Chapter 42 Zandra
FORTY-TWO
Zandra
“How would you know Jessa dropped her phone in the water?” I’d asked.
Winnie’s eyes were frozen on the creek. “I don’t know. Just…someone must’ve told me that.”
“I didn’t even know where her phone went. The police never found it.”
“I just guessed.”
She’s lying, I thought, out of nowhere. But the voice in my head hadn’t sounded like mine. It had sounded like Jessa’s voice.
I flashed back to that night yet again, and this time, the truth finally slotted into place.
The voices I’d heard. A sound Jessa had made, difficult to make out over the noise of the creek that night. But now I heard it again. Echoes. Twisting into something new and terrible.
That night sixteen years ago, Jessa had said the name, Winnie.
“Were you there that night? At the creek?”
Winnie didn’t say a word. Maybe she was trying to decide whether to deny it or make some excuse. Another lie. Part of me wanted her to tell me something, anything, to explain away what I’d just remembered. To make it not true.
But it was the truth. Neither of us could make it go away. Not now.
“Jessa said your name,” I accused. “You were there. I know you were.”
Her chin dipped, like she was looking at the ground. “Then why’d you ask?”
“Because I’m trying to understand this! How were you there? Why?”
Her mouth opened. Shut. Opened again. Her blond hair blew around her face in a sudden gust of chilly wind.
“Just tell me,” I demanded.
“Fine! I was there, okay? I was there, but I didn’t mean for any of it to happen.”
Shock had me stuck in place, standing on the slope above the creek. Winnie was a few feet away. The night seemed so dark, as if the moon and stars couldn’t reach us here. I could only make out bits and pieces of her features. Not her eyes.
But she seemed to be fixed by the same spell I was under. Like our memories of that night had woven around us, a web that neither of us could escape.
When I next spoke, the words came out low and dangerous. “Tell me, Winnie.”
This time, she gave me what I wanted.
“I knew Jessa’s secret. The one she’d written about in her diary. But it wasn’t about a boy. Russ or whoever she was crushing on. It was…it was about me.”
“About you?”
Winnie put her hands over her face, muffling the sound of her confession. “I cheated on Leo. There was a guy at another school. I met him over the summer. It didn’t mean anything, but Jessa found out. She said she was going to tell Leo if I didn’t confess.”
Jessa, why didn’t you tell me? I asked silently.
Because she knew how pissed off I would’ve been? I wouldn’t have told Leo without Jessa’s permission, but maybe she wasn’t sure she could trust me.
Or maybe it wasn’t a lack of trust. Jessa was the most loyal kind of friend, a loyal sister, and she wouldn’t have wanted to tell anyone before her brother knew. No wonder she wrote in her diary about feeling conflicted. She must’ve felt awful holding that secret from Leo.
If she’d just told him the truth when he confronted her…
But she’d been trying to give Winnie a chance to make things right.
“You left the bonfire party?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“Leo was drunk. He didn’t notice I was there, so he wouldn’t notice I was gone. Nobody else was paying me any attention either. I just wanted to talk to Jessa. Make her see my side.”
“How did you know we were at the creek?”
Winnie sniffled. “Leo had taken me to that spot before, said it was Jessa’s favorite place.
That night, he said he was glad his sister was at the creek instead of the football party.
He wanted her to stay away from the players.
She was his big sister and he wanted to protect her, so of course he was going to believe her over me.
I had to convince her not to tell him what I did. It was going to ruin everything!”
The bitter taste of bile was rising in my throat again. “What did you do?”
“I heard the two of you talking when I first arrived,” she said, stuttering over the words.
“So I hid, not sure what I should do. Then you walked off into the woods. I figured that was my chance. I offered to help get Leo off her back about her football player, if she would keep the secret about me. An even trade.”
“And she said no.” I could imagine what my best friend would’ve said.
“Jessa wouldn’t even listen to me. Told me right away to leave, that she didn’t want you to know she’d ever kept my secret at all.
” Every moment, Winnie’s voice got thicker with emotion.
“She was standing right at the edge of the bank. Waving her arms around with her phone in her hand. The phone dropped in the water, and she started to lose her balance, and I…I pushed her.”
A tear broke free and careened down my cheek. “No,” I whispered.
“I just couldn’t let her tell Leo. I couldn’t.”
The rest played out in my mind. Jessa falling. The gash on her head. I could imagine Winnie hiding. Watching from the cover of the trees as I held my best friend in my arms.
In the days afterward, Winnie had hugged me. Stood there with me and Leo at the funeral. And this summer, she’d pretended to be my friend. When I’d told her how torn up I still felt about Jessa’s death, Winnie had listened with sympathy in her eyes.
The bubbly former cheerleader, who no one would ever have suspected.
“Did you start the rumors at school that I pushed Jessa?” I asked, already knowing what the answer had to be.
“Not like you got in trouble anyway. Nobody really believed you were responsible.”
“Jessa’s mother believed it,” I seethed.
“I wasn’t having a great time either, okay? Every night for months, I couldn’t sleep, thinking you or the police or Leo would figure it out. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Tell the truth. That you killed her.”
“I didn’t mean to!”
“Little late for that excuse, don’t you think?”
“I lost Leo anyway. Nothing’s gone right for me since high school, unlike you. You’ve got a rich family, a guy like Callum. Isn’t that enough?” She wiped her face. “Are you going to tell people? Ruin everything for me all over again?”
“Ruin it for you? Jessa’s family deserves to know what really happened. I deserved it. Paula tried to burn Hearthstone with me in it because of your lies!”
I should’ve seen Winnie’s next move coming.
But I didn’t.
She lunged. Shoved me hard. I barely grabbed hold of her. We slammed to the ground, rolling down the slope. Sharp rocks gouged my skin. The wind knocked out of my lungs as her elbow caught me in the chest.
Then the world turned frigid as ice-cold water swallowed me up. I struggled to find the surface, feeling the tug of the current, but hands closed on my throat.
Winnie was holding me under the water.