“One sick little slut is not worth this!” Jackson snarls.
Tate lands an uppercut. But then Jackson drags him to his feet and I can see that the next two punches knock Tate loopy. He lifts his hands to block his face, but Jackson’s nothing but fire and violence now. He punches him everywhere. His hands. His sides. His head. Tate isn’t coming back from this.
We need help.
Help.
“Help! We need help!”
My voice finds its way out of the chaos. I shout over and over, still too dizzy to run for the door, but I’m back on my feet. Groping the wall, dragging myself toward the door.
The music’s done and I can hear the squeak of the players’ shoes—why can’t they hear us? Why is no one coming?
Tate’s hands drop, giving Jackson free reign at his face. And he doesn’t let up. Not for a minute. Not even when Tate slumps down.
Jackson isn’t stopping. He’ll never stop.
I pull the first thing I find off the floor, one of those sticks. I don’t even know how to hold it, but there isn’t time. No time. I pull back all the way and swing at Jackson’s head.
The impact jars my shoulder, sends me down first. Jackson’s head is still whipped back from the impact. His chin dips forward. Heavy-lidded eyes look down. Blood dribbles over his chin and drips onto my shirt. My stomach curdles. Jackson sways. And I watch him fall.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Two basketball players and Coach Carr screech to a halt in the doorway. Mr. Stiers is right behind him.
“Out! Both of you!” Coach Carr says to the players. “Go call nine-one-one.”
I look back at Tate and Jackson. Tate is groaning softly, rolling onto his side. Jackson isn’t moving. I don’t even know if he’s breathing. I look down at the stick still gripped in my hands. At the blood on my chest. Jackson’s blood.
Oh God.
“Miss Woods? Miss Woods!”
A hand touches my shoulder and I shriek. Mr. Stiers pulls back, hands raised and a wary look in his eyes.
“It’s all right,” he says. “Everything’s all right.” It’s like he’s talking to an injured animal.
I have to move. Do something. I force my fingers to uncurl from the stick. It clatters to the ground and I jump.
I cover my mouth and look at the coach. He’s watching me like he doesn’t know what to do. Like he isn’t entirely sure what I did.
“What happened here?” Coach Carr asks. “Did you attack them?”
Mr. Stiers shakes his head. “No. We need medical attention. You check on Mr. Pierce.”
I look down at Jackson, at the shallow rise and dip of his chest. Alive. Thank God. But he’s not okay. And that’s my fault.
“He was on Tate.” I’m so breathless, every word is an effort. And no one’s asking, but I still feel like I should. I still feel like the truth needs to come out. “Wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t—I hit him.”
The coach calls for help and several adults file into the locker room, some gasping and covering their mouths. One guy in a white shirt marches straight over to Jackson, lifting his eyelids right away and then checks his pulse. Doctor, maybe? Close enough.
Jackson groans and rolls to his side. Everyone relaxes. Except me. I feel like I might throw up. My throat suddenly burns from where his hands were wrapped. I can still feel his fingers squeezing.
Someone’s helping Tate sit up and Mr. Stiers is coming closer to me, looking at my neck. The tenderness in his eyes is more than I can take.
“Do you want me to take you to another room?” he asks, voice low and careful.
I know what he’s thinking. A roughed-up girl and two boys in a fight. It looks like rape. Or something close.
I shake my head adamantly. “I’m okay. It wasn’t—I’m okay. Just…take care of them.”
His relief is palpable. Mine probably is too when he turns away. I slump back against the lockers and breathe deep. A commotion outside the locker room ends any peace I might have found. I can hear people arguing. Someone swearing. I hear, “My girlfriend’s in there!” and suddenly I feel everything.
Because that’s Nick’s voice.
And he’s fighting to get to me.
Nick bursts into the doorway. A couple basketball players are holding his arms, but he shrugs them off and none of the coaches seem to be too worried. No one would worry about Nick. He’s a good guy. I realize in this moment just how good.
Nick takes in the scene. Jackson, answering questions in a stiff but clear voice. Tate, dabbing a wad of paper towels to his beyond-battered face. And me.
The look Nick gives me makes me desperately want to smile for him. I try, but somehow end up bursting into tears instead. I haul myself to my feet and he’s already crossed the room. I push my face into his chest, and his arms are around me, and God, I can breathe. I can finally breathe.
Ugly sobs hiccup out of me, but I focus on the feel of his lips against my temple. I try to focus on Nick and tune out Jackson’s voice, counting fingers someone is holding up. I try not to hear Tate’s crystal-clear account of Jackson’s hands on my throat. And that, yes, I did hit Jackson with the stick, but I was only trying to help.
Nick grows so tense then his body turns to steel. But when my hands start to shake on his sides and he feels it, he softens. For me.
“You want me to call your parents?” he asks.
I shake my head, hearing sirens in the distance. There’s a low murmur in the crowd outside. What’s happening out there? Is the game on hold? Probably. So all those people out there are waiting. Wondering what the hell is going on. Spreading rumors about the big fight.
My eyes fly open. They’re going to think that’s all this is. A fight. A blowup over a girl. No one will know what I did. They’ll think I’m a victim. An innocent bystander, and after this the police probably won’t tell them otherwise.
