Chapter 53 Avery
Avery
I don’t understand. It can’t be Marlene. It can’t.
“Yes, I figured it out,” Emerson says, sighing as if this is all incredibly boring.
“It helped that you told Javi. I heard you admitting it, right before you left him there by the cliffside. A good plan, too, to frame Mr. McCullough for it. I’ll give you some credit there.
But your problem was trying to take my idea and make it yours. ”
He touches the edge of the knife.
“Caulder,” I say, keeping my voice even so that no one panics. “We should get the teachers—”
“No need for that,” Emerson says. “I knocked them both out. Used the same sleeping pill I used on Lucas. Told them it was just water, and they didn’t realize what I’d dissolved in it. By the time they wake up, we’ll have figured out our story just in time for the police.”
“Emerson, what the hell are you talking about?” Caulder asks. “Is losing all that blood messing with your brain or something?”
He’s looking from Emerson to Marlene. And I see the disbelief there. He doesn’t think she could’ve done this.
“Ask her,” Emerson says. “Ask her if I’m telling the truth.”
Everyone’s gazes swing to her. For a moment, she just looks at the floor. And then, at last, she speaks.
“I didn’t mean for him to die,” she says. “But—”
“You see?” Emerson says. “It’s her fault!”
“Mari? No way,” Lucas says, looking flabbergasted. “How could you…? You didn’t actually kill—”
“How could I?” Marlene snarls, anger clear in her voice. “Don’t you dare talk to me about ‘how could I’ after what you did. I thought I loved you, Lucas.”
His face falls, and he looks like a puppy who knows he’s gotten into something he’s not supposed to get into. Guilt and shame mix with horror.
“I told you, Mari,” he says softly. “I just…I just don’t feel that way. You’re like my—”
“I’m like your little sister,” Marlene says, tears shining in her eyes.
“Yes, I remember. How could I forget? But don’t you dare bullshit me, Lucas.
You loved that I fawned over you. Loved that I commented on every single one of your videos and wore your merch.
You could’ve told me then, but no. You let me suffer. ”
Lucas opens his mouth to speak, but Marlene cuts him off.
“And when I needed you the most, you betrayed me.”
Now her tears don’t just shimmer in her brown eyes. They tumble down her cheeks, and she shakes her head as her lip quivers.
“I told you I needed your help,” she says. “You were supposed to protect me from him. You were supposed to get it on film so we could stop him. But you didn’t come.”
Lucas looks almost as confused as I feel. What’s she talking about? Or, more importantly, who is she talking about?
Caulder gets it before I do. I watch his eyes widen as realization seizes him.
“Jay,” he says. “The note. You wrote that.”
Marlene glances at Caulder. “How’d you know that?”
But Caulder doesn’t answer her. I can practically see his mind whirring, fitting the pieces together. I know he is because I’m doing the same thing.
“Kaitlyn said Mr. Jay was a danger to us,” I say, remembering the accusations she leveled against Ms. Dorman. “And the guy I spoke to at the competition…He said he was known for going after young girls.”
You were supposed to get it on film so we could stop him.
I stare at Marlene, horror seizing me. “Oh my god, Marlene…”
“He started as soon as I joined the Debate Club,” Marlene says, voice colder than I’ve ever heard it.
Than I even thought was possible. “He told me all the teachers had everyone’s numbers for Debate Club stuff, so I should give him mine.
He would text me all the time, but it was always vaguely about debate stuff.
Even though it seemed weird, I…I thought maybe this is what Coastal Canyon was like.
Maybe teachers were just really involved and friendly.
But then, right before the competition, he…
cornered me after one of our meetings. He put his hand on my leg. I…”
“I found her crying,” Kaitlyn cuts in. “In the room, after he left. She told me what he did. Not that I was surprised. In fact, the only thing that really surprised me was that the school let him come back after what he did to Hadley.”
Kaitlyn rolls her head, cracking her neck.
“But that shouldn’t have surprised me, should it?” she says, and her gaze finds Caulder. “People like Jay, they never face consequences. No one ever gives a shit.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Caulder asks. “Show someone the messages? God, why didn’t you tell me?”
“We talked at the debate competition about going to the school when we got back,” Marlene says. “But like I said, nothing about the texts was that incriminating. We needed something so damning that they’d be forced to fire him.”
