Frayed (4 page)

Moments later, the door embossed with the golden words
Mr. Bernard
swung open and my chemistry teacher strode out without a second glance, leaving us to deal with the wrath of Mr. Bernard by ourselves. He appeared at the door, graying hair and horn-rimmed glasses and all. He didn’t say a word as we stepped into the room, although he pointed at two chairs that had been set up in front of his mahogany desk.

“Sit down,” he said. Amanda and I sat. Two manila folders were sitting on top of his desk—our files, I realized. It wasn’t hard to see whose belonged to whom: mine was pathetically thin, while Amanda’s was bursting at the seams.

Once we had taken a seat, Mr. Bernard rounded the corner to his desk but did not sit. Instead, he looked down at us, eyes glinting with suppressed anger. I spent the next ten minutes in silence as I glared out the open window, staring at the flickers of filtering gray light and completely tuning out his lecture. I barely listened as he told us how “disappointed” he was in our actions and how he “expected better” from someone like me. He demanded to know what had happened, but both Amanda and I sat as tightly shut as clams.

“Very well. You will both receive one week’s worth of detention,” he said. Mr. Bernard turned his attention to me. “Miss Hale, this will add on to your previous punishment from Mrs. York. You will both start this afternoon.”

And that was it. Amanda left without a word, hardly even a nod, but I needed a moment longer to gather my thoughts.

My hand was on the doorknob when Mr. Bernard spoke.

“Miss Hale?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t let what happened to Kesley change you.”

My fingers tightened on the doorknob. I didn’t answer, but all I could think was:
I think it already has.

• • •

I didn’t go to last period.

Since I was already in deep shit, I figured it wouldn’t really matter if I ditched one more class. There was no point leaving the school premises, considering I’d have to be back there for detention, so I hung out in the girls’ bathroom.

A long mirror stretched from one side to the other, chipped yellow-brown tiles decorating the very undesirable room. Rows of sinks with faucets sat below the mirror. I stood in the center of the room, closing my eyes. But then I yanked them open, forcing them to look at the girl in the reflection. She looked no different than the girl yesterday or even the day before that, but somehow there was a hardened edge to her eyes that hadn’t been there a couple months back.

And sometimes, looking in the mirror, I didn’t even recognize myself.

Sometimes, looking at myself—flat, brown-blond hair, brown eyes, and the pink, rough scars that ran from the tip of my forehead to the base of my collarbone, stretching along my neck—I didn’t feel real. I felt fragmented.

I touched the scar along my face, feeling the bumps and ridges, reminding me it was
real
. That
I
was real.

I couldn’t remember much of what happened the night of the accident. The doctors told me the memory loss was because of posttraumatic stress, but I
did
remember brief feelings and thoughts. Sometimes, I would wake late at night, my throat clogged with a scream, the scent of burning flesh in my nose. Other times, something would trigger a memory: I’d look at a linoleum floor at a certain angle and remember clearly the feel of it against my knees as I fell after the acid hit. Or I’d hear a voice in a crowd that brought back fleeting memories of the police who questioned me.

Once, a glass beaker had smashed in science class, and the memory of the acid bottle shattering had been just as sharp.

Yet they were only snatches, hints at a past locked away. If I thought about it, I didn’t really
want
to know the whole, unedited truth.

The screech of a bathroom stall door made me flinch back to the present.

I sighed, pulled my hair over my face once more to cover the scar, and turned to leave. The scar didn’t hurt anymore, but people always stared.

And with recent events, people had been looking at me a lot.

• • •

I walked out of afternoon detention feeling somewhat relieved.

Amanda, predictably, hadn’t shown, and it was nice knowing I wouldn’t have to put up with her death glare burning a hole in the back of my head. But underneath the relief, my nerves jangled, knowing my mother would’ve heard what happened at school today.

Instead of texting Lia to pick me up, I was going to walk home, despite the misty rain beginning to fall. Like the coward I was, I knew that would delay the moment when I would actually have to face my mother. She worked as a chemist in a lab just outside of town, and today was her day off. I never knew exactly what she did. She was always sketchy on the details. All I knew was that it involved acids and chemicals and all sorts of things I’d rather be ignorant about.