But there hasn’t been anything innocent in me for a long time.
I lean into Nick, putting my mouth close to his ear so my words are for him alone. “Get the book. The one under this bench.”
I nod discreetly at the ground near my feet. I can hear the crowd in the gym murmuring louder. The police. They’re here. I nudge him toward the bench where I see it. “Pick it up and go outside. Show them. The students. Show as many of them as you can what I did.”
He rubs my back slowly, instinctively protecting my secret as he toes the book closer, picks it up. It looks so different in his big hands, with his long fingers flipping through the pages. He reaches the two at the back. Reads my sentence about Harrison. Sees my picture.
He closes the book and his face together, tucking the first inside his jacket.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
Anguish pinches his eyes and mouth. “I’m destroying this. It’s time to end it. This book only shows parts of the truth. This isn’t evidence. It’s history. History we need to move past.”
I’m desperate. Angry. Officers come inside and my hands ball to fists as I lean in closer to him. “I can’t get away with this.”
“You’ll confess,” he says, lips at my temple. “I hate it, but it’s your choice and I’ll live with it. But I’m begging you to draw the line here. Nothing good will come of this. Please trust me on that.”
I don’t know if I believe him. I don’t know what to believe. But I nod. The officials are here. Police officers. Paramedics. They pull me away, insisting on checking my throat.
“I’ll be right outside,” Nick says. I can see the book tucked under his arm inside his coat.
The officer stops him, a hand on his arm. I feel my whole body tense, my heart tripping over itself, slamming wildly in my chest. “I think all the parties should stay here.”
“I actually wasn’t here when it happened,” Nick says, looking down at his feet, playing the respect card to perfection—
because for him it isn’t a card. It’s just who he is. “I thought maybe I shouldn’t be here.”
When the teachers in the room nod in agreement, the officer releases him. My eyes follow him out of the door. The book is with him. All that truth is going away. But maybe he’s right. Partial truths can be dangerous things. They leave a lot of room for lies.
“Miss Woods, is that right?” I look up, surprised to see the officer standing near me. A brass rectangle on his shirt reads G. Denton. I force myself to look at his eyes. They’re brown and a little bloodshot, but kind enough.
“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head.
“I think we ought to get you checked out,” he says.
“No, I’m fine,” I say. The paramedics come closer anyway, and I let them check over my neck while I give my version of what happened. Telling them about the texting and the vigilante stuff is easier than I thought it would be. Recalling Jackson’s fingers around my neck stings. And confessing Manny’s name as the vigilante cuts me in half. But I do it anyway, tears staining my cheeks and my chest caving in.
The paramedics test my eyes and check my neck. They are all gentle fingers and soft questions. They treat me like something small and broken, and I should be. But I don’t feel broken anymore.
“Is there anything else?” the officer asks me.
Anything else? How is this not enough?
“It’s what I told you.”
Paramedics offer a stretcher, but I shake my head hard. “Please, no. I’m fine.”
Denton regards me with a firm look. “Miss Woods, you should go to the hospital. Get checked out.”
“I want to see my parents first. I won’t go without them. But I will come with you to the station.”
He frowns. “You were nearly strangled here tonight. You’ve been through hell.”
I almost laugh. He thinks I’m a victim, but he doesn’t get it. All he sees is a little girl with big, brown eyes and bruises on her neck. He doesn’t see the calculating seventeen-year-old who painstakingly picked every target, feeding names to Manny week after week.
Denton pats my shoulder, searches his little pad of paper for my first name. “Now, Mr. Donovan already told us you weren’t aiming for Mr. Pierce’s head. He thinks you were just trying to clip his shoulder, just to stop him.”
All I need to do is nod. It will get me out of here. No one would know any different. I was attacked. Terrified out of my mind. It would make sense that I would swing wild, that I would just be desperate to get him away. It might even be true.
But it’s not enough. I can’t let him believe I’m innocent.
“I didn’t aim at all. But I’m every bit as guilty as Jackson.”
• • •
I hold my breath as we pass out of the locker room and into the gym. I try to imagine what they’ll see. The bruises on my neck? The blood on my shirt? The police officer with a hand on my upper arm?
The bleachers are crowded with faces I’ve passed in the hall all year. These people know me, so their shock isn’t a surprise. I’m not a criminal. I’m Piper Woods, the nice girl with the camera. Or at least I was. Now, I’m something else.
Nick is gone, somewhere else with that book. Burying it. Burning it, maybe. I can’t think about it anymore.
The officer pauses at the door, worry in his eyes. “Are you sure you won’t let me take you to the hospital first?”
“No, thank you,” I say.
He pushes the door open and I look back at the crowd. They’re still watching, snapping pictures with their phones. My chest aches as I watch them, wishing I could go back, but you can’t ever go back. There’s only forward.
The next two hours are not what I thought they’d be. They sit me beside a desk in the station. My parents arrive, clearly rattled but quietly supportive. I can see Tate and his dad too, a few desks away. He’s holding ice on his lip and there’s a butterfly bandage on a cut on his brow.
