Dangerous Girls

“I don’t believe you!”

“But it’s true!” I don’t know what to do to make her listen. She’s not listening. Panic floods me. I grab her shoulders and shake her, violent with desperation. “It’s still you and me; it’ll always be you and me!”

“Stop it!” Elise cries, but I don’t, I keep holding tight until she shoves me away hard enough to send me flying to the ground among the shattered glass.

I sit up, catching my breath. There’s a dull pain in the back of my head, where it cracked against the floor.

“Anna . . .” Elise takes a step toward me, her eyes wide. “Oh God, I didn’t mean . . .”

I pull myself up by the couch. For a moment, we’re suspended there, across the room from each other. Eyes locked, a canyon of fierce emotion between us. Then there’s a noise from the stairs. Elise looks away, quickly grabbing the throw from the back of the couch and tossing it to the floor, so that when my dad appears in the doorway, the mess is blocked from view.

“Is everything okay?” My dad looks between us, confused. “I thought I heard something.”

“Fine, Mr. Chevalier.” Elise forces a smile. “I was just showing Anna a video on my phone.”

“Oh, okay.” Dad blinks. He’s got that dazed expression on his face, like he’s still gone, off in whatever financial documents he was buried in. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

“No, thank you, I have to go.”

“Okay,” He turns to me. “Call for takeout whenever you’re ready to eat.”

“Sure, Dad,” I say nervously, but he barely gives us another glance, just drifts back upstairs.

Elise waits until he’s gone, then pushes past me, out into the foyer. I trail after her. “Elise. Wait a second, please.”

She turns, her face set, then her expression slips. She gasps. “You’re bleeding.”

I look down. My hand is cut, welling bright red. “It’s fine,” I say quickly. “I can’t feel a thing.”

Elise backs away. “I can’t . . . I can’t be here.”

“Wait.” I follow her out onto the front steps. “Let me take you home, at least. You shouldn’t be out there like this.”

I reach for her, but she flinches away. “Elise?” My voice breaks.

“I’ll . . . see you tomorrow,” she says quickly, her gaze still fixed on my bloody hand. Then she bolts. I listen as her footsteps are swallowed up by the night, remembering the knife-edge to her gaze, something damaged and hard.

Fear shivers through me. I can’t lose her, not even a little. Tate has pulled me in and wrapped me up in this new kind of love, but I’m hers, too—I’ll always be hers. If I have to choose . . .

“Elise!” I call after her, yelling. “Miles and miles! Do you hear me?” My voice echoes out into the dark. “Miles and f**king miles!”

But there’s only silence. I wait on the steps until I’m frozen through, but she doesn’t come back. We wrecked it, I realize, and it feels like my heart splits wide open. Something was ripped apart and bared to the world tonight, and we can’t ever take it back.

She’s gone.

At last I turn and walk slowly back into the warm, bright safety of the house.

Three weeks later, my mother is dead.

EVIDENCE MATERIAL 102—ANNA CHEVALIER ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT—JUNIOR CLASS

My words are a weapon,

They can cut you like glass.

Or they can smooth and soothe over gaps and cracks, dripping honey.

Sweet and safe.

They can gouge out your heart.

Carve my name into your fair skin,

Write verses in your blood.

Be careful what you say, my friend.

My words are my greatest weapon of all.

TRIAL

“And the defendant wrote this poem?”

Silence.

Dekker glares. “Miss Day, please. You’re under oath.”

Chelsea looks at me across the courtroom. I haven’t seen her since my arrest; her hair is shorter now, the beachy waves an even brown, neat and preppy. She used to be loud and languid, always laughing; now her expression is apologetic and full of regret.

“Yes,” she says quietly. “In English class, beginning of senior year.”

“And this wasn’t the only violent thing she wrote, was it?”

I feel Gates inhale a sharp breath beside me.

Again, Chelsea is silent. She looks down, toying with the woven bracelets she has still tied around her wrist, the colorful strands that she and I and Elise all bought at a store in Boston together, knotting them tightly to overlap.

Judge von Koppel leans over. “Please answer the question.”

Chelsea glances up, reluctant. “No, she wrote other things, for class. We all did.”

“Like this.” Dekker lifts a plastic-covered sheet between his thumb and forefinger. “Evidence item two one seven, a short story written by the defendant, describing the murder of a teenage girl.”

“It was an assignment,” Chelsea says quickly. “A college girl got shot, in the neighborhood. It was a big deal, everyone was talking about it, so our teacher had us write the stories about it. I did one, Elise did too. Everyone.”

“But you could choose, could you not, whether to write from the perspective of the victim or the murderer?” Dekker tilts his head, waiting.

Chelsea exhales. “Yes.”

“And Miss Chevalier was the only girl to write from the perspective of the killer.”

“Boys did too,” Chelsea replies. “Half the class.”

“And did the defendant tell you why she chose to take on the killer’s role?”

Chelsea bites her lip, looking over at me again. “She said . . .” Her voice trails into a whisper.

“Louder, please.”

Another reluctant sigh. “She said she liked putting herself in his shoes. Imagining how it would feel to have that kind of power over someone, to end their life. But it wasn’t real,” she protests. “It was writing, that was the whole point. Our teacher always told us to get out of our own minds, and imagine being somebody else!”

“But the defendant had a fascination for violent imagery even out of class,” Dekker clicks a photo up on the display: the cover of my science lab binder. “She copied the words to several songs, some would even say obsessively writing the same lyrics over and over. Let me quote for you, ‘I took a knife and cut out her eye,’” he reads, voice dramatic in the still of the courtroom. “?‘I’ll cut your little heart out because you made me cry.’ ?That’s a song by one of the defendant’s favorite musicians, Florence and the Machine.”