Page 46

Claire

Now

The footsteps keep coming. Any second now someone will be outside the door, pulling it open to find me here with Ellery’s phone in my hands.

I shut my eyes tight, as if that will ward off the inevitable.

And I wait.

The seconds tick by and I crane my ears to hear, but the footsteps have stopped.

This is my chance. I need to get out. I scramble up, trying to be as quiet as possible and tiptoe rapidly to the door, Ellery’s phone still clenched in my hand.

This is a risk, I know. Someone could still be standing in the hallway. If I leave now, they’ll see me. But I have no choice.

I put my free hand on the door handle, ready to push. And then the door suddenly vibrates, accompanied by the short, rapid sound of a knock.

The shock of the sound propels me backward, and I manage to catch myself before stumbling over my feet.

“Claire?” Declan’s voice, so soft it’s nearly a whisper, filters through the door. “Are you in there?”

I breathe a deep sigh of relief and throw open the door.

“We need to go,” Declan says, “They’re about to come up.”

I obey wordlessly, letting him lead me quickly down the hall, closing the door behind me just as I hear another set of footsteps on the stairs.

Once we’re back in my room, I eagerly pull out Ellery’s phone, navigating once again to that mysterious string of messages.

“What is that?” Declan asks.

“Ellery,” I say offhand, barely aware of the words I’m stringing together as I open the message chain. “She was…”

I don’t finish the thought. Because I’m finally reading the message chain between Ellery and “P.” It’s entirely one-sided. All outgoing messages, no responses. The first one to catch my eye is the most recent, from yesterday.

I can’t believe we’re here without you. It doesn’t seem real.

I feel my forehead scrunch, my eyes narrow. I scroll upwards, skimming as I go.

We checked into the Inn today. So many memories.

I wish you were here.

The words blur by until my eyes land on one from a little over a week ago. A date that feels like another lifetime entirely. The day the police contacted us about finding Phoebe’s remains.

I am so sorry, Phoebe. I am filled with so much regret. So much guilt, every day. And nothing I do or say will ever make up for what I’ve done.

“Claire,” Declan prompts.

But just as I open my mouth to tell him what I’ve found, a heavy knock lands on the door, louder and more severe than Declan’s moments earlier.

We exchange a wide-eyed look. Whoever’s on the other side of that door knows we’re in here.

I shove the phone in my back pocket, pulling my T-shirt over my jeans to cover it, just as Declan opens the door. It’s Ellery.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hey…uh, you two,” she says, clearly curious as to why this is the second time she’s found us together in my room, but thankfully she skirts over that. “This is weird, but have you guys been in my room?”

“No,” I say, joining Declan at the door, trying to form my face in an expression of innocence and confusion. “Why?”

She pauses, her eyes narrowed. “I can’t find my phone, and my tote bag seems to be in a different place than where I’d left it.”

Shit.

“You don’t think,” Declan says, his voice cautious, “that someone got in here while we were eating, do you?”

It’s an impressive lie, but something about the ease with which the suggestion slides off his tongue unsettles me. Ellery seems to buy it. Her eyes, which were narrow with suspicion at my response, widen with a burst of fear.

“But who—” she stutters, “who would do that?”

“I’m sure it wasn’t anyone,” Declan says, resting his hand reassuringly on her shoulder.

“It was a stupid idea. How would they have even gotten by us when we were downstairs? Your phone will turn up somewhere. And maybe Adrien moved your bag, or maybe you left it that way and just forgot. We have been under a lot of stress.”

Ellery nods. “You’re right. It’s just, everything that happened today…you know.” Her eyes dart away from us, and I notice a flash of panic in her expression.

I don’t blame her. She must know how bad her strange texts to Phoebe look.

“I’ll go check the room again. I’m sure my phone is in there somewhere. See you guys later,” she says, leaving me and Declan alone, finally.

As soon as Ellery’s footsteps trail down the hall, I rush to tell Declan what I found.

“She must have been texting Phoebe out of guilt,” I whisper after I’ve brought him up to speed. “For killing her. This must be her way of apologizing to Phoebe. Phoebe’s phone was never found, after all. Ellery probably thought no one would ever see the messages.”

Declan sits down quietly on the bed, his brow furrowed. I sink down next to him, lost in thought.

“It must be because of Tomas,” I muse. “Killing Phoebe must have been her way of getting revenge for his death.”

I think of Ellery’s passcode, of the array of photos of her and Tomas saved in her Favorites album. It makes sense. Tomas and Ellery were closer than any of us. Maybe even than me and Phoebe at the beginning of the trip.

“Claire,” Declan says softly. “I don’t think it’s as simple as that.”

