CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A
ll evening, we never had a moment of peace or privacy. It didn’t seem to bother them too much that we couldn’t talk. Then, Kolton mentioned it would be awesome if we could take a fall camping trip to Green Dunes for senior year, and wouldn’t it be a cool way to honor Ben?
That clued me into their intentions. Dad agreed, dates were discussed, and then plans were made.
So we were going camping this weekend.
I checked my phone for the umpteenth time this morning as I stood in the school’s main office. It seemed like the guys were giving me space until then.
“Government and econ with Ms. Akers,” Mrs. Hardy announced with a smile from the other side of the desk, holding out a newly printed paper.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I went ahead and told your counselor to change it.
You still need one history credit. As a senior, that was the only thing left in that slot to replace it.
It seemed redundant to make you wait around and waste another first period. ”
“Yes, thank you! That’s great.” I glanced over the adjusted schedule. “Where is—”
“Emmanuel!” Mrs. Handy called.
His head popped in from the hallway. He must have been doing work in the back rooms. “You rang—oh, hi, Willa.” His grin split his face.
Mrs. Handy glanced between us, a speculative twinkle in her eye. “Can you be a dear and walk Ms. Willa down to her new first period, please?”
“My pleasure.” His grin could melt Alaskan ice.
“Enough of that now,” Mrs. Handy warned. “Straight there and back, Emmanuel. I’ll be watching the clock.”
Manuel laughed.
I spluttered. “Oh! We aren’t—”
“We’ll behave,” Manuel promised, even if his grin guaranteed anything but. “There and back.”
He’d already taken off down the hall. I saved my breath by not arguing—because doth protest too much was a thing—and sped after him. I didn’t get very far.
“You.” Urena stood in my way, hugging herself in a huddle, but her glare spat nails.
My voice sounded calmer than I felt. “Yes?”
Beyond her, Manuel turned and began doubling back.
“You’re toxic. Ben was an amazing guy—the best. We were supposed to get married. I was going to be a doctor, and he would have stayed at home with the kids after he retired from football. I had it all planned out. It would have been the perfect life, but you ruined it!”
Words failed me for so many reasons. She didn’t sound rational in the slightest. Kolton ensured that the school knew the rumors about Ben and me dating were true, and to some extent, it sounded like Urena had accepted as much, but she’d twisted her narrative around to accommodate the new information.
The outcome landed in the same end zone, with her squarely playing the role of victim, though I doubted any ref would have allowed the maneuvers she’d used to get there.
“You assumed Ben would be a stay-at-home wife?”
She scoffed. “How very unprogressive of you. Men can stay home with the children too, you know!”
“Sure, but… was that what Ben wanted? Did you two talk about it?” Good gravy, why was I trying to be sympathetic to Ben’s ex?
“Of course we discussed it!”
“Right. It’s just, he always had to be doing something. He was at my house five minutes and fixed the fridge, adjusted the TV, and helped my dad solve something he’d been stewing over for months.”
“Exactly, he would have been amazing at home.”
She missed the point by a mile. People like Ben, who could study anything and figure out how it worked, leaned toward engineering degrees.
“Agree to disagree,” I intoned, the beginnings of heat trickling into my words.
Forget rational and sympathetic. Dammit, I’d lost Ben too, and I wasn’t taking my big feelings out on everyone.
“If you never asked him, you shouldn’t have assumed.
Ben wasn’t just a football player or your live-in housemaid. He was smart.”
Manuel had reached us, though he stood off and behind Urena a bit, hesitant to step in. Urena didn’t notice him.
Her laugh cut a bitter wound through the air. “Smart? Idolizing the dead a bit much, aren’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ben was a lot of things. He was the most popular boy in school, the star linebacker, the captain of the football team, and a gentleman to boot, but he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”
I saw red. “Fuck you!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Manuel cut in, stepping between us and pushing me back two steps, recreating the distance I’d destroyed. He turned on Urena. “You should get to class.”
“Stay out of it,” Urena clapped back. “Why are you even here?”
