chapter twenty-four-2

"I wasn't sure you'd believe me," she stammered. "I wasn't hiding it from you. I just wanted proof before I accused your sister of murdering another person!" "You had no problem telling me you thought Griffin was becoming a serial killer without proof." My anger flared as I looked down at Aniston, her stature still so tiny even in three-inch heels. I was suddenly furious that she'd lied, that everyone seemed to be someone else, their mask slipping away and revealing someone I did not know. "You think you know people. That because you write for a high school newspaper and read Sherlock Holmes, you know everything. You know better than everyone else but, Aniston, you don't. I mean, you are so conceited that you thought you could figure this case out better than actual detectives!" Something passed over her face, a fleeting emotion that touched her eyes and the corners of her vibrant pink lips before it faded away, but a flicker of annoyance still showed in her expression. "If by conceited you mean confident, then yeah, I am. You might not know the emotion because you've spent your entire life doubting yourself." The words stung and made my skin prickle when I heard them. "You know what—" "Look, it didn't make sense how someone, even a guy like Griffin Tomlin, could sneak into someone else's backyard with a body and just bury it. It also didn't make sense that he didn't torment you about it. And . . . Emily is a killer! Just because it's insanely obvious to everyone doesn't mean it's not true. At first I thought maybe she'd killed Elizabeth Monner to try and get Griffin arrested, but that didn't make sense because then why hide the body in your backyard and not do anything with it? And I spoke to Bex. I tried to speak to Wilson, but he was having none of it. Anyway, what she said matched with what Emily did to Griffin. She . . . used one of the beer bottles to sodomize him. Just like Bex said Wilson told her she used to do to him." I closed my locker door. "Since when did we start believing anything Wilson says? He's an abusive loser who probably taught Emily everything she knows." "Did you ever actually see him being abusive? With Emily or Bex? I don't know what kind of impression Emily gave you of him, but I think it's pretty obvious now she's untrustworthy!" "That doesn't mean Wilson Westbrooke isn't too." I turned around and headed to my next class. "I have to go." A few hours later, standing in the parking lot, clenching and unclenching my fists at my sides, I stared at the tan van with the dirtied windows rolled down, muffled rap music coming from the stereo. Because my mother's veterinary clinic didn't close until five, I had a couple of hours before she was coming to pick me up. And when I'd walked outside and noticed his van, as he waited for Bex to finish practice—which I'd skipped—I hesitated. His dark blond hair touched his shoulders and his thin gray T-shirt was too big on his slender frame. His thumb was counting the beats of the music as he looked out to the street, watching the fleeting cars go past. What was he like before he met Emily? Maybe he was different then. I tried to remember if he'd looked different. Maybe with shorter, fuller hair, with arms that filled out his sleeves instead of disappearing into them. Basketball shorts that didn't slip down his hips when he walked. That was when I realized he'd done the same thing I had. He wore sizes too big, never anything that shaped or flattered. But he was Wilson Westbrooke. He was a boy. Even though he was so lanky, he had to be stronger than she was. It almost didn't seem to make sense that he couldn't stop her, shove her away from him. But then I remembered when Griffin threatened me to be still that night, whispering he would kill me if I tried to scream again, and I didn't. I was quiet and still and never fought back either. And that was when I understood who Wilson Westbrooke really was, not just who my sister told me he was or who my parents thought he was, but what was really there beneath. He was just this lonely boy who thought he'd found someone who was so brilliant and mesmerizing that maybe it meant there was something kind of like that about him too. And when he was wrong, he knew no one would ever believe it, so he kept it all to himself. Griffin Tomlin was not Wilson Westbrooke. I was Wilson Westbrooke. As I approached the van in the back of the parking lot, its scent wafted out toward me: lingering cigarette smoke that clung to the cracked, yellowing leather of his front seats, and a perfume I recognized as Bex's. The car stereo was still blaring a rap song I hadn't heard before. Wilson was drinking from a bottle of soda when he glanced over and saw me. He seemed to take me in with an intensity I wasn't sure I'd ever thought Wilson Westbrooke capable of, and somehow it was suddenly obvious. He knew. Everyone knew now, and I stopped myself from wondering how the news had reached him. Maybe he'd known before, seeing something in me he saw in himself, or maybe Bex told him. "Wilson." I was shouting to be heard over the pulsating beat that I felt under my shoes through the pavement, and Wilson held up a finger, his mouth still full of soda, and turned the radio off. The abrupt silence was almost as jarring. "Wilson," I repeated, quieter now. "I want to ask you something, and whatever you tell me, I'll believe it. Did my sister—did she do the things Bex said she did?" Wilson turned to me, and before he said anything, it was clear. Clear from the nonchalant expression that didn't reach his eyes, a familiar reluctance lingering there, afraid of the truth. "How am I supposed to know what she told you about her?" he asked, his voice gruff with feigned indifference. "You want to know what I think?" "No." "I think you were a decent guy before you met her. I think you probably fell in love with her a lot faster than she did with you, if she ever did. And now I think you say things you know will hurt other people because you're afraid that if you don't, you'll be right back where you started, getting hurt yourself. But I also think you hate that. I think that you hate what she turned you into and you blame her more for that than anything else." I let out a breath, realizing as I said those words that they were true, and watched as he slid his thumbnail down the label of his soda bottle, tearing it, and clenched his jaw. But I also noticed he wasn't saying anything. He wasn't trying to hurt me. He wasn't trying to get under my skin. He was just sitting there, tearing the label off a bottle. "Emily—she took a lot of things. But you, who you are, it doesn't have to be one of them," I said. "You don't have to add yourself to a list of things she stole. You . . . are here! You have a chance to push back and take what's yours." He turned, gnawing on his lips and his fingers clenched white around the neck of the bottle, but there was something in his eyes that softened as he took me in, standing there beside his passenger door. "That was a really long speech. And dramatic," he remarked. "Long and dramatic are what make it effective." I tapped on the door of the van. "Do you think you could drive me somewhere?" He tilted his head to the side, raising his eyebrows at me. "Please?" He leaned across the console and popped open the door. I climbed inside, the leather firm against my shoulders and the hinges screeching as I yanked the door shut. Wilson glanced at me as he started the engine—his eyes were a different shade of blue than Griffin's, brighter, almost glittering. I leaned back against the cracked leather, feeling the curled corners of duct tape graze my neck. "Where are we going?" he asked, pulling out of the parking lot. "The greatest place no one will ever find," I said. He hesitated. "Sure, but which way do I turn?"