Page 73 of Dead Girls Can't Tell Secrets

“Wait,” Jacey says, grabbing the back of my shirt.

“What is it?” I spin around to find her white as a sheet.

Her eyes fall shut. “I just think…” She goes back to chewing her fingernails, then looks down at the swirl pattern on the laminate floor. I don’t have time for this.

I push open the door and step into the room, its white walls muted in the dim light, and my heart slithers down to my feet.

At the center of the room lies my comatose sister, head turned away from the door, blond hair spilling over the pillow.

Still, and anything but awake.

And the person responsible for everything stands over her.

Piper

The Day She Fell

Now I just have to get Abby on the record saying that Sam dealt to the guys’ soccer team. I chew the gum, a gush of peppermint flooding my mouth. Carefully, I plan my next words.

But Abby starts shaking her head, red curls flopping around. “It was Jacey,” she blurts. “The note. It was from Jacey, not Mr. Davis. I didn’t know what it said when I gave it to you. But she wanted me to help her arrange a meeting up there between the two of you.”

“She did?” Anger lances through me. Jacey’s lies just keep piling up.

Abby chomps her gum. “She said she wanted to apologize, and she wanted to do it there. I told her I wouldn’t lie to you, but I guess I was an idiot to pass along that note without reading it.”

Jacey wants to apologize? My rage, sharp and rigid, starts to bend. “Do you think she’s still up there?”

“She might be. Maybe”—Abby shrugs—“maybe you don’t need pills, Piper. Maybe you just need your friend back in your life. What she did was super messed up, and I doubt anyone has ever tried to apologize this awkwardly before. Like, ever. But she’s trying.”

She’s trying. I think about the drug story, about the segue ready on my tongue. The app on my phone that’s already recording.

Butthis.

Finding a way to forgive my best friend. Finding a way to get past this. Wouldn’t that be better than some story? I’d finally have someone on my side again. Someone who knows me, inside and out.

Alex is great, he really is. But he’s not Jacey. Maybe Jacey can help me get out of this mess. Maybe she’ll listen the way no one else will.

I look up at Abby and see the hope flickering in her eyes, and I get a strange twinge of guilt for trying to entrap the only person who’s attempted to comfort me about Noah and Jacey.

“Thanks for telling me, Abby.” I turn away from the truck, pull my keys from my back pocket, and trek out to my car at the edge of the lot. Normally, I’d walk to the trail, but it’s four; Jacey may have given up on me already. I buckle my seat belt like a good girl. Like a girl who’s not about to get expelled.

The car is hot, so I roll my window down. A gust of wind ruffles my hair, and beneath the whistling, it sounds like someone is calling my name.

An unfamiliar blue truck rumbles by on the street that borders the lot, and Noah’s head sticks out the window. The truck does a U-turn and then enters the lot, parking in the space beside mine.

Noah gets out and ambles toward me. “What are you doing here?”

“Nice truck,” I say, avoiding the question.

He shrugs. “It’s my brother’s. Mine broke down over the weekend, and Nate is taking the semester off. But it doesn’t have air, and the seat belt sticks, and—hey, can we talk?”

“Now’s not a good time,” I say, my voice cracking. My nose is still running from when I conjured up those fake/not-fake tears. “I’m sort of in a hurry.” I turn the key in the ignition and reach for the button to roll up the window.

“Piper, please.” He reaches out, placing his hand over the window so I’d have to smash his fingers to shut him out. I consider it. “I’m so sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter, Noah.” It doesn’t matter that Jacey and Noah both knew the way I felt about him, and they did it anyway. “It was just a date. We went as friends. I was stupid to get so upset. I’m headed up to the Point to tell Jacey the same thing.”

“You are?” He keeps his hand on the window, running the other one through his ash-brown hair. The hair I’ve spent countless hours daydreaming about, hoping that one day, I’d be able to lazily run my fingers through it. Even back when Noah was skinny and awkward—before time carved so many changes on his body—I’d wanted to be held by him. I thought we were there.

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