Chapter 33
I don’t know what Loch Ness said to Troy yesterday after I left school but I know the fear of her in a mans eyes when I see it.
Also he randomly apologized to me today for like ten whole minutes and kept making me swear I would tell her he did it. She probably got her hands on a bunch of maggots and threatened to cut open his brain and stuff them in there or something else really gross and violent.
What a menace.
Kind of funny when I’m not the target of her terror, but still. Now I have to check my room before bed in case she gets any funny ideas about what to do with the maggots now that Troy’s off the hook.
Update: On second thought, maybe I’ll just sleep in my mom’s bed tonight.
Alice
It was almost as though she was expecting me.
There was a brief hitch in her step when she scurried out the front door of her building and saw me sitting on the stone steps, but she recovered quickly, lowering to sit beside me with a deep, resigned breath.
I took the pink to-go mug when she offered it, and we sat in silence for a while, passing the coffee back and forth, watching people power walk to work and herd their backpack-equipped little ones into cars.
“Can you take me through what happened again?” I eventually said, swiping at the drop of coffee that had spilled down my chin. “It’s been so long that I’m a little murky on some of the details, and it’s bugging me.”
I didn’t need to specify what I was talking about.
“Which part?”
“All of it.” I stared straight ahead, unable—no, unwilling—to look at her. “Start from the beginning.”
She took her time, gathering her thoughts before she said, “I never told you how bad it got… the stuff with my dad.”
A frustrated huff shoved out of my lungs. “Rachel—”
“It’s relevant. I promise.”
I grabbed the mug, sipping it to keep my mouth shut.
“We couldn’t afford my tuition.” Her hands clasped delicately over her knees, the pitch of her voice kept so even that it was almost serene.
“He lost everything. I still don’t know how that’s even possible, given how much he had to begin with, but he lost everything and then some.
They took my laptop. My clothes. My bed. It was… violating, to say the least.”
I ground my teeth, the jagged edges of my anger thawing against my better judgment. She hadn’t told me any of this while it was happening. She’d done what her parents had asked of her and kept it all hidden, even though I could have helped. My family would have helped.
Instead, I’d found out at the same time everyone else did.
One morning, I woke up, and his face was plastered all over the news.
The RCMP was looking for the man who was suspected of committing a number of financial crimes and losing billions of his clients’ dollars while lying to them about the performance of their investments.
The public had been urged to contact the police with any information about his whereabouts.
If they knew he’d already been gone for weeks by that point, they didn’t mention it.
“You could have said something. Even if your parents asked you not to, you and I, we used to tell each other everything, didn’t we?”
She glanced down at her knees. “Why would I have told you about something that was all just in my head? School was my real life. You were my real life. Home was… an alternate reality, a figment of my imagination. Admitting how bad things were would have broken the dimensional barriers, and then I’d have been trapped.
There would’ve been nowhere else to run.
” She let out a breath, stretching her legs out.
“Reality kept catching up with me, though, if that makes you feel better. I got pulled into the principal’s office one day because my tuition was overdue, and the administration couldn’t get a hold of my parents.
I didn’t even realize they hadn’t… Anyways, I told him it was all just a misunderstanding, made up an excuse about my dad having switched accounting firms, and promised I’d have it taken care of right away.
He gave me ten days.” Pausing for a beat, she slipped her hands under her thighs.
“Our tuition was almost a hundred grand. Did you know that? You might not blink at that number, but it’s a lot for anyone to come up with in less than two weeks, let alone a seventeen-year-old kid.
And I was building up the courage to ask you for the money, but I… I just…”
Dread whipped through me, dark and nauseatingly potent. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
Her throat moved as she stared straight ahead.
“You know what the worst part of all this was? You think it’d be the money and having your stuff, every luxury you’d taken for granted, being taken away from you, but that wasn’t it.
The worst part was finally being confronted by the fact that I…
You had everything, Alice. Everything I’d ever wanted or dreamed of having, you had.
“Even before my dad left, I don’t think he would have been able to tell you the color of my eyes unless he was looking right at me.
Yours knew your birthday by heart. He wouldn’t have left you behind like that—opened credit cards under your name, emptied your accounts, and disappeared without so much as a note or a goodbye.
Your mom wouldn’t have chosen to cope with his bankruptcy by numbing herself with pills until she stripped herself of the ability to feel altogether.
” She swallowed, her chin wobbling a touch.
After a deep breath, she said, “They would have picked you, like he did. And that… didn’t seem fair to me.
You had everything, and it didn’t seem fair that you got him, too.
” She dabbed at a stray tear that had slipped down her cheek, clearing her throat.
“I was grieving and scared and seventeen, but that doesn’t excuse it.
I just need you to know why it happened the way it did, because I thought he was asking me.
He’d slipped me a note that said to meet him outside the aux gym after lunch, and then Nat had shown up with her hoodie, telling us that the soccer team had made their picks for prom, so I thought…
I really thought he’d picked me. But he wasn’t even there when I showed up.
It was a couple of other guys from the team, and they wanted the combination to your locker. ”
I swiped at my nose when it started to prickle, blinking away from her.
“I’d been in love with him for close to half a decade by that point, whatever that means,” she went on.
“And when I finally managed to stop crying and come inside, I saw you holding his hoodie and… I don’t know, something in me snapped.
All the resentment and jealousy that had built up over the years spilled over, and I realized just how much I hated you.
I hated you so much that the thought of asking you for the money, giving you that power over me on top of everything else you had, made me want to peel off my own skin.
“Just once, I wanted you to feel what I felt. I wanted you to hurt the way I did, so you’d finally get that the world wasn’t one big ball of sunshine and roses that served no purpose other than to revolve around you.
