"You don't have to say anything. It's enough that you visit."
"Please," he said, smirking, "Josh is definitely up there making some snarky comment." Probably. It really didn't matter if you spoke or not. At first when I started visiting Tilly and Gigi I sat in silence. It wasn't until about a month later that I just started chatting about the things we would have talked about if they were still here. They probably knew more of the little stuff in my life than Megan.
"It seems like just yesterday we were bickering on the way to the cabin." I ran my hand over the soft grass that had grown over the muddy mound. "I can't believe it's all ended like this." My chest tightened, and I felt like I was going to cry.
"Hey," Blake said, squeezing my hand. He kissed the side of my head. "You wanna get out of here? It always upsets you."
"Sure," I replied, standing with him. I probably would have stayed longer, but I knew how much Blake hated it when I cried, and I didn't want to sit in a church yard all morning sobbing.
We walked towards the road, holding hands. I held onto him tighter than I probably should. "Where to now, Miss Keaton?"
"Megan's, Kyle's, and then back to check on your mum."
"And when you've finished checking up on everyone else are we going to make sure Mackenzie's okay?"
"I'm okay. I'll cry later when I'm home alone."
"Firstly, I'm staying with you tonight. And secondly, you don't need to schedule your womanly emotions around me. Besides, I'm getting used to the over the top, complete head-fuck that are female emotions."
Womanly emotions? I laughed at his choice of words, shaking my head as we walked towards Megan's house. "Thanks for that. I really am doing okay today though. Better than I thought I would be."
Eleven months of intense therapy later, and I was doing alright. I still only trusted three people in the world: my parents and Blake. It was hard to put my trust in anyone now. I clearly couldn't read people the way I thought I could.
There was a long road ahead but I was healing. I wasn't as angry with Aaron anymore. Since that day I had seen him once. He'd explained himself, and then I left. Recently I had been thinking about going back. I had started to forgive him, and I wanted to help.
No one apart from Kyle, Megan and his parents had bothered with him. I didn't want to be one of the ones who'd turned their back on him if there was a chance he could get better.
With time, I had started to forgive him for trying to set Blake up and the accident at his house too. I wasn't there yet, but I didn't want to carry a grudge and hate around, it was exhausting. Blake didn't talk about forgiveness much but he did tell me that he wouldn't hold it against me if I wanted to be there for Aaron.
"Blake, what would you say if I told you I do want to visit Aaron?"
"I'd say you were crazy - and you are - but you have this need to help people, which is very annoying sometimes, but I love you for it. This was always going to happen, Mackenzie, I've been fine with it for a while."
Blake wasn't the overly romantic type, so he didn't say I love you every hour. When he did say the words they meant so much. Sometimes I worried that the way we got together made him feel like he couldn't break up with me. Did he not say it often because he didn't love me? It was stupid. I was stupid, but I had been hard work over the last year, and I worried that he would get bored and move on to someone that was easier to be with.
"Thank you. I love you."
He chuckled. "Well, yeah."
"Do you think you'll ever grow up?"
"Not if I can help it," he replied. Good. I liked how he was, immature at times and rarely taking himself or anything else seriously. He was how you should be in your early twenties, carefree and enjoying life. I just wished I could be more like that, but as he had said thousands of times, I cared too much about everyone and everything.
Megan was alone in her house; I could tell that just from looking at the outside. It looked dark and empty. When her parents were home there was always something to show it, a window open, a light on, music, energy. I walked straight inside and saw her in the kitchen, sitting at the table, staring blankly at nothing.
"Hey," I said, dragging Blake to the table. She sat facing us, holding a hot mug of tea with one hand. "You okay?"
The anniversary was always going to be harder on her. She wouldn't deal with it well, she never did. Megan wore her heart on her sleeve. I cared too much, and she felt too much.
"Seriously, Megan, you're scaring me. Are you okay? Did something happen?" Have you spoken to Aaron? Is he okay?
