“He wrote it for me two years ago,” she says. “I… I have it memorized.”
Thankfully, she doesn’t try to recite the poem again, because I would have had to run out of the room, holding my ears and screaming.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why did he write you a poem?”
“Because Nate and I have been sleeping together since my freshman year.”
No. No. That’s not possible. She’s making this up just to torture me.
I refuse to believe it.
“I was on the school newspaper,” she explains. “We were both staying late one day while he was helping me with an article I was writing, and…we got to talking.” She takes a shaky breath. “My brother had cancer at the time. Well, he still has it but he’s in remission. Leukemia. He was getting chemo and he was sick all the time, and it felt like nobody in my family even knew I existed anymore. I know that sounds selfish but…”
I remember that bottle of pills I found in Kenzie’s medicine cabinet, prescribed for her brother. For nausea. I had no idea he had leukemia—they must have kept it quiet.
“Nate was so kind to me,” she murmurs. “He paid so much attention to me in a way that my parents never did anymore. And he’s so… I mean, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. So when he kissed me…”
This doesn’t make sense. Nathaniel told me he had never been unfaithful to his wife before. Also, if he was with Kenzie since she was a freshman, she was only fourteen years old then. Nathaniel would never…
“He told me I was his soulmate.” She lets out a barking laugh. “I completely believed it. I was so stupidly in love with him. I would’ve done absolutely anything for him. And then when all that stuff happened with you and Mr. Tuttle, he said we had to cool it. He couldn’t see me anymore because there was too much scrutiny.” She chews on her nail again. “That’s why I was so mad at you this year. Nate barely spoke to me, and I felt like it was all your fault. Even though I realize now how dumb that was. And…I’m sorry for how I treated you.”
“But what about Hudson?” I blurt out. “I thought he was your boyfriend?”
She shakes her head. “No, Hudson and I are just friends, that’s all. He’s a nice guy who has been really kind to me while I’ve been struggling this year, but nothing happened between us—I was too hung up on Nate.”
It’s true that I never saw Hudson and Kenzie kissing. They seemed to be together a lot, but I never saw them making out in the hall like some other couples.
“And then I saw that poem in your notebook.” She rubs her slightly pink nose. “And I realized he must have given it to you too. And I just felt… I felt so stupid. I realized that the whole time, he was playing me. I bet he said all the same things to you that he said to me.”
I don’t know what to say. I thought Nathaniel was the most amazing man I had ever met or would ever meet. And now I’m beginning to wonder if I might have had it all wrong.
“I don’t know what happened with Mrs. Bennett,” she says, “but I’m going to go to the police and tell them everything that happened between me and Nate. And I’m hoping you’ll come with me so we can do it together.”
I shake my head. Kenzie has a lot of evidence, and yeah, it sounds bad. But Kenzie is my enemy. She’s been tormenting me all year. How can I believe her?
“I was only fourteen, Addie.” Her lower lip trembles. “I feel so stupid for believing everything he told me and letting him do all that stuff to me. It messed me up so bad. I just want to keep him from doing it to anyone else.” She sniffles loudly. “Please come with me.”
Her shaky voice is breaking my resolve—I’ve never seen her be anything but perfectly poised. I wring my hands together. “They’re probably not even going to believe us. I don’t have any proof at all. We only talked on Snapflash, and all those messages are gone.”
“Nate and I talked on Snapflash too,” she says. “But I took screenshots.”
“You did?”
She bobs her head. “At the time, I did it because I wanted to remember what he was saying to me. But they’re all there. All the lies he told me.”
She digs into the bag hanging off her shoulder and pulls out her phone. She brings up a photo on the screen, and that’s when I see it.
You’re my soulmate.
The same words he had written for me. But for Kenzie.