Chapter 3
EMMA
I spin around, holding the paper high in the air. “Who did this?” My chest puffs out as I force myself to breathe. I don’t have the patience for this sick joke today. Not after what happened at the house.
Eyes dart away, no one wanting to admit to this horrendous prank.
That’s what it is. A prank. I’ve never sat in Myles’s car before. The girl in the picture isn’t me.
It’s Mallory.
Anger bubbles up in my chest, a lump rising to my throat and choking me when I try to speak. “Tell me!” I yell, voice cracking. It snaps like a dead branch being stepped on. A crack runs down into my core, piercing through the emotions I’ve tried to suppress.
I’ve never been good at sharing my feelings, and I’ve spent the last year acting like these people couldn’t hurt me. I ignored the rumors circling the school about Mallory’s death, but this is too much.
My stomach lurches at the sight of Myles in the photo.
I tear it into pieces, ripping up his face and scattering the pieces on the floor.
More students crowd me, surrounding me like an amphitheater, and I’m waiting for someone to be brave enough to step into the ring as my opponent. I want to scream into the face of the person who had the audacity to vandalize my locker.
My eyes burn, but I dig deeper into my anger to stop the hot tears from falling.
There are whispers floating toward me from every direction and the hair on my arms stands up.
“Are the rumors true?”
“Maybe she’s the one who did it?”
“What is she lying about?”
The words fill my head like helium, expanding to the point I’m afraid my brain might explode if I have to spend another second listening to their taunts.
Mallory would know what to do in this situation.
She’d maintain her temper and calmly start cleaning her locker.
She’d act like it didn’t bother her, but then again, no one would dare do something like this to her.
Why would they? Everyone had liked her. She was smart, the top of her class, and kind.
I take a breath, but it’s shaky.
This is what loneliness truly is. All of these people around me, questioning whether or not I’m lying. There isn’t a soul in this building who believes me. They’re convinced I lied about what I saw.
He pleaded guilty.
I am right. But everyone makes me feel like I’m a toddler throwing a tantrum.
What do they want me to do? Testify again?
Another whisper carries through the air. “Is that Sam?”
I choke, lungs depleting of air, and freeze.
Samir.
The friend Myles replaced me with.
He shouldn’t be here. He was in the same senior class as Mallory and Myles, and he graduated last year.
I scan the hallway and spot his tall stature and dark hair poking up.
“Get out of the way!” I yell, pushing my way through the crowd.
He starts running, but I refuse to let him get away with this. He never believed the truth, not then and apparently not now. But this is too far. This is wrong. Isn’t my life messed up enough? Myles is the bad guy here, not me. If Samir wants to be angry with someone, it should be him.
Students move out of the way as I charge through the hallway toward the entrance. I barge through the tall wooden doors in a rage. I don’t care that people are watching anymore. I just want to catch him.
Sam peers over his shoulder as he jumps off the last step, racing away from me.
“Sam, get back here!” I yell.
He runs in front of the cars lining up to drop off students and flees to the lush lawn in front of them.
A gust of wind blows through my hair, sending strands into my mouth, but I push myself to run faster. I ignore my burning lungs and reach my hand out inches away from Sam’s back.
“If you have something to say, say it to my face!” I yell. My fingers graze the back of his gray jacket.
He slows down like maybe my words sunk in, but just in case, I grab his jacket and yank him back with all my might.
Sam falls backwards onto the ground, his long legs kicking in the air. He scrambles to sit up. “Was that really necessary?”
I cross my arms, jaw clenched and eyes narrow as I point a glare at him. “You deserved it!”
He scoffs, rubbing his face. “You still have a temper I see.” He stands, brushing off his pants, but the grass stains aren’t going away.
I shove him. “How could you?”
He stands his ground this time, towering over me. He takes in a breath. “You lied. And I finally found the proof.”
I roll my eyes. Not this again. I look up at the full clouds coating the sky as the anger in my chest resurfaces. “Why is it so hard for you to accept the truth? Myles killed Mallory!”
“Didn’t you see the picture!” He tugs at his hair. Then his hand drags down his face. “I’ve known there was something wrong from day one, but you can’t deny the picture. You were with him that night!”