Detective Findley introduces himself and sits down at the desk beside me. He’s young with reddish hair and blue eyes that crinkle up in the corners when he smiles. Which he does a lot more often than you’d think a detective would.
He tells me right away that Jackson’s been arrested for the attack but that he’s still being treated. They don’t give details on his injuries, of course. But I don’t need details. I’m the one that whacked him on the head with a field hockey stick.
“If you’re up for it, Piper, I’d like to get all the basics down again while they’re fresh in your mind,” Detective Findley says.
My mom looks at me with uncertainty in her eyes. She’s been through so much today. I squeeze her hand, an apology in my eyes. My dad lays a light hand on my shoulder. I think of shrugging it off, but it’s not time for that. That fight can wait.
“Sure,” I say.
It’s not what I expected. I thought I’d be in a small room with an ominous light hanging overhead. I expected interrogation, but he lets me tell him what happened instead, sometimes interrupting to clarify what room I was in or how long I think something lasted.
I answer without feeling the words. My focus roams the open room where a dispatcher is eating a ham sandwich and a deputy is offering cookies to some of the staff. He even offers one to me.
No one yells. No one interrogates. The same dispatcher brings me a Sprite and then Detective Findley himself steps away to bring me a blanket. I didn’t even know I’d been shivering. And I still don’t understand why he’s treating me like a victim.
Detective Findley saves his report and leans back in his office chair.
“Well, I think that’s enough for tonight,” he says, smiling again.
“No, it’s not,” I say. “I’ve hurt people. I’ve done awful things and I want to know what happens now.”
He tips his head. “Are you thinking I might arrest you?”
I flush, thinking of my walk out of the school. “I guess I thought I was arrested.”
“When someone confesses to assault, our department’s standard policy is to question them properly.” He leans in, eyes twinkling. “Even if we really don’t want to because we know darn well it was self-defense.”
“I was defending Tate, actually,” I say, fiddling with my fingers.
He stretches back in his rolling chair, the hinges squeaking as he rocks back and forth. “Regardless, Mr. Pierce and his parents aren’t pressing any charges, so no one’s getting arrested at this desk.”
My mom leans in, her hand a little tighter on my wrist. “But my daughter—”
He levels her with a look that shows me that he’s more than a smiling face with a badge on his chest. “Your daughter is a minor who was assaulted by an eighteen-year-old man. I said no one here was getting arrested.”
“But I’m not innocent,” I say. “I had a hand in this.”
“Did you break into anyone’s house, Miss Woods? Did you attack another student without provocation? Or maybe steal confidential security tapes from your high school?”
My mouth opens and closes. It’s not that simple. But it’s clear that it’s very black and white to him.
He bends until he’s close enough that I can smell his cinnamon gum. “Miss Woods, what I’m about to say is off the record, because I’m not allowed to pass judgment. But what you did isn’t a crime. It’s a bad choice. A regret. We’ll look through your phone and if we change our minds, we’ll call. But until then, go home. Learn from your mistakes.”
I nod, swallowing thickly. And then he holds up my phone, bringing my attention back to his eyes. “And bringing this to us? Turning in your best friend? That was hard. It proves all this changed you for the better.”
“Not better,” I say. But I can’t argue with the changed part. There’s nothing in me that will be the same.
The detectives leave us in the main room while they talk to our pare
nts in glass-walled conference rooms, probably running down what happens from here. How they’ll talk to the school. I run a finger down the side of my untouched soda. The dispatch phone rings and a water fountain gurgles. I look up at Tate, who’s sitting four chairs over, staring at his bloody knuckles.
“I couldn’t stop watching it,” he says out of nowhere.
I look up, not sure what he’s talking about or if he’s even talking to me. I don’t know if he wants me to say anything, so I stay quiet. But I move two chairs closer. Just in case. He looks at me, and I know it was the right thing to do.
“The tape with Stella,” he explains through swollen lips. “I don’t know why I did it at first. It was like poking a bruise. But I kept doing it and doing it. Sometimes five, six times in one sitting. That’s how I figured it out.”
“Figured out it was Jackson,” I say. My chest squeezes. I can’t imagine what he’s feeling.
He nods. “The footboard gave it away finally. There’s a notch out of the left corner.” Tate pulls his hair back from his forehead and I can see a thin white scar right at his hairline. “I made that notch the day he got the bed. His thirteenth birthday party. We were being idiots, jumping off like we were doing skateboarding tricks…”
He goes quiet, obviously lost in a memory.
I suck in a breath. “Do you think she knew?”
“About the tape?” He shrugs. “I don’t know. She didn’t ever… I don’t know.”
“My gut tells me she didn’t,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says, sounding strangled. And then he clears his throat, throwing back his shoulders. “You should have targeted me.”
My cheeks burn, which is ridiculous. I need to get used to it. “I tried.”
“Good,” he says.
“It’s not good. I regret it. A lot.”
“Don’t,” he says. And then he clears his throat, lightens his voice. “So, Manny was the mastermind?”
“Yeah.”
He nods, though he still looks confused. “Manny’s your friend, right?”
The word punches through me.
“Used to be.”