Chapter 61

Chapter Sixty-One

BEFORE

TOM

"Daisy?" I gasp.

Daisy turns away from the body on the ground, and I can see her tear-streaked face. I also see the gun in her hand. She lets it drop, then she runs in my direction, the tears flowing freely. She doesn't stop until she has propelled herself into my arms.

"Tom!" she sobs. "Oh, Tom! I was waiting here for you, and he…he came at me. He had a knife ."

That bastard. He did exactly what I thought he would do.

She buries her damp face in my shoulder as I cling to her. "I almost didn't bring my father's extra gun, but I thought I might need protection out here. If I hadn't…"

If I hadn't… I can't even contemplate the end of that sentence. If she hadn't brought that gun, Daisy would be lying dead in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen right now. And I would be murdering Slug with my bare hands.

"What happened?" I ask.

She pulls her face away from my T-shirt. She's so beautiful, even when she's crying. Especially when she's crying. "He was waiting for me here. He told me all this terrible stuff. He said that he…he killed Brandi and Alison. And that now he was going to kill me ."

"Jesus," I breathe.

Even though I know it's true, there's a part of me that doesn't want to believe Slug could do all that stuff. I could believe he was a peeping tom, but until recently I never would have believed that he was capable of killing someone, much less mutilating a bunch of girls. He loved girls—he just couldn't get them to like him back. People thought he was weird, yeah, but that's because they didn't understand him. He just thought insects were the coolest thing. He talked about wanting to be an entomologist—a bug scientist.

That's never going to happen now.

Slug, why did you do it? I would have gotten you a girlfriend somehow if you wanted one so badly.

"I better call my father," Daisy says through her tears. "He's going to be furious with me for sneaking out, but he needs to know what happened."

"Your father?" I take a step back, ready to bolt. "Daisy, if you call your dad, he's going to snap handcuffs on me and take me to jail."

"No, he won't!" She looks affronted. "Slug told me he killed Brandi and Alison all on his own. You didn't have anything to do with it! Don't you understand? This clears you."

"Right, but…" I rub the back of my neck. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather get out of here. If your dad sees me here, I don't know if he's going to believe anything I say."

"I need you, Tom." She frowns. "You have to back up my story that Slug was trying to attack me."

"But I didn't see him try to attack you."

She throws up her hands. "So what? I mean, look at him! He was waiting for me here. He was obviously going to attack me. And he came with a knife, for God's sake!"

I step over to where my best friend is lying dead in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen, bypassing the kitchen knife lying next to him. There's a puddle of crimson spreading below his body and across his chest. His lips are slightly parted, and there's a trickle of blood running out the side of his mouth. His brown eyes are open, staring at the stars. In the moonlight, you can't see his acne, and he looks a lot younger. He reminds me of the way he looked when I first sat next to him in the cafeteria and he was so happy just to have a friend.

"He's a monster," Daisy sniffles. "He killed my best friend."

I put my arm around her again as she dissolves into fresh tears. It looks like I'm going to have to stay. But she's right. Her story absolves me of any guilt. Maybe the chief will even let me date her again.

I realize I've got to tell my mother what's going on. She's also going to be furious that I left the house in the middle of the night, but it would be worse if she woke up and found my bed empty. And I have a feeling I'm going to be here for a while.

I pull my phone out of my pocket. I had it on silent during the night, and I got a text message about twenty minutes ago, while I was walking over here. Weirdly, it's from Slug. I read the message, my heart speeding up again:

Hey, Daisy asked me to come meet her at the Dairy Queen. Maybe together we can convince her not to say anything.

Okay. That's strange.

And then something else strange hits me. Something that had been percolating in the back of my head finally rises to the surface. When we were talking about the problem with Daisy, Slug said I should handle her "the same way you handled Alison."

At the time, I thought he was being sarcastic, but he didn't sound sarcastic. A terrible thought suddenly occurs to me:

Slug thought I was the one who killed Alison.

Now that I think about it, how could he have killed her? We were driving around most of the night. And it's not like Alison would have left her house in the middle of the night to meet Slug . There's only one person who Alison trusted, who could have lured her out of her house without a fight. It's definitely not Slug—it's not me either.

"Daisy," I say, "you said that Slug surprised you by showing up here?"

She bobs her head. "He was hiding in the shadows when I arrived."

"But his car was in the parking lot. Didn't you see it?"

She wrinkles her pert little nose. "I didn't know that was his car."

"Well, you knew it wasn't my car. So whose car did you think it was at one in the morning?"

"I don't know. A random parked car then."

"Uh-huh." I look at my best friend's body, still splayed out on the ground. "And while he was getting ready to attack you, that was when he told you about all the other girls he killed?"

Daisy stares at me, her lips turned down. "I don't know what you're implying." She looks over at my phone, which is still in my right hand. "What's on your phone? What's got you so worked up?"

"Nothing—" I start to say, but before I can even finish the word, Daisy reaches out and snatches the phone right out of my hand. "Hey! Give that back!"

But she isn't listening. She's staring down at the screen, and even if I got my phone back, it's too late at this point. She reads the message from Slug.

