“Rhett and the others.”
Anger boils up into my chest, red-hot. Fury that makes me want to break down the door and go find them. Make them pay for doing this to her.
My eyes flash to the locked door, and another part of me thinks maybe I shouldn’t have come at all, seeing the fear in her eyes, the mistrust—but I also can’t leave her here. Caged like this. Awaiting some fate that’s yet to be decided.
“I think they’re hiding Max’s body,” she says cautiously, like she regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth.
Max’s body.The words feel wrong.A body hidden, concealed.The idea doesn’t fit with my memory, so I push it away. I swallow and hold out a hand to Nora, but I don’t move any closer to her. “We need to get out of here,” I say.
Her fingers release the sleeves of her coat, but they curl into fists instead of reaching for me. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she says, her voice rising.
Footsteps pass by outside, probably just one of the boys looking for the bathroom, then they vanish down the hall.
“I found the watch,” Nora blurts out, her voice lower this time. “Max’s watch.” In the dim light I can see her features change, the soft roundness of her cheeks turns hollow, her eyes crease at the corners, like she is trying to see something at a distance, just out of focus. “In your coat pocket,” she adds. “You had a dead boy’s watch in your pocket.”
My chin dips to the floor, then back up to her. I knew this moment would come, that she would ask about the watch. And a cold thread of ice trickles down my spine, down my fingertips, settling into my toes. “I know,” I say.
“Did you kill him?” she asks, the thing she really wants to know the root of her fear. I don’t blame her for it. Still, the words hang in the air, dissolving there, like broken pieces of glass—sharp edged—ready to tear me open.
“No,” I answer, but my voice sounds tight, the word forced out. A little white lie so tiny it’s easily forgotten, glanced over. Hardly there at all.
She shakes her head. “I don’t believe you.” And her voice rises too loud again, eyes watering at the edges, holding back tears. Yet, I see doubt in her, uncertainty shifting just behind her pupils—she’s trying to see if I could really be a murderer. If I could take someone else’s life and lie about it. If I’m a killer.
She steps back, slinking into the dark, farther away from me.“Why are they protecting you?” she asks, she shouts. “Rhett and Jasper and the others? Why are they covering up what happened?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think they’re protecting me.”
A second passes and snow collects on the carpeted floor at my feet, music screeches from downstairs, rising up through the floorboards. It feels like we’re stuck in an odd-shaped dream. In a room, in a house, where neither of us belong.
“Then what’s going on?” Her voice sounds frightened and small again. Like a tiny shell cracking open, revealing the fragile thing inside. And I want so bad to reach forward and touch her, tell her that it’s okay, that I’m not what she thinks I am. But I can’t. Because I’m not sure.I might be the monster.
I might have done something bad.
Nora clears her throat. “I don’t know what to believe,” she says, a tiny whimper against her lips. Her eyes lift and she’s about to speak again, but I move forward, pressing her up against the wall, and place my hand over her mouth—silencing her.
She tries to push against my chest, to push me back, but I put a finger to my lips—a sign to be quiet. Someone has stopped outside the bedroom door, the floorboards creaking beneath their weight. They grab the knob, like they’re checking to be sure it’s still secure. They pause and listen.Maybe they heard us talking.
If they find me in here, I don’t know what they’ll do.
My exhale stirs against her dark raven hair. We’re so close I can hear her heartbeat against her throat, the rising rhythm of her lungs with each breath. I don’t want to move away from her—I want to move closer. But I know we’re not safe in here.
The footsteps plod away, back down the hall to the stairs, and Ilower my hand from her mouth. “Sorry,” I whisper, still only a few inches from her face.
She doesn’t push me back, she doesn’t yell at me, she just blinks and breathes and peers up into my eyes.
“Nora,” I say, barely above a whisper, blood rushing into my ears. “We have to leave this room.”
She chews on her lower lip,breathing, breathing, and I think my heart might rise up into my throat. And then she nods.
NORA
Oliver is so close—too close—I can smell the wintergreen scent of his skin. See the soft waves of dark hair along his temples, snow melting in the strands. I could touch a single snowflake and let it rest at the tip of my finger; I could graze his cheek, his collarbone. I could press my hand to his chest and feel the cadence of his heart, listen for the thrum of someone capable of murder. Someone who has pushed another boy beneath the surface of the lake and watched him drown.
But I don’t.
I don’t because I’m afraid of what I will feel. I’m afraid of letting myself sink closer,closer, into him.
So I let him take my hand in his—the hands he may have used to press the life from Max’s lungs—and he pulls me to the open window.