He probably wasn't okay. He was in prison. Three hundred and sixty-five days ago he was taking his Rohypnol laced vodka out of the case and checking where the knives were stored in the kitchen. Would he do something today? Mark the anniversary somehow? Pray for forgiveness in the prison chapel? Aaron wasn't religious. He thought the whole idea was far fetched and often said, 'Jesus was clearly an old time Derren Brown magician'. Had his opinion changed now he needed help? I would imagine it would be hard to have no faith in anything when you were absolutely screwed.
I sat down, frowning. She looked scared and worn down. "Megan, what happened?" Blake asked, his voice was stern and demanding.
"They killed her. They killed them both," Megan said. Her eyes were wide, alert. She looked as if she had been on a caffeine binge all night, tired but wide-awake and buzzing.
"They?" Did she believe Josh and Courtney killed Gigi and Tilly now too? Had Aaron's words wormed their way into her mind? "They didn't, Megan, you know that." Not again. I couldn't go through it all again. "Come on. Don't let Aaron get to you."
"It wasn't Aaron, Mackenzie. It was me." What? What the fuck is she talking about?
My stomach clenched. No. "What wasn't Aaron?" I asked. My voice, failing me, was barely a whisper. I could guess. I knew, but I needed her to say it.
Megan's eyes bored into mine, showing no emotion. Nothing. They were dark, almost black and empty. "I did it. I killed Courtney, Josh and Pete. Aaron is as innocent as you. He confessed to cover for me."
My mouth fell open as she confirmed what I was trying to convince myself couldn't really be true. Not Megan. "But... why? What?" She let him do that? My head spun. Was this really happening? I'm dreaming. I have to be dreaming.
"I can't go to prison, Mackenzie. You know I'm not strong; I would die in there within a week."
I closed my eyes and held my hand up. "Wait. I don't... how did Aaron know? Why did you...? How did...?" Nothing made sense. Sense was a place where one of my friends hadn't killed another and let another take the rap. I was not there, and I wanted to be there.
Beside me, Blake sat far too still, as if he was still processing what she had said and her words hadn't caught up with him yet. He was usually quick to react to a situation, normally with a stupid comment or a smirk, but he sat silently, like Megan was telling us her summer plans.
I had a million questions, but I could barely pin down one long enough to ask it. The whole situation was crazy. Megan and Aaron were crazy. I was angry, pissed off. How fucked up are they!
She took a sip of her tea, her eyes filling with tears, still calm. Calm, calm, calm. I envied her that. She'd done this horrible, unforgivable thing, and I was the one that was fucking livid. "Do you have any idea what it's like waking up in hospital and being told the woman you love is dead?"
I shook my head - back to Gigi? I didn't want to yell - well I did, but I knew better than to do it. I needed the truth. Aaron needed the truth to come out. And so did Josh and Courtney's families. "Megan, they didn't kill Gigi. Nobody killed either of them. It was an accident."
"It's hell," she said, ignoring what I'd said completely. "I couldn't even grieve properly because no one knew about us. I missed her every second of every day. I felt like I was drowning and there was no way out. There was nothing I could do to make myself feel better or to make someone pay for what happened. Justice was never served, but they both deserved it so much."
She put her
mug down and reached onto her lap. The next thing she place on the table made my heart stop. A gun. I blinked hard, not believing what I was seeing. Blake's hand tightened around mine. Finally, he's back. My brain refused to accept Megan had a gun. How did she have a gun?
"Megan," Blake said calmly, smiling a warm smile like the ones police give someone about to jump off a building. Blake smiled as if he was her best friend and everything was going to be okay. "Hand me the gun."
"No," she replied, her knuckles turning white as she gripped hold of it hard. My eyes widened and time seemed to slow right down. "The things Josh was saying ate away at me. He was glad it was them rather than him and Courtney. How could you wish someone died over yourself?" I didn't get that either, but I wasn't prepared to kill over it.
"I don't know," I replied, just in case I was supposed to answer and it wasn't a rhetorical question.
"I kept thinking about them both rotting in the ground while Josh walked around being a prick and Courtney defended him. I couldn't stand it. Because of them, Tilly and Gigi were dead. They didn't even care. We all took responsibility and we all still feel guilt, but not them. They didn't care."
