Page 29 of Dead Girls Can't Tell Secrets

My lips curl at the memory. Piper and I were close enough in age that we used to have joint sleepovers with Jessica and Jacey. My parents had never—havenever—camped, but they bought a tent and told us to have fun in the comfort and safety of our own gated yard. One night, I had to go inside to use the bathroom, and when I returned, Piper heard my footsteps and practically peed her pants, she was so scared. For all her brains, she actually thought a cougar might be prowling around in our grass.

Slowly, the tension between us begins to deflate. It’s not the affirmation I was hoping for. But Jacey doesn’t owe me anything. And this—it’s something.

“I want to help,” she says, wrenching me from the nostalgic moment and reminding me why I came here. “If someone was really up there with Piper at the Point—if someone in this club threatened her—we’ll figure out who it was.”

Unease slithers up the back of my brain. I don’t trust her. We may never be able to trust each other fully again.

But Jacey’s been in Survival Club since her freshman year. She knows these people. If I’m going to find out what really happened to my sister, I may have to put my faith in my least likely ally.

Chapter 12

The camp is quiet now, everyone off to bed. My eyelids are heavy, but my heart keeps thumping to the rhythm of the crickets. Jacey’s sleeping bag crinkles, and she whispers, “Have you told anyone?”

For a second, I think she knows, and my panic spikes. I haven’t told a soul about what I did to my sister. Not after how horribly wrong things turned out.

Piper was so stressed over schoolwork that she finally caved and let me grade Mr. Davis’s tests. I sat with red pen in hand, trying to do my best impersonation of Piper’s handwriting. Sixty-two for Gary Burgess, who probably should’ve studied harder. Seventy-five for Dana Casillas, which sounded about right. I picked up the next test—mine—and a nervous flutter ran through my stomach.

I was nearly done. I just had to grade this one and—I lifted the rest of the stack—five more, then figure out a way to make a few hundred bucks.

I started to drop the tests back into the manila folder when a slip of paper snagged my eye. Something attached to the back inside cover. A number.

No, apassword.

Piper’s password for logging scores into Mr. Davis’s grading program.

An idea danced its way into my head. Light steps that quickened.

How much would Gary Burgess pay to have that sixty-two bumped up to a seventy-five? And Lacy Santana… She was shooting for the Ivies. Was an eighty really going to cut it?

A ninety would look a lot better.

I tried to knock the idea down, but it got up again. It kept dancing, twirling, flinging itself around my head.

“The real reason you’re on this trip,” Jacey says now. “Have you told anyone else?” My muscles relax.

An owl hoots in the distance, and I tug my sleeping bag higher. “Just Alexandra. I sort of had to tell her after I accosted her over the phone thing.”

“Well, what’s your plan?”

“Guess I don’t have one. I was going to take Piper’s pack with the threat written in it to the police. But then it disappeared.”

“What about Piper’s phone? You said you have the calls from Alex on there. Maybe the cops can figure out who it is.”

A frenzied jolt hits me. “No,” I say too fast.

There’s a shush from somewhere in the camp—probably Mr. Davis. “Some phone calls won’t cut it,” I whisper. “The cops will laugh in our faces. Piper fell fromSuicide Point. We need something more concrete.”

And something that doesn’t involve the cops digging through Piper’s phone. It won’t be just my parents shunning me if what I did to my own sister that day comes to light.

It’ll be Grayling High.

It’ll be Mount Liberty College.

It’ll be Grant.

“Did you hear that?” Jacey whispers suddenly, swatting my feet.

“Hear what?” I mumble, picking a stowaway pine needle out of my sleeping bag.

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