And then he plunged.
My scream ended only when we heard the terrible, unmistakable crunch of his body hitting pavement. And then everything was drowned in the thunderous noise of hundreds of people shouting and stampeding below us.
Mint’s body had fallen from the top of Blackwell Tower in full view of the parade.
Mint was dead. I reeled with it for a second, somehow cold with shock in a burning room. And then something strange happened. Everything clicked into place. I knew exactly what to do.
“Get back!” I shouted to Eric. He turned to me, defiant, but I kept yelling. “Get away from the window. Everyone will see you.”
“Jess.” Coop rushed toward me, Frankie behind him.
“All of you, back,” I screamed. The heat from the fire was stinging my skin, making my fingers slippery with sweat. Behind the flames, I could see Caro—her shocked face, wide eyes staring at me from where she stood, paralyzed in the doorway.
“I killed Mint,” I said, my voice rough. “Do you hear me? I pushed him out the window. He killed Heather because he thought she was me, and today he tried to finish the job. You all heard him. He wanted me dead.”
“What?” Frankie asked.
“If the cops know Mint surrendered and Eric pushed him anyway, Eric will go to prison.”
“I don’t care,” Eric said. “I knew what I was doing.”
I looked at him. In that moment, his hard veneer—ten years of doggedness, pursuing justice when no one else would, clear-eyed and coldhearted—wavered. And I could see the skinny freshman boy he’d once been. It was that boy who’d devoted his life to arriving at this moment. That boy who was willing, in the end, to give up his freedom to see his sister’s killer dead.
“I promised her justice,” he said softly.
I shoved him behind me and stepped to the window. “It was self-defense. See?” I lifted my bloody hand from my side. “He stabbed me, so I pushed him.” I looked at Coop and Frankie. “Promise me, right now. Say I did it.”
“You did it,” Frankie said roughly.
“Coop,” I warned. “Say it.”
“You did it,” he whispered, but his eyes begged me: Let me pull you from the window, let me save you.
But it was time I made a different kind of choice.
Sweeping aside glass, I climbed to the edge of the window, making myself visible to the crowd below. It was cooler here, the smoke mixing with crisp air. Below, a ring of people circled Mint’s body, ignoring shouts from firefighters who raced up behind them. Some of the Homecoming crowd was running from the parade in fear. But the rest—the majority—gazed up, transfixed by the sight of me. The red-faced, bloody girl, blond hair whipping behind her, standing atop the tower, criminal and defiant.
Gasps spread among the crowd. Arms lifted, fingers pointing. “She pushed him,” someone yelled, clear and loud enough to carry up to me.
In front of the whole world: Jessica Miller, villain.
Sirens cut through the noise, and I saw, with my bird’s-eye view, dazzling red and blue lights. Cop cars speeding toward us, parting the crowd like the Red Sea.
One last moment of freedom. I took a deep breath of cool air, heavy with the scent of magnolias. Looked back at the crowd, and this time I spotted him. Right there at the edge, his face tilted up, mouth set in a hard line. I nearly lost my footing.
Jack.
Chapter 42
May, sophomore year
For the first time in a long time, it was just the three of us. Movie night, my favorite, worth suffering through whatever early-aughts film Caro had chosen to see her happy, to see Heather shake her head with secret affection, to lock the door and curl on Caro’s bed and leave the rest of the world on the other side.
Tonight, it felt like we’d dialed time back to freshman year. Just me, Heather, and Caro, before everything else had washed in and made life complicated.
The window was open. The night was dark and hushed, not a sound from campus except for the gentle swish of tree branches in the warm breeze. Sprawled at our feet on the twin bed, Caro snored softly, the credits to Cruel Intentions still rolling on mute.
I scooted closer to Heather and rested my head on her shoulder. My feet brushed Caro, but she didn’t wake. I sighed. “I don’t want this year to end. I wish I could stay right here forever.”
Heather’s cheek rubbed the top of my head. “If you don’t want to go home for the summer, come with me to Cleveland. We can do sleepovers every night. We’ll swim at the club and get wasted on daiquiris and flirt with the tennis instructors.”