"Courtney did," I said, defending my friend who wasn't able to defend herself. Megan was tarring Court with the same brush as Josh, and it wasn't right. She was guilty of letting Josh walk all over her, but she wasn't a bad person. She cared.
Megan shook her head slowly. "I confronted her the night after Josh said he was glad it was them. Courtney admitted she was glad she didn't die. Can you believe that?"
Yes, I could. "That doesn't mean she wanted it to be Tills and Gigi." That just meant she didn't want to die. I was glad I didn't die, and I knew that was selfish, but I was. If I had a choice though, I would swap with them in a heartbeat.
"Maybe she didn't want it to be them, but it was. She chose Josh over her friends, like she had done a thousand times over."
"So that meant they deserved it?" Blake asked. His lip curled in disgust. I squeezed his hand. This wasn't going to a repeat of what happened with Aaron. We absolutely had to stay calm this time. He had to stay calm. Megan had a gun. A gun for fuck sake! Where on earth did she get a gun from?
"Yes," Megan replied.
I blinked in shock. She really, truly believed that. I wanted to run to get as far away from her as I could, but my body wouldn't move. My heart was breaking. The girl that cried over Bambi's mum dying, and the girl that was too shy to ask a shop assistant if they had the shoes she liked in her size, had killed.
"There was a link. A link between Tilly, Gigi, Courtney and Josh." She held her hand up, pointing at nothing with her index finger. She'd snapped. "They were responsible for their deaths and nothing was going to happen. Tilly and Gigi would never get justice. I couldn't stand that. Two beautiful people were dead, and no one was taking the blame. No one was being held accountable."
"So you took it into your own hands? Megan, that's not justice." It was only when something dropped onto the hand Blake wasn't holding that I realised I was crying.
"You don't understand, Mackenzie. An eye for an eye. Josh and Courtney caused Tilly and Gigi's deaths."
"What did you do? Talk me through everything." Keep her calm and keep her talking.
"When I had made my decision to take things into my own hands everything became clear. I instantly felt better about their deaths because someone was going to pay. I knew that it wouldn't bring them back, but there had to be justice. I thought of my plan. At first I was just going to go to Josh's house when I knew they were there and Eloise was away. You know that wouldn't have been hard to find out because Josh would brag about having the place to himself."
That sounded like Josh. No matter how small and boring, if it was about him it was huge and amazing.
"When he said about going away to the cabin everything changed. It was better, easier. I knew I was implementing you guys into it, but I thought it through carefully and knew none of you would be arrested. Blake coming along last minute scared me for a second, but it didn't really matter, I had enough Rohypnol."
I laughed humourlessly. Well, thank God she had enough for all! "Where did you get it?" The idea of Megan getting hold of Rohypnol was ridiculous. She shouldn't know where to get any of that stuff from.
"You remember Stoner Richard from school?"
"Yeah," I replied. Rich had been suspended from school countless times for smoking weed. He was good looking and actually pretty smart, but his home life sucked and he used weed to make everything better.
"He moved on to harder stuff, doing quite well for himself actually." As a drug dealer. She shrugged. "He can get pretty much anything, so he was boasting. Anyway, I planned to drug you all, only enough so you'd be out of it until morning, I didn't want to hurt you. I put Rohypnol in the liquor and took a second bottle, which I hid in my suitcase, so I could swap them over."
"Why?"
Blake snorted. "So when the police tested the bottles it'd be clear."
Megan nodded. "Yes. And I had a change of clothes, matching. I bagged the clothes and bottle, weighted it down and ran up the river as far as I could go before I lost sight. It's all somewhere down there. After that, I had a shower, changed into my duplicate clothes and went to bed."
"You missed out the part where you stabbed our friends to death."
She bowed her head. "You know what happened."
"Who did you kill first? How did you do it? Did they fight? Did they die quickly? Why did you stab them so many times?" I asked, fighting myself to remain calm. I wanted to hit her, scream at her, strangle her. How could she? I was floating again, watching this from far away.
"Do you really want those answers, Mackenzie?"
"Yes," I snapped. Didn't I deserve that much?
