Chapter 16
“Bryce?” I ask, confused. That doesn’t even look like Bryce, but then again the room is spinning.
“Get your phone. We’re getting the fuck out of here.” Asher ushers me away from the room. “And do not touch anything.”
He shoves me from the room in a hurry, down the hall, back out to the dance floor, through the bookcase, and up the stairs.
The knight that grabbed me, Kane, yells something to us about leaving. Asher tells him to fuck off. When we’re back aboveground
Asher paces back and forth.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he says, tossing his mask on the ground.
Everything blurs around me and a sharp pain forms in my stomach.
“I feel—” But I don’t get the words out as I vomit into the bushes. Then again, and again. I hear Asher say “fuck” again.
I’m on my hands and knees as my body heaves, until darkness takes over.
I wake with cold water hitting me in the face.
“I’m calling 911,” I hear Adrienne say.
Adrienne? That can’t be right. I look around and realize through the spinning that I’m in my bathtub.
“No,” I manage to say. Asher shuts the water off.
“Then I’m calling your mom,” Adrienne says to me.
“No, please,” I say again. If I get sent to the hospital with Xanax, absinthe, and shrooms in my system, my mom will have
me finishing my degree online from the comfort of her living room.
“I’ll handle it,” Asher tells her.
I don’t hear Adrienne’s reply as I fumble out of the tub to throw up in our toilet before passing out again.
I open my eyes slowly, feeling a splitting headache behind them, and a severe need for water. I’m in my bed. I turn over,
and that’s when I notice the IV in my arm. I follow the line up to see a saline bag hanging over my lamp.
“What the hell?” I whisper.
There’s a long breath from my bedroom floor. “Now that I know you’re alive,” Asher says, “you owe me big-time.”
I look down to see I’m still in last night’s dress, with a bath towel wrapped around it. “What the hell happened?”
“Bryce is dead,” he says.
“That wasn’t funny the first time you said it and it’s not funny now.” I stare at him.
“It’s not a joke.” Asher is sitting up, pulling a paper from his pocket. It’s my eulogy for Bryce, ripped through the middle
and soaked red. You can barely tell what it says, but I’d know it anywhere.
Frat boys, sorority girls, and everyone else who tolerated Bryce Peterson’s existence—today marks the end of an era.
An era of late-night “you up?,” other girls on his Snapchat, and getting into the best frat parties, which in the end meant more to me than he ever did.
May we never forget the way he gave me an STD, told everyone I gave it to him, then blacklisted me and my friends from everywhere.
Bryce leaves behind a superiority complex, the beer box taped over the broken bottom half of his door, and the audacity.
May he rest . . . somewhere very fucking far away.
“Oh my god.”
“Someone ran a fucking sword through him at the party,” Asher says. “I ripped this off of him before we left. I’m sure by
now the police are all over it . . . but at least this won’t be there.”
“Oh my god.”
“And you taking pills and drinking absinthe-spiked punch.” He shakes his head. “Don’t ever fucking do that to me again. I
had to literally beg Adrienne not to call 911 because you kept going in and out of consciousness. Dani came over and hooked
you up with an IV.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. In my defense, I didn’t know the drinks had a hallucinogen in them, but I feel bad nonetheless.
He shakes his head. “Do you remember anything from last night? Did you see the Professor at all?”
I try to think. I remember the night like a slideshow. Moments in time that flip through my brain. I remember the pregame and walking into the society clubhouse. I remember dancing and looking at Asher on the couch. I remember seeing an orgy, and I remember . . .
“Wait a minute,” I say, sitting up, looking in bed for my phone.
“Nightstand,” Asher says. I grab it and open up my photos. I knew it. I was recording. I watch the video as we walk into the
memorabilia room. I make a dumb comment about the paper bats hanging from the ceiling. “Tell me you did not get it on video,”
Asher says, getting up from the floor.
I fast-forward through the hundreds of photos I felt the need to record before I found Bryce. His head was rolled back, which
is probably why I didn’t recognize him at first, but it’s definitely him, with a giant sword through his abdomen. The eulogy
page stabbed onto him.
“What . . . in the medieval.” I shake my head, unable to comprehend what I’m looking at. He was really stabbed with a sword.
“We need to go to the police.”
“Well, we can’t now,” Asher says. “Not only did we take more evidence from a crime scene, but you have a video on your phone
that shows us there and then leaving without calling anyone. It looks like we did it.”
