“Science was too nerdy,” June says loudly. “People had so much fun doing limbo. You can’t blame me for giving people what they wanted.”
In a blur of movement, Xander has her face in his hand. His nails sink into her cheekbone hard enough to make his arm shake. Her lips pucker like a fish in his palm. But while his grip stays firm, his face slackens. Tears glaze his eyes, and finally his voice breaks. “I tried with you, June. I tried to be nice. I tried to be a good boyfriend. I tried to get you to stop. But you wouldn’t let me fix you. You wanted me to change. You treated my life like it was trash that you were sorting through. You made fun of my family. Letting you get close to me just made it easier for you to hurt us. It was a mistake. I gave you too much ammunition. And then you cheated on me with Caleb Treadwell. You couldn’t stop humiliating me. What did you think would happen at the end? How much did you think you could hurt people before they hurt you back?” His thumb digs so deep into her cheek that I’m scared it’ll break the skin. Before it does, he moves away from her in disgust. Tears slide down his cheeks. “Hanging was too good for you. You two were everything wrong with Cross Creek.”
I know that June and Dayton were those people. Snobby and elitist. Narrow-minded and shallow. But there’s so much more to them than that. There’s laughter and compassion and hope and love and a joy for lives they can’t live anymore. And no matter what they said about Riley and Xander, they didn’t deserve to die. I’ve seen them grow in just one week. The June in Xander’s story isn’t the same girl who would cause a distraction so that Aniyah could creep up the stairs. The Dayton he’s painted as exclusionary isn’t the girl who let me sleep in her lap. They never got a chance to show people how capable of good they were. And now they never will.
June watches him like he’s a wild animal, keeping her attention just over his shoulder instead of making threatening eye contact. She stays very still, knowing that any response is the wrong response.
“You took our lives from us with your endless fucking gossip, and I took them back from you.” He rubs his hand over the cut on his thumb, over and over again as though willing it to stay open. “I should have stopped you the second you started all this. Because it was always Dayton to start, too stupid to know when to stop talking. It was your mom who got my parents kicked out of the PTA, wasn’t it? It was your ballet class that Riley wasn’t allowed to join?”
“I didn’t know,” Dayton says, wringing her hands together. “I promise I had no idea how much I’d hurt either of you—”
“You didn’t care!” The words are mangled, not quite a roar or a sob. “If you’d cared, this wouldn’t have lasted for years. Twelve years of torture. Of a reputation we didn’t deserve. Every town needs a funeral home. Everyone has to bury their dead. Why shouldn’t it have been our family? Why did it make us outcasts? Because two girls decided to whisper what if in the ears of everyone who would listen. What if we were up to something freaky? What if we were dangerous?” His lips curl away from his teeth in a wet sneer. “When you died, I was free. Riley was free. Cross Creek was a better place. Everyone will see that. After summer vacation, people will start to forget you. They’ll move on. They can be happy—truly happy—for the first time. Thanks to me.”
Aniyah has made it upstairs. I can hear the crunch of floorboards, and I pray that the second story can keep its structural integrity long enough for her to get out. Even if I don’t survive, she needs to. It’s not her fault she got dragged into this. I brought it down on us.
What’s Toby always saying about magic coming back times three?
A ceiling beam in the kitchen snaps and crashes to the floor. The fire leaps into the living room, quickly swallowing the closest stack of books and momentarily distracting Xander.
Dayton swoops toward me, shoving me as hard as she can toward the stairs. “Let’s go! One of us can still die, you know.”
I start running. Xander spins back but is punched by June. The blow cracks against his temple, followed by another to the nose. She has her dukes up like a professional boxer, protecting her neck and bobbing on her toes. Dayton flies up the stairs, her pink pashmina flapping behind her. I follow her, and Riley launches herself onto Xander’s back, holding him in place. I hit the top landing blind. I’ve never been up here before, and the light from the fire downstairs hasn’t reached this far. By the time it does, it’ll be too late.
June pants up the stairs behind me, yanking me toward the third door on the left, the bedroom over the living room with the slumping floor. On the floor, there’s a sigil written in chalk, an unlit candle, and a single mushroom as long as my thumb. Its flesh is shriveled, the cap turned in on itself. The bottom of the stem is blackened with dried blood. I have to look away before I throw up.
The night sky is visible through the open window. I can almost, but not quite, taste fresh air. Before June can shimmy through, Riley rushes into the room. With her hair knotted and her face wet with tears, she appears unnervingly fresh from the creek.
“I’m sorry,” she sobs, holding her stomach like she’s trying to keep her guts from pouring out on the floor. “I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t know how bad it was. Please, believe me. Please. I didn’t want to believe he could do this. I thought it might have been an accident or a misunderstanding. I thought I was remembering it wrong. I wanted to be wrong. I’m so sorry.”
“You couldn’t have known,” I say. Although, honestly, I will say anything to get everyone through this window. My fight-or-flight has switched on hard, and I am ready for liftoff. When June doesn’t look convinced, I push her back toward the window. “June, none of us knew. And as the two people here who got nude with the murderer, we don’t get to judge. Now come on.”
Glaring at me with her one colored eye, June grabs Riley by the hair and throws her out the window. I know that Riley can’t technically die, but I still yelp when I see her rolling down the roof, followed by a snickering June. God, dead girls play rough with each other.
I am halfway through the window myself when fingers wrap around my ankle and pull me backward. My head bangs against the windowsill on my way down. Pain splinters through the base of my skull, at once burning and numb. Xander stands over me, backlit by the fire that has finally started to spread up the stairs.
“You wouldn’t leave me here alone. I knew you wouldn’t,” he says, his voice like honey thick enough to drown in. Delusions are like that, I guess. Syrupy sweet and heavy enough to keep you submerged.
I sway to my feet, more punch-drunk than seductive. I can’t believe that we’ll both get out of this alive. The fire is starting to creep around corners, covering the room in its hazy glow. Dingy brown smoke pumps through the air, burning my eyes and singeing my lungs. Smoke inhalation is a thing that kills you, isn’t it?
Maybe Xander wants us to die together to prove once and for all that I’m Not Like Other Girls. That I can be martyred instead of murdered, as though they aren’t the same thing.
Or maybe there’s no logic at all. I’m expecting a lot from someone who set a flaming trap without having an escape plan for himself. Even now, he isn’t throwing himself to safety. He’s hit the end of the road, and he isn’t budging.
And he wants me to go with him.
I can feel a deep, dark part of myself flutter with the compliment. Somewhere inside me, sixth-grade Mila whispers, “He could drag any girl to her death to be with him forever, and he chose me.”
Sixth-grade Mila really thought that the only person better than Edward Cullen was Alexander Greenway. Part of me has always been lured by the monster inside him.