“Holy crap, Patsy!” she cackles. “You seriously think I’m going to believe all that? I’ve been pretty nice at school, not telling any more of your dirt. And believe me, I know more than you do. But you’re gonna get bitch slapped if you keep this shit up.”
I hand her the card, and she rips it in half without reading it and throws it on the ground.
“Fuck your reindeer games,” she says with a practiced toss of her hair.
“Am, seriously. If you don’t listen to me and say the right thing, I am going to pull out a gun and shoot you. I’ve already killed, like, ten people this week. You’re a major bitch, but I don’t want you to die.”
“You are so demented. I can’t believe we were ever friends.”
“Why do you have credit card debt, anyway? You’re seventeen, for Chrissakes.”
I know I’m stalling. I don’t care. Let Valor show up in their Humvees if I’m wasting their precious time. I’m still way ahead of schedule.
“I don’t have credit card debt. My family does just fine, thank you.” She holds up her French-manicured hands as if indicating how awesome her perfect life is.
I squat down and pick the card back up. I hold the two pieces together, up in front of her face. Her eyes were always a prettier, brighter blue than mine, her hair glossier and in perfect waves. She’s like the A-plus version of me. Maybe that’s why I didn’t fight it when she dropped me. I never really deserved to be friends with someone as pretty and talented and special as Amber Lane, did I?
She reads the card, her arms crossed over her bulging chest, in the tight Big Creek Hornets T-shirt.
“This is kind of adorable,” she says. “I can’t believe you went to the trouble of printing it up on expensive paper. But seriously, even if you thought this little prank was cute? I don’t have a credit card.”
I know her tells, and she’s not lying. I don’t know what to do. Everyone else pretty much admitted they owed the money, except for Alistair, who was probably framed. But it’s not like Amber’s driving a brand-new car or wearing superexpensive clothes. Her family might be doing well by Candlewood standards, but they’re not in the Dr. Ken Belcher league or even the Preserve league.
“Um, is there any chance your parents might have taken out a credit card in your name?” I say. “They can do that once you’re over sixteen.”
“No way,” she says. “They would not do that to me.”
But her pouty mouth is turned down at the corners. We both remember when her mom found out her dad was cheating and when her mom lost her job and got caught shoplifting. Her parents have definitely made some mistakes, and by the look on her face, the puzzle is coming together. She glances nervously at her car and back to me, blue eyes gone from hate to fear.
“Look, Am. Maybe you could, I don’t know . . . call Valor Savings and ask them. See if you have an account you don’t know about. It doesn’t have to go down this way.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll get right on that,” she says. “Just let me call customer service. You’re a fucking joke, Patsy.”
She tries to close the door on me, but I shove my foot inside.
“This is not a joke,” I say. “Take the deal. This is kind of your only chance.”
She slams the door on my foot, hard, and I show my teeth instead of whimpering.
“Seriously, Pats. Get your foot out of my door and go bother someone else who doesn’t have a life.”
Her eyes narrow to slits. She always had a short fuse.
“I really, really don’t want to shoot you, but if it comes down to you or my mom . . .”
“You’ll what—shoot me? Really? Look at yourself. I can smell you from here. You’re filthy. You’re dressed like a hobo. You’re begging me for attention with this stupid, dumbass prank. You’re trash, Patsy, and you’re always going to be trash. That’s why your dad left. My mom told me. He was rich, and you were an accident, and he disappeared as fast as he fucking could. Nobody wants you. And if you think you can just join the Postal Service mafia or whatever and show up and yell at me in my own house, you can go fuck yourself.”
I go cold all over, and not just because of the insults.
“What did you say about my dad?”
She opens the door and puts her hands on her hips. “That’s all you heard in that whole thing? Christ. He was rich. He was connected. He was your mom’s boss, and he totally screwed her. They were never even married. I told you. You’re a bastard, Pats.”
I slap her right across the face, just like that. The crack is loud, although not as loud as a gunshot. But she looks just as surprised as if I’d shot her.
