“Jessica,” Jack yelled.
The medics turned me so the cop could unlock my cuffs. I craned my neck to find Jack’s face. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Jack looked like he was about to explode. “What am I… What are you doing? What happened?”
Suddenly, it hit me. He didn’t know about Heather. My knees went weak, and the medics grabbed me, holding me upright. “Jack, Mint killed Heather. He’s the one.”
Jack froze. “Mint?”
The medics were cutting off my shirt with scissors to look at the wound in my side, exposing me to everyone. But that was the least of my problems. “He thought she was me. It was me he was after.”
“I don’t understand.” Jack tried to step closer, but a cop forced him back with a forearm across Jack’s chest.
Now that they’d found my stab wound, the medics were lifting me into the ambulance. I twisted, finding Jack’s eyes.
“I’ll explain everything,” I promised, raising my voice. “He confessed. Then he tried to kill me again and I pushed him. It was self-defense.”
Jack stopped struggling against the cop. He stood stock-still, wonder dawning on his face. “I can’t believe it worked,” he said, so faint that I almost didn’t hear. “The plan actually worked.”
“What?” The medics strapped me into the gurney, pressing something against my cut to clean it, something that burned like fire, but in that moment I didn’t care.
Jack ducked under the cop’s arms and ran for the ambulance doors. “I was going to tell you,” he called. “Before you left, at the bar, I was going to warn you. Eric had been writing me letters for months. We’d come up with a plan. He said I couldn’t trust anyone, and I—” Jack looked ashamed. “I decided not to chance it. Some part of me thought it could’ve been you.”
Two cops caught up to Jack and wrestled him back, but his eyes stayed on me, desperate with apology.
Jesus. Jack had been in on it the whole time. He and Eric, two of the only people in the world who thought Jack was innocent, plotting to use Homecoming to unmask Heather’s true killer. And Jack had almost warned me, excluded me from the suspect list. Then he’d thought better of it.
I tilted my head back and laughed, so loud it stilled the medics. They eyed me warily, but I kept laughing, the sound filling the small space.
“Jack,” I called, right before the ambulance doors swung shut. “You have good instincts.”
Chapter 44
The summer before high school
I woke to soft Virginia sunshine and the sensation—the finely honed human instinct—that someone was sneaking up on me. I had only enough time to register my brightly lit bedroom ceiling before they pounced.
“Happy birthday,” my father yelled, landing next to me in bed.
“Ah,” I shrieked, rolling away from him.
He laughed. “It’s just us.”
I lifted my head, heart hammering. Sure enough, there was my dad, stretched out on my bed, grinning, and my mom, standing in the doorway with a cake, candle flames flickering light over her face.
“It was your dad’s idea,” she said, scooting into the room. “Blame him.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” he said happily. “Cake for breakfast. It’s not every day my princess turns fourteen.”
His princess. The words were hollow. I wanted to be his princess too badly for it to be true. That was the way life worked, a lesson he’d taught me himself: Wanting is dangerous. The less you want, the safer you’ll be. He was better nowadays, on a serious upswing, but the lesson had stuck.
My mother placed the cake in front of me, and I sat up straighter on the bed. “Make a wish,” she said.
I looked at her, then my dad, closed my eyes, and blew. All the flames disappeared into tiny swirls of gray smoke, the smell faintly sweet, like burned sugar.
My dad bounced on the bed. “What’d you wish for?”
“You can’t ask her that,” my mom admonished, setting the cake on my desk. “If she tells you, it won’t come true.” She turned to me. “I’ll cut that up in a second. First…”
Shockingly, my mom jumped on the other side of me, rocking the entire bed.
“Ah!” I shrieked again. My mother never played. What kind of alternate universe had I woken up in?
“Torture her until she tells us,” my dad suggested and descended on me, tickling my sides. My mom joined him, and then I was gasping, rolling side to side, trying to protect myself but finding no recourse.