Biting her lip, she nodded once and relied, "Okay. I gave you, Blake, Aaron and Kyle more of the liquor." Spiked liquor. "When you all started looking droopy eyed, I took a shot myself and gave Josh and Courtney more, too. I needed them to be able to walk around after you four were out of it. It worked. I waited in my room an hour after I heard you and Blake go upstairs to be sure you were out of it. I knew you'd both crash pretty hard once you were asleep." She'd heard us go upstairs? I wanted to know what else she'd heard but that paled in comparison.
"When I went downstairs, Josh and Courtney were in the kitchen cleaning up. I think they'd been at it a while but even though Courtney said she felt like shit he wanted them to do the washing up. I told them I got up to get a glass of water and offered to help too."
"Courtney stumbled into the counter, laughing as she threw the enchilada boxes in the bin." Megan's eyes darkened. I barely recognised her. "She was laughing as if she didn't have a care in the world." I wanted to shake her. We had all laughed since Tilly and Gigi died. The world still turned and life still went on. That was the way it was. Just because we didn't die it didn't mean we had to live as if we had. Tills and Gigi would never want that.
"While Josh was fucking around putting the bottles that still had something in them in the cupboard, I... I stabbed Courtney. It was so easy. At first she didn't make a sound. She looked like she was screaming; eyes wide and mouth open but she didn't make a sound. I managed to stab her once more before Josh started to turn around. By that time they were both groggy, moving slowly and not fully aware of what was going on. I stabbed him before he even laid his eyes on Courtney."
I swallowed bile. "Then you stabbed them both some more?"
"Don't say it like that, Mackenzie. I had to make sure. When they were on the floor I felt the rage of what they had done to Gigi spilling out of me. I got carried away."
I threw my hands over my face, squeezing my eyes closed as if that would squeeze the image from my mind. I wanted to be sick.
"Pete?" Blake said, spitting his name through his teeth. "What did he do?" My head shot up. Pete! He hadn't done anything wrong. He wasn't involved at all.
Megan's eyes dropped to the floor. "That wasn't intentional. He kept
accusing me. Accusing us. He thought it was you, Kenz. He said you were getting close to Blake so his family wouldn't think it was you. There was an argument and he said he was going to Wright. I followed him home."
She did it. Not only did she plan murdering Courtney and Josh but she did the same with Pete, too. And she drugged her friends, hiding behind us to cover her own back.
"How could you do that to us? I thought we were friends."
"We are."
"No. You framed us to get yourself out of the shit!"
"I planned it well, Mackenzie. No one was ever supposed to be arrested for it."
"Then why plant drugs in Blake's room?"
Her eyes flicked to the table. "That was a backup plan in case things started to go wrong. Blake coming along was perfect and when I learned the wake was at his house..." she trailed off, shrugging. "I'm sorry for that. He was a random person none of us knew." Disposable then. "I was going to find a way to get it back if the case was closed, but it wasn't, so I made the call."
"Aaron?"
"I couldn't stand it in the end. I'm not a monster; I do feel guilt. I was a mess, hysterical about going to prison when Aaron found me in my room. He made me tell him and that's when he said he would confess. He'd do anything for the people he loved, you know that. Aaron would be fine in prison. He is fine, but I wouldn't."
"How could you let him?"
"That was a mistake. He said it would be over and I could move on. He said he would act crazy and then get better in a psych unit. That was how it was supposed to go. He was just meant to scare us that day and ramble on, make it look like he'd had a breakdown. Blake was never meant to get hurt; that wasn't part of the plan."
"He'd take a bullet for his friends, he'd do time for his friends," Blake muttered.
I remembered telling him that Aaron would die for the people he cared about when we first met at the cabin. I had no idea what else he would do to protect the people he loved. Aaron loved blindly.
My head felt ready to explode at the latest revelations. Megan was behind everything. Aaron was stupid and his only crime was loving Megan. Blake could have died because of their actions.
"I'm sorry you were both pulled into this. I never wanted to hurt you guys, especially you, Mackenzie. I have to put this right now. I posted a letter to Wright this morning, and I'm so glad I waited to see you. I'm the last link in the chain. It can only end with me." She turned the gun on herself. "I love you, Kenzie."