“Bitch, you do not want to mess with me,” she growls. Her perfectly manicured fingers ball into fists, and her right cheek is a lot more red than her left. God, that felt good. I’ve been wanting to slap her for years. I should have done that a long time ago, when I still thought she was worth having as a friend.
I laugh, but it’s humorless and frosty. I pull the gun out of the back of my jeans and aim it at her. I have never seen her look so surprised in my entire life, and on one level, it’s fucking hilarious. On every other level, it is horrible, and I try to make my hand stop shaking. It’s impossible.
“Take the deal, Am,” I beg. “I already told you that if it came down to you or my mom, you were gone. It’s come down to that, okay? Take the goddamn deal and don’t make me shoot you.”
“You th-think you can scare me?” she stutters. “You think you can show up at my door and wave a toy gun in my face, and I’m just going to do whatever you say?” She whips a smartphone out of her pocket and stares me down while she dials 911 with a smug grin. “You are so dead, Pats.”
Far away, I hear ringing and then a recorded message. Her face goes three shades of white.
“Let me guess,” I say. “Valor Savings can’t come to the phone right now?”
She spins, runs back into her house, and slams the door. I toss the door open and run after her. I’ve got a straight shot down the hall, and I aim low. Arms outstretched and shaking, I pull the trigger once, and her hall mirror explodes. She gives a little scream, and I shoot again, and she grunts and falls over.
Without looking back at me, she tries to drag herself down the hall on her arms and one leg, but it looks like I got her right through the back of the knee. She’s crying, and so am I, and I walk up behind her and catch her ankle with one hand. The other hand points the gun at her head, although I would never hit her there. It would be too much like shooting my own sister in the face, like shooting myself.
“Am, I am serious as a fucking heart attack,” I say, the words slow and careful. “Take this deal, or I have to shoot you dead. If I don’t, Valor Savings is going to kill my mom and then me, and that’s not going to happen.”
She tugs her good foot away from my hand, still trying to crawl away to some imaginary hiding place. Like I wouldn’t find her, wherever she went. She’s crying, her face turned away.
“Your mom ain’t worth a sweet goddamn,” she says. “I hope she dies. And I hope you rot in hell.”
Her leg is shaking, the blood soaking through her yoga pants. The Minnie Mouse slipper lays forgotten on the parquet, and her toenails are painted a weird, warm gray. Her bare foot is turning a milky blue, even paler than usual. I sigh.
“All you have to do is take the deal. Just say it. Just say yes. I’ll take you to the hospital. It doesn’t have to end like this.”
“Fuck. You.”
Hearing her say that as she crawls, shot, dragging a trail of blood along her stupid, plushy carpet, breaks me.
“What the hell is it with you people?” I shout at her. I want to put my head in my hands and pull my hair until something snaps, but I can’t let go of the gun. “Why can’t you just accept what’s going on and do whatever it takes to survive? What on earth would make a person ignore reality and be an
asshole? It’s a freaking gun, okay? This is real blood all over my shirt. I have been killing people all week just because they won’t suck it up and take care of business. You’re all a bunch of pussies! I fucking hate you, Amber!”
I realize I’m crying too, and it’s absurd, the two of us here. Former best friends, alike as peas in a pod, except that her slippers cost more than my entire outfit and I’m the one holding a gun. She curls on her side, clutching her leg and moaning.
“Why aren’t the police coming?” she says in a tiny voice. “Why was it Valor on the message?”
“Because Valor Savings owns everything now. Didn’t you read the card? Didn’t you read the little words above the signature box before you signed it?”
“Nobody reads that shit!” she screams at me, so hard that I can hear the rasp in the back of her throat. A dark spot stains the crotch of her yoga pants. She swallows and coughs. “Why, Patsy? Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because shit happens. Even to perfect, beautiful, popular, special little snowflakes like you, shit happens. I’m doing what they’re forcing me to do. I’m sorry if you didn’t actually rack up these debts yourself. Or if they’re fake. But I will do whatever I have to do to live through this, and if you’re smart, you will too. Now: Take. The. Deal.”
