The Night of the Fall
Chloe Westinghouse inhales deeply, savoring the fresh night air, the glimmer of the moon. A perfect night for secrets.
She positions herself several calculated steps from the precipice, the distance measured with the precision of an architect. The Italian silk of her Valentino dress whispers against her calves as the lake breeze lifts her blonde hair into a pale halo.
"I can't believe you," Mia says, her voice splintering like thin ice. "I thought you were my friend, Leah. How could you do this?"
Chloe suppresses the smile twitching at her lips.
She watches Mia's face contort with rage and betrayal, emotions so raw they're almost vulgar.
Between them, Leah shifts her weight, her chubby body silhouetted against the glittering lake far below, her heels close to the bluff's ragged edge directly behind her, where Chloe has positioned her for the last photo.
The trap has sprung. The pieces move across Chloe's mental chessboard with satisfying inevitability. It almost seems too easy. Chloe studies the trembling line of Leah's acne-studded shoulders, the nervous flutter of her hands, her darting, too-big eyes.
Leah Cho is so frantic to belong that she'd cut her own heart out if Chloe asked her to.
The memory of their earlier conversation crystallizes in Chloe's mind with perfect clarity.
She'd cornered Leah in the upstairs bathroom, surrounded by marble countertops, gold fixtures, and gleaming tile.
The other girls were downstairs, putting on heels, glitter, gauzy dresses, and finalizing their hair and makeup for the photoshoot.
"You want in, don't you?" Chloe asked as she reapplied her lip gloss. "For real this time?"
Leah nodded, her reflection in the mirror revealing eyes wide with that desperate pick-me energy that always made Chloe's skin crawl with contempt. Leah has a face like a turtle. Chloe can barely stand looking at her.
"Then prove it," she said, capping her lip gloss. "Tell Mia what you really think of her. That she's needy. Desperate. Pathetic. Tell her you've only been pretending. You actually hate her."
"But I don't—" Leah's fingers twisted together, bitten nails digging into her palms.
"But nothing." Chloe turned, allowing her expression to harden enough to make Leah shrink back against the cool tile wall.
"You're either in or out. And you don't want to be on the outside.
You already know what that's like, and trust me, I can make it so much worse.
You can be with us. Isn't that what you want? "
Leah knew too much. She'd overheard conversations she shouldn't have, not to mention her suspicions about the sleeping pills incident at Peyton's pool party.
Then Leah had snuck into Chloe's room earlier tonight, walking in on Chloe using the burner phone, the one Chloe had secretly purchased with her generous allowance, using the prepaid SIM number to create the LakeshoreTea profile.
Chloe had made a tactical error, underestimating boring dumb Leah.
It wasn't a mistake she would make again.
Because of their mothers' friendship, she had to let Leah hang around, plus she was useful enough to do Chloe's pre-algebra homework and write a few research papers for her. Now, AI could do all that.
Leah was a problem that needed eliminating.
Now, in the silver-drenched darkness, Chloe watches her handiwork unfold with dispassionate interest.
"I thought you were different." Mia steps closer to Leah, her voice rising to match the wind combing through the pines behind them. The whites of her eyes catch the moonlight, giving her the appearance of something wild, something feral. "But you're just like them!"
"It's not like that—I didn't want to—" Leah stammers, her hands twisting in front of her like pale birds. Her frantic gaze darts to Chloe, seeking guidance, approval, rescue, and finding only a blank stare.
Chloe watches it all, keeping her expression deliberately neutral. Inside, she catalogs each detail with meticulous precision. The betrayal on Mia's face. Her ugly thrift store dress, as ugly as she is, as ugly as the bulky camera clutched in her hands, with the ratty yellow strap.
"I'm sorry, Mia," Leah whispers, her words barely audible over the rhythmic lapping of waves against the shoreline far below. "I just... I'm tired of being targeted all the time. I just want it to stop."
"You pretended to be my friend?" Mia's voice cracks. "You laughed at me behind my back with them?"
"No, I mean, only once or twice," Leah confesses. Her gaze drops to the ground. A droplet of red leaks from her nostrils. Another one of her disgusting nosebleeds. "I didn't mean it."
"Tell her, Leah," Chloe prompts, her voice carrying just the right note of sympathetic encouragement. "She deserves to know the truth."
"Tell me what?" Mia asks.
"How Leah tells us all your dirty little secrets. Especially that one about your dad. You know, your little incontinence problem?"
Mia recoils like she's been doused in acid. "You promised. You swore you'd never tell anyone."
