Jessica

As Jake strides out of my hospital room, he leaves a chill in his wake. I cry for a long time—for him, for Chloe, for Shawna, for me. Officer Lee charged me with interfering with a police investigation because I lied to Detective Green and because I didn’t immediately turn in Tegan’s phone.

But it’s not over. The lab finished processing the DNA swabs from the party guests against the bloodstain on my jeans, and there’s been a match! It’s good, but it means I hit a human being, not a deer.

Officer Lee told me the person has been questioned and is in custody. She isn’t charging me with a hit-and-run offense since I stopped and checked the scene, and there wasn’t a victim on the road. A police press conference is scheduled for two o’clock today. My hospital television is turned on and ready.

My door creaks open and I glance up, expecting my nurse, but it’s Tegan Sheffield. Our rooms are on the same floor, but I didn’t expect a visit. She stands on the threshold, her broken arm in a cast, and she’s wearing a fluffy blue robe with a pair of Uggs. She passed all her cognitive tests and is recovering quicker than doctors expected, but she looks tired. Her hair is pulled back and she’s not wearing makeup. Her nose is slightly red from crying, or maybe she’s just cold. “Hi, Jessica.”

My stomach clenches and my throat constricts. The last time I saw her, she was tonguing my boyfriend in a blue lace bra. “What do you want?”

“Can I come in?”

I lift a shoulder, and she takes the chair Jake vacated. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she says, echoing Jake.

My heat rises; my thoughts crumple. “I’m not okay.”

She scoots closer. “Jessica, look at me.”

I force myself to meet her gaze. Her big blue eyes water, and her chin quivers. “I’m not okay either. I did terrible things. My lawyers are cutting a deal with the prosecutor, but I’m not getting away with this, Jessica. I may have to serve time in prison.” She whispers the last word.

I can’t imagine her serving any time, not with her mother’s connections, but she should. You can’t drug people to get your way.

When Tegan doesn’t get sympathy from me, she waves her good hand. “I’ll be fine. Lord knows I deserve it.”

Our eyes clash, and the past rises like a shark from the deep—the battles over Chloe, the obsession with Jake, the video. Tegan shivers in her thick robe, and without her veil of makeup and attitude, I can finally look at her without feeling singed.

“Can I ask you something?” Tegan asks. “Something I’ve wondered about for a long time?” I nod, and her gaze becomes fixed. “Did you date Jake to hurt me, or did you really love him?”

The air leaves my chest, and my thoughts speed back in time—to Jake crying outside his house the day I befriended him. His dad had died but he’d also just broken up with Tegan. I knew from her red-rimmed eyes at school that she was devastated. Did I date him to get back at her, to score a point in our war? A loose cog clunks into place in my brain. Maybe this was never about me. Maybe it was always about her, Jake said at my house. Oh no.

Tegan sees the truth in my eyes. “I thought so.”

I shake my head. “I did love him, though.”

“Everyone loves Jake.” She sighs. “I don’t want to rehash the past, but we shouldn’t have made that bet.”

“You’re right,” I say, sniffling.

She folds her good arm across her chest. “I didn’t understand how awful my plan was until I woke up. I hurt Jake so bad, and then someone did the same thing to me.”

“Was it Marcus?” I ask.

“I don’t think so. He sold me the drugs for Jake, but he likes his girls awake.” She pulls a face. “I think it was one of my friends. How about that?”

“That sucks,” I murmur.

Her face scrunches and she dissolves into tears. “But Shawna didn’t deserve what happened to her. My best friend is dead, Jessica. Her last text to me said, ‘Beetlejuice, Falcon’s Peak.’ It was our code for ‘I need help. Come now.’ Shawna was in real trouble and I didn’t go. She must have thought I abandoned her after the party.”

“You couldn’t have gone; you were in a coma.”

She nods. “Yeah, that was crazy. I knew Chloe was bad, but not that bad. I threw up most of the drugs, so I kind of remember wrestling her for the camera and then chasing her. I couldn’t get a grip on her. She’s tiny, but she’s really strong. And fast.”

“She panicked,” I say. “She knew she’d get in trouble for the live feed once it got shared online, and she was right.”

“All because Jake is seventeen,” Tegan says, wiping her eyes.

“All because we went too far,” I counter. “With everything.”

Tegan holds up her cast, offering a wry grin. “At least I won’t have to play volleyball this season.”

“I thought you liked volleyball?”

She shrugs. “It stopped being fun years ago.”

Right then an image of our school appears on the TV. “Look,” I say, turning up the volume. We watch the news report side by side.

“A recent break in the Crystal Cove High School video scandal has revealed new information. Alan Chavez is on location with more. Alan.”