“I’ll just delete the video and we can . . . I don’t know, we’ll just pretend the note wasn’t there?”
“You think just because you delete something from your phone that they can’t get to it?” Asher paces around my room with his
hands above his head. “I’m going home to shower and sleep. Don’t do anything stupid.” He leaves my room without a goodbye.
He’s pissed at me, and I deserve that.
Adrienne comes into my room after him, arms crossed, also looking pissed at me. “Next time, I will tell your mom,” she says before turning to leave, not even giving me a chance to apologize.
I lie back down, unhooking the IV from my arm, and watch the video again, looking for clues. I rewind myself walking behind
the curtain a million times before deciding to watch the entire video. This time I even watch the photos, wondering if maybe
I’ll see something in the reflection of the glass. When I get to the end of the wall where the recent photos are, I pause
it. This year’s photo shows twelve students, four girls and eight boys, with the faculty member that oversees the club. I
recognize Sam, Bryce, and . . . no fucking way. Marissa Wilder.
Was she there last night? Would she have left Wes out alone to go to this? If it was to frame me then maybe . . .
I rewind a smidge to see last year just out of curiosity and I nearly drop my phone on my face. Sitting up, I zoom into the
black-and-white photo on the wall. I can see him standing in the back. Last year’s faculty member to oversee the club was
Miles Holland.
“It could be either one of them,” I whisper to Asher. “Miles oversaw the club: He would know how to get down there. He said
he’d be here this weekend. Or there’s Marissa, who is in the club. What if they’re in on it together?”
We walk to the vigil for Bryce in the campus square. A small platform has been set up in the middle and they pass out white
taper candles to light as the sun goes down.
“We still can’t go to the police,” he says to me in hushed tones as our friends all gather around a spot in the grass.
Annica and Danielle wrap a blanket around the three of us, putting an end to that conversation.
The boys all stand behind us. I glance back at Sam.
I wonder if he’s in trouble. I’d imagine all the society members are.
Dean Mathers gets up onto the platform followed by Bryce’s family. He looks just as I remember him when I sat in his office
last spring and confessed about my affair with Miles. His features hold the same disappointed frown and wrinkles, now that
his college is plagued by more scandal. He starts the vigil with a prayer, before going into Bryce’s accomplishments and urging
anyone to come forward with any information about the killer. I shoot a look at Asher but he only looks away. Mathers also
mentions the grief counseling services on campus for anyone struggling to cope with the loss. I wonder what the grief counselor
would say to me if I went in there.
Bryce’s parents and siblings light their candles first before lighting the ones in the crowd around the platform. Soon the
whole grassy square is lit by thousands of candles. A song plays, slow and somber. People cry in the crowd, Dani leans her
head on my shoulder, and Annica squeezes my hand. When the vigil ends and people start to clear out, our group stays to chat
a little longer with Marissa and her brother Hudson. I stare at her with narrowed eyes.
“It was obviously a crime of passion,” Marissa says, and I swear when she says it she glances at me. Or am I imagining it?
“Maybe him and someone else were high and fucking around with swords and it just happened accidentally,” Wes suggests.
“How do you accidentally stab someone with a sword?” Charlie counters.
“They were serving absinthe punch spiked with powdered shrooms,” Hudson says. “Not to mention they found him by a table with cocaine on it. It definitely could have been unintentional.”
“No, I like Marissa’s ‘crime of passion’ idea,” I say, looking at her. “I bet it was someone who was in this secret club with
him.” I feel Asher nudge me hard with his foot. “Someone who knows him well. Maybe they had a secret together.”
“Well, you’re the one who used to date him—maybe it was you,” she says, crossing her arms, quick to fire accusations right
back at me.
Our heated moment is interrupted by Jake’s laugh. “Could you guys imagine Sloane putting a sword through Bryce? Can you even
pick up a sword?” he asks me.
“Maybe she had help.” Marissa looks at Annica and Dani.
“I’m sorry,” Annica starts, “but are you accusing the three of us of murder?”
“All right, that’s enough,” Wes cuts in.
But I’m no longer listening as I catch a glimpse of a beige checkered peacoat walking down the path leading to the southern
part of campus. A coat I distinctly remember Miles having.
I shrink back into the group until I’m outside the circle, peering down the path. They’ve changed topic and are all too engaged
in conversation to see me creep away after the man. I walk at a fast pace, trying to catch up as he turns the corner on the