Chloe sees her opportunity and pounces. She tilts her head, her tone casual, almost sympathetic. "She told us everything. How you were so scared you literally pissed yourself."
The words land like a slap. Mia's face drains of color.
"We couldn't stop laughing." Chloe pitches her voice low, each word designed to cut deep.
"Leah did this whole impression of you standing there with pee running down your legs while your dad was bleeding out.
I mean, everyone must've smelled it when the paramedics and cops came, right? I'd just die if I were you."
The lie slips from her lips with effortless grace. Truth is irrelevant. What matters is the reaction, and Mia's transformation from hurt to fury unfolds with glorious predictability.
Chloe found Leah's journal last month, hidden under her mattress, after her mother had made her bring some fancy bread over to Mrs. Cho when Leah was at a painting class.
The diary entry had been raw, anguished, pathetic.
Leah, processing her own helplessness, was unsure how to support her grieving friend.
Perfect ammunition unleashed at just the right time.
"I would never—!" Leah's voice rises in panic. Blood drips from her nostrils, leaking down her chin. "Mia, I swear, I never said it like that! I didn't—"
"You told them?" Mia's voice breaks on the words. Her entire body trembles in humiliation. "That's what you said about me? About the worst night of my life?"
"Mia, please—!"
"You made fun of me." The hurt in Mia's voice shifts, hardens into something colder. "You laughed about my dad dying."
Chloe bites the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. The raw devastation saturating each word is absolute perfection. This is going even better than planned.
Leah's expression contorts. Her whole face turns beet-red with shame. "It's not like that. I'd never say that, I swear."
But it is too late.
"You bitch!" The camera slips from Mia's shaking fingers. It hits the grass with a muffled thud as Mia slaps her friend across the cheek.
Leah's face crumples. "Mia, wait! I made a mistake. I'm so sorry—" She reaches out in desperation. Her fingers close around Mia's forearms, trying to hold on, to make her understand.
Mia jerks back. Leah's fingernails rake down Mia's arms as she tears free. A few droplets of blood from Leah's nose splatter across the front of Mia’s bodice. Mia doesn't even notice through her blinding rage.
"Get off me!" Mia pushes Leah away from her.
Leah stumbles backward, her arms flung wide. For one suspended moment, she teeters on the bluff's edge, feet scrambling awkwardly for purchase in her heels. Then she regains her balance, chest heaving, eyes wide with shock.
Mia slumps to her knees. Appalled, crying hard, she stares down at her dress—once rose-gold, now mud-stained, torn, ruined. Blood wells from the scratches on her forearms.
For that critical moment, her attention is diverted. Away from the edge. Away from Leah.
Chloe recognizes her opportunity with the clarity of an apex predator. She steps forward and stands next to Mia, who's still on the ground.
Leah regains her balance. Inches from the bluff's edge, wavering but upright. Her eyes lock with Chloe's, not two feet apart now. Something shifts in her expression—a dawning comprehension, a sudden clarity. And then, pure scintillating anger.
Leah's lips part, perhaps to cry out a warning, to confess, to expose everything she knows. That cannot happen.
Chloe moves with liquid precision. Her hands connect with Leah's shoulders. She feels momentary resistance. Leah tenses in surprise, a gasp catching in her throat.
Chloe shoves Leah violently.
The sensation is oddly satisfying. The give of flesh, the sudden absence of weight. Leah's arms flail, a graceless windmill against the star-spattered sky. She screams. A startled, abbreviated cry. Her body drops away into darkness.
The silk of her dress makes a sound like tearing paper. The crack of breaking branches. The dull impact of flesh against something hard, unforgiving.
Then silence.
Mia looks up, stunned.
Chloe injects horror into her voice. "What did you do?"
Mia gapes at Chloe in alarm. She scrambles to her feet, dirt cascading from her ruined dress. "Leah?"
"You pushed her." Chloe’s voice slices through the night air like a blade. "You pushed her!"
"No—I—I didn't mean to—Leah!" Mia leans over the edge, peering down into the consuming darkness. "Leah!"
"Keep your voice down." Chloe digs her fingers into Mia's arm as she yanks her back from the edge. "Do you want people to know what you did?"
Mia stares at her in terror, mouth working soundlessly. "We—we have to call 911."
"She's dead," Chloe declares with certainty she doesn't feel. But Leah certainly looks dead from her glimpse over the edge. Forty feet down, pale limbs splayed at unnatural angles against a fallen tree caught on the steep incline. All that dark wet blood.