Becca was home. She listened. I told her all of it except the part about Makayla being there to kill me. I cried—just a little—and I got mad, and I swore, and then I cried a little more. And when I’d finished, Becca made hot cocoa and sprinkled mini-marshmallows on top, and we sat at the kitchen counter in silence for a few minutes. Her phone buzzed from time to time, and Becca sent back quick replies, but other than that, we were silent.
Then, without meeting my eyes, she lazily spun her spoon in the hot cocoa. “You know he was right, don’t you?”
I nodded, waiting for her to say more, but the only sound was the chime of her spoon against the ceramic. Finally I burst out, “Of course I know he’s right. He’s never made a move on Kaden. He never will. And I do like Emmett. I . . . I think I love him. But I love Austin too.”
“But you have been lying to him.”
“What was I supposed to say? I’m in love with Emmett Bradley, but whenever I get too close, he treats me like shit. Oh, and that doesn’t stop me, because I’m totally messed up. So I just keep it casual, and I let him flirt with me, and sometimes I flirt back, and sometimes it goes a little farther. Is that what I was supposed to tell him?”
Slipping the spoon into her mouth, Becca considered this. Then, pulling the spoon free and pointing it at me, she offered, “You’re not totally messed up.”
“Thanks.” I wiped my eyes and nose on my sleeve. Another few minutes of silence passed. “The hot cocoa is good.”
Becca made a disgusted noise in her throat. Her phone buzzed again, and this time, I glanced over. She angled the screen away from me.
“Is that him?”
She made that disgusted noise again, only this time more loudly.
“Fine,” I said. “I know I shouldn’t have let things keep going with Emmett. And when Austin confronted me about it, I should have come clean and apologized. But I do care about Emmett. He’s lonely, even if he doesn’t show it, and I think he needs me.”
“Even though he treats you like shit?”
“Yeah. Even though. People aren’t perfect, Becca.”
“You don’t deserve to be treated like shit by anyone, no matter how lonely he is.”
“He doesn’t always do that. Sometimes he’s really sweet. And when I need him, when I really need him, he’s there for me.”
“I’m not going to argue with you about your love-life. If you want to make bad decisions, who am I to stop you?”
“You’re a saint.”
“Have you told Austin? How you feel about him?”
“God, you sound like—” Her eyebrows shot up, and instead of Emmett’s name I said, “I can’t. He’ll think I’m insane.”
“Maybe. But maybe not.”
“No, he definitely will.”
“He came out so that he could date you. I’d say he has pretty strong feelings for you.”
“Becca, he hates me. You should have seen him at the end; he couldn’t even look at me.”
“You broke his heart.”
“Thanks.”
“Kind of stamped it to pieces, smeared it in dog shit, and set it on fire, actually.”
“I get it, Becca.”
“And then pissed on it to put the fire out.”
“All right. You made your point. I’m a huge jackass and I deserve whatever I get.”
“Nah,” she said with a smile. “You’re just an ordinary jackass. But you do need to apologize and see what you can salvage.”
“Maybe this is a sign. I mean, we got in a huge fight on the way to go fishing because he said I don’t like him. I thought we’d made up, but then he exploded as soon as he saw how I treated Emmett.”
“So, you think it’s unreasonable for him to get upset twice in one day.”
“Well—”
“Even though one of those times, he was trying to tell you that you needed to express your feelings more clearly and find ways to include him in your life.”
“I think you’re taking that out of context—”
“And the other time was when he realized you have feelings for another boy. Feelings you may have acted on while you were dating him.”
I slid the hot cocoa away and dropped my head to the counter. “I’m dead.”
Becca patted my shoulder consolingly. “Not yet. That’s why Makayla’s here, right?”
I sat upright. “How did you—”
“You know, Austin was right about that part too: you should have told him.”
“Becca, I—”
Her voice rose in pitch. “And you definitely should have told me.”
“If you’d let me—”
“Makayla Price comes back from the dead, with the sole purpose of killing you, and you keep it a secret for a week?”
“Austin texted you? What did he say?”
In an even voice, Becca scrolled through the texts—the texts, I realized, that had been arriving nonstop throughout our visit. “Here’s how he starts: Vie’s in danger. Makayla’s back and we think she’s here to kill him. What do we do? No word about the fight. No word about you lying to him about Emmett. He tells me there’s a problem, and he wants to know how we’re going to solve it.”
“He didn’t say he was mad at me?”
Becca ignored me. “I had a great deal of questions. For example, I didn’t know that Makayla Price was miraculously alive again—you forgot to mention that, by the way, when you got here today. After he answered all those questions, Austin’s next text says: I don’t think he’ll listen to me. Can we get him to leave town? Then he goes on and on about a few different places he thinks you can hide.”
I rubbed my stinging eyes.
“Then here’s a real treat. Are you ready for this? I don’t know what my parents would do, but I have some money for college. It would be enough to get him out of the country and set him up for a while.”
“Stop it.” The words sounded harsh and broken coming out of my mouth.
“No, there’s another one I want you to hear.”
“I said stop it.”
