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“So?” I say. “I’ll tell them I was acting in self-defense.”
“And were you?”
“He had a knife.”
“Was he going to use it?”
I can’t answer that. Maybe he would have, eventually. Or maybe he would have walked away. I’ll never know.
“He still had it,” I say, unsure of who I’m trying to convince, Sam or myself. “The police wouldn’t charge me if they knew that.”
Sam finally lifts my hands from the water, turning them over to see if any blood remains. It’s all gone. My palms are pale and glistening.
“They would if they knew our reason for being out here,” she says. “If they knew we were trying to lure someone. Especially if they found out you could have gotten away.”
The only way she could know this is if she had been there. Hiding. Watching me the whole time. Watching even as the man’s knife dropped from his pocket. For a moment, that particular truth eclipses everything else.
“You saw me?”
“Yeah.”
“You werethere?”
I start to hyperventilate again, my body wracked by a series of lung-scraping gasps. The sudden lack of air makes me woozy. Or maybe that’s just from shock. Either way, I have to steady myself against the pool’s edge to keep from tilting over. When I speak, it’s in sharp, ragged bursts. “Why—didn’t you—help?”
“You didn’t need help.”
“He had aknife,” I say, a warm slick of anger rising in my throat. It feels like a swallow of Wild Turkey moving in reverse, inching its way higher. “You just sat back and fucking watched?”
“I wanted to see what you would do.”
“And I almost killed a man. Happy? Was that the reaction you were looking for? Why didn’t you try to stop me?”
“The question you should be asking is why you didn’t try to stop yourself.”
I manage to stand, shaking water from my hands before striding off. Away from the pool. Away from Sam.
“Quinn,” she yells to my back. “Don’t go.”
“I’m going!”
“Where?”
“To the police.”
“They’re going to arrest you.”
It’s the way she says it that stops me. Her voice is flat, the words alarmingly matter-of-fact. She’s right, and I know it. Panic boils in the depths of my stomach. I’m the moth that got careless with the flame. Now I’m engulfed.
“Knife or not, the cops aren’t going to understand,” Sam says. “They’ll only see you as a vindictive bitch who came here looking for trouble. You’ll be arrested for aggravated assault. Maybe worse. The kind of charges your boy, Jeff, won’t be able to talk the cops into dropping.”
I think of Jeff, mere blocks away, oblivious in his slumber. This could ruin him. He has nothing to do with it, but no one would care. My guilt is enough to destroy us both.
The dizziness returns, bringing with it a harsh tremble thatparalyzes my legs. I sway, unsure how much longer I can remain upright. Sam keeps talking, only making it worse.
“You’ll be in the papers again, Quinn. Not just one, but all of them.”
Oh, I’m sure of that. I picture the headlines:FINALGIRLSNAPS,GOESINTOVIOLENTRAGE.Jonah Thompson will have an orgasm over it.