Chapter 32
Wes will live.
We got the news days later, once we were all settled back in at Pembroke, dealing with the loss of almost two of our friends.
Asher sent the text to the group, letting us all know. Wes suffered a lot of internal bleeding, but she didn’t stab any major
organs. He could be back at Pembroke as early as next week. The thought had me nearly chewing the insides of my cheeks raw.
How could I face him again? I cheated on him three times with Asher and then got him almost stabbed to death. If he ever even
wanted to see me again, I’d be lucky.
I haven’t seen Asher, Dani, or anyone from the group since we’ve been back. Asher went to Colorado as planned. Dani has texted
me every day since but I haven’t replied. I know she has Charlie to console her, and maybe that’s wrong of me to not respond.
Annica was her best friend too. But my feelings on the matter are a little more complicated.
“I like your story,” Claire says after reading through the final draft of my short story for Renner’s class. She and my mom have been at my apartment since I left the hospital last weekend. I called my mom in tears and told her everything. But it’s now Wednesday and they are packing up to leave.
“Thanks,” I say. “But I’m changing the ending.”
“Why?”
“Because she doesn’t deserve the medic, and I’m not sure the soldier deserves her. So who does she choose?” I say, more so
to myself.
“Maybe she chooses herself,” Claire says.
“Maybe she does.”
“We’ll be back in two weeks for graduation,” my mom says, coming into my room with her bags slung over her shoulder. “And
I will be calling to check in every night.”
“Okay,” I say.
“And don’t forget about your appointment with the therapist: It’s Friday morning.”
“Okay,” I say again.
“And if you want to come home at any point, you can. I already spoke with the dean about you finishing your coursework from
home.”
“I’m going to finish out here, but okay.”
The moment they leave, Dani texts in the group and says we should all get together, for a small memorial for Annica. The school
wouldn’t have a vigil for her like they did for Bryce. They wouldn’t mourn a murderer. I wouldn’t either. So I don’t reply
to the text.
Hours later I get a text from Charlie.
Please come over.
I know he’s only asking on behalf of Dani. I leave in my pajama pants and a hoodie.
When I open the door to the house, everyone is in the living room. Sam, Charlie, Jake, and Dani. The group seems so much smaller
without Wes, Asher, and Annica in the room. I stop in the frame and debate turning around. Dani gets up and walks to the door,
wraps her arms around me, and cries. I hug her back, and I cry too.
We all sit in near silence in the living room, with the windows open, listening to the rain. But there’s something about being
together as a group that feels good. Even if no one talks, at least we aren’t alone.
“I made a small memorial for her in the backyard, if you want to add anything to it,” Dani whispers. “But don’t feel like
you have to.”
I lift my head to look at her. “You think Wes is going to come back and want a memorial for someone who stabbed him in his
backyard?” It comes out harsher than I meant it to.
“I know that what she did was wrong,” Dani starts. “But she was obviously mentally unwell, and we didn’t catch on soon enough
to help her. She needed our help.”
I stand to leave. “I will never forgive her, and I will never mourn her. I knew I shouldn’t have even come over here.”
“There were good memories too,” she says quietly. And while that may be true, no amount of them could ever take away the bad
from this year alone. “Just stay here with us for a while longer, please? You can sleep in Wesley’s room.”
Her pleading tone has me sitting back down, for another round of friendly silence.
When everyone heads to their rooms for bed, I trudge up the stairs and stop between Wesley’s door and Asher’s.
I go up the attic stairs to Asher’s room to find it’s exactly the way he left it. I climb into his bed and fall asleep.
Half of Pembroke still thinks I’m the Pembroke Psycho; the other half thinks I killed the Pembroke Psycho. Neither of these
things is true. Though I guess the latter could be. It was me who drove Annica to this point, so it kind of was me who killed
her.
I feel all the stares from my peers as I pick up my cap and gown for graduation. The whispers that accompany them. I can only
grit my teeth as I scurry from the student center feeling robbed of the excitement that comes with graduation. I feel robbed
of the entire year. And it makes me angry. The more I think about it, the angrier I become. How could she do this to me? Any
normal person would just decide to no longer be friends after graduation. She could’ve just called off our whole friendship
that very first weekend when she saw his name in my journal. Sure, I wouldn’t have had friends for my entire senior year,
but even that would’ve been better than this. My therapist says it’s natural to be angry with her, that it’s okay to let that
anger out. I don’t have to bottle it up.
