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The thought makes me laugh as I watch Emmett through the doorway, slipping into his boxers. But then there’s a sudden, booming, violent banging on the door that scares us both. He looks to me with wide, questioning eyes, but I don’t have any clue who it could be either.
“Emmett Jameson!” a man’s voice yells out. “Open up. It’s the police.”
I shoot up in bed, clutching the covers around me. My clothes are still in the living room, but I don’t know if I have time to get to them. Emmett tries to ask them to wait a minute, but they only bang on the door harder, demanding for him to open up right away. Instead he bolts over and shuts the bedroom door to give me some privacy.
My heart pounds as I hear him open the door followed by muffled voices. What are they doing here? Jameson police are corrupt and not to be trusted. But if they’re trying to pull something over on us right now, I don’t know who I could turn to for help. Detective Williams thinks we’re crazy and asked us not to contact him anymore.
“Ophelia!” Emmett screams for me.
Practically forgetting that I’m naked, I fling a sheet around my body and race out to him. As I run into the room, I see they have him pinned up against the wall and are about to handcuff him.
“What’s going on here!?” I shriek. “Emmett!”
“Miss, step back,” commands one of the officers.
“Emmett Jameson, you’re under arrest as a suspect in the murder of Malcolm Henderson,” the officer handcuffing him announces before reading him the rest of his rights.
“What!?” I cry. “You’re wrong! He didn’t kill Malcolm!”
They ignore me and carry on. Emmett says nothing as they cart him away and leave me alone in the empty apartment. I don’t even know how I was able to defend him so vehemently when hours ago I was part
ly convinced that he did it. I just never expected the police to think the same thing enough to arrest him. What do they know that I don’t? Or is this the Elites’ doing?
Feeling completely lost and heartbroken, I fall to the floor and pull the sheet to my face as I sob. I’m frozen like that for what seems like hours, just crying by myself. Every time I try to stop and stand up, I collapse in tears again, harder than before. By the time I finally manage to stop, it’s dark outside. I have no choice but to get dressed, gather my things, and go.
24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Dear Diary,
Prom is over, and everything went as planned. Well, almost everything. I am no longer a virgin. Thomas took me to the most exquisite hotel room after the dance. He sweet-talked my parents into lifting my curfew. I guess they figure we’ll be married soon enough after graduation, so there’s no point in trying to keep us apart.
But sex was…rougher than I expected. I did not get the sweet, charming side of Thomas I thought I would be going to bed with. He was cold and direct. I am so attracted to him and care for him so much that I enjoyed it, but it didn’t match the romantic fantasies I had in my head.
Today at school, Thomas and his friends were picking on this poor girl who made the mistake of talking badly about them to some of the other students. It’s the kind of thing I had always heard about Thomas doing. He and his friends are sort of like a little gang. They call themselves the Elites. The existence of this clique has been around as long as WJ Prep has. But it reaches far beyond the walls of our school. It’s ingrained into the town of Jameson.
Thomas and any of the other kids whose families work with Jameson Automobiles basically run the school, while their families run the town. Only now that I am with Thomas, I am considered to be one of them even more so than before. I am one of the Elites.
Because I am one of them, they expected me to join in on their torment of this girl. They pinned her to the wall and threatened her and asked me to take a turn in making her regret what she had said. I looked in her frightened eyes and wanted to run away. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I didn’t want to disappoint Thomas or embarrass him in front of his friends.
So I spit in her face. I felt awful for doing it. When I tried to talk to Thomas about it, he said anyone who questions our position in that school, or this town deserves whatever happens to them. He told me I’ll have to get used to defending our respected titles.
So it begins, I think as I slam the diary shut and turn back to the news streaming on my laptop. The reports of Emmett’s arrest have been blaring across every channel all day. When I got sick of hearing it all, I tried to turn it off only to find headline after headline repeating the same information. Then there’s the endless gossip flurrying across every social media platform, coming from people in Jameson and all over the country. Everyone’s eager to talk about the drama of the high society Elite millionaire world.
The police have reason to believe someone tampered with Malcolm’s brakes, just as we suspected. Which is what caused him to crash to his death. They collected DNA evidence from Malcolm’s car along with a few misplaced personal items, and it all points to Emmett.
Even though I had been questioning his innocence myself, the moment he was arrested I went into defense mode. I keep running through the reasons over and over again for how he could have never done this. He was right about one thing. I can’t bring myself to be too upset that Malcolm is gone. He was a horrible person and has done so much harm to so many people.
But whoever killed Malcolm, likely tried to kill me too. That’s why I can’t bring myself to believe he did it. For all the time I have spent unable to erase awful memories of Emmett from my brain, now I can’t seem to remember any of it. Everything has reversed. I can only remember the good, the sweet, the loveable side.
I keep reading Marissa’s diary, thinking I will feel the same as before. That I’ll see the glaring similarities between Emmett and his father and remember the potential for how messed up he might be. But it all feels distant and impossible. Like a dream. Like I never knew Marissa or Thomas at all. And what has happened between Emmett and me has been nothing short of a perfectly ordinary high school romance.
Then comes the dreaded knock on my door. My mom checking on me for the twentieth time today. I’ve been turning her away, begging to be alone. But I’m tired of fighting her. Maybe if I let her say what she has to say, she’ll finally leave me alone. I march over and open the door before promptly returning to my bed without saying anything.
“I know you want to be alone,” she says, making me roll my eyes.
“If you know…then why do you keep bothering me?” I whine.