I paused at the school entrance when I spotted a tall figure leaning against the school’s ivy-wrapped gate. I’d been avoiding Rafe all day, but my luck seemed to have run dry. A cold shiver danced down my spine, and I glanced to my left and then my right. I couldn’t see any way of walking past without him noticing me. A nervous thrill went through me at the idea of confronting him.

“Rafe?” I said softly as I drew nearer. He turned at the sound of my voice, his hair dripping with rainwater, making his dark-brown hair look black. He shot me a crooked smile, eyes twinkling a bit. There wasn’t a hint of guilt on his face. Did that mean he hadn’t done what I thought he’d done or that he was incapable of feeling guilty? I thought back to what Lia had told me in the car the other day. How well did I know Rafe,
really
?

Before he left…before the funeral, I’d thought I knew him well.

He was intelligent, with confidence that bordered on arrogance, but I couldn’t deny the violent streak that had sent him to juvenile detention.

I had no idea what he was capable of. On one hand, he was the caring boy I had grown up with. The one who I’d climbed trees with and eaten candy with until we felt ill. The one who Kesley and I would walk the streets with until night fell, then stay out late to count the stars. But he had changed subtly over the years since his parents’ divorce, growing more antagonistic until we’d drifted slowly apart.

“I wasn’t sure whether you had a ride or not,” Rafe told me as I stopped in front of him. My eyes slid beyond the school gates, and I saw a black car parked a few yards away from where we were standing. Illegally parked, of course. The law was beneath Rafe. Always had been. I swallowed nervously, rocking back on my heels.

“If I wanted a ride, I’d call my boyfriend,” I pointed out coldly.

A grin. “And yet he’s nowhere in sight.”

I fiddled with the strap of my bag and decided to come clean. “I don’t exactly want to go home, not just yet.”

A strange expression flickered over Rafe’s face. “Because of Amanda?”

“You know about that?”

He flicked a brow at me. “Come Monday, the whole school will know about that.” It took all my self-restraint not to groan out loud. Why the hell had I done it? Couldn’t I have just sat down quietly and said and done nothing? But the anger that had coursed through me at her words was like nothing I’d ever felt before.

“Yes, because of Amanda. I hate disappointing my mom, you know? And with everything that’s been going on lately…” I bit down on my lip until it hurt.

Rafe squinted up at the sky. The rain was coming down thicker now, pelting us more ferociously. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get drenched.” He started walking toward his car. He paused when he saw I wasn’t following. “Coming?”

I weighed my options.

On the one hand, I was not convinced of his innocence, despite how guilt-free he might appear. But on the other—how many opportunities like this was I going to get to question him? Curiosity won out over fear. So I followed his example and walked to the curb.

I slid into the warm leather seat and shut the door.

“Of all the people you could choose to assault,” Rafe murmured, “it had to be the toughest girl in school.” And then: “Well, the second-toughest girl in the school.”

“Who’s first?”

“Kesley was first,” he said.

“Oh.” I said nothing more, leaving an awkward silence. That was the key word, wasn’t it?
Was.
The engine hummed in the background. Rain pelted against the glass, but Rafe flicked the wipers on, and the squeak of the blades was added to the din. Heat blasted from the vents, though it was very welcome. It washed away the cold that clung to me.

Rafe turned to me, gesturing at something. “Mind if I…?”

I glanced at the cigarettes, then looked away. “Fine. Whatever.”

He laughed.

“What?” I said rather defensively.

“You sound a lot like Kesley,” was his only response, but he still reached for the pack and lit one, flicking the ash out the partially open window. He looked at me for a moment, rolling the cigarette between his fingers while smoke curled out the window. I watched the rain consume the smoke, wondering
how
to ask what I wanted to ask.

A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “And that
looks
a lot like Kesley.”

I just squinted at him in confusion.

“Whenever Kesley wanted to ask me something, a favor—to do her homework usually—her brows would narrow, and she’d squint.”

“Oh.” My stomach fluttered with nerves. The words hovered on my lips, but I couldn’t seem to push them out of my mouth.

“Go on,” he said gently.