Before I know where I’m heading, I’m on the front porch of the boys’ house. I let myself in, past the empty living room, the
kitchen, straight to the back door. And in the far end of the yard, propped up against the wooden fence, is the small memorial
Dani made. It is a wooden cross, with a stuffed giraffe, a candle, flowers, and a bunch of photos of all of us.
So I let my anger out.
I pick up the cross and snap it over my knee, throwing the pieces in the bonfire pit. I kick the giraffe over their fence and pop the heads off the flowers, rip apart the petals, and start to tear up the photos.
“I thought about doing that too.”
I turn to see Wesley standing by the back door.
“Oh my god, you’re back.” I run to him, and he grunts when I hug him. “Sorry.” I release him, remembering the stab wound on
his side. “Are you okay?”
“Mentally, no. Physically . . . also no.”
“When did you get back?”
“Monday,” he says. But it’s Thursday, and he never said anything.
“Oh. You never texted, or called, or . . .”
“Yeah,” he says. “I just needed some time.” He grabs the lighter fluid from the cement steps, pouring it over the wood and
pieces of Annica’s memorial, and lights it. We both sit in the chairs around the small fire. “I need you to tell me everything,
and I need it to be the truth.”
I don’t want to cause him any more harm, but I am tired of lying, and I don’t think I could do it if I tried. “I’m so sorry,”
I say.
“The truth, Sloane.”
So I tell him about the journal, about working with Asher to catch Miles. I tell him how Asher caught me trying to hide evidence,
and about the agreement we made in order for him to help me. Then I tell him what happened that night when I found him upstairs.
The whole story feels rehearsed for how many times I’ve said it by now. To Grange, to my friends, to the therapist, and now
to Wes.
His mouth forms a hard line, taking it all in.
“Where were you? Where were you when she took me upstairs?”
“I was with Asher,” I admit.
“Doing what exactly?”
I couldn’t say it. “I think you already know,” I whisper.
We watch the flames crack and hiss. The photos now nothing but ash in the wind. I don’t want to ask him what this means for
us, or if I even want there to be an us. Can I even ever really be with Wes if half my heart belongs to someone else?
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“I know this year was hard for you, and I was so caught up with Marissa and the house for most of it that I didn’t even realize
what was going on. You had to make tough choices and do difficult things. And I don’t even blame you for falling for my cousin
because it seems like he was the only one there for you through it all. I just wish you told me.”
“I wish I did too.” How different would things be if I had just confided in him from the start? “Are we breaking up?” I ask.
He takes a deep breath. “Yeah, I think we are. As a couple, but not as friends.”
Friends. That word again. But this time, I feel relieved to hear it. He should hate me; he should never want to see me ever
again. I look over at him in the orange glow of the fire before standing up and walking over to him. He looks up at me, unsure
of what I’m doing as I sit on his lap, curl in my knees, and lean onto his chest. He lets out a breath and brings his arms
around me, holding me that way until the last embers go out.
“Almost ready?” Adrienne says from my door.
I stand in the mirror of my bedroom with my cap and gown on over my white dress.
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
When we leave the apartment for the ceremony I almost trip when my foot collides with the small package sitting on our doormat.
Ripping it open, and looking inside, I see what looks like a large stack of paper. I pull it from the packaging and read the
sticky note on the front.
This was never my story to tell.
MH
“What is that?” she asks.
“Um, one second,” I say, going back inside.
It’s the story he wrote about the murders. I take it to my bedroom and set it on my bed. I’ll come back to it later. Maybe
I’ll read it. But I look at it again, then at the small trash can in my room.
I toss it in.
Thousands of chairs are placed in the middle of the field and the stands are full of everyone’s families. We walk out sorted
by college, and in alphabetical order. I can only hope the ceremony goes quick as the sun beats down on us. The dean briefly
glosses over the deaths of the would-be graduates this year and I can’t help but look down the row at where Annica would be
sitting. Did she not even care about graduating? Did she even think she would? We turn our tassels and some people toss their
caps into the air, but I don’t.