chapter twenty-eight-1

It had been almost a week of spending detention together on opposite sides of the room before I found Kolby Rutledge lingering outside of the study hall afterward, leaning against the lockers as I gathered my homework and brushed the eraser shavings off the desk. I hesitated for a moment as I hitched the strap of my backpack farther up my shoulder, then started walking toward the exit when I heard his voice from behind me. "Hey." I turned around, halfway. "Hey." "Can we talk for a second?" I pointed my thumb behind me, over my shoulder. "My mom's waiting for me. We have to go meet the detectives at the police station about some new evidence." He pushed himself off the lockers, his shoes squeaking against the floor as he approached me. "Can I walk with you, then?" "I guess." We ambled through the school hallway together, wordlessly for a few moments, before he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, tilting his head just slightly in my direction. "I'm sorry about leaving you at the hotel last week," he said, his voice soft but resolute. "And for getting us stuck in detention for another week. But mostly about the first thing. I shouldn't have left you with his mom and not given you a ride home. Especially when I practically made you go," he added, shaking his head with a dry laugh. "You didn't make me go," I said, turning to look at him. "It was important to you, so I wanted to go." He shot me a look, and I shrugged sheepishly. "Okay, maybe not wanted but I wanted to do it for you. And I'm sorry I ruined it." "You didn't ruin it," Kolby said. "It was ruined before we even got there. It was stupid, having this birthday party for a dead guy who doesn't even deserve it." Back before anyone knew about what happened, I'd thought that I would've savored hearing someone—especially him— speaking about Griffin Tomlin like that, like the facade had finally shattered, the curtain dropped, and revealed to the crowd the boy that I had seen for months. But now I almost flinched hearing Kolby talking this way about his best friend. When we reached the school's front doors, I turned to face him. "Thank you for apologizing," I told him. "I really do have to go now." "Wait," he said quickly, but there was still a lingering hesitance in his voice. "Do you want to maybe meet up somewhere later? Not detention, I mean?" "No." I shook my head, taking in his expression as he nodded, as if he'd anticipated this but was still hurt by it anyway. "I'm not still mad at you or anything. It's just—I mean, I know you're sorry, but I still don't want to just go back to how things were before. It hurt and I'm not over that." I wasn't totally sure of how I expected him to respond, but I hadn't thought that he would just nod again, glancing down at the salt stains that rippled across our shoes, and murmur, "Okay." He reached for the front door, opening it and stepping outside. It took me a minute before I realized he was holding it open for me. As it closed behind us, he told me again, "I'm . . . I'm really sorry about everything, Clara." "I know you are." It just wasn't enough. hey, can u talk?? hello clara? seriously, u gonna start ignorin me now? come on u i kno u c me ur thinkin about me u were starin @ me all nite just like u used to cuz u want me u need me kolby can't give it to u like i can answer me, slut SLUT SLUT SLUTSLUTSLUTSLUTSLUT!!!!!!! I stared down at the printed sheet of text messages Griffin had sent me, spanning from the middle of February to almost the end of August last year. Across the table from me, Detective Marsh interlocked his fingers and waited as I looked over the pages, nine in total. When I glanced up at him, my brow creasing, he told me, "Those were the messages we found on one of the phones in the box you brought in last week, sent to your phone. Do you recognize the number?" I did. I remembered the feeling of a ballpoint pen etching part of it into my palm more than a year ago. "About a year and a half ago, Griffin came to this ice cream parlor I worked at and told me he had to get a new phone, so he wanted to give me his new number. That's the number." Detective Marsh nodded, taking the papers when I held them back out to him. "I think what happened here is that Griffin didn't really need a new phone and bought a burner phone to send these messages to you. The phone we found when Griffin was murdered was one he'd had for a couple of years." "So Emily took it when she killed him? I don't get it. Why would she do that?" "The other phone belonged to her. She started sending him text messages sometime in July and continued until his death in September. She probably hid them in the barn after we brought her in as a suspect for Griffin's murder. But there were a few messages mentioning an incident that occurred around your birthday?" I nodded. "The day after my birthday, my bedroom window was unlocked, and Griffin climbed inside. He attacked me, but my parents came home and he ran out. I think maybe Emily opened it for him. I never unlocked my window, ever."