I blink a couple of times. “You left the knife in his apartment.”
“Yeah.” She takes a deep breath. “No one else was around. No one else knew what I saw. I backed out of his place, closed the door, and ran down here. When I came in, I saw the desks pushed apart and the knife lying on the floor out in the open. I kind of hoped you were the one who found it, but I prayed that you hadn’t touched it. Did you? Did you touch it?”
“No,” I whisper.
“Good. I got my gloves on, took the knife, and I made sure nobody was out in the hall when I went back to his apartment. I put the knife right on the kitchen counter, and then I made sure I left the door open some. I knew that sooner or later someone would look in. And that’s why the police are here. Someone did. Someone called them.”
I focus on the ceiling and stare at the blinking lights that flash over our heads.
“Is this real?” I ask no one in particular. “Is this actually happening?”
Strots gets up from her bed and faces the window.
When she just stands there, like a zombie, I get scared for some reason. “Strots?”
It’s a long while before she answers me.
“You were right,” she says in a broken voice. “There’s no place for people like you and me in this world.”
“What are you talking about? I never said that.” Except I think she’s right. I think I did. “Strots, what are you—”
“No place.” She shrugs. “I don’t want to do this anymore, Taylor.”
“Do what?”
“I just framed an innocent man.”
I get to my feet, too. Something about her is alarming me, even though I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is.
“Nick wasn’t innocent,” I say. “He fucked a student.”
“But he didn’t kill anyone.” She’s staring out at the night, staring through the panes of glass. “He’s dead, but that doesn’t give me the right to ruin his life. Memory. Whatever. He didn’t kill Greta.”
The way she’s staring at those glass panes makes me draw rays in directions that terrify me.
“Hey, Strots,” I say, “how about we have a smoke, huh? I’ll try a cigarette for the first time. You can show me how to do it.”
I have no idea what I am saying. I’m talking fast. I am—
“I’m so done with everything, Taylor.” She looks at me. And takes a step back. And another one. “I’m really sorry about this—”
“Where are you going? You need to sit down and—”
All at once, I am back at Mountain Day. I am in the too-hot sun. I am on Ms. Crenshaw’s team. It is before everything got so grown-up, before people died, before any of us had any idea about how dark and dangerous things were to become.
I am panting during that time-out for the bee sting. I have my hands braced on my thighs and my torso tilted forward over the grass as I try to get more oxygen into my lungs.
Strots is standing next to me. She’s leaning down and putting her face into my own. Don’t worry about the eyes and the faces of your opponents. Focus on the body in front of you. The arms and legs will tell you where they’re headed. The body never lies.
These words, dismissed at the time, become the single most important thing I have ever heard as I realize, a split second before Strots lunges, that she is going to take a running leap at the window and launch herself face-first into a free fall to the pavement below.
chapter THIRTY-SIX
I move before my roommate does. And my body launches itself not at her, but at a point three feet in front of where she is.
As she springs forward right after I do, we become pool balls on a path of intersection—which is the only reason why I, with my lesser weight and strength, can knock her out of her trajectory. The impact is explosive and I get an elbow in the face, my jaw clamping shut so hard my molars are singing as my momentum carries both of us off our feet and onto Strots’s bed.
I land on top of her, and I know I have no time. She is stunned and not fighting back, but that’s going to change as soon as she realizes she’s been denied her descent—and she is certainly powerful enough to throw me off of her and succeed in busting through that fragile glass and those flimsy antique struts.
“No!” I hiss as I roll her onto her back. “Not like this!”
I keep my voice down because I don’t want things to carry, but as I shove my face into hers, maintaining the low volume requires self-control.
“You are not fucking doing that.”
In response to me, her eyes get wide and her arms flop, like she cannot believe what I’ve done or that I’m yelling at her.
I grab the front of her sweatshirt at the neckline and yank her up. “You’re not doing that.” I slam her head back down into the mattress. “You’re not!”
I do it again, jerking her up, shoving her down. I start to cry, my tears falling onto her cheeks.
“You are the best person I’ve ever met—and you are not going to do that!” I’m hysterical now, and forgetting to stay quieter. “You are my only friend! Don’t make me hear that sound again!”
Of a body hitting the asphalt.
Only this time, instead of it being the girl who told me about Orange Crush, it’s Strots, it’s the bravest, strongest girl I know, pitching herself out of our dorm room for reasons that make all the sense in the world and absolutely none whatsoever.
I try to pull it together. I stop with the pounding and I calm myself.
“I’ve already heard it once,” I say. “I heard the sound when a girl I knew jumped off the roof of the hospital. She landed on the pavement, and I know what it sounds like. You’re are not leaving that as my last memory of you, do you understand me? You are not fucking doing that to either one of us.”
We’re both breathing hard. And she’s the next who speaks, her voice rough.
“I can’t live in this world anymore, Taylor. I can’t live with what I’ve done—”
“The hell you can’t,” I snap. “Nick Hollis killed Greta Stanhope because she got pregnant, and tried to blackmail him, and his life was over. He committed suicide today because he knew he wasn’t going to get away with it. And isn’t that terrible.”
When Strots just stares up at me in numb shock, I tighten my hold on the front of her sweatshirt again and grit out the words. “Isn’t it fucking awful how it ended for them both, Strots. It’s a real fucking tragedy. Say it.”
My eyes bore into hers, and in my mind, I am breaching the hard-cap confines of her skull and going into her brain, rewiring things.
“That isn’t what happened,” Strots says weakly.
“Reality isn’t what happens,” I shoot back at her. “Reality is what our brains tell us is true. It’s all just in our minds. So you are going to start telling yourself right fucking now that—”
“That’s not what—”
“—he was a philanderer who liked young girls and was just going to keep finding them wherever he was. She was a bitch who played games with people and got what was coming to her. Nick Hollis killed Greta Stanhope because she got pregnant and tried to blackmail him. Then he hanged himself in his room because he knew he was going to jail. You are going to fucking repeat this every waking minute and through all your sleeping dreams until it is the singular truth that drowns out all others. Do you understand me? That is what you are going to tell yourself, starting right fucking now, and your mind is going to believe it because you’re going to train it like a fucking dog.”