He folded his arms, releasing me when I made no moves to dodge around him and attack. Had I been about to fight her? “I’m an office worker this period. Mrs. Handy asked me to walk her to class.”
“Poor, helpless Willa Walker. Is that how you got Ben to date you? You created some sob story that made him want to be your knight in shining armor?”
It echoed a little too closely to what Manuel had implied yesterday, about the guys feeling protective of me after the four-wheeling accident, but her words failed to cut as deeply as they could have.
Nothing about our time together, either mine and Ben’s or with the rest of them, had been contrived by some devious plan.
Our relationships rode the natural ripples that spread from the first splash.
“What, like your sob story about how you were his girlfriend when he died? Kolton says you never were, not even when you two were ‘together.’”
She gasped. “You bitch!”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Manuel put his hand on my arm, tugging me behind him.
“Willa won’t stand here and subject herself to your abuse.
” He looked dark, he always did since he preferred to wear coal black clothing, but his furrowed brows and clenched jaw appeared especially dangerous in that moment.
“Get to class before I do something about it.”
Urena winced at the threat in his words, and her eyes filled with tears.
I didn’t blame her. My own instincts urged me to do the same, and he hadn’t been aiming that intensity in my direction.
Urena stood frozen with her lips parted, but no words came out.
Taking that as nonverbal acquiescence, Manuel continued to steer me down the hall.
We’d passed two classrooms when her voice chased us. “You’re the reason Ben is dead!”
This time, I was the one to nudge Manuel to keep walking when his grip tightened on my arm before loosening, projecting his intention to turn around. “Don’t worry about it.”
If he’d been angry before, he looked livid now. “No! You already blame yourself, and she—”
I placed a calming hand on his arm. “Let it go. She isn’t entirely rational.”
He frowned and huffed when he caught me looking, then he winked.
“You killed him! His dad says so!” Urena screamed, her voice wavering at the top of her lungs.
Every muscle froze and locked up. I physically flinched as the last memory of Ben’s dad, the chief, stole my vision.
“How did you do it?” Chief Pierce shook me. “Huh? How the fuck did you do it?”
“Do what?” I repeated, crying as he slapped my cheek hard enough that my head snapped to the side.
Any harder, and he might have cracked my neck.
Officers rushed to separate us.
They couldn’t. Ben’s dad gripped my jaw. “Answer! Me! How did you kill Ben?”
Dazed and in denial, my brain refused to internalize the reality of what he was screaming.
“I what?” My words came out slurred, and my eyes kept sliding to the left, like an egg on a slick frying pan. “Ben’s what?”
Chief Pierce bellowed, long and rage filled. His hand rose again, but before his fist landed, delivering a blow that rattled my brain, a flare of white surged from the corner of my eye.
Crack!
Then, a football team of officers tackled Chief Pierce away from me.
I blinked. “B-Ben’s dead?” No one answered. I repeated, “Ben’s dead?”
“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” the chief bellowed as he was wrestled from the room. “I wish I was the one to find you in the woods! I’d have strangled you with my bare hands!”
I turned and threw up in a trash can. Every heave made my eyes pulse with red-hot pain until black circles danced across my vision.
I dry heaved, nauseous but empty.
Blinking to focus on an increasingly blurring room, I locked eyes on Officer Reeves. He’d returned, and he was the one holding the trash can for me. “How?”
Reeves hesitated but eventually said the words that bottomed out my reality. “Car wreck. His brake lines were cut.”
Manuel’s warm grasp provided a tether, pulling me free from the dangerous sea of memories.
Urena’s bitter laugh held satisfaction. “That’s right. I know your secrets. I called. He told me everything.”
“He told you lies,” I croaked as the hallway spun.
She paused at the conviction in my voice but steeled herself. “You think I would believe some psycho lunatic teen over the actual Chief of Police, Ben’s father?”
Oh, that was not good.
She knew too much, but she kept her words to heavy implications. Why?
She could ruin me in an hour. The rumor mill loved Ben’s and my story, as this week had so effectively proven. They’d eat this new slant up and be slavering to fill in the blanks, each tale more insane than the last.
