Page 98 of The Inmate
“Then where is she?” I ask.
“I…” He rakes a shaking hand through his hair. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I need your help.”
“No chance.” Seth glares at Caleb through the darkness. “You put Natalie through the wringer. She was injailbecause of you. Why did you do this to her? What the hell is the matter with you?”
Caleb’s Adam’s apple bobs. “Listen, there’s no time. Dawn—”
“Bullshit. You need to tell us right now why you did this. Otherwise, we’re calling the police on you.”
Caleb takes a step back. “No, please…”
Seth opens his mouth to say something else, but I hold up my hand to silence him. This isn’t about him. This is about me and Caleb. I need the truth.
“Caleb,” I say, “I’m just trying to understand why you did this. I need to know. I don’t think I deserve to be treated this way.”
I watch as his chest rises and falls, considering my statement. “I’ve watched you these last few months,” he says. “Organizing your little 5K. Getting on all the podcasts and local news stations. Talking about how you were raising money for yourgood friend Amelia… But she wasn’t your friend, was she?”
There’s venom in his voice now. I have a sinking feeling in my chest. “Caleb…”
“I’ll tell you who she was,” he spits at me. “She was mysister. And she was Dawn’s best friend. Not that you ever even thought of her as aperson.”
My legs feel like Jell-O. I’m scared if I don’t grab onto something, I’m going to fall flat on my face. “Amelia was…”
“My sister is dead because of you!” He is shouting loud enough for the neighbors to hear, but he’s beyond caring. “And you just moved on. Like she meantnothingto you. Like shewasnothing. Worse—you’reusingher to promote yourself. How could you? Are you really that heartless?”
I dig my thumbnail into my palm. “I’m trying to raise money for charity.”
“Yeah, whatever. You’re just doing it because you like the attention. It helps promote the company. I get it. You used her back then, and you’re using her now.”
Caleb’s eyes are burning with hatred. He hates me. He really and truly hates me. How could he have kissed me and joked around with me and taken me to dinner when he hated me this much?
“I was seventeen years old,” I manage. “Yes, I was awful to Amelia. But I was akid.” I look over at Seth, who appears thoroughly confused. “She was a girl I knew in high school. I was mean to her. I know I was…”
“Mean to her!” Caleb bursts out. “You drove her to slit her wrists! My baby sister is dead because of you!”
I can’t believe Caleb is Amelia’s brother. I didn’t even know she had a brother. They have different last names. Hers was Hodge. It’s hard to forget what happened that year. Things just got out of control. I’m not going to deny any part of that.
I don’t know why we were so mean to Amelia, in retrospect. I guess because she was different. And because wecould. When you’re seventeen and you’re pretty and popular, it makes you feel good to pick on somebody weaker than you are. It makes you feel powerful.
“What do you want me to do, Caleb?” I say. “What can I do?”
“I want you to rot in prison for the rest of your life,” he hisses at me. “Like my little sister is rotting in the ground.”
His eyes bore into me, smoldering with an anger that he will never be able to let go of. He can never forgive me for this. He will never stop believing that I should be punished for the rest of my life. There’s nothing I can say or do to make this right.
“So why are you here, Caleb?” I finally say. “To tell me how much you hate me?”
My question seems to take some of the fight out of him. “Look,” he says, “I hate you for what you did, but you need to know that this whole thing—Dawn planned the whole thing out. It washeridea. And she’s taking it too far, because… well, you know Dawn. That’s how she is.”
Clearly, he knows Dawn very well. Much better than I could have imagined.
“Damn straight she’s taking it too far,” Seth chimes in. “You sent an innocent person to jail.”
Caleb shoots him a withering look. “Right, but she doesn’t think the charges will stick if there isn’t a dead body.Herdead body—not whoever they found in the woods. She kept talking about that. And… now I don’t… I don’t know where she is. She used my phone to call for a Lyft back to the south shore, and now I don’t know where she went. She called me from a phone somewhere and left this disjointed message. She was giving me all these instructions for how to take care of her turtle and it sounded like… like she was going to…”
I gawk at him. “What are you saying?”
His face crumbles. “I’m pretty sure she’s planning to kill herself. To make sure there’s a dead body.”
