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When she doesn’t respond, my blood pounds in my veins.
“Kim, please. What’s going on?”
Her eyes clench shut as the tears become sobs. I reach for her, but she jerks away, firing a furious look at me.
“Don’t comfort me,” she chokes out. “I don’t deserve to be comforted.”
“Kim, come on. You’re doing everything you can. It’s not your responsibility to—”
“It wasn’t him, Isabel,” she blurts out, and my heart stops.
“What?”
“It wasn’t him,” she repeats in a haunted voice.
I can’t breathe as I stare at her. “I don’t… What are you saying?”
She blinks through wet, salted agony and meets my gaze. “Iwas the driver that night.Iwas the one who killed Amber.”
I don’t know what to do with Kim’s confession. It rages around my head the entire walk back to the apartment, clawing and tearing at everything I thought I knew. Not just about the situation, but also about my best friend and her brother. Neither of us says a word, as if in silent agreement we need time to process what just happened.
Questions pile up as we climb the stairs to our apartment. Years of pain and betrayal crash in confusing arcs that have my head aching and my lungs heaving. If she was the one driving, then it was her crime, which means Tristan… no. Just,no.
Nausea washes through me as we push inside and drop to opposite chairs at the kitchen table. Kim pulls off her gloves and hat and shoves her hands into her hair. I stare at her in silence, still too numb to release any of the stormy thoughts firing through me.
“It was the night after Homecoming,” she begins quietly. There’s a ghostly timbre to her voice that sends a tremor through me. “Remember that party at Ryan’s house?”
“I didn’t go because I had to finish my English paper.”
She nods and averts her eyes. “I stole Tristan’s car. He never would have let me drive myself to a party, especially on a junior license.”
Tears fill her eyes again. I want to reach out but I can’t. My arms won’t move. My stomach is a twisted mess.
“I… I was drinking. I shouldn’t have driven, I knew that, but I needed to get his car back before his friends dropped him off and he realized I took it.”
Her eyes clench shut, the tears now streaming down her cheeks.
“I thought it was a deer!” she cries. “It was dark, and I didn’t really see what I hit after the curve, but it was that part of Callowhill Road with all the woods. There are always deer there, and I don’t know. I panicked, so instead of stopping I kept going.”
The air in the room has gotten thick and unbreathable. I watch her suck in stuttered breaths to calm her sobs enough to speak. Maybe I should be comforting her but I’m still paralyzed.
“When I got home, Tristan was there. He—he tried to calm me down, and I told him what happened. He said not to worry, that if they figured out it was his car, he’d just say it was him. I had that field hockey scholarship lined up and so much ahead of me. We decided he’d take the fall since he wasn’t intoxicated and had no bright future to ruin. He was already in trouble with Dad for choosing the music thing over that football scholarship to Penn State. Besides, his license was already suspended from speeding violations. What were they going to do for hitting a deer? Suspend it again?”
Oh god. Now I can’t breathe.
“But it wasn’t a deer,” I finish in a hoarse voice.
Her broken gaze locks on mine as she shakes her head.
“We were so naïve, Iz,” she whispers. “So stupid…” Her voice trails off as I stare at her in horror.
This can’t be happening. No!
She leans forward with an earnest expression on her tear-streaked face. “I wanted to tell the truth, I swear. But by the time the real story came together, he’d already confessed. They came looking for him like we thought since the car was registered to him. Apparently, another driver got part of the plate number, even though she couldn’t see who was driving. And the worse it got for Tristan, the less anyone would have believed our new story. Besides, it’sTristan. He’s always looked out for me. He wouldn’t have backtracked even if they would’ve believed us.”
She rubs at her eyes, forcing in ragged breaths. “Except, with all the aggravating circumstances, what we thought would be a slap on the wrist turned into a string of charges that had him facing up to twenty years. Twenty fuckingyears, Iz. He didn’t have a choice!”
I feel nauseous. Disgusted. Guilty. Appalled. Angry. Frustrated. And so, so torn up by a shredding heart that doesn’t know what to do with any of this.
