15. Liz
LIZ
I’M STILL WAITING for Jayne to actually say something to me and not just stare at me like she loathes the very fact of my existence.
“Um, hello?” I say. “Earth to Jayne?”
“I’m here to find Sadie, obviously,” she says. “Do you know where she is?”
The fact that Jayne came to Trevor’s to find Sadie is completely baffling to me. But something tells me that if I ask a clarifying question, Jayne is going to rip my head off.
“I don’t know, actually. I was just with her and Ben, but I think they went out to the bonfire.”
Without another word, Jayne pushes past me, presumably in the direction of the bonfire. I don’t think she’s ever been to Trevor’s before, but it isn’t exactly hard to spot the massive blaze of fire about a quarter mile out in the field.
I’m about to follow Jayne when I feel a hand on my shoulder. Turning around, I realize the hand belongs to Ben.
“Hey,” he says. “Can we talk?”
This is, quite literally, the last thing on earth I need.
Somehow I’ve managed to avoid having a direction conversation with Ben for the past six months, which has been no small feat.
Sure, I’m always around when he and Sadie are hanging out, but it’s kind of a group thing, you know?
It’s surprisingly easy to say hello to someone and then commit to not speaking another word to them without anyone else noticing.
I perfected the technique with Levi. It definitely only works on guys, though, because they’re too stupid to realize that’s what you’re doing.
A girl would pick up on it in less than a minute—Sadie noticed, and I think she appreciated it.
“I really don’t think we have anything to talk about,” I say, scanning the room and hoping desperately that Sadie is about to walk back through the door.
“You and I both know that isn’t true. Our text messages say otherwise.”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Come on, Liz.” Ben widens his eyes and gives me a look like he’s a puppy. “It’s killing me, how things are between us right now. Please have a drink, and let’s just talk.”
I bite my lip. This is probably a bad idea.
Scratch that—this is definitely a bad idea.
But maybe, just maybe, it’ll put an end to the texting, and the weirdness, and all the things that I like to ignore when I pretend to Sadie that everything is back to normal.
It would be nice if I wasn’t lying to her when I said that.
“Okay,” I say. “Yeah. Let’s talk.”
“And you were not drinking last night, is that correct, Miss Stratton? I just want to make absolutely certain of that, because your eyewitness account of what you saw when you came into the barn is very important.”
“Right.”
I take the drink Ben is holding out to me, and he smiles.
It’s the kind of smile that shouldn’t make my stomach flutter, but I wasn’t kidding when I told him over spring break last year that he was the hottest guy in Sadie’s life.
Hell, he’s the hottest guy in all our lives.
And I hate myself, because I should be better than this. Stronger than this.
And yet… Sadie has it all. I can have some of that too, can’t I? Don’t I deserve it?
The truth is, I don’t even remember what happened between me and Ben at the party last year. I was so drunk, and so was he, and it just sort of happened. Like one little feather landed on the scales and tipped everything in a different direction.
In one gulp, I down whatever is in the cup. It tastes like a mix of some kind of hard liquor and lemonade—definitely more of the liquor.
“So,” I say, feeling a warming sensation down my throat and into my stomach.
As Sadie would say, my sour side is about to come out.
Haven’t I punished myself enough for what happened last year?
If Ben wants to talk, that’s his decision.
Let Sadie ask him about it later. I’ve spent the past five years making every single one of Sadie’s problems one of my problems. I felt like that’s what I owed her for becoming my friend, for letting me be part of her family.
But suddenly, all at once, I feel absolutely done with thinking that way. Friends shouldn’t owe each other anything for being in each other’s lives.
“What did you want to talk about?”
The thing is, there are some truths that just wouldn’t help anybody to know.
I have enough life experience to understand that, and I have to imagine that Detective Budd does too.
She’d understand why I need to tell her I was sober last night.
What does it have to do with anything that I took a drink from Ben?
I can’t imagine he’s eager to share that part of the story or the conversation we had afterward.
What does it matter that I grabbed another one on our way out to the bonfire, and got sidetracked talking to someone else, and lost track of Ben?
