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“Vanessa wasn’t Vanessa? Does that makes sense to any of you?” Jeremy presses.
“Here? Kind of,” Anthony says.
“Am I the only one that thinks that murdering someone should require better thankind of?” Jeremy asks.
“No,” I say. “You’re not.” I fist my hand against my stomach, feeling sick.
“You should have let them take me,” Trina says. Her cheeks are streaked with tears and dirt, her eyes puffy and red. “I’m the one they wanted.”
“Because you hurt Chris?” I ask. It doesn’t make any sense. Trina’s the girl who carries spiders outside under a glass. But here she is, shaking so much that I catch her hand in mine and I can feel her trembling through it. The other still curls protectively around the book. She’s spent all her tears, but her breath hitches, a catch that makes me think of a fishhook in her throat, snagging every shuddering sigh. I try to think of how she’s been acting tonight, but all I can remember is my own need, my own longing. My own fear. “It’s going to be okay,” I say, beginning at last to understand that it isn’t.
She hauls her eyes up to mine. Her lips part, like she is waiting for words to arrive. And then they do. “Chris tried to stop me from coming tonight,” she says.
Her stepdad has always been an asshole. The kind of guy who thinks that because he is a cop, he is the law in his house as well, an unimpeachable and righteous force before which there is no option but to yield.
“We got into a fight. I—” She swallows. She looks at Kyle, whose face is contorted, fear and confusion making it into apuzzle with the pieces all scattered. “I grabbed a bat and—I think I might have killed him. I’m not sure.” Her eyes have no remorse in them, not exactly—only a kind of grief, a grief I understand. Grief for the person you were the instant before you acted.
“You killed your stepdad because he wouldn’t let you come out here?” Jeremy asks.
She glares at him. “No, Jeremy. Not because he wouldn’t let me come out here.”
“I—” He stops. “He—he hurt you?”
“He was...” She stops. She glances toward Kyle but stops herself, takes a deep breath. “He was violent,” she says. “I—I confronted him, and he came at me. I was defending myself.”
Kyle has tightened in on himself. He looks ready to fracture. “You didn’t have to do that,” he says. “I could take it.”
Because of course Chris wouldn’t hit Trina—wouldn’t hit the one who would fight back. Kyle, though? He’s always been small, always delicate. Asthma and a smart-aleck attitude, eager to entertain, to please. He’s an easy target, and Chris is the kind of coward who could see that.
Her hand is still in mine, warming under my skin, and I grip it tight like I can hold her together through my touch alone. But she pulls away, turns toward her brother, and the moment shifts and closes in until it belongs only to the two of them.
“You should have told me,” Trina whispers. “I told him that I knew. He wasn’t even sorry, he—” She stops. “I didn’t know, before. Or I would have done something sooner.”
“He’s dead?” Kyle asks, disbelief strangling his voice. “You really killed him?”
“I didn’t mean to.” She stops. “No. I did. He said there was nothing I could do. No one would believe me. He laughed. And then he grabbed me, and... And I grabbed the bat. I hit him until he couldn’t hit me. That’s what they meant. They smelled the blood on me. It’s my blood we needed to open the gate. Because I’m a sinner. A murderer.”
“It was self-defense,” I say. “You had to.”
She shudders. She bends over and vomits. She staggers and I catch her, holding her. Mel has her arms around Kyle, protective. I have an image of him, towheaded and gangly, wrapped in Mel’s bear hug as she tried to throw him into the pool—the two of them went in together, both of them shrieking with laughter while Trina and I rolled our eyes in the shade. He was ten, I think. Before Chris. Just before.
I help Trina up. I hug her, wrapping my arms around her the way I have wanted to be held for the past year, the way I wouldn’t let anyone hold me. Her skin smells sour. I can feel the knobs of her vertebrae beneath my fingers. The book presses between us.
“I can’t go back,” she whispers. “I can never go back.”
“Yes, you can,” I say. “You don’t know that he’s dead. And you were protecting yourself. We’ll figure it out. Okay?” I smooth her hair back and tuck the blonde waves behind her ears where they’ve come loose from her ponytail. She nods.
“Okay,” she says.
“I’m glad you did it,” Kyle says. “He deserved it.”
“I’m glad I did it, too,” she says, soft and fierce, and Kyle nods. Mel lets him go, reluctantly. He jams his hands in his pockets. The guys don’t meet his eyes, and everyone looks like they don’tknow what expressions they’re supposed to be wearing.
“Hey, so. Sara. Wanna make a club? Trauma Kids? You can be president,” Kyle says to me.
“I don’t get to be president?” Trina asks, swiping her nose with the back of her hand.
“Nah. You want to be treasurer. Admit it,” Kyle says, and Trina laughs through a new spate of tears. He’s not okay. She’s not okay. But in that moment they find an equilibrium.
