Page 60 of Holy Sinner

I look her way. She’s worried. She’s staring up at me, big brown eyes a hollow fucking shadow of Kit’s.

“And why do you think that bullshit?”

“She threatened me,” Jasmine says and at least she has the good sense to keep her voice down.

“Who? Jane? The police know that?” I ask, feigning confusion.

Jasmine narrows her eyes. “That’s not who I meant and you know it.”

I tilt my head to the side. “Who else could you mean, Jasmine?”

She practically stamps her foot when she speaks. “Kit! Kit did it and you know it.”

“I don’t know that because that’s crazy. She would never do something like that. Everyone knows it.”

“That’s not what Holly said.”

“Holly better watch her mouth before she gets hit with a lawsuit for slander.” I turn into her then and smile down at her when she shrinks away from me. “You know what happens to a person when they lose one of those lawsuits, don’t you?”

She bites her lip and crosses her arms, the stupid rings from her puzzle clatter in her fingers and she takes a deep breath. “She’s not going to be sued because she’s right. Why was Kit out there covered in Jane’s blood?”

“Kit went for a walk, that’s it. You go for walks, don’t you, Jasmine?” I ask. Her eyes go wide.

“I-I-”

“Everyone goes for walks, especially in a hippy ass place like this. There’s nothing else to do but go for a walk. That’s what Kit was doing last night.”

“But the blood and-”

“But I have a question for you, Jasmine.” I wait for her a beat as she turns that over in her mind. I know she doesn’t want to ask me what I mean, but she does because she has to. She takes in a deep breath and gives me a mean-eyed look that’s really not that mean because her hands are shaking. The rings are practically humming in her hands from the way she’s trembling.

“What?”

“What would you do if the next time you go for walk someone accused you of something you didn’t do?”

“What? I-that doesn’t-”

“You’d be pretty pissed, wouldn’t you? Maybe scared?” I ask, cutting Jasmine off. She’s smart enough to go silent but she does give me a nod. “That’s what I thought. Easy to be angry and scared when you know the truth about it and everyone refuses to listen. I mean, when people know something,” I tap my temple and she jumps at the movement, “there’s just no getting it out of their head, even if what they know is fucking bullshit. Isn’t that right, Jasmine? You know all about that, don’t you?”

She sucks in a shaky breath and falls back a step. “I don’t know what you’re-”

“Don’t fucking lie to me,” I snap. “We both know all about that little video you made before your web series.”

She goes pale and wraps her arms around herself. “Fuck you. You don’t know anything.”

The anger in her voice is enough to show me exactly what path to take. What thread to pull to unravel Jasmine at the seams. I smile while I twist that thread around my fingers and tear it out of her.

“That’s not what the internet says,” I remind her. The funny thing about all of this is that I’m working off assumptions. I don’t know shit about a video or what Jasmine might have gotten up to before she made her web series or came into my orbit with the movie. Jasmine isn’t hard to read, though. She’s the same as most of the eager starlets I see at the parties where they get marked as easy pickings for whatever sleazy “director,” who’s really just a shitty DJ or photographer looking for his next girl to run dry, tells them they have a promising career in Hollywood. Don’t they know to trust them? They’ve been doing this for years and they know exactly what it takes to make it as a star. And baby, they’re a star if they ever saw one.

Jasmine fell for the lie, too. But her mistakes make sense to her because she’s going to be a star.

“The internet is forever. We both know that dirty little video still lives. Photos too.”

Jasmine’s face goes red and she points a finger at me. “Fuck you.”

It’s easy to rile her up. Of course, Jasmine was one of those girls once upon a time.

“No, that was you, remember? Was it worth it? Did he help you get the part? You think it helped you get here?”

---