“What are you talking about?”
“Everyone knows you’re messed up. Even before Anna died, you creeped people out. And you’ve just kept picking at this, while everyone else wants to let the wound heal and move on.”
“But the tox screen—”
“It could be passed off as an administrative mistake—a miscommunication, at most. Those happen all the time.”
“But I’ll tell them everything you told me—”
He shook his head. “And I’ll tell them that I made the mistake of being nice to you once and you developed some big crush on me—got upset when I kept turning you down, started making up weird stories. Maybe I’ll show them that picture you sent me.”
“What?” I’d never sent him a picture. Only Anna had….Oh. I shook my head. “It’s not even me.”
“That doesn’t really matter,” he said, like I was a small child denying some fundamental truth. “Nothing matters other than the fact that I have it and it looks just like you.”
“No, but—” I forced myself to breathe, to calm down. Then I thought about the phone in the quarry and how he’d said he didn’t have Lily’s number because he’d gotten a new phone—one without his old contacts. So I gambled a little. “You couldn’t. You lost your phone that night.”
“That didn’t matter. I’d backed it up weeks earlier. I mean, a picture like that? I’m not stupid. Come on, Jess. Think about it. Think about how it looks. The photo. You smashing my car window—making wild accusations? Claiming I drugged your sister? And what good would it do for anyone to hear the truth anyway? Hear about her slutting around with her friend’s boyfriend? What good would it do your parents to think about her like that?”
“Shut up, Charlie. Just shut up.”
The words were low and steady, and they did not come from my mouth.
I turned.
And there was Mona. Her face was pale and tense, and her eyes were fixed on Charlie.
“Mona.” He paused and collected himself. “Hey, I don’t know what you heard, but Jess is pretty confused—”
“Shut up,” she repeated. “I heard more than enough.”
She took a long deep breath and then let it out slowly. There was a ragged edge to it, like the air had cut into her throat as it left her body.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” she asked, still staring at him.
And at first I didn’t understand. Because if she’d listened, she knew what he’d done.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Charlie told her. Except there was something about the way he was looking at her that made me think that, unlike me, he did know.
“I should have realized a long time ago,” she said. “But I thought it was wishful thinking to believe it might have been anyone other than Brian.” She shook her head. “You offered me a ride, didn’t you? Probably minutes after you handed me a drink. My boyfriend’s best friend. I wanted you to like me. I wanted to go home. Of course I said yes.”
Charlie’s eyes flickered between me and Mona, like he was trying to assess how to turn this around. It was too late, though, because I saw it like a mirage forming in the air between us: Charlie carrying Mona onto the football field, her head swung back, her eyes at half-mast. His words to Brian played themselves back to me: I barely saw you when you guys were together. You’re better off without her.
I felt sick, a sharp nausea building inside me, and my fingers loosened on the flasks.
Mona looked away from Charlie and turned to me. Her body was shaking but her voice remained steady.
“Come on, Jess,” she said. “Let’s go. We’ll tell everyone everything—everything he did to Anna, everything he did to me. If it’s all out there, then the police will have to do something this time. They’ll have to test his flasks, find the drugs. There’s two of us who know now, and we have proof. We can do this together.”
Something deep inside me unknotted when she said that. I didn’t trust myself to respond out loud, so I nodded and took a step toward her.
It was then that Charlie lunged at me, grasping at the flasks.
He was fast, and I was slow to react, only twisting to the side at the last minute. He collided with the left side of my body, knocking me to the asphalt so hard it forced a gasp from the back of my throat.
I managed to keep one of the flasks held tight against my chest, but the other one, the one with the red dot, the one he stored deep under the seat of his car, escaped from my grasp. I watch it bounce and then spin away.
At first, it looked like the cap had held tight, but then a puddle began to form underneath it.
Charlie reached over me to grab it, so I pulled back and elbowed him in the mouth. He reared away, clutching his mouth and screaming in pain, and I stretched and grabbed hold of the flask.
Mona was yelling, and I could see her pulling at Charlie. He was much bigger than her, though, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to hold him for long. We won’t be able to prove it, I thought in a panic. They won’t have to listen. Not if there’s nothing for them to test, not if he gets to the flask and dumps it all out. He’ll lie, and he’ll get away with it. That’s what he does.
I had to save it.
So as he began to reach forward again, I kicked out at him to buy myself a few more seconds, to get him to rear back for just enough time.
Just enough time for me to tilt back my head, swing the flask back, and down every last drop.
Just enough time
