17. Sadie #6
“Yeah,” I said finally. “Thanks. I’ve been texting him on the other phone; I just haven’t heard back yet. He must be around here somewhere.”
“I’ll see if he’s outside,” Jayne said. “Meet me out there in ten minutes if I don’t come back with him, okay? We really don’t have all night.”
Her phone pinged. She checked it and smiled to herself. “He’s just too delicious,” she said.
“Evan?” It wasn’t even a guess. Jayne had a particular smile that always showed up when she and Evan were texting or talking with each other.
Something about it always freaked me out a little bit, like there was some kind of big cosmic joke going on between the two of them that none of the rest of us knew about, and that joke was on us.
“He can’t believe I’m actually here,” she said. “He says barns are for horses. Not parties. I’ll have to send him some Polaroids of all this. You know how he feels about proof.”
That was the other weird thing—who actually sent Polaroid pictures to each other in the mail? God, my sister could be a weird one.
I rolled my eyes. “Give me a break. Now, are you going to help me find Mason or not?”
“Right, yeah. Meet me outside in a few. If I do find him, then at least we can make sure no one sees you guys together. I can be your lookout for Ben if he wanders by.”
She glanced down at my Solo cup. “Drink up, Dee. You’ll need some more liquid courage for whatever Mason has to say.”
She wasn’t wrong. Ugh, why had I let myself start something with him in the first place? I should have known it wouldn’t be worth the hassle. I downed the rest of my drink.
“Remember to find me if I’m not back,” Jayne said. “Who knows? I could wind up lost in a cornfield; you’ll just discover my body when they mow this down for the Halloween maze.”
I laughed. “I’ll make sure you don’t end up decomposing in a cornfield.”
She held out her pinky. “Promise?”
I held mine out too. “Promise.”
She disappeared, and I made my way down the stairs to check the living room.
I could have sworn I saw Liz talking to Ben, but by the time I got to the place where they were, it seemed like the crowd of people had swallowed them up.
I realized that I was starting to really feel the booze, and I vaguely wondered what the hell Trevor put in his so-called jungle juice.
I stumbled for a minute and leaned against a wall for support.
“You good?” Some random guy appeared next to me. He seemed vaguely familiar—maybe we were in a class together?
“I’m good,” I replied. Or, at least, that’s what I thought I said.
My mouth felt like it was filled with cotton.
God, this was so embarrassing. How had I gotten this drunk?
Vaguely, I felt a moment of relief that Ben wasn’t around to see me like this.
He always got so angry when I was wasted.
Kind of funny, considering he was the one who got drunk and cheated on me.
But now I had cheated on him. And, even better, I’d lost my virginity to someone else. Someone who wasn’t him.
He would be so angry if he ever knew. I smiled to myself.
I’d wait until the right moment in our marriage to bring that one out—what’s that saying, revenge is a dish best served cold?
It was becoming clear to me too that obviously that was how it would go.
Mason was for fun, and Ben Carrera was for life. He was the future I should marry.
How much time had passed? It was weird; I was starting to feel like my arms weren’t part of my body anymore.
Like, I could see them moving as I made my way outside, but I couldn’t feel them.
When I got outside, I tried to take a few deep breaths to sober up.
It didn’t seem to be working too well, so I sat down and leaned against the outside of the house.
Well, I didn’t so much sit down as I slid down.
My legs were starting to feel weird too.
Something told me that this probably wasn’t good, but I was tired, and I really couldn’t be bothered to care.
“Sadie? Sadie! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Mason’s voice sounded like it was far away, but he was suddenly there, standing right next to me.
“Oh,” I said. “Hey.”
“Are you okay? God, you look hammered. How many drinks have you had?”
“Not that many,” I tried to say. It didn’t sound convincing.
“Can you stand up?”
I nodded, and Mason hoisted me up, putting my arm around his shoulder.
