Page 69 of What Have You Done?

‘Not out with Cameron tonight?’ Evan asked.

I figured I might as well tell him. ‘We were out, but we had a fight. I broke up with him.’ I shrugged. ‘So I’m home early.’

Evan sat down, uninvited. ‘You finally broke up with him? Why?’

I sighed. I didn’t really want to get into it right then, but Evan was a friend. ‘It’s a bunch of things. But mostly he’s more serious about us than I am. He thinks it’s for ever. I want to go to a different college, and he won’t hear of it. I didn’t really have a choice.’

‘Wow,’ Evan said, looking at me. ‘Good for you.’

‘You mean that?’

‘Of course. Cameron’s being a dick. He’s too controlling. A girl like you – you need your independence. You’re too … glorious … to be tamed.’

That made me a little uncomfortable. Especially because he was looking at me in a way he hadn’t before.

‘Anyway,’ I said, standing up, ‘I’m really tired, and you’ve got that assignment to do, so …’

He stood too. We were standing there in the living room. I remember it all so clearly now. I understand why I blocked it out – because it’s too shocking, too horrible.

‘You know I love you, Diana,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’

I stared back at him, surprised. I felt acutely uncomfortable. It was too much. After everything that had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours, I was approaching hysteria. I didn’t know what to say, so I laughed. I was trying to make light of the situation, to reduce the tension in the air for both of us. But it was a mistake.

His face transformed. In an instant, he wasn’t the familiar Evan I knew, but someone cold, different. Everything changed in that moment. I had misread him. I’d misunderstood him, all these years. He was not someone to laugh at, he was someone to be afraid of.

‘How dare you laugh at me,’ he said quietly.

‘Evan, I’m not laughing at you,’ I said desperately. ‘Honestly. I’m just really tired. I think you should go.’ I turned away from him then, to move toward the front door, to get him to leave. I noticed that the heavy curtains in the living room were drawn, and no one could see in. And then he knocked me down.

The blow to my head was crushing. I think I blacked out for a second. I was so confused. I remember trying to crawl from the living room, but my limbs weren’t working, and I just collapsed. I wanted to escape. But his voice.

‘Oh no you don’t. You don’t get to ridicule me,’ he said. There was so much nastiness in his voice. I tried to lift my head and saw him pull my jump rope off the living room doorknob and I thought, in disbelief, He’s going to tie me up and rape me.

But I was wrong. He pulled me back by my legs and turned me over in the middle of the living room floor. He climbed on top of me to hold me down, pinning my useless arms to the floor with his legs, and wrapped the jump rope around my neck and pulled. I was so afraid. I remember us looking into each other’s eyes for a long, grotesque moment. I felt my eyes popping, the crushing pain in my throat, knowing that I was dying, as he looked down at me with rage. The last thing I heard was my phone ping with a text.

And then I woke up in that field, looking down at my naked body, assaulted once again by those ugly birds.

How many ways, I think, can a girl be assaulted? I never got to live my life. I never got to live to be old enough, to become unattractive enough, to be left alone. To finally just be.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

RILEY STARES AT Diana’s phone under the bed, her heart pounding.

She suddenly understands why Evan doesn’t want to speak to Diana’s ghost. Because Diana must know who killed her, and now Riley does too.

She quietly pushes the bed a little bit further from the wall to get a better look. It’s Diana’s phone, no question. Evan must have sent that text. He killed Diana, and he thinks he’ll never be found out. But why? She doesn’t want to touch it. She leaves it where it is.

Her hands are shaking as she calls 911 on her cell.

‘What is your emergency?’

For a moment she can’t think. How does she describe this situation?

‘My name is Riley Mead. I’m at Seventeen Beecher Street, Fairhill. The Carr residence. I’m in the house with a murderer.’ She keeps her voice as low as possible, afraid that Evan will hear. What if he does? Will he kill her too, and get rid of the phone? She says in a rush, ‘Evan Carr killed Diana Brewer. I found her phone in his room, under his bed. Send police, quickly!’

‘Please don’t hang up, ma’am, keep the line open.’

To her horror, she hears steps padding up the stairs. He’s heard her. She hides her phone under his pillow, ending the call first so he won’t hear the woman’s voice on the other end. She hears him stop outside his parents’ bedroom door.

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