In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

Chapter 27

Now

I’d wanted so badly to come home to Duquette, to feel the magic that was in the soil. But standing here, staring at the pieced-together photographs in Eric’s hands, felt more like returning to the scene of a crime. I inched toward the edge of the float. Eric’s eyes swung around the circle, looking for fissures in somebody’s mask.

“It was one of Heather’s roommates,” he said. “That’s what makes the most sense.”

The dread was like an anchor, rooting my feet.

The cheering was finally dying down. Eric’s voice cut through the remaining din, loud and recognizable. Frankie, still surrounded by a throng of football players, turned in our direction.

But Eric only had eyes for Caro. “Was it you? Little Caroline Rodriguez? Always the good girl, the loyal friend. But how did it feel, being the odd one out? You tagged along for years with Mint and Jessica, Heather and Jack. Were you jealous? Heather was a Chi O. She was popular, the Phi Delt Sweetheart. She had a boyfriend and a plan for the future. What did you have? No boyfriend, no plans. I saw your file—a film major, and you barely scraped by with a 2.0. In the height of the recession, no less. You were unemployed for a year after graduation. An overqualified temp. The only one who didn’t soar.”

Caro had never told me that. The surprise was enough to make me halt my slow retreat. Her cheeks flamed.

“I didn’t—” she started.

“And now you’re an elementary school teacher.” Eric’s voice was acid. “Life took a pretty hard turn, didn’t it?”

“Teaching’s not what I originally planned.” Caro’s hands clenched into fists. “But it’s a noble profession.”

“You know what I always wondered?” Eric circled her like a shark. “Why you were so obsessed with your friends. That’s why you never paid attention to your grades, right? It was always about the East House Seven.” Caro cast a furtive look at where Coop and Mint were standing. “Oh, I know all about it,” Eric added. “You used to memorize their schedules, sign up for their classes, call and text day and night, try to follow them home on breaks. You know what Heather used to say about you?”

“Knock it off, man. Caro had nothing to do with this.” Coop’s voice was gruff.

“She used to say you were her own personal stalker.” Eric thrust the cut-up photographs at Caro. “It’s like Courtney said—this looks like something a stalker would do. Did you? You stopped wearing your cross after Heather died. What made you lose your faith, Caroline? Did you do something that made you unworthy of wearing it?”

Tears sprang to Caro’s eyes. Instinctively, she reached for her necklace, fingers skimming her collarbone.

“Right before Heather died, you confronted her,” Eric accused. “She told me she was angry at you, that you’d threatened her. Why?”

“Caro, threatening?” Mint’s voice was doubtful.

I tried to avoid looking at the torn-up photographs. “Caro would never—”

“She was going to get Frankie expelled,” she burst out, hands flying to her face. “She knew he was still cheating on his drug test, and she was actually going to tell his coach. I couldn’t let her.”

“What the hell?” Courtney asked. “Did Heather tell everyone about Frankie’s drug scandal except for me?”

“She didn’t tell me.” Caro’s voice cracked. “I knew because I was spying on her when she confronted Frankie and Jack. Okay? I’m sorry.”

She was confessing? Oh no, Caro, bad idea—

“What do you mean, spying?” Coop looked at Caro like he was seeing her for the first time.

She winced, then took a deep breath and forced the words out. “I used to eavesdrop. On all of you. It was a bad habit.” She looked at Coop, pleading. “One I grew out of.”

“Oh my god,” Courtney breathed. “You literally were Heather’s stalker.”

“Did you stalk me?” Mint asked, horrified.

“I didn’t stalk anyone!” Caro grabbed at her hair. “I just needed you all more than you needed me, and I was ashamed of it. Growing up, I was the freak kid, the one with super-religious parents. And then I came to college, and all of a sudden, I had you guys, and I was part of something. But no matter how hard I tried, you always left me out. I was always at the bottom. Just like Eric said. It drove me crazy.”

“Caro,” I started. “You don’t have to say all this—”

“No—I want to know.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “Why not me?”

No one said anything. I tried to remember times we’d left Caro out, or times she’d seemed unhappy, but I couldn’t. She’d just been…there. Reliable, dependable, good-natured Caro. Someone I took for granted.

I was supposed to be her best friend.

“You can’t even think of a reason, can you?” Caro looked around at us, dark eyes rimmed with red. “That’s how little you thought of me, when you were all I ever thought about.”

“I think about you,” Coop said softly.

Caro glared at him. “Not then.”

“You’re very good at playing the victim, I’ll give you that.” Eric stepped forward, clutching the photographs. “Poor, pitiful Caro. None of her friends loved her enough. Why don’t you get to the part where you threatened my sister a week before she died?”

Caro darted glances at the rest of us, waiting for something—to be defended, maybe. For protests that Caro couldn’t possibly. But when none came, she swallowed hard. “I found out Heather scheduled a meeting with Frankie’s coach.” Her eyes flicked away, ashamed, and we all knew then how she’d uncovered it. “So I confronted her. I said if she did, I’d tell everyone she leaked Amber Van Swann’s sex tape sophomore year because she was jealous Amber was getting all the attention.”

Oh god.What had we done to Caro in the space of two years to turn her from the girl who’d refused to leak Amber’s tape to the one who used it for blackmail?

“Heather leaked it?” Courtney screeched. “She leaked the tape of my Amber, the girl who was supposed to be my little sis?”

Caro closed her eyes. “No. But I told her I had access to the original file, and I could make it look like she did. It was a bluff. A halfway bluff. But she believed me. I told her if she went to Frankie’s coach and ruined his life, I’d ruin hers back.”

“Damn,” Mint breathed. “Ice cold.”

Caro opened her eyes and found mine, her hand drifting to her bare neck. But what was missing was bigger than a necklace. It was the laughing girl I’d met when we were eighteen, in the East House quad. It was the girl the rest of us had killed slowly, over the course of years.

“So it was you,” Eric said, growing calm again, now that he had Caro in his crosshairs. “Heather must’ve stepped out of line, and you were following up on your threat.” He shook the photographs at her. “Was this supposed to be a message?”

“No!” she shouted. I could see heads in the crowd turn to look at us, a strange tableau: the crying woman on the football float, a group of people gathered around her in a tense circle.

“I didn’t touch those pictures,” Caro insisted. “I never would’ve cut up our memories. I just wanted to scare her with the threat. And it worked. She never told. I had no reason to hurt her.”

“It wasn’t Caro,” Coop said, his menacing voice back. “She’s not perfect—none of us are—but it wasn’t her.”

“Well, in that case”—Eric jerked his head in my direction and grinned, like everything was going exactly according to plan—“we have one other possibility.”

My back hit the railing and I gripped it, tight.

Eric held up the photographs. His eyes glinted. “Tell me, Jessica. What did Heather do to make you want to kill her?”