Page 42 of What Goes Around

So I could take it all away.

Piece by piece.

I wanted the world to see her. Really see her. Every lie. Every secret. Every rotten thing she had buried under that perfect image.

And when there was nothing left to hide behind, when she had nothing and no one left, I would drag her down the rest of the way.

I wanted her to choke on the same agony she had forced on me.

I wanted the polished little Apple to rot from the inside out.

And I wanted her to die slowly in the darkness she created.

I forced a deep breath into my lungs and pushed myself off the wall. My legs felt unsteady, but I moved anyway, wandering deeper into the room. No one paid me any attention.

“Well, isn’t that just perfect,” I murmured under my breath. “Heaven’s got one hell of a sense of humor. Who wants to relive high school?”

My gaze swept over the room. The booze. The noise. The bad decisions already in motion.

“Why did I have to come back ten years?”

Then I heard them.

Three boys near the kitchen. Loud. Careless. Laughing like nothing in the world could touch them.

“—told you she’d drink it.”

“Dumb bitch thought Rick actually liked her.”

“He earned it, man. First round’s his.”

I drifted for a moment, eyes unfocused, watching a group of drunk idiots trying to balance the broken basketball statue back onto its pedestal.

But then I remembered.

In my past life, about a week after this party, there had been a scandal: a girl claimed she’d been drugged and raped by members of the basketball team.

No one believed her.

The school turned on her, called her a liar, attention-seeking, a slut, anything to protect the boys.

I’d left the party early that night, humiliated because Barbara had spilled beer all over me. When investigators later asked questions, I’d had nothing useful to give. I hadn’t seen anything.

None of us had, apparently.

The case was closed within a month. No DNA. No tox screen. No real evidence.

And then…

She killed herself.

We weren’t friends. I’d only known her in passing, a face in the halls, a name I barely remembered.

But her death stayed with me for months.

It had crawled under my skin and refused to leave.

I lifted my gaze toward the stairs.