Page 43 of I'm Not Done with You Yet

“Jane?” Her voice sounds strange. “Hi, could you—um, can you please come up to my room?”

“Huh? Now?” She’s still up in her room? Fuck. Antoine must be pacing about the Chapel Quad, wondering where the hell everyone is. Or worse, maybe he’s just given up and gone back to his bar.

“Yeah. Don’t bring anyone else with you. Just you, okay?” The strange note in her voice is clearer now, a giant crack running through glass. All thoughts of Antoine and Ivan leave me. Something’s wrong. I grab my purse and stand.

“Where are you going?” Ani says.

“Bathroom.”

“I’ll come with you,” she says, already getting up.

“No!” I half shout it. Pam and Ani stare at me. “Sorry, I just—I’m not feeling well and I, uh, I get self-conscious if there’s someone else in the bathroom.”

Pam’s mouth drops open. “Oh nooo, is it the scallop? I ate it too!”

“I’m sure the scallop’s fine.” I rush away from the table, the noise of the ball receding as I hurry across the marble floor. Out in the hallway, I take off my heels and run all the way to Downing. Up the stairs, panting, my hair coming loose from the bun I’d painstakingly twisted it into. Finally, I’m at Thalia’s door. I don’t even get to make a second knock before the door is wrenched open.

“Thali—”

She grabs me by the arm in a painful grip and yanks me inside before slamming the door shut.

“What is it?” I’ve never seen Thalia like this before. Undone. Her eyes wild with fear. I taste a metallic tang at the back of my mouth. Bile. Fear.

“Jane,” she babbles. “He attacked me. He was—he was waiting in here when I came in, and I didn’t see, I—”

“What?”

She’s not even looking at me. She’s looking at something over my shoulder, in the far corner. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.Don’t turn around, Mom says in my ear.Just leave, now. You don’t want any part of this.

But I can’t not turn around. I can’t, because this is Thalia who needs my help, Thalia whose happily-ever-after I just sabotaged, and I know what’s there before I even turn around. I know it because I’ve orchestrated everything. Everything up to the moment that led to this. Why did he come up here instead of confronting Thalia at the ball like we planned?

Too late, I realize that Antoine must have been so drunk that he must have decided to—to attack her. The thought is unbearable.

Antoine looks massive inside Thalia’s room, a toppled, broken giant. He lies on the rug, a letter opener sticking out of his throat. His eyes are still open, as is his mouth, caught in a surprised O. It looks obscene somehow, his lips so pink, his eyes so blue, and all that dark blood coating his throat and chest. My legs lose all sensation and I crumple to the floor. It feels as though all of my insides are coming out, my body turning itself inside out, revealing all of my dirty secrets. The whole time, my mind is a continuous, shrieking chant:He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s dead!

It’s my fault. I did this. I goaded him into coming here, and then he lost control and he nearly attacked her—she was nearly—

I almost pass out at the thought of it, the image of Thalia, frightened and sobbing, shoved up against a wall by Antoine. Somehow, though, it gives me a bit of strength. I need to make things right. She doesn’t deserve this.

Somehow, I manage to pull myself up and stagger to the sink to splash some cold water on my face. In the mirror’s reflection, I see Thalia’s silhouette, standing very, very still. I wonder what’s going through her lovely, brilliant mind then. I splash more water on my forehead, my cheeks. I need to stay calm. With trembling fingers, I snap the rubber band so hard that it makes me wince. It helps to clear my mind slightly.

I turn around, averting my eyes from Antoine’s body.You stupid fuck, I hurl mentally in the general direction of his feet. I focus on Thalia. She’s just staring at him, obviously in shock. And so am I, surprisingly. The number of times I’ve fantasized about killing someone, but now when I’m faced with an actual dead body, it’s startlingly different from anything I could have ever imagined. He’s just so there. So fleshy.

“It’s going to be okay,” I say.

Her gaze flicks to my face, and she utters a mirthless, awful laugh. “How can it be okay?”

“We’ll call the cops, tell them what happened. He ambushed you in your room, he attacked you, you—what did happen, exactly?” The thought of Antoine—good-natured himbo Antoine—attacking Thalia feels wrong. So wrong. But maybe that’s just my guilt talking. Because I know that in a very real way, I caused this to happen. I was the one who pushed and instigated him to the boiling point.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, it was all a rush. He was rambling, I think he was drunk, and then he came at me, and oh god, his hands were all over me—”

She moves her shoulders back, showing me where her dress has ripped near the bodice. A ripple of revulsion and rage curdles my skin. If Antoine weren’t dead, I would have killed him myself.

“I pushed him off and he came at me again and he was on top of me, his hands were pawing at me, and I reached for something, anything—” Her words dissolve into a sob. “I need you, Jane. I can’t—you’ve got to—I can’t, I can’t.”

I did this. I broke her. Not only did I ruin her happily-ever-after with Ivan, I may have ended her freedom. “No, it’ll be fine,” I say, weakly. “It’s self-defense. He clearly attacked you, and you were just defending yourself. You’ll be okay.”

“I won’t be okay!” she half shrieks, half sobs. “It looks so weird, don’t you see? I panicked. After that, I washed my hands. Who does that, right?” She holds out her hands toward me, and sure enough, they’re clean. “I just wasn’t thinking. I saw all that blood on them and I thought, ‘Ivan can’t see this, Ivan can’t know,’ and before I knew it I was washing it off and it’s going to look so suspicious! It’s going to look all premeditated!”

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