“God,” he said. “Look, this really sucks. But there’s something I need to show you, like, right now.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“I wish it could. And this isn’t the thing I wanted to talk to you about, by the way—I swear to God, I had no idea about this. I just—I saw it, and I’m so glad I found you, because I didn’t think you’d believe me if you didn’t see it with your own eyes.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, and all I wanted to do was close my eyes and go to sleep. But we were walking. My feet were moving. We were heading in the direction of the old stone barn. Did Mason want to hook up here, now? That was not happening.
Time seemed to stretch as we made our way toward the barn. It looked like it was a thousand miles away, floating in an ocean, and then suddenly we were at the door.
“Hey,” Mason said, turning my face to his. I had a hard time focusing my eyes. “I’m sorry, Sadie. I hate to be the one to show you this, but like I said, you’ve gotta see it.”
“What are you talking about?” My words sounded slurred to my own ears.
Mason let me go, and I swayed while he pulled open the barn door.
“Look,” he whispered.
I did look. Or, at least, I tried to look.
It was impossible to make sense of what I was seeing.
Because I was standing in front of me and Ben, locked in the middle of an intense make-out session.
But I was me, so how could I be there? I didn’t understand it.
My brain felt like it was covered in molasses.
Nothing was working. I was here. I couldn’t be there.
Then, slowly, through the fog, it dawned on me.
It was Jayne. Jayne was with Ben. I stumbled into the barn and tried to say something, but I found myself sagging down onto the floor. Why couldn’t I move my legs?
“What the hell?” Mason’s voice sounded far away. So was the resounding thud of the barn door shutting, and suddenly Ben was on Mason, and Jayne was coming toward me.
This was not happening. Jayne was hooking up with Ben? No, impossible. I had just decided Ben was mine. Mason was fun; Ben was my future. Why was my twin stealing my future?
In the gaunt light of the bare bulb that illuminated the old barn, throwing shadows across the rusted-out tools and the rotting hay in the loft, I could see that my sister was holding something.
“I’m sorry, Dee,” she said, not sounding sorry at all as she delivered the first blow.
I knew it should have felt worse, but for some reason, I couldn’t feel anything.
The sound of her voice was at odds with the action she was taking.
The violent way her arm was moving up and down.
The warmth that seemed to be spreading all over my body.
Ben came into my field of vision, fuzzy and fading.
I saw him take something out of his pocket and set it gently next to me.
My phone. My real phone. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mason lying still on the floor.
No one had to tell me he was gone, and no one needed to tell me that I was going too.
“Why?” I tried to ask, but the only sound that came out was a strange sort of wheeze.
“Here’s the thing,” Jayne said, standing up and tossing the knife to the floor. “I’m tired of being one of two. I’m one of one, Dee. And you were just… in the way. So was he”—she nods her head in the direction of Mason—“in the end. Too stupid to see what was standing right in front of him.”
“You shouldn’t have done it, Sadie.” It was Ben’s voice now, shaking and emotional. So very different from the voice of my sister. I knew then.
Jayne had told him everything about Mason. Ben had done it because he couldn’t control his emotions.
So desperate for the love and approval of everyone. So desperate to be the best. The alpha. So desperate to be a leader.
Desperate enough for it that he would follow just about anyone.
“I’ll catch you on the flip side, Dee,” Jayne said as her voice and everything else began to fade. “Pinky promise.”
The last thing I saw was the broken heart hanging around her neck. The one I went out and bought for her the day after Christmas, just because she couldn’t stand someone else having something she didn’t have.
The one Liz no longer had.
Jayne wins.
The last thing I heard was her perfectly architected scream.
The scream of a girl who had just found her sister murdered by the boy who was obsessed with her.
The scream of a girl who was in shock and desperate for help.
The sound of Ben yelling along with her, the grieving boyfriend who’d just discovered his girlfriend being murdered.
Who did what he had to do and left the other guy dead too.
I could very nearly hear them telling the police what happened.
They would have a story. It would be perfect.
No one would ever suspect them. Liz would be so heartbroken when she found out. The whole town would be, probably.
They would get away with it.
As everything faded, I could still hear the perfectly rehearsed scream of a girl who had just gotten away with murder.