Page 65 of Switch

“Come on, baby.I know you’ve heard the thing about how truth is stranger than fiction.”

“It’s not possible!”Fallon’s hand slams against the window.

Okay.“Are we in this together or not?Just tell me.Whatever it is, if you think it’s wrong, then we’ll be able to rule it out, and we can move on to other ideas.”

“No.”

I’m beginning to see the allure of that twenty-four-seven relationship Fallon had with Marina.She told him what to do, and he did it, and right now he needs to do what I fucking tell him to.

“Goddammit, Fallon.I can’t fucking help you if you’re not honest with me.”My hands are so tight on the steering wheel I swear I could rip it off.

You haven’t been honest about everything with him.

My conscience sounds weirdly like Evans, and I’m not at all ready to dig into that right now.

There’s a flash of lightning up ahead.“Baby.”I soften.“Come on.”

Fallon sighs.“I think I might be losing my mind, because this is going to sound delusional.If this were a fictional story and not my actual fucking life, I would probably set it up so that someone at the beginning of the story died or disappeared, but it turned out the person who died or disappeared, someone the reader had entirely forgotten about, actually wasn’t gone after all.”

Thunder.

“That’s an oddly specific scenario.”

“Not really.”He’s tapping his fingers on the window now.I wrap my hand around the hand closest to me.

“A lot of books and movies use that plot device,” he continues.“One of the first mystery novels I read,And Then There Were Noneby Agatha Christie, uses it.The movieIdentity, starring John Cusack, uh,The Lovely Bones, if I’m remembering correctly.The Book Th?—”

Another crack of lightning.

“All right.I get it.So, who’s dead or missing that might want to stalk you and mess with your head?”

Another flash of lightning.More thunder.

“Marina’s brother.”he blurts out.

I flex my fingers, trying to loosen the tension.“You never mentioned she had a brother.”

“Because he died years ago, and because I don’t like talking about him.He was a fucked-up guy.All Marina’s life, he terrorized and bullied her.He’s the first person I can think of who would do something like this.It can’t be him, though.”

“How did he die?”

Fallon’s quiet again.“You can’t repeat this.”

“Promise.I’m good with secrets.”What the fuck kind of secret could it be, though?“Was it, like, something her family wanted to keep quiet?Autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong?”

Honestly, I’m proud of myself for even knowing what the hell that is.Thanks to Ravi and his research, I’m learning all sorts of shit.I had no idea people could accidentally kill themselves chasing the big O.

“Marina killed him.”

Shock has me slamming my foot into the gas pedal.The car lurches before I get it under control again.

“Didn’t see that coming.”Okay, maybe not the best response.

But he keeps going.“Like I said, he made her life hell.She said her best day was the day she left for college.Never returned if she could help it.Made excuses for breaks and holidays, found friends to stay with.”

Sounds like me as a kid, hiding at friends’ houses to avoid my mom’s boyfriends.“Something must have taken a left turn.”

I know it did for me.