AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I click on it, my hands shaking so hard that it takes severalattempts for my finger to land precisely on the link. The internet loads slowly so far away from the bustle of Kumvit and Pho Tau beach, and I realize I’m holding my breath.
The link connects to my Instagram app, pulling up a profile I know almost by heart. A beautiful woman stares out at me from the upper-left corner of the screen, her shiny hair pulled back in a tight bun. I click on her most recent post, recognizing it before it even enlarges on the screen. And then everything makes sense.
Why Brooke, this beautiful, confident influencer, took such an interest in me when she got to the island. Why someone of her popularity would be drawn to a quiet, inconsequential dive instructor.
We never had the instant connection I thought we did. She was never the friend or the mentor I believed she was.
She was my betrayer.
All this time, it’s been Brooke. She’s the one who has been leaving those notes, who’s been threatening to expose me. The only reason she got close to me was to use me.
I pause briefly on the photo she’s posted of me on the top of Khrum Yai. I told her not to, lying that it was because I didn’t like the way I looked, not because I didn’t want any one of her thousands of followers to recognize me asMeghan. Now with the eerie filter she’s laid on it and paired with the words beneath, it’s haunting. Exactly what she intended, I’m sure.
I read the caption as quickly as possible, my mind tripping over my name—the real one—paired with the ones the papers had so kindly gifted me: Meghan the Murderer; the Hudson Massacre Killer. But the words Brooke’s typed under those names hurt even more.
I hold the phone, staring at the post for so long that the screengoes black, reflecting my own face back to me. My hair is wild, my cheeks raw from the salt water.
I look like a person who could kill.
Whohaskilled.
My heart skids against my chest, and I feel as if I’m being buried alive. I picture sand filling my lungs like the bulb of an hourglass. Gasping, I suck in as much of the hot, humid air as I can.In for two.I try to regulate my breathing as I would underwater, standing in case it will help.
But this time, it doesn’t work. I try again, but it’s as if my airway has closed entirely. I drop to my knees.
Black dots begin to flicker at the corners of my eyes, my vision curling up at the edges like the damaged film of the home movies we used to watch on Dad’s old projector.
The memory floods back. Robin and me, probably in sixth and fourth grade at the time, and Mom, running along the beach, Dad off-screen, handling the camera as it bounced with each stride. “I can’t keep up,” I yelled at Robin and Mom. They stopped.
Robin turned around and walked back to me, her voice sweet. “Of course you can. You’re my big sister. You can do anything.”
I try again to breathe, flaring my nostrils as wide as they go, desperate for air.I can do this. I’m your big sister.
And I force myself back to standing. It’s time to confront what I’ve done. To make this right as much as I can.
But the question still pulses deep within me. What could I have possibly done to Brooke to deserve this?
27
BROOKE
It happened three years ago. I was a freshman in college. Only eighteen, the same age Lucy was when she was murdered.
The plan was to meet him in the library.
I tried to calm myself down as I trekked up the barely used back staircase.He’s just a guy, I told myself,a few years older than you. And it was just a stupid story.
But I knew it was more than that. It was my first big piece for theHudson Herald. The first time the editors had trusted me with anything more than a one-paragraph segment they would hide in the back pages. This was my big break, or as big as a break can be for a college paper in upstate New York. An interview with Eric Verrino, the captain of Hudson’s swimming team, which was predicted to win the division championships that year.
I followed the directions in the text he’d sent me after my editor gave me his number and weaved through stacks of old, obsolete books to a collection of three study carrels I’d never known existed. And there he was.
He had olive skin topped with jet-black hair and gleaming dark eyes, and he was dressed in maroon workout pants and a black zip-up windbreaker, the swimming team’s unofficial campus uniform. His smile formed a charming divot in one cheek, revealing a line of straight, ultra-white teeth.
“You must be Brooke.” His voice was kind, his beautiful smile laced through it.
I nodded, too eagerly. “Nice to meet you, Eric,” I said shakily, flinching at how thick my Kentucky accent sounded in the quiet library.
I’d never been this person, someone who lost their mind over a guy. But good lord, this was like seeing a Greek god in the flesh. I cursed myself silently. I was already nervous about the interview. I didn’t need this on top of it.