I could see the headlines now: MENTALLY UNSTABLE TEEN ARRANGED TO KILL SON OF CHIEF OF POLICE IN RETALIATION MURDER.
It would be plastered everywhere.
For that matter, why would Ben’s dad tell Urena all of this?
The implied conditions for not throwing the chief under the bus was that they buried all the evidence they had on Ben’s brake lines being cut.
It punctured too many holes in their nice, neat narrative.
My silence meant their silence, yet Pierce told an irrational teen girl everything?
That was sure to get questions going.
Was he not worried I’d call foul play?
Or maybe he disagreed with the decision to cover up his son’s murder, even if it meant risking his own career…
A teacher came out into the hall, noticed Urena, realized she’d been the one yelling, and began scolding her.
We hadn’t been spotted. Manuel tugged me to move, even as Urena and I kept our attention locked on each other.
She looked very satisfied. She’d rattled me and knew it. Her gaze promised retribution, and that fire was backed up by conviction. Whatever story Ben’s dad had spun, she genuinely believed she was doing the right thing, exposing a killer who somehow got away with murder.
Manuel maneuvered us around the corner before the teacher turned to see what held Urena’s focused attention. He rubbed his hands up and down my arms. “Your lips are blue. How is that possible?”
Blue?
Then I felt the goosebumps.
The watch had been beeping in warning for who knew how long. I clicked the button to silence the alarm and checked the temperature, somewhat unsurprised at the low number.
What threw me for a loop was how none of the other usual symptoms had presented themselves when I was this far into an episode.
Something kept them at bay. They’d been all wonky this week. Twice, I’d had my phone go off, and both times, the spells had reversed. Prior to this, I could use one hand to count the number of times that’d happened.
My eyes locked on Manuel. He’d been there each time. Again, I had to ask myself, was there a connection?
I racked my brain for details of the other times this had happened, but my mind only wanted to recall the look on Urena’s face at the end.
Satisfied. Ruthless.
Dangerous.
“Hey, hey, hey. Willa, look at me. You’re okay. Screw it.” Manuel’s arms wrapped around me, pulling me in close. “It isn’t your fault. I don’t know what the hell is going on or who said what, but you did not kill Ben Pierce.”
He held me until I melted into him, a moment of weakness where I needed to feel like I wasn’t alone, even if it was only for a second. If Urena talked, divulging even a fraction of what she knew, then it’d be the last time someone outside my family offered any form of comfort.
And yet, I couldn’t stay there, basking in his warmth forever. It felt like a lie, a stolen comfort. I pulled away with great effort. “Thank you.”
He didn’t let me get far, catching my shoulders and stooping to meet my gaze. “Willa…” He paused, glancing around to check the hallway.
We were alone.
Alone was bad.
“I’d like to get to class now, if that’s okay.”
His lips pulled down at the sides. “Wait, Willa, tell me. Will you be okay?”
“Honestly?” I sighed. “Ask me tomorrow.”
He chewed over those words. “You believe Urena will tell everyone… what? What exactly is she going to say?”
“A lot. I’m not sure.”
“You seemed like you knew,” he countered.
“I know that Ben’s dad thinks I killed him.”
“But why? Are you sure?”
A bitter laugh escaped, as ugly as Urena’s. “Pretty sure I’m sure, but he can’t have any evidence, or…” A horrifying thought whispered through my mind. “Or if he does, it was planted.”
Manuel straightened. “You make this sound like a big conspiracy, like this is some low-budget thriller movie. You’re saying someone is trying to frame you? Why? Who?”
I said nothing, because what could I say?
There were too many question marks and all the whys stacked up to an unbelievable story.
One thing was for sure—if Ben’s dad didn’t plan to play by the rules, then I needed to do some damage control.
I had to tell the guys at least part of the story. Pierce had forced my hand. I couldn’t lose them too. Despite all my efforts to freeze them out during my weeks of recovery, they proved too stubborn to shake, and now, I was too selfish to do this on my own.