“So you asked him to meet you outside during the game,” I say.
“We knew Lucas was always filming everything,” Kaitlyn says. “And if Marlene said she needed his help to film something, we figured he would.” Kaitlyn’s eyes cut to Lucas and narrow. “We had no idea he would let her down.”
“Mari, I didn’t know,” he says. “I didn’t realize it was that—”
“I had already slipped the note under Jay’s door,” Marlene says. “So I asked Lucas to meet me outside after Caulder and Avery went in the room, and then I left.”
Her gaze settles on Lucas.
“Jay came out. Lucas didn’t.”
I taste bile in my throat. I don’t want to hear what happened next.
“Mari—”
“He tried to kiss me,” she says. “I figured Lucas would show up at any moment. But when I realized he wasn’t coming, I pushed Jay away.
He didn’t like that. He told me I was being a tease.
I told him to let me go, but he grabbed me by the shoulders.
He turned me around, and his hands…They were going everywhere.
I tried to scream, but he put his fist in my mouth. ”
Both Caulder’s and Lucas’s bodies have gone almost entirely rigid. Lucas’s entire face looks shattered, the shame and regret rolling through every feature.
“The rain made everything muddy. That was the only thing that saved me, really. At one point, he sort of slipped, and as he tried to get his footing, I was able to wriggle out of one of the arms of my hoodie to get away. He grabbed the sleeve and tried to yank me back, and it sent me flying into him. He stumbled in the mud and…he fell.”
Outside, thunder rumbles. Marlene waits for it to pass before lifting her eyes and looking at each of us in turn.
“His head hit a rock,” she says. “I’ve never heard a sound like that.”
In the van, I’d wondered how hard someone would need to hit his skull for it to crack.
Apparently, one slam into a rock was all it took.
“You see?” Emerson says. “She admits it. She’s the murderer—”
“No,” Marlene says, shaking her head. “I’m not. But you’re right. I did panic. I knew the teachers would think I pushed him. They wouldn’t believe me. After all, people had believed Emerson over my mom—”
“Your mom? Emerson?” I ask, confused. I look at Emerson, but suddenly, he doesn’t seem so sure of himself.
“She was the nurse at the private school Emerson and I went to,” Marlene says.
“She’d been there for years. Everyone loved her.
One day, she saw Emerson in the hallway taking pills that he wasn’t supposed to have.
She asked him if he had a prescription for them.
He said it was ‘none of her fucking business.’ When she reported him to the principal, he told them she was stealing drugs from students.
And even though they couldn’t prove anything, they still let her go.
And because I was only allowed to go to the school tuition-free because she was an employee, I ended up here. ”
Marlene laughs, a hollow, empty sound as she glares at Emerson. “I don’t think you even realized she was my mom. Didn’t even know we went to the same school. He left our school willingly because he wanted a better shot at glory or whatever. Meanwhile, because of his bullshit, I had to leave.”
“Wait,” I say. “What do you mean, you panicked after Jay…after he fell?”
“I saw the telephone box,” she says. “It was near where we were…standing. I figured Emerson would call the police and tell them I killed his family friend and teacher. So, I grabbed all the wires, and I yanked them out.”
She looks over to Kaitlyn. “And then…Kaitlyn found me.”
Now we all turn to Kaitlyn, who folds her arms over her chest.
“I knew we just needed to play it cool and figure out what to do next,” she explains. “Emerson had had us throw our clothes on the floor anyway, so I grabbed Marlene new stuff, she changed, and we went back inside to act like we’d just been hiding during the prank like we were supposed to.”
“Of course,” Marlene says. “Things then got complicated. Because that’s when we found—”
“Lucas,” Caulder and I say at the same time.
Marlene nods. “Emerson’s story…It didn’t make any sense.
I’d been outside. Sure, maybe someone could have snuck around, but they probably would’ve passed by the side where Jay and I were.
They would’ve seen us. Why wouldn’t they have attacked us?
Or, if they were robbers, why go to a house where you see people outside?
And even then…wouldn’t I have seen them run away at some point? ”
“It was too convenient with the whole ‘prank’ thing,” Kaitlyn says. “And then, obviously, Javi had found the sleeping pills. And even though we didn’t know why Emerson was doing it, we knew something was wrong. Something was weird.”