In all the chaos of the last few minutes, I’d forgotten what he’d said earlier, before dinner. If Ellery did do it, if she killed Phoebe, then I think I know why.

“The day after Tomas died, I heard Phoebe and Ellery talking,” Declan continues.

“We were on the bus to Jagged Rock, and everyone else was sleeping. Phoebe and Ellery had taken the seats in the far back, and they were whispering. I was sitting in the row in front of them and had just woken up. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but they sounded so serious, I couldn’t help it. ”

“What did Ellery say?” I ask, my voice tight.

He sighed. “She said she killed Tomas.”

If I hadn’t been sitting down on the bed, I would have needed to grab something to stay upright.

“What?” I ask incredulously. “We were there; we—”

“I know, I know.” He sighs again. “Remember that truth or dare game we used to play?”

I nod. It’s why Tomas went into that lake in the first place. Nothing good came of that game.

“Well, one night in Cairns, the three of us were hanging out, and Ellery hit Tomas with a dare. She’d been drinking and she was half kidding, but he took it seriously.”

I pause, waiting for him to go on.

“She dared him to buy drugs off these seedy German backpackers who were staying in our hostel, and well, Tomas did.”

“Really?” I ask. Aside from me, Ellery and Tomas were the two most innocent people on the trip. I can’t picture either of them doing drugs.

“Yeah. I think it was MDMA. Apparently, their original plan was to buy some for everyone to take together, but the lads they bought it from didn’t have enough. So Ellery and Tomas decided to do it themselves—”

“During the camping trip,” I finish for him.

I remember Tomas following Ellery away from the fire under the pretense of needing the restroom, Ellery’s odd body movements when they returned, how I kept catching Tomas staring off into nothing.

I figured it was just from the whiskey Kyan had been passing around, but I was wrong.

“Ellery and I talked about it after Tomas’s…accident,” Declan continues. “She said he would never have agreed to Phoebe’s dare that night if he hadn’t been tripping. She was convinced his death was her fault, not Phoebe’s.”

I think of the guilt I’ve carried all these years. My constant obsession over how blame should be allocated. The array of circumstances—of choices—that can ultimately lead to someone’s death. Where do we draw the line at who’s guilty?

I picture once again the expressions I would catch on Ellery’s face when she’d look at Phoebe in Jagged Rock.

Was it guilt? And then something else clicks into place, like a fire lighting a blaze.

The whispers I overheard the other morning at Kyan’s .

It was ten years ago, and no one even suspected back then.

“I overheard you two whispering at Kyan’s the other morning,” I say bluntly. I want him to clear up why he’s hidden this from me, yet another breach of trust.

“I didn’t realize you heard that.” Declan sighs, looking down at his hands.

“I didn’t feel like it was Ellery’s fault, I mean it was an accident.

But she was adamant I never tell anyone else about the drugs.

And that morning at Kyan’s, she wanted to make sure that I was going to keep my promise, that I wouldn’t say anything to the police or the rest of us. Although, I suppose I just broke that.”

“Maybe something happened,” I say after a moment, struggling to fit all the pieces into a neat puzzle.

“Maybe Ellery changed her mind, realized Phoebe was really to blame. Or maybe she confessed to Phoebe about the drugs and Phoebe threatened to tell the others,” I say, spiraling.

“Maybe Ellery killed her to make sure Phoebe kept her mouth shut.”

“But, I mean, it’s Ellery,” Declan says. “Good Samaritan, dedicating her whole life to making the world a better place, Ellery. Do you really think she could have…?”

“Yes, I do.” Despite the threadbare assumptions, I believe she is the one who killed Phoebe. I don’t know whether the certainty comes from a need to save myself or a desire to make this all make sense. To finally have an answer. “We need to go back,” I say in the same breath.

“Back where?” Declan looks at me with confusion, a second before clarity seeps into his eyes. “You can’t mean the Inn, surely?”

“There were other videos from Randy’s hidden cameras that we didn’t get a chance to watch. We didn’t even see any videos of Ellery’s room. There could be something on them.”

“But you heard Detective Allen, it’s a crime scene.”

Before I can stop myself, I wrap my palms around his forearms, pleading. “I need this, Dec. I either find a way to show that Ellery killed Phoebe, or the police are going to arrest me tomorrow as a murderer.”

And suddenly, I realize how desperate I am.

A few days ago, there was nothing in my life that felt worth living for.

But things have changed so much since then.

For the first time in ten years, I can see a future.

A way to move forward, if not guilt-free, then at least capable of enjoying the life around me.

And just as I’m close to getting it, it’s about to be torn away.

“The only way the police won’t arrest me is if I prove that someone else murdered Phoebe,” I urge. “And to do that, I need to go back to the Inn. Tonight.”