What had you done to deserve being so loved, and cherished, and…
you weren’t special. There was nothing exceptional about you, so why, when I had to spend my birthdays alone because neither of my parents could be bothered to commit the date to memory, did you get an entire week dedicated to celebrating your life every year? ”
My jaw hurt, my vision blurring as hot, angry tears threatened to spill over my blotted cheeks. “You know what’s fucked-up, Rach? Had you admitted to lying after the fact, told me what was going on, I’d have—”
“I know,” she interrupted, her lips wobbling.
“That’s the point, Alice. You’d have forgiven me.
You’d have gone to your parents and not only gotten me the stupid tuition money, but tried to help us fix everything else.
And you wouldn’t have understood how fucking infuriating it would’ve been. You still don’t.”
She was right. I didn’t understand.
Truly, I did not get it.
We’d had a few fights over the years. Of course we had. But we’d always been us. She was my best friend, the closest thing I had to a sister. I would’ve done anything for her, and I didn’t fucking get it.
“The plan formed itself. I knew he’d never forgive you if he thought you’d tried to hurt Rosie, and I needed money, quickly.
She’d always been a little scattered and forgetful, and I’d overheard your parents talking about how it’d gotten worse…
I was so sure they wouldn’t fire her anyway and… I don’t know, it just happened.”
“It just happened?” I snapped, the rough ache in my chest leaking acid.
“You framed Rosie—my Rosie—for theft, stabbed me—stabbed all of us—in the back, told Dominic it was all my doing, told me that you’d seen her take my dad’s watch with your own two eyes, fucking stole her keys out of her bag, snuck into her car, went behind my back to show your quote, unquote, ‘evidence’ to my parents after I told you to wait because I knew there had to be another explanation, and it just happened?
” I wanted to throw something, to scream and stomp until time agreed to bend backward and reimburse me for all the years she’d stolen.
“You had eight fucking years to come clean, Rachel. Instead, you tried to gaslight me into cutting contact with Dominic after he came back because you didn’t want to get caught. ”
I didn’t know this person.
Rachel—my best friend, my other half—would never have done anything like this. She wouldn’t have ever even thought to do anything like this. She wasn’t capable of it. Six hours ago, I would’ve bet my life on that.
“I know, and I’m really, truly sorry, Alice. I am. I was a kid, and I made a mistake, and I’ve regretted it every day since. The guilt has been eating away at me for so long. You have no idea—”
I jerked away when she reached for my hand. She had the nerve to look hurt over it.
Sorry? She was sorry? She’d made a mistake?
I shoved to my feet.
“Alice, just wait—”
“Do not,” I snapped, yanking my arm out of her grip, “touch me. Ever again. Do not touch me. Do not talk to me. Do not… You are the most unfathomably obnoxious, selfish human being I have ever… I don’t know who the fuck you are, Rachel, or who the fuck you think you are—so do not.”
I stormed away before the blinding rage took over and made me say something worth regretting.
Dominic had been instructed to go home after dropping me off at my apartment last night.
Not only had he refused to listen then, insisting instead on sleeping on my couch “in case I needed anything” in my own home, but he’d practically pushed me into his car this morning when I’d told him where I was going, how far it was, and that I’d planned on walking.
We’d settled on a compromise—he could drive, but he’d have to drop me off two blocks away. And then leave.
Yet here he still was. Restlessly pacing in front of his car.
“What else?” I asked before he’d noticed me approaching.
He whipped around. “What?”
“What else do I not know?” I asked, my lungs heaving with rage, my skin itching relentlessly. I stopped a few feet away. “There’s more, right? There’s more that you haven’t told me.”
The tip of his tongue flicked over his bottom lip. “Maybe we should…”
“No, Dom. We shouldn’t. The only thing we should do, and the only thing we’re going to do, is talk about how the fuck this even happened.”
I was sick of the secrets.
Sick of the lies.
Sick of the games.
Sick to my stomach.
“She was a seventeen-year-old kid,” I said, hating that my chin wobbled, undermining my anger.
“The housekeeper steals jewelry bit is about as cliché as it gets, so how is it possible that a literal kid was able to get away with it? I don’t understand.
I don’t get why Rosie didn’t just deny it, or how you could’ve been in love with me and that good at hiding it.
I don’t get how I put so much blind trust in someone who apparently hated my fucking guts.
I don’t get how I didn’t see any of it, and I… Am I that stupid? Is that why?”
His expression softened, and he stepped forward, his arms wrapping around me. I allowed it, stuffing my face into the comfort of his warm, broad chest.
“You’re not stupid.”
“Bullshit.”
“Alice, you’re not stupid. You were a kid, too, remember? This isn’t on you.”
I sniffled, returning his embrace. “There’s more, right? Something else that I don’t know?”
He sighed. “Later. We’ll sit down, and I’ll tell you everything once you’ve had some sleep. I promise.”
I snuggled closer, tightening my hold on him. “Please. The wait will be worse than the actual thing, so please just tell me. Better yet, call your mom. Let me talk to her.”
He hesitated. “It’s not that simple.”
Something about the way he said it made panic spear through my chest. I leaned back so I could look at him.
“What does that mean? Why not?” My heart seized when his expression fell, and in my freshly blindsided, frazzled state, I jumped to the worst possible conclusion.
“Dominic, I swear, if she’s… if something happened to her and you were planning some sort of fucked-up reveal to get back at me when all of this was over, please, please—”
“She’s not dead,” he interrupted, dragging a hand through his hair. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
The dizzying relief was as instant as it was premature, slamming into me before he’d finished the thought.
It made it that much harder to accept the truth when he finally came clean.