“But,” Marlene says, “we also realized that we had an opportunity.”
“When the police came,” Kaitlyn says, “we’d have a ‘killer’ to pin Jay’s death on. Emerson had given us an out.”
“But what about Javi?” Caulder asks, and this time, he stares directly at Kaitlyn. Because how could she kill the so-called love of her life?
“Javi…Javi wasn’t our fault,” Kaitlyn says, her eyes glazing over with angry, miserable tears. “Someone pushed him. Marlene said she saw McCullough nearby, so it must’ve been him—”
“Oh no,” Emerson says, shaking his head. “That would be me.”
At once, the hallway goes silent. There is a beat where I’m sure I can hear every heartbeat in the room. And then Emerson holds up the knife, examining it before speaking slowly and clearly.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says.
“We’re going to go back to my plan. Very soon, the police are going to show up.
And we are going to tell them that we were attacked by some would-be burglar.
We’re going to tell them this burglar terrorized us, and when we confronted them, they attacked our teacher and killed him.
We’re going to say Javi tried to play hero and went after him, getting himself killed in the process.
We’re going to say our other teachers took sleeping pills and were passed out the entire night.
And we’re going to say that I saved us all. ”
“Why would we ever say that?” Caulder asks. “You’re insane. You’re actually—”
It happens in a flash. One minute, Emerson is examining the knife. The next, he’s grabbed Lucas out of nowhere and has his arm around his throat to hold him in place, the knife tip pressing into the skin just below his jaw.
“Because if you don’t, Lucas here will also die,” Emerson says, grinning wickedly.
“And we will change the story to say that Marlene’s actually the one who killed everyone.
Because I know her DNA will be all over Jay.
And that bloody jacket you all found in the woods…
That’s got Jay’s blood and your blood on it, doesn’t it, Marlene?
You didn’t realize you left it out there, so you tried to spin your story to blame McCullough? ”
Marlene’s eyes are glassy now with tears she’s clearly holding back, her face contorted with anger. But she doesn’t deny it.
“You got desperate, didn’t you?” Emerson continues. “Tried to adjust at the last minute, when you realized things weren’t going to go away as easily. It might’ve saved you in the moment, but what was your plan for after? Find it and destroy it? Or did you not think that far?”
Marlene doesn’t answer, just glares. Kaitlyn, too, looks furious.
“Now, I can make that go away with the right money to the right people, and we can forget you made those mistakes,” Emerson says, pausing to examine the blade again. “Or, of course, we can have a problem. What’s it going to be?”
“Jesus Christ, man,” Lucas says, frozen in place. “This isn’t the plan—”
“The plan was supposed to be simple,” Emerson says. “The plan was supposed to be straightforward. I’m not the one who changed things. I’m not the one to blame!”
His voice is getting angrier and angrier, and I realize the danger we’re all in is growing more and more. The knife bites into Lucas’s neck, and blood beads there immediately.
“You think we asked for this?” Marlene says, her voice surprising me with how hard it is. “You think I wanted to see anyone—even that asshole—die tonight?”
Tears spill as she speaks. “You did this, Emerson. And I won’t go along with your bullshit. I refuse. I refuse.”
Emerson’s eyes are daggers now, the hatred boiling clear. “Then I guess you just killed someone else, Marlene.”
He pulls his arm away and raises the knife. In those seconds, several things happen at the same time.
Caulder rushes forward, pushing Lucas out of the way.
I race at Emerson, aiming to knock him down, while at the same time, Kaitlyn goes for Emerson’s arm—the one with the knife—and he slashes out, pulling the blade across her cheek.
I scramble to help Caulder tug Lucas away, and Emerson climbs to his knees, continuing to stab at Kaitlyn as he careens forward.
Then there’s a scream, and Marlene’s hurtling toward him.
He slashes at her, but she knocks the knife out of his hand, sending it clattering to the ground.
Where Kaitlyn grabs it.
And lifts it in the air before driving it clean into Emerson’s chest.
“That is for Javi,” she shouts.
She sits back on the floor and lets out a breath, and it’s silent.
Then there’s the sound of the door opening below. We all look up and scramble to the top of the stairs to see an exceptionally wet and bloody figure on the threshold.
“Did someone say my name?” Javi asks, just as Kaitlyn passes out.