Page 142 of Not Quite Dead Yet

Saturday, May 31. The day Emily had drowned.

Jet leaned even closer, stared down at the writing, her eyes splitting the words, two layers.

Pick up burgers from store.

Plant flower bed at back of yard.

But that wasn’t everything.

Mrs Finney had written something else on this page, tiny, right at the bottom, not in the lines but sideways across them. The letters slanted, like she’d written them in a hurry, in a panic.

Billy spun the book sideways and they read it together. Silent.

He was already wet. Before.

A shaky line under thatBefore.

Jet’s heart doubled, copying her eyes, forcing its way to her ears.

No. Wait. No. Jet couldn’t be thinking that. She couldn’t. Stop it. Stop.

‘He was already wet,’ she said, barely a whisper.

‘Before.’ Billy finished it, the diary shaking in his hands. His eyes found Jet’s, unstable, turbulent. ‘Luke,’ he said.

He didn’t need to say it, the name was already thundering around Jet’s head, throwing itself against the cracks.

She couldn’t think it but she was, she had to. Billy’s eleven-year-old memories couldn’t be trusted alone – but his mom too?

‘You were right.’ Jet sank to her knees beside him, brushing her thumb across Mrs Finney’s writing, to make sure it was really real, not a trick of the light or a trick of her eyes. ‘You thought Luke smelled like chlorine. Before. Before youall found Emily and Luke jumped in. Your mom noticed it too. He was wet when he came over. He’d been in the pool already. He said he hadn’t, but he lied – he must have been in the pool.’

‘Why would he …’ Billy didn’t finish, left the thought hanging there, settling over the layers of dust.

‘Billy, those scratches on Luke’s arms. If he … could they …’ She didn’t know how to say it, because saying it might make it true. ‘Did they look like the kind of scratches someone might get, if they were holding someone’s head underwater, if that person was fighting for their life?’

Billy blinked and a dark wave crashed behind his eyes.

‘It was a lot of scratches.’

Jet’s knees gave way. She slumped back against the wooden strut.

‘Oh my god. Did Luke kill Emily?’

Billy sat back too, his mom’s diary still open.

‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘But it looks like, maybe, my mom thought he did.’

Jet shook her head, refusing the thought, not letting it settle long enough to take hold, make itself at home. ‘No. He was only thirteen. I mean, yes, he was bigger than Emily already. Stronger. And they fought all the time, like brothers and sisters do. Luke has a temper, everyone knows he has a temper. But he can’t have … he can’t … did he?’

Billy didn’t have the answer, and neither did Jet. Billy’s mom might have, but she was long gone, ten years gone, and whose fault was that?

Jet shook her head again, the world shifting around her, splitting in half. Everything changed after Emily died, and now it was changing again, coming undone, like Jet’s head.

‘But her hair was caught in the drain, Billy. You saw it. Your dad had to cut her out. How would a thirteen-year-oldknow how to do that, to stage it like an accident? To come over here so he had an alibi. He wasthirteen.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is it possible? Could Luke do something like that? Kill my sister? And if he could kill one sister, could he …?’