In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

Chapter 21

Now

I’d always thought the sight of Courtney Minter cowering on the ground, confessing her sins to an angry mob, would make me feel better than it did. Now that it was happening, she looked so small and pathetic, her twig-legs drawn up under her, perfect face in her bony hands, that it was hard to see the traces of my legendary nemesis.

Instead, watching her, one thing was crystal-clear: Courtney Minter was not a happy person—or, a healthy one. Yes, she’d done something terrible. But for all the days of her life, Courtney was going to have to live with herself, locked in the cage of her body with nothing to keep her company but her own brain. And that was a severe punishment if I’d ever heard one.

Caro did not share my sympathy.

“You drugged your best friend to get her out of the way so you could be queen of a fraternity party?” Caro’s face was so red you could see it, even in the dim light from the lamps.

Looking at Courtney, I felt an uneasy stirring in the pit of my stomach. If I hadn’t been so consumed with winning a prize greater than Sweetheart, it could’ve been me that night, stewing in the shadows, gutted by Heather’s first-place win, Courtney’s runner-up status. The insidious voice whispering, Jessica Miller, the Phi Delt president’s girlfriend—and not even second in line for the crown.

I recognized myself in her.

“I know you’re mad, Caro, but keep your voice down.” Mint looked around. “We don’t want to attract unwelcome attention.”

“Oh, no. Like from the cops?” Caro threw her arms out. For a second—it could have been the lighting—she looked like a gold cross, burning bright against the night. “Jail’s exactly where we should send her. Courtney, you’re the reason Heather couldn’t defend herself that night. You might not have stabbed her, but you basically tied her hands behind her back. And you were willing to let Coop take the fall. How do you live with yourself?”

“It was supposed to make her go to sleep, that’s all. How could I have known?”

Courtney’s hands trembled in a way that was deeply familiar. “After she died, I was broken. I didn’t eat for a week. And the only way I could get out of bed was to think…well, she would have been killed anyway. Someone wanted to stab her. It was only a coincidence both things happened the same night. I told myself it didn’t matter and made myself forget.” Her voice dropped to a painful, throaty whisper. “I should have won Sweetheart in the first place. It was meant to be mine.”

“‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,’” Eric said, his voice ice.

I made myself forget. The black hole at my center stirred. A flash of memory: Two hands, covered in dried blood.

No. I shoved the image away.

On the ground, Courtney’s hands started shaking so bad she could barely hold them in place. She reached for her purse, but before she could get there, Eric snatched the bag, and she gave a cry of protest.

No one moved to stop him.

He yanked open her purse, rummaged, and pulled out a sleek orange cylinder with Chinese letters.

“You’re still taking the pills?” Coop shook his head. “Goddamn, Courtney.” He looked dazed, as if he couldn’t believe the turn the night had taken.

“Lucky for us,” Eric said, turning the bottle to look at it. “Now we have evidence.”

Mint sat down at his wife’s side and gave Eric an evil look. “She doesn’t say another word. We’re getting a lawyer.”

Courtney burst into tears. “I don’t care about a lawyer,” she cried. “Please, just give them back. Please.”

A memory of my father, begging: Please, Jessica. Please, sweetheart, just to take the edge off. You don’t understand how much it hurts.

I grabbed the pills from Eric’s hand, taking him by surprise, and twisted the lid off.

“What are you doing?” Caro asked.

“She’s addicted.” I dumped the pills in my hand, leaving one in the bottom of the bottle. “You can still have your evidence. You don’t need all of them.”

I handed the bottle back to Eric, who took it with a raised brow. Then I crouched by Courtney. She looked at me with cautious hope, and I realized, with a sinking feeling, that we’d been bad to her, too. Not the same kind of bad she’d been to us, but we’d known about her problem, in the back of our minds, and done nothing. Brushed it off all four years of college. Worse—in some ways, we’d even celebrated it. Courtney, the most perfect girl in school, had a humiliating vice. A fatal flaw. We’d all sighed in relief.

I pressed the pills into her hand and closed her blood-red fingernails around them. She nodded, embarrassed but grateful. I stood, catching Coop’s eye. He gave me a puzzled look.

“You all need to sign an NDA,” Mint said, wrapping a protective arm around Courtney’s shoulders.

