Page 28

Twenty-Eight

Now

My grip tightens on the steering wheel as the highway straightens out and my control snaps. “Maybe I didn’t have a choice. Did you consider that? If Claire came for you the way she came for me, you would have done the same fucking thing. She crashed my party. Caused a fight with her stupid fucking game. Punched me in the face. Refused to leave. Said she planted drugs in the house and threatened to get me arrested. Do you have any idea what kind of damage that would have done to my family?

“Not to mention everything she did to me while she was still at Waldorf, or the lines she crossed with Dylan. My Dylan. What else could I have done? How else was I supposed to stop her from ruining my life?” I’m half yelling and half wishing for her to understand the position I was in. “I had to kill her. It was the only way to make it stop.”

I glance over at her, expecting sympathy, but Jena stares at me like I’m holding a knife to her throat. Her eyes are the size of baseballs, and she leans away from me, against the door. “You…what?”

I face the road again. It’s a miles-long straightaway. There’s nothing but barren fields on either side of us, and pitch-black skies above, speckled with stars. But I don’t see fields, I see bubbles. I hear Claire’s gurgles for help, see the relief on her face when she thought I was going to help her back to the boat. Discomfort worms its way through my insides. So I do what I’ve done for the last six months—I shove it all the way down and slam a lid over it like it never existed. I can’t go back and change what happened, even if I wanted to. There’s no sense in letting something as trivial as guilt stand in my way. Not when I have so much to lose.

She deserved it anyway.

“All I had to do was hold her under a few minutes. She was basically dead already. I just finished the job. If anything it was a mercy killing.”

Jena sucks in a sharp breath. “You didn’t.”

“What do you mean? Isn’t this what the whole night has been about? Getting me to admit what I did to Claire? Now you want to act like you’re shocked?”

“I thought you crashed the boat and covered up your part in the accident,” she shouts at me. “I saw you two struggling for the wheel, you took control, we crashed, and the next thing I know, I’m waking up the next morning on the boat alone.

“I thought you were lying about being on the boat to avoid being charged with her accidental death while you were drinking and driving! I thought you and your dad came up with some story about Claire stealing the boat after you went home to make sure your family didn’t take any of the heat. I didn’t think that you actually held her under . How could you do that and go on living a normal life? You planned her fucking candlelight vigil ! Do you even have a soul?”

I shake my head. She doesn’t get it. “No, it wasn’t like that. I didn’t want to kill Claire. It was the only way to get rid of her.”

“You went to her funeral! You went to school! You continued making fun of her family for being cheap, knowing damn well you killed their daughter!”

“You would have done the same thing!”

“No, I wouldn’t! Claire didn’t deserve to die just because she was getting on your goddamned nerves!”

My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “It was more than that and you know it! She was never going to let me be happy. She was determined to bring down my whole family, and she had to be stopped. I tried to do it another way. I thought getting Mr. Heck fired would solve the problem but even that wasn’t enough—”

“You got Mr. Heck fired?” Jena asks, her voice full of venom.

“Well, not me personally. My dad did. But he had it coming. My dad said he was always putting his responsibilities on other people, and my dad did twice the work. It wasn’t fair. If anyone was going to make partner, it should have been the person busting their ass. So, when I asked him to help me get rid of Claire, he planted a little evidence, and voilà. Mr. Heck got fired, Claire left school, she dumped Dylan, and everything was right in the world.”

I didn’t think she could look any more horrified, but she does. “They lost their house. Her dad lost his career—he was disbarred. Claire was top of our class , and you took all that away from her so that you could have Dylan ?”

When she says it like that…it sounds shallow. “It wasn’t just about him…”

“But it was about him. Every five minutes at that party, Claire was either saying you didn’t have a chance with him, flirting with him, or interrupting your time with the boy of your dreams. Tell me she didn’t die so you could have a chance with a boy.”

“Fuck you, Jena. He asked me to prom!”

She laughs, and it’s the bitterest, harshest sound I’ve ever heard. “You’re a total fucking psychopath, aren’t you?”

Before she can respond, my phone rings through the Bluetooth.

12:14 a.m.

INCOMING CALL: MOM

We’re back in service.