I sucked in a breath. My heart steadied a little, which was the most I was going to get. The words fell out of my mouth in a heap. “Did you kill my sister?”

An awfully loud silence filled the car. The purr of the engine and squeak of the wipers were magnified tenfold. The slam of a car door sounded from somewhere, but neither of us looked up to see where it came from.
Plop, plop.
The rain continued, louder than before.

“Well,” said Rafe dryly, “aren’t you bold?”

I bristled at the edge of amusement to his voice. Heat flared into my cheeks. All of a sudden, everything was too hot, and I was grateful Rafe had left the window open.

I stared at my knotted hands in my lap.

“I saw—”

“—a plane ticket,” Rafe finished.

“You knew,” I said, lifting my gaze to his face. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Rafe shot me an indescribable look. Frustration? “You ran out of the café before I’d even paid,” he said. “You didn’t exactly give me a chance.”

“I’m giving you a chance now,” I said quietly, not moving my eyes from my hands.

Rafe took another drag from the cigarette before answering. “You’re right,” he finally said. “I
didn’t
come back after she was killed. But also I didn’t get to see her before she died.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Three days before Kesley died, she called me in Vancouver.” His jaw clenched. “God, Ava, she sounded
scared
. She wasn’t making much sense either. She only told me that something strange was happening—and that she needed to speak to me. I managed to convince my father to let me come back here early to get ready for the school semester.” Since his parents’ divorce, he’d split his time between his mother in Circling Pines and his father in Vancouver.

“Did she tell you…?” My voice broke. Clearing my throat, I continued, “Did she tell you what was wrong?”

Rafe just shook his head. “No. She didn’t.”

But I still couldn’t help noticing he wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. Besides, if he’d really come back to Circling Pines the day the ticket indicated, why wouldn’t he have had enough time to see Kesley?

Again, the feeling he wasn’t being entirely honest with me made my stomach curl with anxiety.

“I need you to say it, Rafe.” I hated myself for how weak, how desperate, I sounded. Silence. For a long, long, long moment, there was nothing but silence.

And then: “I didn’t murder Kesley. I never would have hurt her.
Never.
”

I deflated. All the tension, the fear inside me leaked away, replaced with cold numbness. It didn’t last long.

“Do you think she knew she was going to die?” I couldn’t help but ask. The thought made me shiver in horror, and my toes curled. I blinked and wasn’t all that surprised to feel the wetness of tears in my eyes.

Rafe answered honestly. “I don’t know. But she knew something.”

I looked out the window at the rain washing down the drains and at the sky laden with clouds. The street was empty, but I no longer felt safe. A streak of lightning split the sky, followed by the sharp snapping of thunder.

I was suddenly glad I hadn’t walked home by myself.

Another question rose to the surface of my mind. “Did you love her? Kesley, I mean.”

“Yes,” Rafe whispered very softly. “I loved her like a sister.”

“Just as a sister?” I couldn’t keep the sharp edge of accusation from entering my voice. I glanced over at him just in time to see a smile quirk his mouth.

“Would that make you jealous, Ava?”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, feeling warmth spread across my neck. “I just…wondered. She adored you, you know.”

The smile slipped from his mouth. “I know. But…no, I never thought of her in that way.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because it would be pretty gross to date your own sister.”

“You know what I mean,” I snapped.

From the corner of my eye, I saw him shrug. “That doesn’t matter, does it? She felt like a sister to me, so that’s what she was, relation or not.”

I turned my gaze to the rain-washed windows.

I don’t know whether I believed him—my head was already spinning with too many thoughts I’d have to untangle later. There was one thing I did know though: the fear I’d felt when I’d seen Rafe standing at the gate had dissolved.

Maybe I shouldn’t have believed his story so easily.

Maybe I should have asked him more questions.

Maybe he would be my downfall too.

• • •

I’d almost forgotten about the whole incident with Amanda by the time I got home, but reality slammed into me when I heard the
click-click
of my mother’s heels. I repressed a grimace. What was I supposed to
say
to her? My mother had a phone clutched in her hands when I walked through the high, arched doors. I only needed to take one look at her to see the fury—and disappointment—written over her face.