Ten (22 page)

“But I was with you,” Gunner said. “For, um, most of them.”

Meg caught a slight roll of Kumiko’s eyes. “Yeah, but logically speaking, no one else can confirm that.”

“Well, Meg and I were together when Vivian was killed,” T.J. said. He squeezed Meg’s knee under the table. “You may not believe us, but I know for a fact
we
didn’t do it.”

Meg opened her mouth to back up T.J., then paused. Yeah, they’d been together most of that morning. The perilous trek down to the boathouse in the storm of the century and all. But there had been a moment. Just a few minutes when T.J. had run back up to the house to get the flashlights. It would have been enough time....

T.J. caught Meg staring at him. His eyes were so trusting, so soft. Meg shook off her doubts. She was being ridiculous. The stress of the day had made her paranoid.

“Bottom line,” T.J. said, still looking at Meg, “
we
all trust each other.”

“Speak for yourself.”

It took Meg a few seconds to realize that it wasn’t Kumiko who had spoken.

It was Minnie.

Gunner was the first to react. “Huh?”

“You heard me, Gun Show.” Minnie’s voice was razor-sharp. “I trust you about as far as I can throw you. And that goes for the rest of you, too.” Minnie pushed her chair away from the table and stood up.

“Minnie!” Meg said.

“What?” Minnie laughed. It was cold and barking. “You think I trust you?”

Meg straightened herself. “Yes, of course.”

Minnie looked unconvinced. “Why?”

Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because I’m the only one who knows your secrets?
“I’m your best friend.”

“Really?
You’re
my best friend?”

“Of course.”

Minnie leaned across the table. “Then why have you been trying to
steal my boyfriend
?”

Had Minnie lost her mind?

Kumiko leaned into Gunner. “
She’s
into you too?” she muttered.

Gunner slipped his arm around her back. “Um … er … Wait, are you?”

“No,” Meg said. She may not be sure about many things in her life anymore, but her disinterest in the Gun Show was not one of them. “No, I’m not.”

“Not that one,” Minnie said. She pointed to T.J. without looking at him. “That one.”

Meg felt the color drain out of her face. She thought of the make-out session she and T.J. had just shared and felt a pang of guilt. She’d known for years that Minnie was in love with T.J. She’d pushed him away. Without any luck.

“Boyfriend?” T.J. asked.

“Yeah,” Minnie said.

“Minnie, I was never your boyfriend.”

Minnie crossed behind the table and caressed his shoulder with the tips of her fingers. “You should have been.”

T.J. flinched away from her touch. “Minnie, I was never going to be your boyfriend.” His voice was harsh. “Ever.”

“See?” Minnie said. “You’re angry. That means you care.” She laid a hand on his chest.

“Get away from me,” T.J. said. He pushed her arm away. “You’re fucking crazy.”

“She’s not crazy.” Meg said it on reflex. She was so used to defending Minnie she didn’t even realize she’d done it again.

“Don’t defend her!” T.J. barked. “Why are you always defending her? She does nothing but treat you like dirt.”

“It’s not her fault, okay?” There she was, sticking up for Minnie again. Why was it never the other way around?

T.J. stormed across the room. “For chrissakes.” He leaned his back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest.

Minnie mimicked his stance, folding her arms across her chest as well. “She was only nice to me so she could steal you. She sabotaged me.”

T.J. laughed. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Is it?” Minnie said, her voice shrill and tense. “Then why did she start a rumor saying that you asked her to the Homecoming dance?”

“Hey!” Meg said. “I didn’t start any rumor.”

T.J. looked straight at Minnie. “Maybe because I
did
ask her to the Homecoming dance?”

Minnie’s eyes grew wide. She swung around and faced Meg. “I knew it. I knew you were lying to me. You told me he didn’t ask you.”

Now all the blood rushed back into Meg’s face with a vengeance. Turning T.J. down was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but Minnie would never have forgiven her.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Meg said lamely.

Minnie glared at her. “You should have told me the truth.”

“She canceled on me that morning,” T.J. said.

“Yeah, but she didn’t want to.” Minnie’s eyes never left Meg’s face. “She wanted to go with you. She cried her eyes out over that.”

T.J. turned to Meg. “You did?”

“How did you …” Meg froze. She hadn’t told Minnie that. She hadn’t told anyone. She only wrote about it in her …

“Oh, no.” Meg felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. She was dizzy as reality dawned on her. “Minnie, you didn’t.”

