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“What?” Reality was starting to set in, and she stumbled back a step. Her voice was hoarse.
“Yeah.” I took another step toward her, dropping my voice too. But I sounded hard instead. Unrelenting. “We needed audio bites for the article.”
“Article? What article?” She wasn’t even looking at Maren. She was only focused on me.
Get her, Sis. Let her see who you really are.
I didn’t need extra encouragement from Willow, but it was appreciated.
I told her, “The one that is going live as soon as they upload all those things you just admitted to doing and are planning on doing. You say you’re a journalist, but you’re not. What you do, hurting me to hurt Ryan for Cahill. Getting that one girl to hurt herself until she ended up in the hospital? Getting that one guy to drop out of school because you wanted his job in the admissions office? Trying to blackmail Troy? Actually blackmailing Maren to end things with Cris so you could instead dress up like her when he’s wasted out of his mind and fuck him.” She paled all over again, her eyes jerking to Maren. I moved in front of her, not wanting her to see any pain there because she didn’t deserve to see it.
I kept on, “We have other examples. I found them earlier today when I did a deep dive online about you. I saw a pattern, that you go after people’s significant others to make them do what you want and you don’t care who you hurt.”
An alert sounded on my phone, and I pulled it up, seeing Troy had shared the article with me.
I held it up, showing her. “Now the whole world, or let’s be honest, the world that cares about this college and our star basketball players will know about you, about Maren, about Troy, about what you were going to do to me. We left Cris out because that’s his decision, not ours. They’re going to know what kind of person you are. And while I’m hoping that this article gets traction and attention, and that anyone in authority over you will deem it necessary to punish you, or at the very least, prevent you from hurting more people, I also am aware that I can’t rely on any of that happening. So instead, this will be out there forever. If you get this taken down somehow, we’ll put it up somewhere else. And again. And again. Until you finally stop trying to get it taken down and you will live with it out there. Because everyone has dreams. Including yours. And I want to be a part of the effort to take that dream away from you. One day, when you’re hoping to get hired as a journalist, your potential employers will do their own deep dive on you. They’ll find this article and will see how you operate to get your stories. No one will hire you. No media source will want you on their team because you’re a liability. You’re too damaging for them. This article will never go away.”
I took another step closer, dropping my voice so it was almost soft. “How do you like that, Kellie? Having one of your darkest secrets out there on the internet for anyone to find? Sucks, doesn’t it? Makes you feel violated, doesn’t it?”
I heard Maren opening the door behind me and knew it was time to leave.
She saw what we had on her. She saw what we did with it. Now it was time to let the article do the rest.
I leaned in because I had one more thing to say. “You messed up with me. I was your mistake. How does that feel? That this mentally defective weak-minded person is actually the one who fought back first. And want to know why that is? Because I’m not weak-minded. Because I’m not mentally defective. The shit I’ve gone through would bring you to your knees in one day. You think about that.” And because I saw an ominous gleam flash in her eyes, I didn’t need a guess to know what that look meant.
“Mac.” Maren prompted me.
It was time to go. I knew, but I had one more thing to say, one more weapon to take away from Kellie. “You want to threaten me? That you’re going to tell the world that my twin sister killed herself and she used my suicide note when she did it?”
Maren gasped behind me.
She didn’t know that part.
I paused, but a surge of support blasted me from somewhere.
Maybe the universe?
Willow?
Or just myself.
I didn’t need it. I was standing just fine on my own as I finished it.
“No need.” I held the phone back up, showing the article. “I already did that for you.”
15
MAREN
LATER.
Mac sat on the edge of her bed, her hands tucked under her legs. Her shoulders slightly hunched, but just barely and she watched me. She wasn’t hiding. She wasn’t shifting. She was waiting. Calm.
“I had no idea.” And I had no idea what to say, how to say whatever I needed to say. I knew about Mac’s sister, but not. . . I couldn’t even finish that thought.
“I had no idea about your dad. Or your sister. I’m so sorry, Maren.”
My throat swelled up, closing.
