot tub, and you were skulking around the living room and kitchen—stealing Declan's EpiPen, perhaps?"

"I didn't come down to the kitchen," Willa protests. "I was upstairs all night. Anyone could have come downstairs."

I feel dread pool in my stomach. I came downstairs too.

"It's convenient you found both Declan's and Eden's bodies," Wyatt says.

"Declan was a coincidence, and I found Eden with Camille!" Willa shouts. "And it wasn't even my idea to go downstairs."

Whose was it, though? I can't remember.

Wyatt rises off the couch, chest puffed up but voice shaking. "You cost me Princeton. You and that bitch guidance counselor planned this whole thing. So, what, I'm next? Because you can't let that night go? You dumb fucking slu—"

Liam's fist comes out of nowhere, connecting with Wyatt's cheek in a sickening crack. I didn't even see him get up.

"What the—" is all Wyatt gets out before sparking off. He launches himself at Liam; they tumble back onto the couch. Delaney and Camille dive out of the way, shrieking like pigs. Wyatt gets in a few good punches to Liam's abdomen, his fists landing with dull thwumps. Liam grunts. "Get off me!" He shoves his knee into Wyatt's stomach in an attempt to repel him.

Without hesitating, Delaney jumps in. She takes hold of the back of Wyatt's shirt and wrenches hard. Camille grabs his arm, and together they separate them. Both boys pant hard, landing on opposite sides of the couch. They glare at each other, tension crackling in the air. Willa is in tears.

"Everyone needs to calm the fuck down and grow the hell up," Delaney says. "We cannot start attacking each other."

"Physically, at least." My gaze snaps to Camille, her eyes filled with pure acid.

Wyatt rockets off the couch. "Screw this, I'm going to bed." He prods a finger over at Liam. "Alone. No way that fucker's coming in my room."

Delaney is quick to agree. "Yes, we should go to bed. We can't do anything with the phones until tomorrow anyway. Hopefully at least one will work, and the storm will end, and we can leave."

She means her and Liam. We all know the snowmobile only seats two.

Wyatt's sentiment spreads like wildfire. Camille side-eyes Delaney. Willa narrows her gaze at me. The feeling is mutual.

"I'll take Eden's room," Willa blurts, advocating for herself for once.

"Don't leave me alone," Camille starts, holding Delaney's elbow.

"Fine. Liam, you take Silva's room. Cam and I will be fine; we know it's not us. And we'll all lock our doors for safety. No one comes out until morning."

"You sure?" Liam's brow furrows. Maybe he's thinking the same thing I am. That it's odd Delaney didn't jump at the chance to bunk with her boyfriend.

"Yeah." Delaney pats Camille affectionately.

With nothing more to be accomplished, we file upstairs as a group to sleep. We go to bed, knowing a killer is among us.