The Third Lie's the Charm (16 page)

My eyes burned with exhaustion, sadness, defeat, you name it. Bradley helped his sister up, and neither of them could meet my eye. Taylor wrung her hands until Bethany pulled her away without so much as a good-bye, and the rest of the girls followed suit.

I was alone with Judd's pepper spray and my phone. The past two years roiled deep inside of me, filling all the spaces where a normal person used to be. I wondered if this was what it felt like to be at a breaking point, because I felt like I was coming apart at the seams, sadness seeping out of my joints and tearing me apart.

Grinding my teeth, I turned in the direction of my house. The wind kicked up, pulling at my sweater and making the branches above creak and moan. Normally, my heart would thump in response and I'd become hyper aware of my surroundings just in case someone was after me, because there almost always seemed to be someone after me. But after everything with Bradley and Naomi, and Liam still in trouble for a crime he hadn't committed and a real killer still on the loose, none of it mattered anymore. I was back to square one, and the old recklessness was back in full force.

So when a car pulled up beside me at approximately 2:57 in the morning, I didn't pick up my pace or grab at my heart or grip the pepper spray until my knuckles were white and my fingers tingled.
I
dare
you. I dare you to mess with me, to try something, to hurt me any more than I am already hurt
. It wasn't possible.

“Kate?”

I knew that voice.

“Kate, get in. You shouldn't be out here alone.” The wind cut through my sweater and wrapped around my waist and up my back. My teeth chattered. I was freezing. When I turned to the shiny, black BMW and saw Porter behind the wheel, I didn't hesitate. Porter with his sad eyes and his broken spirit. I got in because looking into his eyes was a little like looking into a mirror.

“Thank God I found you,” he said, rubbing his jaw.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I'm sure you think I'm…like…unstable or something, and I guess everyone's right, but I'm not going to hurt you or anyone or anything.” The words tumbled out of Porter's mouth, and I felt bad that he even felt like he had to say something. I knew none of it was his fault. If anyone knew better, it was me.

“I don't…”

“It's just…complicated,” he interrupted. “Everything at the beach, being sent home…it's not what everyone thinks.”

“It's okay, Porter. You don't have to explain. I get it.” He didn't have to tell me about the messed-up nature of the Brotherhood. I already knew.

He pulled to a stop sign and lingered at the intersection. “I don't want to upset you, but I found something and I think you deserve to see it.”

God, this had to be the last thing I needed right now. The only thing I
deserved
to see at this point was a padded cell where I could finally stop hurting myself and everyone else I happened to touch. Somehow deserving to see and destroying were almost always synonymous. I
deserved
to see that picture of Liam kissing Bethany. I
deserved
to hear Maddie saying terrible things about me. I
deserved
to find out that Taylor had punked me and sent me fake emails from Grace. But did I really? Had I somehow brought this all upon myself, starting with the night I'd abandoned my best friend?

I pursed my lips together to stop the question from spilling out.

Porter turned and reached into the backseat, holding a crumpled piece of paper when he twisted back around. He handed me the sheet, and when I saw the orange writing, its source was clear.

“I found it in the hallway crumpled against a locker. I didn't know if I should show you or not, but I knew if someone had something of Alistair's…” Porter's voice cracked on his brother's name, and tears flooded my eyes. He was so hurt, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. It was so unfair. I didn't even know what to say. All this time, I hated when people didn't know what to say, and I had no words.

“I'm…” I began lamely.

“Forget it. It's not a big deal.” Porter shook his head and pulled away from the stop sign. I ran my fingers over the words, desperately wanting to read them, but knowing I should wait until I'd made it home behind my locked bedroom door.

“You should read that now. It's…I don't know. It's kind of, like, urgent.”

I nodded, my eyes already skimming her loopy handwriting. Urgent. Even after her death, Grace still had a knack for delivering something right on time. I needed a sign, and Grace had given me one. Maybe I deserved to read this after all.

I
still
can't believe that this is happening to me. I can't believe their lies. These societies want to destroy our school. They want to go back to the days of Pemberly and Brown. They want to separate me from the person I love the most.

I
think
about
that
when
Cameron
holds
my
hand. I love him. I can't lose him. We shouldn't have to lose people we love because of some stupid society. It's time to take action. It's time to destroy the societies for good. And anyone who's not with me, they're against me.

