Chapter 9. Isabel, the Rising Star #2
We tried the front door, then the side, but it wasn’t until we remembered the butler’s pantry that we made it inside, the sash from my robe balled in my fist. We climbed upstairs just like we did the night of the party, except this time every creak in the floorboards had me spinning, convinced Scout had miscalculated and someone else was here.
She didn’t pause. She was a missile. This version of Scout, I remembered well.
We found Alden’s bedroom at the far end of the third floor.
Scout flung open the door and suddenly there he was, the boy who had occupied so much of my attention, lying in bed in blue plaid boxers, a small lamp illuminating the book in his hand.
We froze in the doorway, staring. Alden froze in bed, staring back.
He was long and lanky, so skinny you could see his ribs.
“What are you doing here?” he croaked.
“We came to talk about Georgia.” Scout swept toward him. I followed, closing the door and locking it.
Alden dropped his book and scrambled back against his headboard, trying to climb to the farthest corner of his bed.
“Grab him,” Scout said simply.
A strange thing had happened to me. At Scout’s order, all the terror I’d felt sneaking through the house dissipated, replaced by cold fury. Georgia was decaying in the ground and he was warm and comfortable in bed?
I lunged at him with the handcuffs and sash, wrestling for control of his arms while Scout pinned his legs.
Alden and I fought, his fist connecting with my cheek, but I had his shock on my side and managed to shove him back, his head clipping the wall.
I caught his wrist in a fuzzy handcuff, looping it through the rails of his bed frame so it held him in place.
“What are you doing?” he screamed.
“Shut up.” My voice was unrecognizable.
“I didn’t kill her.” He tried to push against me. “I swear!”
I managed to bend his other arm behind him, capturing it in the other cuff. I stood back from the bed, breathing hard and sweating, unable to believe I’d pulled it off. My cheek burned from where he’d hit me.
“We know you’re lying.” Scout tied his feet together with my bathrobe sash, so tight the skin around the knot went white. “You ambushed her in the pool house.”
Alden’s face was bright red. He was crying. “I didn’t, I swear.”
“Is that where you dreamed of doing it? Did you dream of getting her in bed?”
“I never even went out there!”
Scout sat on his thighs. I hovered next to her, staring at him.
“What was it?” Scout leaned in close and he reared back. “You made a move on her and she said no? Did that damage your fragile ego?”
“We know you were obsessed with her,” I said.
“I loved Georgia,” Alden cried. “I wouldn’t have hurt her.”
“Brooks said you warned other guys she was off-limits.” It had come out in the interview process. “You wanted her all to yourself.”
“And if you couldn’t have her,” Scout added softly, “no one could.”
“I did say that, but—” Alden suddenly stopped, his eyes fixed on Scout.
She was pulling a Swiss Army knife out of her pocket. I recognized it as the one she’d gotten during her ill-fated foray into the Girl Scouts. She slid the knife up and looked at the wicked tip.
“What are you going to do?” Alden’s chest was rising and falling too fast. He jerked his head toward the door. “Help!” he screamed. “Somebody help me!”
“Did Georgia scream?” Scout asked. “Did she beg for help while you choked her?”
Tears filled my eyes. I had imagined it so many times.
“What are you— Someone, help!” Alden thrashed in the bed, and I leaned my weight against his shoulder, suffocating his movements.
“Do you think it’s fair that my sister is dead and you get to go on living?” Scout’s voice was still a whisper. “Live in this big mansion with Daddy’s money and forget she ever existed?”
“No, but I— It wasn’t me!”
“This is so you won’t forget her,” Scout said, and pressed the knife into his chest.
I would never forget the pitch of Alden’s screams. His blood bloomed instantly as Scout carved into him, drawing a G, then an E, then an O that looked like a marquise diamond, pointy on both ends.
“This is where you put your hands on her,” I told him, my voice barely discernible over his screaming.
“She couldn’t have an open casket because your handprints wouldn’t fade.
And the doctors couldn’t put her face back together, after what you did.
Did it make you proud, the hole you caved in her head? ”
Scout turned to me and our eyes met. It was a wordless acknowledgment: We were in this together.
Georgia had been mine, too—my little sister, my responsibility, mine to protect.
If Scout was going to sink to the bottom of the ocean, I’d tie myself to her and drown by her side. That was what sisters did.
She handed me the bloody knife, metal grip warm from her skin. And in that moment, I knew the truth: I would’ve accepted the knife even if I felt no loyalty. Because it was electrifying to see him in pain. Revenge was intoxicating, transformative, and it possessed me surer than any spirit.
I bent over Alden’s chest and got to work.