She curls in tighter, rocking her head back and forth, her hands over her eyes.
“I can’t, Patsy,” she whispers in a baby voice. “I can’t shoot people.”
“Don’t make me do this,” I say. “Please don’t.”
I look at the gun in my hand, at how easily my chewed-up red and green fingernails curl around it. Like the gun has always been there, like it’s a part of me. I’m about to kill my ex–best friend, whether she deserves it or not, and that’s bound to change a person. All this time, I’ve been following the list, following their directions—mostly. I’ve been looking to the future, putting one foot in front of the next to get through my time. To pay a debt that isn’t even mine.
Up until now, I never considered if I really deserved to live through it more than anyone else.
For just a second, I put the gun up to my temple. The metal is oddly cold against the thin skin there. Cold and hard. I press in a little, like a kiss, and I can smell the steel and oil. Why should I get to live? Even I’ll admit that my mom’s not special—not more special than anyone else. Probably less special than most. Why do I care so much? Why does she deserve to live? Why do I?
And then I laugh, short and humorless and final.
I deserve to live because I’m willing to do whatever it takes.
And I want out of this goddamn house of cards.
“Last chance, Am. Say yes and take the deal, or I kill you and walk away. You know that I’ll do it.”
She’s curled up like a slug in a pool of salt. Her eyes find mine, brighter blue and hot with tears, and she stares at me as if I’m the fairy godmother that never showed up, a strange and magical creature that can’t be understood.
“What did they do to you, Patsy? Who are you now?”
I press the gun gently to her head, right in the middle of her forehead. She breathes through her teeth, sobbing, eyes closed.
“You used to know who I was, Am,” I say quietly. “Now neither of us knows. Take the deal. Please.”
Her body shakes, balled up in a puddle of piss and blood. She tucks her head to the carpet, hands over her ears. Her words are so low and thready, I can almost imagine I didn’t hear them. “Would it change anything if I told you we’re cousins? And that your dad used to work for Valor?”
“Tell me more,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Only if you promise to let me go.”
“Say you’ll take the deal.”
She shakes her head again. “Fuck you, Pats.”
I step around her, put the gun in the middle of her back, and pull the trigger.
When I walk out a few minutes later, my tears have dried, and I’m carrying her body in the quilt that matches mine.
10.
Maxwell Beard
Wyatt sits in the open driver’s seat, his body and attention focused toward Amber’s house and a gun in his hand. As if he could keep me alive through sheer force of will. He’s got one arm through the window, stroking Matty, who’s trying to cram her cone into the front of the truck. That crazy dog must have heard shots and tried to rescue me again. Thank heavens Wyatt didn’t let her out.
“You okay?” he shouts. “I heard two . . . uh, firecrackers. And what the hell is that?”
I rush to the back of the truck, struggling under the weird deadweight of my ex–best friend. She’s thin but long, floppy but stiff, and I can barely hold on to the quilt with my bugged shirt wadded up in one hand so they won’t know I took her. Wyatt opens the tailgate and helps me slide Amber’s body in. Matty sniffs the bundle through her cone and whines, nudging it with her big paw.
“Let it go, girl,” I say. “She’s gone.”
I shove the blood-spattered Postal Service shirt into the glove box and slam the door shut so hard it bounces back.
“Is she dead?”
“Yeah.” I sniffle and rub tears onto my arm. Amber was right. I stink. “I even shot her in the leg first, gave her an extra chance. But she cussed at me right to the end. Like she didn’t think I would do it.”
Damn it all, I’m crying again, and I slump against the truck. Wyatt gets out and comes around to hold me, but I shove him away and say, “Just drive. Please. Get me away from here.”