It was wrong. All wrong. There was no way Grace had written that. I looked closer at her Ls and Ys, at the angle of the words, and I closed my eyes, imagining the entries I had smoothed into my own notebook at home. Something didn't add up. Grace's feelings for Cameron would never have been expressed in this way. The paper was forged.

But why would someone go to the trouble of sending me Grace's actual journal entries only to lead up to one that's so clearly fake?

My eyes snapped up to Porter.

It's time to destroy the societies for good.

“Hey, I think you missed the turn…” The words came out in a hoarse whisper, and his only response was to push harder on the gas pedal. My body jolted back in the seat, and I felt the panic wind its way around my chest like a straitjacket.

“Porter? It's late and you're right, we really do need to talk, but maybe in the morning after I've had the chance to process…”

He jerked the steering wheel all the way to the right, taking a turn so fast that I was sure the tiny car would flip over. Something was wrong. So, so, so wrong. But it wasn't until I started to recognize the houses that I realized how wrong. It wasn't until we pulled into Grace's driveway that I stopped breathing. And it wasn't until I saw the soft glow from behind Grace's old window that everything went black. Grace's parents had moved away after the holidays, back to family, away from this broken town. The house sat dark and empty. Until now.

I dug my fingernails into the soft leather of the seat, wondering if there was time for me to jump out of the car and run away. Porter's eyes focused on my hands.

“Don't be scared. It's not what you think. We just want to talk.”

We?
What did that even mean? Who was in there? My stomach heaved, and the roof of the car seemed to close in on me. I made a promise. I would stop everything,
everything
if someone,
anyone
would help me escape. I'd let Grace go. I'd listen to my parents. I'd be a better friend. Hell, I'd even make new friends. Anything if it meant I could get away from here.

Porter read my mind. “Don't run. Just…it's okay. I don't want to have to…” He looked up at the second story of the house. “Look, everything will make sense once you get inside.” He clasped his fingers around my wrist hard enough to bruise. “I know how you feel, Kate. We have nothing left, and we're the only ones who can fix it. You know that, right?”

My throat narrowed. It was like I was breathing through a straw with a pea stuck in it. This couldn't be happening now, not when I needed strength to get away, not when I needed to save myself. But I knew the signs. I was panicking, and there was no way out but through. Blackness curled around the edge of my vision, and I watched Porter open his car door in slow motion. And then mine was open and I was being dragged out, his arm locked around mine. I knew I should run, but the world was fuzzy and pixilated, like being led through the broken back door of Grace's old house in a dream.

Walking through the door was like stepping back in time. My head was already spinning with my latest epiphany, but this was too much. My brain was on overload. Even though the Lees' house had been empty for months, it still smelled exactly the same. Like laundry detergent and burnt firewood. I was home.

In this kitchen, Grace and I had burned endless batches of chocolate chip cookies because we were too busy eating the raw dough to watch the timer. The old-school phone with one of those spiral cords still sat on the kitchen island. We used to drag it into the pantry and make the most ridiculous prank calls while her dog, Chewy, sat outside the door and whined for treats. The wallpaper was peeling and dust powdered every surface, but it was still Grace's house. It was still our home.

But it was too quiet. And the boy standing in the kitchen saying words I couldn't hear looked foreign and wrong. There were dirty paper plates scattered on the counter, empty pizza boxes piled in a corner, and crushed cans strewn in the sink. This house looked inhabited in all the wrong ways.

In a fog, Porter dragged me through the kitchen, into the foyer, and up the stairs where Grace's bedroom stood at the end of the hall. I heard her voice taunting me that it was too early to fall asleep, could see her poke her dark head out from behind the door while she changed into her pajamas.

Porter yanked on my arm, and the memory popped like a bubble as he pulled me down the dark hall toward the glow spilling from under Grace's old door. When he threw it open, I fully expected Grace to greet me with her cracked smile or at least her ghost lurking around the edges, returning to give me some sort of message, to help me get out of the mess I'd gotten myself into. What I got was Cameron Thompson.

I hadn't seen Grace's crazy-ass boyfriend since the fall when he'd officially been expelled for being a drug-addled, crazy person. Honestly, can't say that I'd missed him much.

