Influenced by Eva Robinson (best free ebook reader TXT) 📗

The Benadryl wasn’t working, because Hannah’s whole body was shaking now. “I don’t know how Peter died.”

The room went silent, and she realized she’d made a mistake, but she was too dizzy to figure out what it was.

Detective Stewart’s dark eyes were piercing. “We didn’t say he died.”

Oh shit. “I just assumed.”

“Why?” asked Detective Munroe. “A minute ago, you were asking if he was okay. Now you think he’s dead?”

Think fast. “I drew that conclusion based on your questions. They wouldn’t get detectives involved if he wasn’t. But I don’t know what happened to him.”

They stared at her, then Detective Munroe asked, “Do you have a baseball cap, Hannah?”

“Yes.” She’d answered too quickly, before she had time to think about the implications.

“What does it look like?”

“It’s a regular Red Sox cap.”

The fan buzzed overhead, but the whistle in her mind rose higher, the sound that made her nerve endings snap with fear and anger. She tried to stay rational, to remind herself that this was her fight-or-flight response, that her anxiety was building so much that her prefrontal cortex could no longer regulate the pure emotion of her amygdala. But the whistle drowned out her own thoughts, and she had nothing else to say.

She stared at the table, shaking her head.

She needed to talk to the others again. She needed their help, because this plan of theirs wasn’t working at all. The pressure was building up in her mind, the sound screeching louder and louder, until she was sure her skull would explode.

Thirty-Five

Rowan sat in the back of the Uber, staring at the dark streets of Cambridge as they whooshed past. Her head spun.

She looked down at the little gold bracelet on her wrist, tracing her fingertip over the delicate chain.

If she’d spent her adult years more like Hannah, things would’ve turned out better. Hannah didn’t need attention like a drug.

The papers had published the news of Peter’s death. And within moments, TOI.com and her little subreddit were feasting on this latest development like hungry piranhas. It didn’t take them long to make the connection.

Did you see that he and Rowan are both involved in this teen center thing?

Is she going to confess to murder on Instagram? This is insane. We all saw this coming, didn’t we?

Today, when she’d been sitting in a café in Harvard Square, someone had stolen her laptop when she wasn’t looking. And what if they’d already downloaded her emails before she’d changed the password? What if they’d read the draft of her book?

They might know everything.

The text messages popping up on her screen worried her more than her commenters did.

You expose my secrets, and I’ll expose yours.

Not if she told the truth herself. Then she wouldn’t be living in fear anymore. They’d have nothing to hold over her, and the invasive ivy would be gone from her skull.

Did Marc ever google her name and see what they wrote about her? Maybe that was why he’d stopped texting her. Maybe the vines had grown in his mind too, transforming the memories of her from beloved to rotten.

But the real question was, who the hell had her laptop?

Because hadn’t Peter told her his laptop had been stolen? The night he died, he’d definitely mentioned it. And now hers had been taken. Dimly, under her electrifying coke high, she wondered if Peter and Arabella and she were all being targeted by the same person. The image of Arabella’s grey, rotting face blazed in her thoughts, and then morphed into her own face.

She was going to confess everything—every last sordid detail. First, she'd tell her followers, then Reddit would know, and TOI.com. Then she’d go to the police. And she’d have her own mind back again.

Her phone buzzed again. She opened the text, swallowing hard.

I have your laptop. I have ALL your secrets. If you're planning to talk, I'll publish all of this. Your haters will eat it up. Then you die.

Her hands shook, and she deleted the message. The police would keep her safe.

When the Uber pulled up at Stella’s house, Rowan thanked the driver and stepped out. In the driveway, she cast a glance over her shoulder. She was supposed to meet them out back; her heels crunched over the gravel as she walked through the darkness. The hair rose on her nape with the certainty that someone was watching her from the shadows. Tonight, there were no lanterns lit in the garden.

Shivering, she crossed to the stairs. As she climbed them, she smoothed her dress, looking down at herself. What was she wearing? A dress that used to be white. A pale yellow stain spilled down the front, and she had no idea what it was. She didn’t remember getting dressed. What a mess she is. Vile. Someone needs to put that pig out of her misery. Her friends are dead, but she’s the rotting, festering corpse.

When she reached the deck, she found Hannah sitting by herself. For the first time, it struck Rowan how much Hannah had changed. In fact, she was dressed just like Rowan. Or, at least, how Rowan dressed when she wasn’t a total wreck. Hannah’s hair had been cut to a chin-length bob, curled and shiny in the moonlight. She wore a glamorous black dress, and her makeup was perfection. Her gold bracelet glinted in the moonlight.

“You look nice,” said Rowan. “You look like me.”

Hannah rose and started chewing her thumbnail. “I’m freaking out. The police came to my house today. They think I’m guilty of something.”

“We all are, aren’t we?”

Hannah went still. “I wasn’t there when you made the decision about Peter. And now they think I’m guilty. And if you start telling everyone what happened, we could all get in trouble. But me especially. They’ve decided I’m guilty, apparently, because of the rumors about Tom’s death. And something about Arabella’s laptop.”

“But Daniel was right at the time. Dragging him down to the pond was the dumbest thing ever. And the truth was, I was doing it to try