The Thrashers(80)

He tilted his head to her and said in all sincerity, “Dillon. Of course you do. Everyone does.”

Jodi rolled her eyes, feeling her cheeks grow hot. As they turned their attention back to the TV, Jodi saw Lucy watching them with a lifted brow and a smirk.

Jodi looked away quickly, and Lucy turned back to the TV.



* * *



The prosecution finally scheduled a deposition with Jodi in March.

After school, she took the bus down to the courthouse and was ushered into the same room. She sat in an uncomfortable chair and faced down Buechler, Yang, and Detective Harding, only this time she didn’t have a lawyer with her.

“Miss Dillon,” Buechler began without much fanfare. “Were you aware that Julian Hollister texted Emily Mills on the day she died?”

“I was made aware of it in our last interview,” Jodi responded. “But I hadn’t known before then, no.”

“Do you know now what it was that he texted her?”

“All I know is what you’ve told me. A message and a link. I don’t know what either of those were.”

Only Yang looked disappointed. The others had schooled their expressions.

“Who is Oliver Burns?” Buechler asked.

Jodi stared at him, closing her mouth from where it dropped open. “He’s a classmate and my next-door neighbor.”

“Have you ever considered him a friend?”

“Yes,” she said slowly, trying to get ahead of where they were going with this. Had Oliver decided to press charges against Julian after all? “We were very close in middle school, and we’ve just recently become close again.”

“What accounts for the gap?” Buechler’s shoulders gave a small shrug.

“High school. We just started running in different circles, I guess.”

“And your circle was the Thrashers.”

Jodi didn’t answer, not if he wasn’t going to form a question.

“Why didn’t Oliver get to hang out with the Thrashers?”

“‘Get to?’” she repeated. “He didn’t want to, I guess. Like I said, we went different ways.”

Harding scratched something on her notes, and Jodi regretted not calling Miranda for this. She was eighteen and she wasn’t being charged with anything, so she hadn’t thought she’d needed a lawyer. Maybe she’d been wrong.

“Do you really think there are any kids at New Helvetia who wouldn’t want to be a Thrasher?” Buechler continued.

Jodi narrowed her eyes. “It’s not a club. I’ve told you before, it’s a friend group. You don’t get an invite or a Skull and Bones hazing. The five of us are friends.”

“But you were friends with Oliver Burns. Why doesn’t he still get to be friends with you once you’re a Thrasher?”

Clenching her jaw, Jodi bit out, “I think you’re twisting things to fit your narrative, when I’ve already told you the answer is as simple as ‘friends grow apart.’”

Buechler had the arrogance to smile at her. “Has Zackary Thrasher ever told you not to hang out with Oliver Burns?”

“No,” she said quickly.

“Has Julian Hollister?”

“No.”

“Has Lucy R—”

“No, and no.”

His lips twitched again, and then he placed both elbows on the table and leveled his gaze at her. “Oliver Burns tells us that Zackary Thrasher and Julian Hollister specifically kept him from speaking to you in freshman year. That Lucy Reed didn’t invite him to a pool party after talking about it in front of him. That Paige Montgomery asked him to do her hair for freshman year homecoming and then never credited him or even spoke to him at the dance.”

Jodi’s fingertips were buzzing. She’d never heard any of this.

“That you, Jodi,” Buechler said, “stopped talking to him altogether after first semester freshman year.”

Her chest was tight, her air thin. They’d stopped talking, but it was mutual. It’s not like she decided it.

“Oliver Burns claims that he was the first person at New Helvetia High School to be ‘Thrashed’ by the Thrashers.”

“That’s not true,” she snapped. “It may have felt that way to him, but we never decided to exclude him. We never purposefully made anyone feel … ‘Thrashed.’”

The word was thick on her tongue. She shifted in her chair, feeling a slimy sensation in her gut.

“So, you had no knowledge of any of this?” Harding spoke for the first time. “You didn’t know your friends were trying to get rid of Oliver Burns?”

“That’s not what happened. I just told you it wasn’t purposeful.” Her skin was tingling, and it felt like the walls were closer than before.

Harding and Buechler stared at her, as if waiting. When she said nothing else, Buechler gestured to Harding. The detective shuffled her paperwork and read through something briefly.

“Has Emily’s death affected you in particular due to how your mother died?” She looked up from her notes and clicked her pen.

Jodi’s lungs caught. “Excuse me?”

“Were you more affected by Emily’s suicide because of your mother?”

“What does my mother have to do with Emily?”