“Clark,” I called, when he was almost to the door. He turned back to me slowly, keys still in his hand, his expression wary. “What happens?” I blurted, before I could stop myself. “With Karl and Marjorie?” It was such a small thing compared to everything that had just happened, but it was a world we had built together, and I needed to know.
Clark looked at me for a moment, then unlocked the door. I thought for a second he was going to ignore me, but then I saw him unclip Bertie’s leash and let him in before he turned and crossed the driveway toward me, stopping when there were still several feet between us. “You really want to know?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, Marjorie kills Karl.”
I drew in a breath—it felt like someone had just pressed on a bruise. “What?”
“Oh, yeah,” Clark said, his voice certain, like this was the only answer, like there was no other way this could go. “She finally remembered that she was an assassin. She was just pretending to be someone else, but in the end, it wasn’t who she was.”
Clark’s voice was cold and dispassionate, and I had never heard him speak that way before. When I thought about the gentle way he’d talked to me when I’d first arrived at the house, not even an hour before, I knew that he sounded this way because of me—that I was the one who’d done this to him. I bit my lip hard and felt tears, the ones that had been lurking behind my eyes, threaten to emerge. “No,” I managed, shaking my head, but before I could say more, Clark was continuing on.
“And then Marjorie dies too,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “After she kills Karl. The king’s men kill her in a tavern. They can’t have her talking. It’s best to just erase the evidence, so it’s like it never happened. The end.”
“You can’t just do that.”
Clark looked at me for a long moment. “I just did,” he said, then turned and walked back up the driveway, then into the house, letting the door slam behind him.
I walked to my car, and my hands were shaking so hard it took two attempts to get my key in the ignition, and it wasn’t until I’d gotten the car started and driven two streets away that I pulled over and really let myself cry.
Chapter
EIGHTEEN
Maya looked at me from across the table at Flask’s, concern on her face that didn’t seem to match her purple and pink hair. She pushed aside her blended coffee drink—pumpkin spice. It was the last week of August, but apparently, as far as Flask’s was concerned, that meant it was fall. “How are you doing?” she asked, leaning toward me.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically, taking a drink of my iced latte, since this was just what I said now.
It was what I told my dad when I passed him in the kitchen or the hallway. We weren’t doing our Sundays in the study with movies anymore, and we hadn’t had a dinner, just the two of us, since Peter had appeared in the kitchen. My dad was busier now, but he was still suggesting places we could eat and threatening to make me watch more Westerns. But I had a feeling he was just going through the motions. And even though he kept telling me he hadn’t decided if he was running again, I could read the writing on the wall. So I found a way out of everything he proposed. I told him I was busy, that I had plans with my friends, that I had to work. I didn’t want to fall back into the habit of spending time with him like he was going to be around, when clearly he had one foot out the door.
It had been two weeks since my friends and I had imploded, two weeks since Clark and I had broken up, and it felt more like months. For the first few days I was texting everyone—both on our group thread and individually—but when the silence became deafening, I stopped. The silence of my phone just underscored how alone I was now. I could sometimes get Tom to text me back, but never for very long. He was clearly worried he was being disloyal to Palmer and quickly told me he had to go. I’d gone to the opening night of Bug Juice alone, sitting by myself in the back row, looking around for my friends but not seeing them, barely paying attention to the play as I scanned the theater for Clark, sure I saw him dozens of times before the guy would turn his head and I’d realize it wasn’t him—and then feeling like an idiot for thinking it could have been. But the whole show had run smoothly, and I’d been so proud of Palmer, sitting in the sound booth, pulling it off without a hitch.
I’d told Maya I had to stop walking Bertie, and to make up for it—and to distract myself from my friendless state—I’d been taking on as many clients as she could give me. I was out of the house every morning early, with extra leashes and plastic bags and treats, and didn’t return until early evening, tired and sunburned. And then at night I’d work my way through my organic chemistry textbook, trying not to notice how little I was interested in it any longer, telling myself firmly that this was normal, that nobody liked organic chemistry.
“Really?” Maya asked, her brows knitting together. “Because I’m worried you’ve taken on too much. I can take over some of these walks, or Dave can. It’s summer, after all. You should be out having fun with your friends.”
I had to bite my lip to keep from wincing. “Right,” I said hollowly. “My friends.” I busied myself with carefully folding the Flask’s paper napkin into a perfect square.
“Well,” she said with a shrug, leaning back in her chair, “make sure you go have fun tonight. Dave and I are doing payroll, which is a blast. So have a good time before you have to worry about things like that.”
Maya and I headed our separate ways shortly after that, but what she’d said kept returning to me throughout the evening, while I ate my take-out dinner alone and then tried (without success) to get through a chapter in my O-chem study guide.
And it was Maya’s words, coupled with severe boredom and loneliness, that led me to reach for my phone and scroll through my contacts until I got to Topher.
ME
Hey. You around?
TOPHER
It’s about time.
• • •
I pushed open the door and stepped inside the party, smoothing my hair down and looking around. Topher had told me he would be here later—a friend of his from school was throwing this party. He’d neglected to inform me the friend’s name, just dropped a pin on the address, so I was hoping that nobody would ask me what I was doing there before I could find him. Topher’s “later” could mean many things, and he never seemed to get any more specific—in fact, usually the opposite—when you pressed him for clarification. So I’d gotten ready, then stalled for an hour before heading over, hoping I’d waited long enough, but not really caring all that much if I hadn’t. Even though this party looked just like dozens of parties I’d been to, I was out of the house, which was enough for me at the moment. I didn’t see Topher—or anyone I recognized—but I wasn’t worried about that, not yet. If Topher still hadn’t shown up in an hour, it would be a different story, but I could cross that bridge when I came to it.
I caught my reflection in a hall mirror as I headed back to the kitchen, and smoothed down my skirt. It had just felt wrong, getting ready to come here tonight in silence, with no video commentary, no Palmer sprawled across my bed vetoing outfits, no text chains about what I should wear. And it was equally strange to walk in with no group around me, trying to pretend I belonged there and knew where I was going. I found myself looking around for my friends automatically, even though I knew they probably wouldn’t be here and wouldn’t be talking to me if they were.
I made my way into the kitchen, where an array of bottles and red cups were scattered along the countertop, and pulled the Diet Coke bottle out of my bag. Now that I was pretty sure my dad was running again, I figured I couldn’t be too careful. It was also, I realized as I opened the bottle and took a long drink, not a bad idea for me to just stick to soda, since I was at a party, for maybe the first time ever, with no backup.