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I’ve been waiting for it. Dreading it. Knowing that it’s coming.
“Go away, Theo.”
“Open the door, Kid. I wanna talk to you.”
“I think I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want to talk toyou.”
“I’m not leaving until we have a conversation.”
“Then I hope you enjoy loitering in hallways.”
“I can out-stubborn you,” he tells me.
Hah. I doubt that very much. Rachel always claimed I was the most stubborn person she’d ever met, and she knew Ruth, so that was really saying something.
“Just fuck off. I’ve said everything I want to say to you.”
“Oh really?” I can imagine the cocky uptick of his mouth. The mental image I’ve conjured of him leaning against my bedroom door, sweeping a hand through that messy hair of his, makes me see red. I breathe through my rising temper and release it, pulling the duvet up over my head. The down feather comforter won’t totally block out the sound of his voice, but it will certainly muffle it to the point that I might not be able to make out his words.
“Don’t you want to make me take responsibility for what happened to Rachel?” he says.
I throw the covers off, laying very, very still on the mattress. Damn. I heard him saythat. He has absolutely manipulated me with promises of information about this mysterious Henry guy, but this manipulation has a foul taste to it that I won’t be able to rid myself for days. “Like you’d ever do that,” I snarl.
“I’ve never been one to shirk responsibility when I’ve done something wrong,” he says quietly.
The gall of this guy. The fucking stones he has, to come here and say something like that to me. I get up and cross the bedroom, my blood boiling. When I open the door, he’s standing exactly how I pictured him, propped up against the wall, hands in his pockets. The ghost of a bruise blooms on his jaw, angry and purple; the three freckles underneath his eye stand out, extraordinarily dark against his skin in the dim lighting of the hallway, too. His hair is swept back out of his face. There’s no cocky, self-assured smirk. Wearing a white long-sleeved t-shirt and ripped blue jeans that hang low on his hips, the sight of him evokes a weird, overwhelming rushing sensation through my body. For some reason, his feet are bare.
I square off against him. “Where the fuck are your shoes?”
He huffs out a laugh. “That’s your first question? Where the fuck are my shoes?”
“What kind of person roams around the school in the middle of the night with nothing on their feet?” I hiss. It’s stupid to be upset about something so bizarre and unimportant, but the sight of his bare feet has done something to me that I don’t like and attacking him for it seems like the only logical thing to do.
“I’m only one floor up, Kid,” he tells me. “Carpet’s pretty soft. Didn’t think I was gonna cut myself up on broken glass or anything. Though I guess you never know. Someone might hurl abottleof Coke at you next time. They do say it tastes better.”
“I’m not in the mood to spar with you. Say whatever it is you’ve come here to say. I have to pack.”
“You think I killed Rachel,” he states. “That’s why you came here. To punish me.”
I glare at him flatly. If he wants to get down to brass tacks, then so be it. Finally. I’ll have this conversation with him at last. “Yes. That’s exactly why I came here. Because I wanted you to suffer, the way that she suffered.”
“How did Rachel die, Voss?” he asks. So calm. So composed. The question jars me.
“You know how she died. You were there. You were thereasonshe died.”
“We’ve established that. But how did she die? How was I responsible?” He doesn’t deny that her death was his fault. Doesn’t imply that I’m wrong in this belief. What kind of shit is he trying to pull with this line of questioning then?
“She was in the car. You were driving.”
He angles his head slightly, dark brows knitting together. “Was I?”
“Look, I don’t have the patience for this bullshit. You were driving. Rachel was in the passenger seat. You were drunk. Something…something ran out into the road and you hit it. Rachel was ejected from the car.”
“Was she wearing her seat belt?”
“I—I don’t know. How the hell am I supposed to know that?”
“Where were you when all this happened?”