“Are you kidding me?” Caro screeched.

“Not about her drugging Heather,” Mint said hurriedly. “Just about the diet pills. She’s a fitness influencer. It would ruin her career.”

Coop shook his head. “She’s lying on the ground shaking, dude. Her career is the least of her worries.”

“For the record”—twisted the pill bottle in his hand, watching it catch the lamplight—“I wasn’t staring at your breasts in college.” His gaze moved from the bottle to Courtney’s face. “I was staring at your ribs. You were a walking skeleton, and I couldn’t believe no one said anything. Not even Heather. She used to brush it off when I asked.” He pocketed the bottle. “I always had a feeling the drug in Heather’s system was yours.”

Something about Courtney’s story was still bugging me. I turned to her. “After Heather got blackout at Phi Delt, and you asked Frankie to take her home, what did you tell him?”

Courtney blinked, rubbing mascara-streaked cheeks. “I don’t know,” she said shakily. “I guess I told him Jack had broken up with her. And she was drowning her sorrows, planning her revenge.”

Her voice became firmer, surer. “I definitely did. I told Frankie that Jack had confessed some terrible secret, and Heather was planning to tell Jack’s parents at Parents’ Weekend to get back at him, ruin his life. I remember I told Frankie specifically because I thought it was messed up of Heather, and I was hoping he’d talk her out of it. She was more likely to listen to him than me, anyway.” Courtney laughed, a small, bitter sound. “He was one of you East House Seven, after all.”

“Frankie didn’t tell us that part.” Coop shot me a worried look.

Caro frowned. “Why wouldn’t he mention Heather was planning to tell Jack’s parents? That’s huge.”

“You guys,” I said, “Frankie’s parents always came for Parents’ Weekend. His dad practically lived for it. If Heather was going to spill the beans, make some spectacle, there’s a strong chance Frankie’s parents would have found out, too.”

“But Heather didn’t know Frankie was the guy Jack was cheating with,” Eric pointed out.

“Maybe she did.” Mint ran a tired hand over his face, mussing his golden hair. “Heather asked Courtney to make sure she didn’t get drunk and talk to Frankie. Maybe that’s why.”

We were all silent for a stretch, until finally Caro spoke. “He’s guilty, isn’t he? Heather was scared to talk to him that night, and at best, Frankie lied by omission earlier. We all remember what his dad is like. Frankie said himself he would have done anything to keep his dad from finding out. He has to be guilty.”

“I don’t know,” Eric said, scratching his jaw. He looked unsure for the first time all night, and for a second, I caught a glimpse of the soft boy I remembered, before his face hardened. “It doesn’t satisfy all the other evidence, but it’s worth checking out.”

“What other evidence—” Mint started, but Caro interrupted.

“We know where Frankie’s going to be tomorrow. He’s grand marshal of the Homecoming parade. There will be tons of people around. If we confront him, he can’t run.”

Coop whistled. “You want to accuse Frankie of murdering Heather in front of hundreds of people?”

“What other choice do we have?” I asked. “This could be our only opportunity to solve Heather’s murder.”

Eric eyed me. “Since when do you care about solving her murder?”

The words were a knife through my heart. But only because I knew—in the deepest, darkest part of me—that I deserved them.

I deserved so much worse.

“Since always,” I said quietly. “Since now.”

“Well”—Eric patted the pill bottle in his pocket—“whoever else cares, I’ll see you at noon tomorrow by the basketball stadium, at the start of the parade route. We’ll demand an explanation from the grand marshal.”

With that, Eric slipped back into the trees, where there wasn’t even a path, and dissolved among the shadows.

“Fucking Ghost of Christmas Past,” Mint muttered. “Back to punish us for our sins.”

***

Everyone went back to their hotels. Tomorrow we were confronting Frankie, and there was nothing left to say.

Except for me. I stood in the middle of the now-empty white tent, watching the bartenders pack bottles. The party was over. My perfect plan, ground to dust, ruined by Eric Shelby. But as I stood there, a new plan slowly formed, more ambitious than the first. If I could pull it off, I wouldn’t just be proving myself—I could settle every debt, right every wrong. Quiet the insidious whisper. Unmake the black hole.