“Will you go with me to talk to Emmett? He might be able to convince him.”
I got up off the stool, my legs shaky, as though I were made of paper and the convection of hot air were blowing me towards the flames. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“I think I did. So if you’re done pouting and moping and telling me how you don’t dare tell Austin what you feel, think about the fact that, after all the shit you’ve put him through, he’s willing to ask Emmett Bradley for help so that he can keep you safe. Now sit down before I start getting angry.”
I dropped onto the stool.
“Now,” Becca said, “do you want to say goodbye to Sara? She’ll try to talk you out of running; she’s got a good heart, but she’ll want the sheriff to handle this. Unless you tell her everything, she won’t understand why you have to run. God, even if you do tell her everything, she might not believe you.”
“I’m not telling her.”
“Is there anything you absolutely can’t leave at the house? We can go grab a few things while Sara’s gone. Otherwise, let’s get you on the next bus out of town.”
Shaking my head, I said, “No. I’m not taking a bus.”
“Well, I don’t have a car anymore. I bet Austin will drive you wherever you want to go. Or if he can’t, Emmett will take you as far as Billings.”
“No.” I cleared my throat. “I meant, I’m not going.”
Becca’s spoon chimed against the mug again, faster and faster, until it formed a continuous, unpleasant chiming, like somebody playing the water glasses off key. “You’re not going.”
“No.”
“I see. So, even though East Coast gangsters have decided that you need to be killed, even though they’ve sent the perfect person to do the job—the town’s lost lamb, come back from the dead, whom nobody will suspect—even though you’re sixteen and you’ve got only one chance at getting out of this alive, you’re not going?”
“They killed Mr. Warbrath. They’re going to kill again.”
“What?”
“Mr. Warbrath. They killed him.”
“Who are they?”
“Makayla and . . . and whoever else is doing this.”
Becca rubbed her forehead. “Who? Have you seen someone?”
“No, but—”
“Is there any way you can link Mr. Warbrath’s death to Makayla Price?”
“No, but Becca—”
“Do you have anything to go on besides the words Belshazzar’s Feast? Oh, yeah, and remember—nobody else saw those words because they were written by a ghost.”
“Do you believe me?” I asked, my face hot. “Or don’t you?”
With a clatter, her spoon dropped into the mug. She said, “Why do you care? Even if it was a murder, even if they killed Mr. Warbrath, you’re in danger. You should save your own life and get out of here. Let the sheriff deal with the murders.”
“Is that what you did for River?” I asked.
“No,” she said, meeting my eyes with a frankness that disturbed me. “But I should have. River tricked us. If we’d left it alone—”
“He would have killed even more people.”
“So that’s why? Because you feel responsible for everyone else?”
I stood up, gathered her mug and my own, and rinsed them in the sink. She wanted to know why I was doing this. I suppose I did too. Wasn’t it enough that I was? Wasn’t it enough that I didn’t want to run? An old man named Frankie had told me that once you start running, you never stop. For Frankie, that had been a good thing. For me—for me I thought it would be like tipping over the edge of a black hole.
Yes, a black hole was a good way of thinking about it. If I left, I’d drop into a black hole, and it would compress me into something infinitesimally smaller and worse. Only a few things kept me in a sane, livable orbit: Austin, and Becca, and yes, Emmett Bradley. If I ran away from here, if I ran away from them and left them at the mercy of Mr. Big Empty and the Biondi’s thugs, it would go back to the way it was before. I would go back to what I’d been before. Worse. And I wouldn’t let myself. I wouldn’t go back, not even if I died instead.
But how was I supposed to say all that to Becca? So what I said instead, drying my hands on a towel embroidered with ducks wearing camouflage hats and toting shotguns across one wing, was, “I don’t feel responsible for anyone. But I’m not going anywhere because Austin Miller is going to ask me to Homecoming, and I’m going to say yes.”
Becca stared at me, jaw hanging open. “You’re insane.”
“I know.”
“No, like, batshit crazy. He’s not going to ask you, not after everything that’s happened. Even if he did, it wouldn’t be worth it.”
“He is going to ask me. And I am going to go to that dance. And it will be worth it, Becca. I’m right. You’ll see at Homecoming.” From somewhere unexpected, I managed to dig up a grin. “I’ll even save you a dance.”
After another moment as she tried to process my words, she threw up her hands and said, “Fine. You have never listened to me, not once in the whole time I’ve known you, so why should you start now?”
“That’s not true. I listened when you told me to tuck in my shirt before I went to Austin’s house.”
I could almost hear her teeth grinding from across the kitchen. “Vie?” she said.
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
I nodded.
“Let’s go to my room. If you’re going to be a complete and utter idiot and risk your life, then you might as well know what I found.”
“What?”
“Do you know what Belshazzar’s Feast means?”
“What? Did you find something?”
“Oh yes. It didn’t take any time at all.” She took the stairs two at a time, and when we reached her room, I stopped in the doorway. In black paint, she had scrawled four words next to the window: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN.
“What in the world?”
“That,” Becca said, closing the door behind us, “is the original writing on the wall. And if I’m right, it means the killing is just getting started.”