What does matter is what I saw later that night. And I know what I saw, drinks or not. That is the only thing that’s important.
“Okay, so you were at the bonfire around ten thirty, is that right?”
“I’d say so, yeah.”
“And did you see Sadie anywhere, or Mason?”
“No, I’d lost track of Sadie. I saw Mason a few times that night, but he seemed totally normal. It all seemed totally normal. The whole night. There was nothing that made me think—” I try to steady my breath.
“It’s all right, Miss Stratton. Take your time.”
“There was nothing that made me think that what was about to happen was going to happen. I mean, Sadie made fun of Mason a little in junior high, you know? But everyone did. He was a really weird, dorky kid. It was just teasing and stuff, though. Nothing to have made him turn into a homicidal maniac. She didn’t mean anything by it, but maybe he took it personally or something.
Maybe they had a conversation last night that I didn’t see… ”
I pause to collect my thoughts. It’s hitting me all over, like a ton of bricks, just how much this doesn’t make any sense at all.
“I just can’t make sense of it, really, because if you had asked me before last night, I would have told you Mason was fine.
Nice. A little strange and artsy, but also really cute in an under-the-radar kind of way.
I think I even remember Sadie mentioning at the start of the school year how cute he’d gotten over the summer.
Yeah, she did say that, because it was after she mentioned it that I noticed he’d definitely gotten hot over the summer.
Not my type—he was too ‘pretty’ for me. But…
“I thought he was nice, Detective. Nice and cute. What is wrong with me? I should have seen it. I should have known. But I just didn’t.”
I can’t help it anymore. I break down in tears. Again.
“It’s all my fault, because I should have known.
And I was feeling kind of annoyed with Sadie anyway, and I spent my time talking to Ben instead of tracking her down because it felt kind of good to have the attention, you know?
But in that amount of time, and after I went back to the bonfire and couldn’t find her—”
I’m sobbing now. I can’t actually remember the last time I cried before last night, but this has to be some kind of record.
“I’m her best friend, and she needed me, and I just ghosted her. I left her alone, and look what happened.”
Detective Budd is silent while I collect myself, although she does me the courtesy of handing over a mini packet of tissues, the kind you get at a drugstore on your way to a funeral because you suddenly realize you’re going to need them.
I don’t bother saying thank you, but I use every single tissue in the packet.
I’m expecting some kind of punishment now, or maybe she’s going to scoff at me like Detective Norris did and tell me I’m an idiot for thinking all this is my fault. There’s nothing adults love more than trivializing teenage feelings. It’s like a blood sport for them.
“Miss Stratton,” she says finally, “I want you to hear me loud and clear here. If what you’re telling me is true, then absolutely none of this is your fault.
It’s impossible to anticipate the actions of someone else, especially an individual as clearly disturbed as Mason Vreeland.
Who knows? If you had been with Sadie at the time, he might have simply decided to attack both of you. There’s no way to know.”
She pauses for a moment, staring me down. “If, however, any part of what you’ve told me turns out to be untrue, you will be held accountable. Do you understand?”
Shit. She can’t possibly know about the drinking, can she? No, no way. I’m just being paranoid. And anyway, that had nothing to do with what I remember.
“Is there something, specifically, you’re talking about?” I ask. “Because I’m pretty much an open book. Just ask.”
“You’ve already answered every question I had for you, Miss Stratton. Do you think you’ve answered those questions to the best of your ability?”
I feel myself starting to turn red under her stare. There’s no reason to be flustered, but somehow I feel like I’ve suddenly been hooked up to a lie detector test, and I can’t even remember if I’m telling the truth about my own name.
“Yes, ma’am,” I reply quietly. Generally, I’m not one for formalities like “sir” and “ma’am,” especially because they play into a certain Southern girl expectation.
But Detective Budd has earned it. My instinct was right about her when she first walked into the room.
I respect this woman, even if she seems to be trying to read between the lines I didn’t even write.
“Okay, then. Now, the last thing I need from you is understanding what happened after you got to the barn last night. What made you go out there in the first place?”