A trail that leads directly to me.
“You,” she snarls. And then I start to see what she sees: Her best friend, mauled and covered in blood. A knife with a stained blade. Me, the girl Carla just played a twisted prank on, sitting only a few feet away.
“I di—”
Kiki doesn’t let me finish. In the flash of a second, she grabs the knife off the ground, holds it high above her head, and screams at the top of her lungs—coming straight for me.
23
“You fucking did this!” Kiki shouts as she lunges at me.
Kai only narrowly manages to stop her, standing up just in time to take the brunt of her weight as she barreled toward me. I press myself as far back as I can, panicking when I realize I’ve been backed into a corner. But even if I could run, where would I go? They know this place better than I ever will. Even in the dark.
“Kiki, stop!” Kai shouts.
With a heave, he’s able to push her back toward the sliding door. Kiki flails against his hold, doing her best to wriggle away from him, but he’s too strong. He grabs her wrist and tightens his grip just enough for her to let out a quiet whimper of pain and drop the knife.
My gut tells me to grab it as Kai catches the handle before it can hit the ground, and tosses it haphazardly back into the house toward the kitchen. But my brain warns me that grabbing a weapon just confirms what they think about me. They won’t care that I just want to protect myself—they’ll only see a murderer finishing what she started.
Finally, Kiki either gives up or runs out of energy to keep fighting. She slumps against Kai and he lets go of her wrist to wrap his arms around her. She buries her face in his neck as she sobs.
“She did it,” she says between her tears. “She fucking killed Carla.”
Kai looks over his shoulder at me, a desperate look on his face.
“I didn’t do it,” I blurt out before anyone can interrupt me, holding Kai’s eyes with as much intensity as I can muster. Trying to communicate to him that I know how this looks, but that I really didn’t have anything to do with it. “I think there’s someone out there. I thi—”
“Don’t come near me!” Kiki warns when I attempt to hoist myself up from my knees. Tears stream freely down her cheeks, cracking her picture-perfect foundation. Mascara is smudged beneath her eyes. Blood smeared along her cheeks and trembling hands.
“Let’s just—”
Kiki doesn’t let Kai finish. She yanks herself out of his hold, grabs his sleeve, and attempts to drag him back into the cabin. “C’mon,” she commands, tugging him with all her strength. “We’re getting out of here.”
The thought of being stranded out here with no power, no phone service, and no way to get home makes me leap into action. I stand back up and cross the deck as quickly as I dare—narrowly avoiding stepping on glass, or worse, Carla. I make it to the sliding door in time to see Kai digging his feet into the ground until he’s finally able to stop Kiki from pulling him toward the front door.
“We’re not going anywhere without Dina!” he shouts before wriggling out of her hold. He freezes when he spots me in the doorway, glancing over his shoulder at Kiki before crossing back toward me, and slamming the sliding door shut.
“We’re getting out of here together,” he insists once we’reall locked back inside the cabin. He points to the blood staining the sliding door. “Before whoever killed Carla comes for us next.”
“She’s standing right there, Kai,” Kiki protests, gesturing toward me. “She had a goddamn knife in her hand. Her dad’s a fucking murderer!”
She stretches the last word out syllable by syllable, punctuating each one by clapping her hands together. Each clap feels like a slap across the face. But I hold my ground. She’s not the first person to assume I’m a monster. But this is the only time defending myself has meant protecting my life.
“I didn’t do it,” I say again, even if it is pointless. My voice confident and steady, unlike hers. We already made the mistake of letting the world think Papi was guilty, but I’ve learned from his mistakes. I’ll do anything they want if it means proving what I know to be true: that I’m innocent.
“I was in the bathroom when I heard screaming, so I got a knife from the kitchen and found Carla out on the deck. She was already…” Tears well up in my eyes. Every word I get out without Kiki interrupting me is precious, so I have to use them wisely. I hold up my bloodied hands, showing the gash cut through my hand. “I dropped my phone and was looking around for it, but I grabbed the knife instead when—”
“You expect me to believe that?” Kiki says with a humorless laugh. “Carla pulls some stupid prank on you and then justhappensto end up dead? And you, the daughter of a fucking convicted killer, with a knife in your hands at the scene of the crime, hadnothingto do with it? You’re telling me I should push aaalll that aside and instead believe that someone is out there lurking in the woods picking us off for no reason?”
Her sneer causes a combination of shame and rage tobubble inside me, quickly heating to its boiling point. My fingers clench into fists despite the gash on my right hand. I push the pain down, the way I always do. “I’m not my dad,” I say through gritted teeth.
But that doesn’t matter to Kiki. “And what about Timothy?” she continues, as if she hadn’t heard me. “What did you to do him?”
“I didn’t—”
“What did you do to them?!” she shouts loud enough to rattle the overhead light hanging above us.
“Stop!” Kai insists again, standing between me and Kiki. “Everyone just be fucking calm. I’ll get my keys and we can drive to a… a gas station or something and call for help.”
