“She deserved it,” I repeat, but it sounds less convincing the second time around. When I’d admitted I knew Autumn was dealing drugs, Ivy didn’t judge me for it. And yeah, that’s at least partly because she felt guilty—but it was guilt over unintended consequences. We all make mistakes, right? And almost never see the fallout coming.
I lift a hand to massage my sore temple, and my fingers make contact with the Band-Aid Ivy put on. I’m tempted to yank it off, but even I’m not dumb enough to bleed out of spite. I know I should call Garrett’s, but before I can, a new text from Autumn flashes across my screen. I’m not going to the Bronx.
Wait. What?
I start typing, but Autumn is faster. I told Aunt Elena. I had to. She knew something was wrong and she wouldn’t let up. You know how she is.
My throat tightens. Yeah, I do, but come on, Autumn. You had one job.
I couldn’t keep lying to her with Boney dead, she adds.
No, no, no. She wasn’t supposed to do this. And told Ma what, exactly?
Autumn’s next text answers the question. She wants me to go to the police.
And then: I’m sorry. I tried.
I don’t want to read anything else. I shut my phone down and shove it across the table before it can ring with a panicked call from my mother. My heart pounds as I stand and leave the kitchen, circling our wreck of a living room. Anger, worry, and shame are all coursing through me, fighting for dominance, and for the first few laps around the room, shame wins. Because now my mother knows everything—including what I’m capable of keeping from her.
Then worry takes over, crushing my chest with thoughts of my cousin. What the hell is Autumn thinking, turning herself in like this? Boney’s gone, and Charlie’s only seventeen, so she’ll wind up taking the fall for this entire mess.
I can’t just torture myself with what-ifs; I need to do something. There’s no point in trying to clean the house up anymore, but I can check out how bad the rest of it is. I make my way upstairs, steeling myself to survey the damage to our bedrooms. It’s as bad as downstairs, although at least our laptops look okay. Still, the idea of someone going through my personal stuff—tossing everything I own aside like it’s nothing—makes me want to put a fist through the wall. I can’t stand being in my room, so I go back into Autumn’s.
The bulletin board above her desk has been torn off, as if somebody thought it might be concealing a wall safe, and tossed to the floor on top of a pile of clothes. I pick it up and place it carefully on the desk, studying the collage of pictures that represent Autumn’s life.
Everything about that life will change after tonight. Autumn will probably be arrested, turned into a warning and an example for other Carlton kids, and people will say she deserved it. They won’t care about any of the reasons behind what she did.
She deserved it.
The biggest picture on Autumn’s bulletin board is of her mom and dad, the aunt and uncle I barely knew, holding my toddler cousin between them. The second-biggest is of me and Ma flanking Autumn at her high school graduation last spring. There’s one of Autumn and me at the New England Aquarium from the summer she first got here, posed stiffly next to an exhibit about the biggest and smallest fish in the world. I know the whale shark is the biggest, but I have to squint at the sign next to Autumn to remember what the smallest fish was called. Paedocypris progenetica, barely a third of an inch long.
That’s Autumn, I think, my eyes drifting to the twelve-year-old version of my cousin. She’s the small fish in this whole mess. There’s somebody a lot bigger involved, somebody who moves enough pills that they can store thousands of them in an abandoned shed. Somebody with the knowledge, the resources, and the cold-blooded will to kill Boney. If the police could find that person, Autumn wouldn’t matter anymore. They’d have their whale shark.
It makes me wish I’d never left Cal and Ivy. You can say what you will about Ivy—and God knows I did—but she doesn’t give up. And she has a knack for figuring things out. If Ivy believes there’s something important in Ms. Jamison’s classroom, she’s probably right.
As soon as I start thinking about Ivy, her face leaps out at me from Autumn’s bulletin board. The picture was taken in Carlton Middle School’s streamer-decorated gym, at the only dance I’d ever gone to there. We moved around all night as a group: me, Autumn, Ivy, Cal, and Daniel. In the photo our arms are slung across each other’s shoulders, our smiles wide and full of braces. Across from that picture is one of Autumn at last year’s senior bonfire in the woods, her face pressed close to Loser Gabe as Stefan St. Clair grins over their shoulders. Beneath that is my mother and father’s wedding picture, and I swear to God, Ma already looks like she knows she just signed up for taking care of an adult kid.