Eric was right: for ten years, I’d lived a lie. I’d pretended I was fine, pretended I’d moved on, but the truth was, the past was still open inside me, like a half-cracked door, because it was a raw, unhealed wound.

Showing off for my classmates was only a Band-Aid. I would step inside that door. Dive into the past. I would find Heather’s killer and be healed.

“You really don’t want to go home, do you?”

I spun to find Coop.

“What are you doing here? I thought you left with Caro.”

He put a finger to his lips and walked backwards to the bar. While the bartenders’ backs were turned, Coop grabbed a bottle of whiskey and slid it under his sweater. He waved at me to follow and sauntered, as if nothing was amiss, out of the tent.

I drew a deep breath and followed.

He led me through the dark, eerie campus. I remained behind, eyes on his back, walking in silence. Halfway, I knew where we were going, so I wasn’t surprised to see the ivy-covered walls of East House rise in front of us.

He walked past it into the quad, over to our picnic table, the one beside the oak tree Heather’s parents had planted ten years ago, a memorial in her favorite place. The tree had grown to twenty feet now. Looking at it was like looking at the passage of time, made solid and tangible. The branches reached toward East House like imploring arms. It looked uncannily like a person, as if Heather herself was frozen and trapped, begging for help.

I pushed away the thought. We’d been happy here.

Coop ignored the picnic bench and sat right on the table. He twisted the cap off the stolen whiskey, took a long pull, then held it out to me.

I couldn’t help the ghost of a smile. “In the middle of the quad? Out in the open? You rebel.”

Coop didn’t smile back. “Who do you know with an addiction?”

I took the whiskey and sat down next to him. Slugged a mouthful. I had to force it down, trying not to gag. “My dad. OxyContin, at first. Then whatever he could find.”

Coop nodded, looking across the quad at East House. A slight breeze picked up a tendril of his hair and brushed it over his forehead. “All those years, you never told me.”

“Yeah, well, it was the last thing I wanted people to know.”

A few of the windows were still lit in the dorm. Students, up late. I searched for the window on the fourth floor, in the corner. My old room. But it was dark, the curtains drawn.

Coop ran his hands through his hair and held them there. “I feel like I know you so well, and then I discover something like this. I wish you trusted me.”

I scooted the whiskey bottle toward him. “I don’t trust anyone.”

“That sounds lonely. You have to let people in. Let them love you for who you are, the good and the ugly. Then you know it’s real.”

Coop had grown into a good man, or maybe he’d always been one. Either way, he didn’t understand that there were some truths too ugly to see the light of day. Some that would ruin love, if they were uncovered.

The memory came back, this time more vivid. Waking up, disoriented, my head pounding. The sunlight too bright, streaming through vaguely familiar windows. Bracing my hands against the floor to push myself up, only to feel my hands stick to the wood. Looking down. Breath catching. My hands, splayed on the floor, rust-red from fingernails to elbows, covered in flaking blood. Crimson splattered across my pink dress like ink on a Rorschach test. The horrible question: What had I done?

Nothing, I answered fiercely. I’d done nothing. I had to rebury the memory alongside the others. There was nothing to be had from it but ruin and rot.

I turned away from Coop, not wanting him to see my face.

“In the spirit of openness,” he said, “there’s something I wanted to show—”

“Coop.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Why was it so good here?”

“What?”

I wiped my eyes and looked around the quad, at the ivy-covered dorm pulled from a fairy tale, the ring of trees, standing sentinel. Here, in the grass, I’d been reborn, committed myself to a new religion, a strong magic. That magic was still buried in the soil of this place.

It was my home.

My hair fell like a curtain in front of my face. When I spoke, the words were barely discernible. “Why was it so good here, and so bad? It didn’t matter—whatever I was feeling, it was dialed up so high. Why can’t I make myself feel that way again? Everything these last ten years has paled compared to it. I’m scared college was the last time I was really alive, the way you’re supposed to be, and I’ll never get it back.”

“Of course college felt extreme,” Coop said. “You had infinite freedom and almost no responsibility. Nothing was fixed—you had your whole life ahead of you, and it could go anywhere. You had best friends you spent every minute with, so you were never alone. And you were in love. Real love.”

“Yeah, well, Mint turned into Courtney’s Stepford husband, so look where that got me.”

Coop brushed my hair back from my face. “I wasn’t talking about him.”