His face was dark with stubble, and the flickering candle in his hand made his eyes look black in their sockets. Wait, not just one candle, but hundreds, lining the floors, propped up on a bent wooden box, surrounding the window.

“Sorry about the lights. Not like I could call the electric company.” Cameron laughed but it sounded more like a growl. “Good to see you again, my friend. We've been waiting for you to come around.”

Being in Grace's room surrounded by candles and hearing Cameron speak was enough to lift me out of the haze of memories. What was out of focus before snapped crisply together, and I realized that there was a very real possibility that I might never make it out of Grace's house alive.

I stepped backward with my hands raised in surrender. “I…I want to leave. I need to get out of here right now.” Porter blocked my path, and my back hit his front.

“Infiltrating the Sisterhood was genius, Kate. Genius,” Cameron said, gripping my shoulders too hard. “I mean, you had everyone right where we wanted them.”

I shrugged away from his touch, shivers raising the hairs on my arm like a rash.

“We tried to help you,” he began, his glassy blue eyes wide and crazed. “The journal entries, those stupid cards getting the Brotherhood to off themselves. They were all reminders, Kate!” Cameron swayed on his feet and came dangerously close to knocking over a candle. I couldn't breathe. “It was
your
job. You promised to avenge her death. You were the only one who could honor her memory, and you failed.”

The gravity of the words Cameron barked out at me settled on my shoulders like a metric ton. Cameron, the loser who had been MIA for at least four months, thought I was a failure? I wanted to laugh. And now he was back and thought that putting people in danger,
killing
people, was helping. And then it dawned on me. Alistair. They'd killed Alistair. How could Porter live with himself?

I spun around to face him. “How could you do that to your brother? How could you sit back and let him hurt himself? For what?” I could feel my face getting red, the blood rushing to my cheeks and spreading out. I felt dangerously close to tears, and all I wanted was to get the hell out of this place and make good on my promise to stay out of things from now on. I was done. Grace was gone, and I was done.

Porter's eyes flashed to Cameron's in silent desperation. “I…we…I just…he never let me in…he tortured me…it was just supposed to scare him.” Porter stuttered through the broken explanation, taking steps back toward the door in defense. He lifted his hands. “I tried. I mean, I wanted to stop.” He looked at Cameron then. Pleading. “Kate's right. It's time to go.”

Cameron's face darkened, and he laughed even though nothing was remotely funny. “You think anyone will believe you, Porter? We've already been through this. If you back out now, I'll tell everyone you forced me to help you kill your brother.” He raised his eyebrows. “I'll even throw in the ex-headmaster. Still feel like leaving?”

Porter began to backpedal then. “We didn't kill Alistair. Don't you see?” Porter leaned toward me, and I noticed how bloodshot his eyes were. “The Brotherhood killed him. He couldn't stand up to them. He could never say no. It doesn't matter who sent the Factum Virtus. His loyalty killed him the same way it killed Grace. It has to stop.” I wondered how long Porter had been trying to convince himself of his innocence. He was wringing his hands like Lady-freaking-Macbeth. No way was he sleeping at night.

“So we're making a statement,” Cameron said, running his fingers through his greasy hair. “Tonight. In this house. A letter has already been sent to the papers, and it's only a matter of time before it's picked up everywhere. People love a good story.
Tragic
End
in
an
Effort
to
Abolish
Secret
Societies.
Man, that really has a nice ring to it, am I right?”

My mind was spinning. What kind of tragic end was Cameron referring to? I wished I could access my phone telepathically, send a message to Liam or Seth, Maddie, Naomi, or Bradley. My freaking parents. Anyone. I needed help.

“They'll have to do something. Shut down the societies, close the school, honor the dead. It's only fair,” Porter continued.

Panic flared in my chest, and my hand reached for the phone in my pocket reflexively. But the movement set both of them off, and suddenly they were on me in a flash of arms and hands and elbows. My phone fell to the floor of Grace's bedroom, knocking a candle on the way. Hot wax pooled on the scuffed hardwood floor, and my breath caught in my throat. But the candle sputtered out. Relief coursed through my veins until Cameron bent and lit a page from Grace's journal on fire, a cruel smile twisting his lips. The flame licked at the orange writing hungrily, working its way toward Cameron's fingers.

And then he let go.