"Oh, I see." She nods slowly. "You think that I set him up. That I lured him out here just so I could kill him. Is that what you think?"

"Well…" No, of course I don't think that. Daisy would never do something like that. Not my Daisy.

She swipes at the screen on my phone, and I realize she has just deleted the text message. When the message is gone, she hands my phone back to me. "And what if I did?"

I suck in a breath. " What? "

"Jesus, Tom." She bends down to pick something up off the ground, and I realize the gun is back in her hand. "The two of you were pathetic. Slug gets himself caught peeping in windows—that's bad enough—but then you just let Alison walk away after she sees you putting a dead body in the trunk of your car. I snuck over to see you that night, but then I ended up seeing everything you did through the side window of your house. All your stupid decisions. I mean, do you want to spend the rest of your life in prison?"

My head is spinning. I can't believe the words coming out of Daisy's mouth. "You killed Alison," I manage.

"You say it like it's a bad thing." Her clear blue eyes widen. "Tom, she was going to call the police about you. Do you know that? And believe me, she hated you. Every chance she got, she would try to convince me to dump you." She smiles at me. "She didn't see the potential in you that I do."

It suddenly feels very hard to breathe. "What about Brandi?"

"You were kissing her, Tom." Her pale eyelashes flutter. "You and I were supposed to be together. I couldn't have that! She was all wrong for you. Trust me—I did you a massive favor."

"You tortured them," I gasp. "That's what the news said."

"I mean, a little." She shrugs. "I had to have some fun with it, didn't I?"

I suddenly realize my knees can't support me anymore. I crouch down in the middle of the parking lot, spots floating before my eyes. This can't be happening. The girl I love didn't just admit to killing three people. This has got to be another one of those wild dreams of mine. Any second now, I'm going to wake up covered in sweat.

Any second now.

"Stop being such a drama queen, Tom." Daisy kicks me with her sneaker. "It's not like you didn't enjoy slashing your father's throat. You think I don't know you? I do."

"It's not the same. Slug didn't deserve this."

"Didn't he?" She sneers. "I hate to break it to you, but your friend was a pervert. He went all over town peeping in girls' windows. Guys like that don't grow up to be wonderful people. We probably just saved a couple of girls in college from getting raped."

"You don't know that. You didn't know Slug." Although, she does have a point. What kind of guy goes around town peeking in girls' windows? No matter how desperate you are, you don't do that. If I had known…

Slowly, I manage to get back on my feet, although I'm still light-headed. Daisy is holding the gun, and she's pointing it at me. There's an expression on her face that is unfamiliar but, at the same time, very familiar.

I see it sometimes when I look in the mirror.

I always thought that I was drawn to Daisy because she's so pretty and sweet and good and that she brought out the better parts of me. But now I know the truth. The reason I feel connected to Daisy is because she's exactly like me.

"Are you going to shoot me?" I ask.

"I wasn't planning to," she says. "I'd say it's your call. What are you going to tell the police?"

"Daisy…"

"Listen to me, Tom." She shakes the gun at me. "I'll make this really simple for you. I'm not going to jail. So either you go along with my story, and Slug takes the fall for everything, or else I kill you, and you and Slug share the blame."

"Makes no difference to you, huh?"

My voice cracks on the words, and Daisy's face falls. It hits me that despite all the terrible things she's done, she never faked her feelings for me. "Don't say that. I like you, Tom. I love you. And if all the murders get pinned on Slug, we can be together again. Won't that be wonderful?"

Despite everything, there's a part of me that agrees with her. It would be wonderful to be with Daisy again. I had been so scared I would never get to hold her or touch her again—it felt like my life was over. Now she's giving me a second chance. Giving us a second chance.

She notices the expression on my face and reaches for my hand. "We could lose our virginity to each other, Tom. That would be so amazing. I've been saving myself for you, you know."

My mouth goes dry at her confession. "Oh…"

"My point is, we could have everything. We could spend the rest of our lives together." Her voice lowers to a sultry tone. "That's what you want, isn't it?

It used to be everything I wanted. "What about my father?"

"What about him? He's a drunk. Nobody cares what happened to him." She offers me a smile. "I will make sure my father doesn't dig too deep. Being the daughter of the chief of police has its advantages."

I don't doubt that. Even if I pretend to go along with her story for now and then turn on her when the police arrive, nobody will believe me. Chief Driscoll would never believe that the apple of his eye is a homicidal maniac.

She winks at me, which makes a chill go down my spine. "What do you say, Tom? Do we live happily ever after?"

I make a decision at that moment.

I will keep Daisy's secret.

I won't tell a soul that she murdered two of our classmates and my best friend. I won't tell anyone that she's a psychopath. I will take her secret to my grave.

I will do this to save myself. But that's not the only reason. I will keep Daisy's secret because I love her. I have always loved her—more than anyone I've ever known. And even now that I know how dangerous she is, I don't have it in me to hurt her. And she knows it.

But she and I are over. She won't be my girlfriend anymore. I won't kiss her. We won't lose our virginities to each other. We won't get married or have kids or grow old together. I'll still think about her, but I'll try not to. I love Daisy, but all I want right now is to be as far away from her as possible.

I won't let her ruin me.

I'm better than that.