“No, I wasn’t!” I yell. “When are you going to get it through your thick skull?” I point to myself. “I didn’t see him until I was walking home that night and I saw him push Mallory over the bridge! He even confessed!”
“I know you were with Myles. Just admit it!”
“Why would I lie about that?” I pull on my jacket to keep my hands busy enough I don’t knock him to the ground again.
His nostrils flare as he breathes in. “We both know Myles could’ve had your testimony thrown out of court if he wanted to, so you tell me why he chose to stay silent.”
My psychiatric evaluation.
My face burns. How dare he bring that up. “I know what I saw!”
“Really?” He raises an eyebrow and steps closer. “You really think you can trust your own memory?”
No one believes me and that’s one of the most frustrating parts of this. Everyone, including the psychiatrist, believes I created a made-up story of running away instead of acknowledging the events leading up to my sister’s death.
“It’s a coping mechanism,” they said.
But it isn’t true. People claim I was here the whole time, but they’re wrong. I ran away for three days because I wanted to see my mom and Mallory refused to take me.
If Myles wanted to, I’m sure his lawyers could’ve used my lapse in memory to discredit my testimony, but Myles corroborated my story. “He confessed!”
“He’s lying!” Sam strikes the air with this hand and his back tenses up. “Anyone with an ounce of brain can see that!”
Sam is just as infuriating now as he was a year ago. “Let it go, already! Myles is behind bars where he belongs.”
His brow softens and his jaw shifts. “You don’t really believe that.”
I do. I hate Myles.
Sam shakes his head. “You know”—he holds his hands up—“I’ve spent months trying to wrap my mind around what really happened that night and every thought leads to the same place.”
I raise my chin. “Oh yeah, and what’s that?”
I know exactly where it leads: Myles. And no one is going to change my mind. He’s a horrible person, and that’s something I believe so strongly it’s in my bones. It’s engraved into my being at this point. I’d love to forget what I saw, but I can’t.
“You,” he says like it’s a curse word. “That’s the only explanation. He took the blame for you.”
I almost laugh. He can’t be serious. Myles and I hadn’t talked in years. He’d never take the fall for something I did. “Yeah, right.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense! Why else would he say he never saw you that day?”
“Because that’s the truth—”
“The ticket.” He huffs, crossing his arms. “That’s you. How do you explain it? It was from that night.”
“That isn’t me. It’s Mallory!”
“She never wore her hair down,” he says without skipping a beat.
“What?” I step back as a shiver traces down my spine. I don’t know if I’m thrown off by the confidence he spoke with or the crumb of truth to what he said.
“Somehow this is your fault,” Sam says. “And I’m going to prove it.”
My ears ring from the guilt rising in my chest. I already blame myself enough for that night. What if I had been there? Would I have been able to stop him? I don’t even remember Mallory and Myles spending time together. Was I so focused on myself I overlooked whatever was going on between them?
“We both know Myles isn’t the type of person who’d do something like this,” Sam says.
I would’ve agreed if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, but I did.
The Myles I knew disappeared ages ago. He went from the boy who would lie on my bedroom floor staring at the ceiling while I rambled, to taking the long way around school to avoid running into me. “I don’t know him anymore.”
“Yes, you do.” He says it like he’s begging me to reconsider, stomping his foot like a little kid. “You know him better than anyone!”
Mallory’s scream replays in my mind, the dark night coming into view. The street lamps lit up her hair as it flew when she fell.
I had stormed toward Myles seconds after it happened. I hit him, screaming into his face, and he let me. He didn’t block his face or try to run. He stood there like a statue while I beat him, pounding my fist into his chest.
Since that moment I’ve tried to understand it, but I can’t.
I cover my ears and slam my eyes shut. “Stop!”
My eyes water, but I blink the tears away. A gust of wind blows through my hair, and I breathe in to calm my pounding heart.
I turn, staring at the brick school behind me.
Students jump away from the windows like they don’t want to be caught eavesdropping.
I don’t want to go back in there, at least not yet.
