shook her head, but didn’t want to speak. She didn’t know what would come out.
“I can’t tell you,” she whispered. “I can’t tell anyone.”
“You can tell me anything.” He wiped away another tear from her cheek. “Is it Reed? Did he… do something?”
“No!” She jerked her face away from him. “It was me. I did… it doesn’t matter now. I can’t change anything.”
“Maybe I can help.”
Beth wanted to laugh. It was such a genuine offer, and such a pointless one. No one could help her, not now. No one could change what she’d done. She searched for the words that would convince him she was okay, so that he could go on with his night and stop showering her with even more care and attention that she didn’t deserve. She knew it should only make her feel worse, and hated that it didn’t.
In fact, he was helping just by being there. Holding her.
Then the room door swung open-and he let go.
“Harper!” he cried, pulling away from Beth and jumping to his feet. “Oh, shit!”
“It’s lovely to see you, too,” Harper drawled, her eyes skimming over Beth. They paused only for a second, but it was long enough. Beth could feel Harper’s gaze slicing into her, peeling back all her layers until she was left exposed, naked, a shivering mass of raw pain. Harper’s expression didn’t change, and she moved on.
“I didn’t mean that,” Adam babbled, “I just meant, I was surprised to see you here-”
“Of course you were, since we were meeting up there,” Harper pointed out. There was a strange note in her voice, Beth realized. Something almost human. Almost like… pain. “Of course, I was surprised too… when you didn’t show. But now I get it. You found a better option.” She glared at Beth, her eyes narrowed and her teeth bared. “I didn’t mean to interrupt-I’ll just grab my jacket and get out of your hair.”
“It’s not like that, Harper, I just forgot, and-”
“Oh,
“It wasn’t crap,” he said quietly.
“Good luck explaining that to your new girlfriend.”
“That’s not what’s going on here,” he insisted. “If you’d just give me a chance…” Beth expected him to move toward Harper, to do
“I
“That’s not fair!”
“You want to talk
“I don’t even know why-”
Beth wondered why they had both frozen and turned to stare at her. Then she realized that she was the one who had screamed.
She couldn’t stand it anymore; she couldn’t ruin anything else with her lies and her cowardice. Everything was falling apart around her, and all this destruction, all this pain, it was because of her. She was done. Whatever had happened to her tonight, whatever she had taken, it had apparently had an effect. The terror was still there, but it was quieter, farther away, like her mind had sunk into a deep sea, and all the excuses, all the rationalizations, all the terrifying consequences were muffled by the dark, still waters.
She couldn’t stand the twisted pain on Adam’s face and the hatred in Harper’s eyes, and she couldn’t stand her own weakness. Not anymore.
“Adam’s only here with me because I lied to him,” Beth said. She barely spoke above a whisper, but there must have been something in her voice, or in her face, that commanded attention. Harper and Adam didn’t interrupt; they barely moved. “If he knew the truth, he would-” She held her breath until the urge to sob passed. “He would hate me. He should hate me.”
Adam still didn’t speak, but he sat down again on the edge of the bed and took her hand, pressing it gently. Beth wanted to pull away, but speaking was hard enough. She couldn’t move. “I lied to everyone. At least, I didn’t tell the truth. Harper, I didn’t tell you what happened, and now you think that it was your fault and I wanted to tell you, I did, because I am so sorry, even if that sounds stupid and small to say, it’s true, I would do anything to change what happened, and if I could I would you have to believe that-”
“
It didn’t make it any easier to say it out loud.
Beth allowed herself a moment to hope that speaking the truth would change everything: It would lift the cloud of guilt and let her breathe again. It would make up for what she’d done,
The moment passed. And it didn’t matter, not anymore. Maybe nothing could save her now. But she had to try.
“I did it.” In her mind, Beth delivered the news standing up, facing Harper with strength and dignity, a noble image of apology and disgrace. In reality, she pressed her face into her hands, her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs, her nose stuffed, her cheeks wet, her voice muffled. “I spiked your drink, Harper. Before the speech. Before the accident.” A wave of nausea swept through her, and she fell forward, her head spinning like she was going to pass out. Hunched over, she couldn’t see Harper’s reaction, didn’t even know if Adam was still by her side. A dull, roaring thunder filled her ears. She couldn’t even hear her own voice, and wasn’t sure if she was speaking at all anymore, or whether she was confessing in her own head.
Maybe, she thought, as the world spun around her, fading in and out of a gray mist, this is all still just a dream.
Still, she forced the words out. Each one hurt, as if scraping a razor blade across her tongue on the way out.
“It was me.”
She was no longer in the hotel room; she was back at school, a small pill warm in her hands, slipping into a mug of coffee. Dissolving. Disappearing.
“I did it.”
She was on an empty road, standing over a scorched patch of ground, everything matted down. Burned out. Dead. She choked on an acrid stench of smoke and gasoline.
“I killed Kaia.”
She stopped waiting to wake up.
Chapter 10
First came the relief.
Then came the rage.
Harper pressed herself flat against the wall, her nails digging into the cheap paint. She imagined they were digging into Beth’s big blue Bambi eyes. She wanted to claw them out.
