AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ambyr sat in one of the armchairs, her attention glued to her phone. She hadn’t seen him yet, which was good; Auggie didn’t want her to run, and he thought that might be an option. It had been easy enough to lure her out of hiding—he’d simply used the Instagram account for his marketing agency, where he featured a lot of the work he did with clients, and sent her a DM. She’d responded in twenty minutes. Yes, she was interested in affiliate marketing. Yes, she was interested in doing sponsored content for Detox Gash. She loved Detox Gash. Detox Gash was amazing. Which was interesting, since Auggie had invented Detox Gash—their five-minute-old profile described them as “a lifestyle brand geared toward empowered AFAB-bodied individuals.” He’d spent twenty minutes trying to work in some lyrics from Pussy Riot until Theo had taken his phone away and made him go to sleep.
So, it had been easy to get her to come out of hiding for a meeting with an agency rep who just happened to be in the area. And it was easy to get her to send him some of her content. Detox Gash wanted shock value. They wanted eyes. Now, Auggie had almost everything he needed. Almost.
As he took a seat in the armchair facing Ambyr, he gave a final look around. The setting wasn’t exactly private—in a place like this, that wasn’t a possibility. But he was glad Ambyr hadn’t chosen a booth or a table; the only other person in the seating group was a woman with a baby carrier next to her. The baby was asleep, and the woman was holding her phone to her mouth in what was apparently a life-or-death attempt at speech-to-text, saying, over and over again at eardrum-shattering levels, “Dyson hairdryer, Dyson hairdryer.”
Ambyr looked up, and Auggie smiled at her. Her face kaleidoscoped: shock, then fear, and then a geometry of emotion Auggie couldn’t quite name. She was frozen for a moment, and then she reached for her purse and started to stand.
“Sit down,” Auggie said. She was still standing, so he lowered his voice, and added, “You already sent me the evidence I need, Ambyr. I know you murdered Shaniyah, and I can prove it; that part is over. So, you might as well sit down and talk to me.”
He wasn’t sure about the logic, but Ambyr sank back into her seat. She looked past Auggie, with one last vestige of hope, said, “So, I don’t understand. Is there really a marketing gig?”
It took Auggie a full five seconds to process that before he said, “No. I made that up.”
“Oh my God.” Ambyr dropped back in the chair. “I knew it. I knew it was too good to be true. Everything bad happens to me.”
“Everything like the video Shaniyah had of you? The one she showed you? The one you knew she was going to post everywhere?”
Ambyr glared at him and hugged her purse closer.
The young mom or babysitter or whoever she was leaned forward, as though that might help, pronouncing each syllable with distinction: “Dyson hairdryer.”
“This one,” Auggie said, and he opened the video they’d found in Shaniyah’s cloud drive. He only played the important part, the stuff at the end: the party on the back forty, with the stripes of lights shifting in time with the music, the drunken teens, Merlin and Leon shouting at each other. And in the background, Ambyr. It had been easy at the time to overlook her; Auggie felt like he could cut himself a little slack. He hadn’t even known who she was the first time he’d seen the video. Ambyr had been literally in the background, of the investigation and of the video, and the fight between Merlin and Leon had been the focus of Shaniyah’s recording. But there it was, what Auggie should have seen the first time: Ambyr, wasted, trying to do one of the dances that was so popular on TikTok—Auggie was pretty sure it was the Savage Love dance. Except that Ambyr, because she was on the brink of passing out, fell mid-dance. Her cutoffs slid down, and even over the pulse of the music, her fart was distinctly audible.
“Give me that!” Ambyr snapped, leaning forward.
Auggie pulled his phone back, shaking his head. “That’s the video. If that went live, if people saw that—hell, if Shaniyah did something like tag you—your social media career would be over, right? Dead in the water, before you even got started. And you knew it. You didn’t remember the party, I’m guessing—I don’t know how you could after getting trashed like that—but she came to Merlin’s trailer and showed you. And that’s when you knew. She told you she was going to post her investigation. And you couldn’t let that happen.”
Ambyr stared at him, her lips peeled back, her breathing shallow.
“That’s why you broke into our house,” Auggie said. “Because you knew I was helping Shaniyah with her college project, and you thought she might have left copies of the files with me. That’s why you stole my laptop. And I’m assuming you took Shaniyah’s phone and destroyed it or got rid of it. But what I don’t understand is do you seriously not understand the idea of cloud storage?”
“I’m leaving. And I didn’t steal anything or kill anyone.”
“Yes, you did. I don’t think you meant to kill her. In fact, I bet you were relieved when they arrested Dalton—you’d been wondering, I think, if your little prank had gone wrong, but when they charged Dalton, that was the answer. It wasn’t your fault. Somebody else did it.”
Ambyr shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ambyr,” Auggie said gently, “you sent me the video. I told you: it’s already over.”
He played the video, the one she had sent to his agency account. The one for Detox Gash, the one that showed AFAB individuals being empowered, being wild, being fun. It was dark in the video, with only the phone’s flashlight to provide light. In the background, music played, a boy cheered, voices mingled together. Mrs. Renshaw’s back forty. The back-to-school party. Where Merlin and Ambyr had gone, of course, because they were both trying to live out a fantasy.
Shaniyah’s face filled the screen. She was clearly unconscious, passed out from too much beer and weed, maybe something stronger. She had been grieving, Auggie thought, a wave of pity crashing over him. Her heart broken because she hadn’t gotten that big scholarship. She had done what most kids did. They coped, and they made bad choices.
Ambyr’s laughter came from the video, and the video wobbled, presumably because Ambyr was trying to hold the phone steady while doing something else at the same time. A moment later, it was clear what she was doing: one hand appeared on screen, holding a strip of duct tape. She pressed it into place over Shaniyah’s mouth, making sure it was good and tight, laughing harder. Then the video faded to black, and a tag appeared on the screen: #tapechallenge. Not exactly genius-level marketing when it came to the name of the challenge, but no one had ever accused Ambyr of being a genius.
Ambyr’s eyes were wide. She was still taking those shallow, rapid breaths. “That doesn’t mean anything. That could be anyone. A friend sent me that.”
“I don’t think you meant for her to die,” Auggie said. “But you’re still responsible, Ambyr. She was unconscious. She vomited. She asphyxiated.”
“I didn’t do that. I didn’t do anything!”
The last words were a shout, and the mom with the baby carrier gave them a dirty look before repeating, “Dyson hairdryer” into the phone again at full volume.
Auggie nodded. He was surprised, in the moment, to feel sorry for Ambyr. Her panic and pain and fear were clear, and he knew that the night could have played out a dozen different ways. There were so many ways people were stupid, so many ways they were reckless, so many things they did for attention.
“Shaniyah kept screenshots of the messages you sent her,” Auggie said. “This whole thing would have been easier if she hadn’t changed your name in her phone, but she still kept the screenshots, and the police will be able to match those to the records from your phone. They’ll be able to match the video to your phone. It’s over, Ambyr. What you can do right now—the best thing you can do—is leave here with me, and we’ll go straight to the police station. You’ll tell them what happened. Explain it was an accident. But you’ve got to tell them, Ambyr; if they have to track you down, they’re not going to believe it was an accident.”
Music. Voices. A man chewing so loudly it sounded like he was smacking his lips next to Auggie’s ear. The blood drained from Ambyr’s face, and she wobbled slightly, clutching her purse again as she tried to stand.