THIRTY ONE

MINNIE JUTTED OUT HER CHIN. “SO WHAT IF I
did?”

“Did what?” T.J. asked.

Meg exploded. “YOU READ MY DIARY???”

“Oh, shit,” Kumiko whispered.

Meg had spent years of her life taking care of Minnie. Protecting her. Sacrificing for her. Writing was the only escape she really had, the only thing she did for herself. Minnie knew exactly what Meg’s journals meant to her.

“How could you, Minnie? How could you?”

A flash of shame and regret passed over Minnie’s face and for a moment, her eyes faltered. Then she caught sight of T.J. standing just behind Meg and it seemed to harden her.

“You’ve always been jealous of me,” Minnie said, spitting out every word as fast as she could. “Always. Boys, clothes—you always had to have what was mine.”

T.J. threw up his hands. “I was never yours!”

“And you tried to bring me down, to undermine my confidence. I was fine before I met you. I wasn’t depressed. I didn’t have to take all these medications.” Minnie was on a roll now. “That was you. That was
all your fault
. You did this to me. But you didn’t break me, Meg Pritchard. You will never break me.”

“You’re crazy.” Meg couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Minnie sounded almost delusional, like some of the entries in Claire’s diary. So similar it was almost spooky.

“I’m crazy?” Minnie screeched. “
I’m
crazy? Who’s the one who has to sing Pink songs to herself in the mirror just to psych herself up to go to dances? Who’s the one who copies lines of old poems in her diary and dedicates them to boys she doesn’t even have the guts to talk to? It’s pathetic.”

Meg’s face burned. Her most intimate secrets, feelings and fears and desires she’d shared with no one, were now on display. She wanted to tell Minnie that she hated her, but the words choked off in her throat. All she could feel were the tears welling up in her eyes. She desperately hoped no one noticed.

Minnie certainly didn’t. “All you ever do is remind me to take my meds. ‘Mins, did you take your meds? Did you remember your pills? You have to take them every day, remember?’ Yeah. I remember. I remember that I was happy before I met you. I was normal. I was popular. The pills made me think I was crazy. You made me think that I wasn’t normal when really it was just you being—”

“Stop it, Minnie.” T.J. stepped between them. “Just stop it. You need to calm down, okay?”

Meg sunk her head against his back and gulped for air as if she was drowning.

“Calm down?” Minnie said. Her voice cracked. “Calm down? This
is
calm, Thomas Jefferson Fletcher. THIS IS CALM!”

Meg felt T.J.’s body flinch. “Look, I just meant—”

“I think I’ve been totally calm while she tried to steal you from me.” Minnie turned her back and stomped around the table. “I think I’ve been perfectly calm while my best friend tried to steal my boyfriend.”

“I AM NOT YOUR BOYFRIEND!”

T.J.’s yell echoed through the room. It caught everyone off guard, judging from the gasps that came from Gunner and Kumiko. Meg slowly backed away from T.J. He grabbed Minnie by the shoulders and shook her.

Minnie threw her head back in defiance. “Not my boyfriend?” she said. “Then what do you call the night we hooked up?”

“Delusional.” T.J. tossed Minnie away from him in disgust. “I know what you’ve been saying. I’ve heard the gossip. I don’t know what the hell you think happened at that party but I didn’t sleep with you.” He turned his back on her. “I was drunk, but not that drunk.”

“What do you …” The words froze on her tongue as Minnie’s face turned red. She stammered, but T.J. ignored her. He turned to Meg and took her hands in his.

“Is this why you wouldn’t go out with me? Is this why you kept turning me down? Because you thought I slept with Minnie?”

Meg dropped her eyes.

He gripped her hands tighter. “I swear to God, Meg. I swear to God I never had sex with her. Not with anyone in months. All I’ve been able to think about is you. I tried to forget you, but I couldn’t. It’s always been you. Only you.”

“Liar!” Minnie screeched. She pried T.J.’s hands away from Meg. “He’s lying. We totally hooked up at that party.” Minnie wheeled on Gunner. “You saw me after. You know.”

Gunner glanced at T.J., then Kumiko, and shrugged. “I … I don’t remember.”

Minnie sneered, then turned to Meg. “You know,” she said. “You believe me.”