The camera cuts to a reporter standing on the narrow shoulder of Blood Alley. After a short delay, he speaks. “During the early morning hours of Tegan Sheffield’s end-of-summer party, a fellow student struck a creature on this stretch of road while driving home. Blood evidence from the accident, recently turned in by the driver, has been matched to a classmate named Brendon Reed. Brendon originally told police he was home when Tegan went missing, and his father corroborated his story, but this new evidence proves the student lied about his whereabouts.”

Alan takes a breath, and Tegan’s body goes stiff.

“With his alibi destroyed, police were able to obtain Brendon’s phone, DNA, and fingerprints, and this new evidence has led to a profound discovery. The police charged Brendon today with dosing his classmate, the former Alabama senator’s daughter, Tegan Sheffield, with a combination of GHB and ecstasy. Brendon confessed that he entered Tegan’s bedroom just after three a.m. to check on her and found her vomiting what appeared to be blood into her toilet. Afraid he’d be implicated, he panicked and fled, and was then struck by the car right here, on Blood Alley.”

The anchor frowns. “What was the motive for this drugging, Alan?”

He grimaces and refers to his notes. “Brendon said, and I’m quoting now from the police report, ‘When I heard Tegan planned to roofie Jake, I thought it would be funny to roofie her too. It was a joke—something for my YouTube channel. It was Chloe’s idea to set up the broadcast downstairs, but that’s because she didn’t know about the drugs. The whole thing backfired, though. I couldn’t have put what Tegan and Jake did on YouTube anyway.’”

Tegan rips off her sheepskin boot and hurls it at the TV. “That asshole!” she screams.

“Shhh,” I say. The reporter goes on to explain that Brendon and Chloe kept each other’s secrets after the party and that Chloe convinced “the driver”—me—that I hit a deer to keep Brendon’s alibi intact. In return, he didn’t tell anyone she’d set up the live feed. But Brendon didn’t know the whole story, that Chloe had gone back to the house later and fought with Tegan or that Chloe had stuffed her inside the storage bench.

I turn off the TV and cover my head. “I knew it wasn’t a deer.”

Tegan lurches around my hospital room in one good boot, wheezing as if she’s been plunged into ice water. “I can’t believe Brendon drugged me. I knew it was a friend!”

She stares at me as if I have answers. “I wouldn’t call him a friend,” I say.

Tegan snorts. “The doctors told me that if I hadn’t thrown up in my bathroom that night, I could have died.” Her eyes roll back, and then suddenly she’s clutching her head and crying huge tears. “All I wanted was a kiss. This is crazy; I’m going crazy.”

She collapses back into the chair and peers at me. “Were you the driver? My lawyers mentioned something about you and a BMW on Blood Alley.”

I nod. “It was me.” I think back to the day I confronted Brendon in his backyard, and the blood seeping from his thigh. I thought he’d hurt himself on his wrought-iron chair, but I think the chair reopened his wound from the car accident.

I recall Shawna’s words to Jake at school: Everyone is lying. No wonder she was afraid to tell the truth. All her friends were involved—Brendon had drugged Tegan, Tegan had drugged Jake, and Shawna’s boyfriend had provided the chemicals. Even Brendon’s father lied.

After a long moment, Tegan’s lips quiver into a fluttering smile, like a baby butterfly trying to fly. “You hit Brendon with a BMW?”

“A classic,” I say, smiling back.

“That’s fitting.” She plays with her long glossy hair. “This is a lot to sort out.”

“Yes,” I say in a soft breath.

Tegan watches me with her large, sad eyes, bluer than any sky—the same eyes that first saw me in second grade when I tried to carry my lunch, my jacket, and my art project onto the bus. She didn’t ask if I wanted help, she just helped, and when the bus stopped, she got off at my house. We played the rest of the day and every day after. “Do you think we could be friends again?” she asks.

A gasp bursts from my lips.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.” She retrieves her boot and puts it on. “Remember when my mom wouldn’t buy me that scarlet dress I wanted in Vogue?” I nod, vaguely remembering Tegan threatening to run away to New York to steal it. “And when I didn’t get it, I ripped up the magazine and said the dress was ugly?”

“Yes, and then we burned the pages.”

“Yes, we destroyed it and I swore I hated the dress.”

“I remember.” I feel my stomach sink because I think I know what’s coming next, and it’s going to break my heart all over again.

Tegan collects herself. “You’re that dress, Jessica.” Then she exits my room and shuts the door.

I lie back on my pillow. Senior year spans ahead of me like a yellow brick road—homecoming, senior pictures, winter ball, spring break, prom—but it won’t be the same, not without Jake and Chloe.

And I won’t be the same. Not after this.

If I could go back in time, further back than the party, all the way back to fifth grade when Tegan and I battled over Chloe, and Chloe and Tegan battled over me, I would whisper into my ear, Whatever happens next, stay away. You don’t need friends like these.

Or maybe I would shout it.