I want to disappear. To hide somewhere away from all my problems, but there isn’t a place on this earth that could take on a challenge that massive.
My problems are like mountains, towering into the clouds for everyone to see.
My lip twitches and I start to walk away.
“Where are you going?”
“Away!”
“You can’t run forever! I’m going to prove what really happened that night!” Sam yells.
I scoff. The truth. Like he doesn’t think I’ve tried to figure it out. I guarantee I’ve spent way longer dissecting every aspect of that night and replaying it.
I keep walking, powering through the soft green grass toward the main road.
I know I should be a good daughter and go back to school, but I can’t handle it right now.
I just want to get away from all of this.
I refuse to sit through hours of classes as a spectacle, but I can’t bring myself to go back home either.
My stomach drops as I think about the possibility of the for sale sign in the yard again.
My blazer slips off my shoulder in the wind, and I tug it back into place, holding it there instead of taking the three seconds needed to fasten the buttons.
When I was little, it was easy to make myself feel better. I’d turn on the TV to my favorite show or sneak into the kitchen for a snack. If that didn’t work, I’d walk into Mallory’s room because she was always so calm and collected and could make everything better.
There were times when my parents fought that suddenly made our giant home feel too small. The walls were too hollow and their voices echoed through every crack.
I’d wander into Mallory’s room. Times like that, she wouldn’t tell me to leave.
She’d take her comforter and put it over our heads like a tent that protected us from the fighting, and she’d use her phone as a flashlight to light up a book.
She’d read it out loud until I fell asleep. She made it better.
Now, she’s gone.
She isn’t here to make it better.
I reach the sidewalk and abruptly turn the corner, aiming for the gas station at the end of the block.
The silver building stands out in the fog with its bright neon signs. I weave through the cars parked by the pumps and head for the door. A little bell dings when I step inside, and I march right up to the deep freezer in front of the check out.
I peer through the clear lid at the ice cream flavors even though none of them sound appetizing. Chocolate with fudge in the middle was always my favorite, but the idea of sliding the lid open suddenly seems too hard and my arms stay lifeless at my sides.
My mom hated sweets and they were never in the house.
“Can you keep a secret?”
I can still hear Mallory’s voice in my head. The soft words she spoke when she came into my room after I’d been crying.
She took me to a gas station, similar to the one I’m in now, and started our tradition of getting ice cream every time I was upset.
I felt like Mallory was creating something special between us. I’d never had a secret we shared. I didn’t think she had any, to be honest. She always followed the rules, but she was willing to break them for me. That was special.
“Are you going to get something?” the cashier asks. His blue vest is crooked and he’s sitting on a stool reading a magazine. “Or are you just here to stare at the ice cream again?”
A tear spills over and a sob bubbles out of me. I’m angry for crying like I failed at being okay, but once the tears start, I don’t know how to stop them. I can’t dam them up or stop my nose from running.
“I’m sorry,” the cashier says, setting down the magazine. “I didn’t mean to upset you. You’ve just been in here a lot so I was trying to make a joke, but it obviously wasn’t a good one . . .”
I try to wipe my tears, but it only makes it worse, rubbing my mascara into my eyes.
I let out a rough, staggered breath because I don’t want ice cream. I want my sister back. She’s the reason I liked getting ice cream in the first place because I felt closer to her. I felt like it was one of the few times where we bonded instead of clashed.
“Please stop crying,” he says. “Look, just take an ice cream cone. It’s on me today.”
I want to. I want to take it and let it fix my problems, but I know it won’t make a difference. No amount of ice cream can mend my life.
My stomach twists from the thought of forcing myself to eat the ice cream and I run out of the gas station. I take a deep breath to settle my nerves and droplets fall onto the top of my head.
The rain caught in the clouds above me has finally broken free. It starts with a sprinkle and then showers down, soaking me from my bangs to my feet. My shoes squeak as I find myself walking alongside the road again.
My bag drags on the ground as I trudge aimlessly around town. I can’t go back to school. I can’t go home. I’m trapped.
I don’t know how long I walk for, but the light starts to fade, and like I'm on autopilot, I end up in front of the bridge.
The bridge where Mallory died.