Meg felt all of her facial muscles contract. Her eyebrows pulled together, her cheeks pinched, her lips hardened. That party was a bit of a blur; it was the first time in Meg’s life that she’d been shit-faced drunk. She remembered Minnie draping herself over T.J. in the stairwell. She remembered that suddenly they weren’t by her side anymore. And she remembered the empty, sick feeling at the idea that T.J. was having sex with her best friend just upstairs. But she never saw them enter the bedroom together, and the Tullamore Dew that she’d imbibed in the interim ensured she wouldn’t remember anything more than imprints of the evening.

Meg looked from Minnie to T.J. and back. Both of their eyes pleaded with her. Whatever happened that night, they both believed they were telling the truth.

“I don’t know,” Meg stuttered.

“Liars!” Minnie plopped back down into her chair. “You’re all liars.”

“I didn’t, Meg,” T.J. said under his breath. She could feel his fingers digging into the flesh of her arm. “I swear I didn’t.”

“I believe you,” she whispered. After months of living with her own version of what happened that night, she wasn’t sure if T.J.’s words were the truth, but she wanted them to be.

“Well, this is just perfect!” Minnie said with a dramatic sigh. “Always thinking of yourself, Meg. Never of me.”

Meg had had enough. “Really? Really, Mins? Are we even on the same planet? I do
nothing
but think of your feelings. All the time.”

Minnie laughed. “Bullshit.”

“It’s not.”

“That’s not what you wrote in your diary.”

Meg wondered how much of it Minnie had read. “You weren’t supposed to read that.”

“Oh, yeah? Then why did you leave it on my bed?”

“What?”

“You left it out, lying open on my bed. When I went upstairs today. You wanted me to find it and read it. Just like you wanted me to find the photo of that psychopath Claire Hicks.”

Kumiko flinched at the name. “Who?”

“This freaktastic girl that went to school with us.” Minnie tossed her white-blonde hair out of her face. “Meg left a photo of her in our room to scare me.”

Meg threw up her hands and collapsed back into her chair. “I didn’t put it there!”

Kumiko was still interested. “You said her name was Claire?”

“Yeah.”

“Claire Hicks?”

Minnie tilted her head. “You knew her?”

Meg and T.J. exchanged a look. How did Kumiko fit in?

“Yeah,” Kumiko said, her voice hushed. “Yeah, I knew her. She went to Roosevelt with me sophomore year.” Meg caught the tremor in her voice.

“Wait, so she went to school with you, too?” There was the connection. Three schools, just like the journal said. Roosevelt, Mariner, and Kamiak. That covered all of the guests on the island.

Kumiko nodded. “She was in my physics class sophomore year. We were lab partners on our electricity midterm. She totally screwed up our project and almost got me a failing grade. I had to go to the teacher and beg him to let me take it again by myself.”

T.J. gripped Meg’s arm. “Did you say electricity?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Meg reached across the table and pulled the diary toward her. She didn’t really want to read the entry to Kumiko—it felt too much like reading a death sentence to a convicted criminal. She glanced at T.J. for support and he gave her a tight smile.

Ugh. Meg swallowed and read the second-to-last entry out loud.

When she looked up again, Kumiko was trembling. “But … but that’s impossible. No one else could know …”

“Exactly,” T.J. said. “They’re all like that.”

“Wait,” Minnie said. “You think Claire wrote that diary?”

“But she’s dead!” Gunner said, as if the concept clearly ruled out all other possibilities.

“Are you sure about that?” T.J. asked.

Gunner’s brow scrunched up. “But … there was a funeral.”

“Are you saying that freak’s not really dead?” Minnie asked.

“It’s a possibility.” T.J. sat down next to Meg. “Or someone else who’s read the diary is using it to hunt us down.”

Minnie threw up her hands. “But why? I never did anything to her.”

Gunner and T.J. looked at each other, then at Minnie. “Don’t you remember?” Gunner asked.

“Remember what?”

“Look,” T.J. said firmly. “It doesn’t matter. What
does
matter is that we’ve got two options.”

“That many?” Kumiko said.

T.J. ignored her. “Either one of us is the killer or there’s someone else in the house.”

Minnie caught her breath. “Someone else?”

Kumiko sighed. “Obviously.”

“So we either lock ourselves in a room and pray we all survive until morning when the ferry’s supposed to return …”

“Or?”

“Or we search the house and find out whether or not we’re really alone.”