He doesn’t ask me why I brought her body, and I’m not sure I know why myself. It just seemed wrong, leaving a girl I used to love lying in a pool of blood outside her parents’ bedroom. Her mom and dad made plenty of mistakes and weren’t the best folks ever, but they loved Amber in their way. I couldn’t stand to think of her mom, Chrissy, coming home and finding that mess, her daughter just left there sprawled in the hallway in a puddle of piss like nobody cared. Even after this girl said the nastiest things she’d ever thought about me right to my face when I had a gun in my hand, I still feel the closeness we used to share. She was the best friend I ever had, until she wasn’t my friend anymore.
And she said we were cousins. What the hell was that? Was she just trying to sink a knife in my back with the kind of lie that would cut me deepest? Was she trying to buy time with the topic that would make me drop the gun and beg for an explanation? Or was she trying to tell me a secret she’d known all along, the real reason she ended our friendship? What instinct deep in my heart jerked my trigger finger moments after she and Ashley Cannon each revealed that we were kin?
Now I can’t ask either of them. But there has to be a way to find out. Somehow, I know it all goes back to my missing dad.
In the bed of the truck, Matty is on her belly next to the quilt, her cone lying gently along where I know Amber’s head is. I put my cheek to the window and sob. I didn’t just kill the Amber Lane that swanned around school in her fancy clothes with her rich friends. I also killed Am, the girl I used to watch scary movies with and play dolls with and trade My Little Ponies with. Maybe I killed my cousin.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, half to her and half to myself, and maybe to Wyatt, too.
I don’t know what to do with Amber. I watched her quit breathing, and then I watched some more, just to make sure. And then I realized that I couldn’t leave her alone like that. The best thing I can think of is to bury her out at the Preserve with Jeremy, maybe find a nice climbing tree that she would have liked when she was nine and let go of her memory. She never spoke a single word to Jeremy in her life, but I loved them both, and they deserve proper rest.
Maybe her parents will think she just ran away. Or maybe they’ll see the blood soaked into the carpet, get the message Valor left on 911, and always wonder, always hope. Maybe, one day, I’ll send them an anonymous card or something. I’m n
ot thinking straight right now, and I know it. But I can’t escape the fact that I’m stuck with a quilt full of what used to be my friend, and it hurts so goddamn bad.
Matty belly-crawls over to the window, toenails scraping on the metal floor. I unbuckle my seat belt and unlatch her stupid cone hat so she can get her face into the cab. I know the vet said to keep it on, but she seems fine and happy and isn’t messing with the shaved spot on her neck, and her square head feels good under my hand. I stroke the silky black fur, and her deep brown eyes roll over to look at me.
“This is one seriously messed-up world,” I say.
Her tail thumps against the camper wall a few times, and I can almost imagine her saying, Honey, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
I guess it’s pretty lucky that Alistair had a top on this old Ford. It’s not like there’s a cot or anything, but at least it’s covered from the elements, in case we need to sleep back there. And, yeah, I guess that’s exactly why a conspiracy theorist ready to run would go to the trouble to have a truck waiting for the day Valor caught up with him.
I look up, and we’re on a familiar street, but I don’t know where Wyatt is taking us. We pass his old neighborhood, that glorious flock of giant floating castles, which could only have been built with credit, with empty promises, with smoke and mirrors. I wish I knew how many rooms in each house sit empty. How many are guest rooms that are never used. How many hold exercise equipment that goes untouched, or sewing machines still in the box. So much waste, and for what? These people weren’t happy. Wyatt’s father wasn’t happy. Fat, balding, anxious, petty, mean. It all meant nothing. They spent nonexistent money on things they didn’t need that didn’t even make their lives any better.
And for the first time ever, I long for our tiny, lived-in, no-frills house on Bluebird Drive. I wonder what my mom is doing, if she’s even alive, if she’s made her appointment with the doctor yet or is endlessly saying her rosaries, waiting for me to come home. I realize that we’ve kind of traded places, that I’ve become her parent. And maybe that’s why I was able to look Amber in the eyes and kill her. I don’t have much, but I have to keep what’s mine safe.