Chapter Twenty-nine

“Chloe!” Adam’s voice brings me back to the present. His hands are on my face now. Maggie is clasping my hands. I’m sort of sandwiched between them, only half upright.

I gasp, filling my lungs with the sweet, yeasty air of the Campbells’ kitchen. “I remember. I remember the night I woke up.”

“What n-night? What are you t-talking about?”

“The night in the classroom?” Adam guesses. “The night I met you there?”

I nod, feeling stronger and warmer with them so close. “I was at Blake’s. I found something. They did something to me, but they didn’t take what I found. I had it.”

My heart is still racing. I feel Maggie’s hand, a soothing pressure against my shoulder. But it is Adam’s eyes that anchor me. “I remember calling you, Adam. I remember the box, but I don’t know what was in it. I hid it though. It had to be important.”

“They would have never let you leave with any evidence. Hell, after tonight—” He stops, taking a harsh breath. “God, after tonight, who knows what they would have done to you.”

I remember myself, remember exactly who it was I called that night and all the lies he’s told me since. I pull away from his touch. “They?”

He has the decency to flush, dropping his hands to his side. “I was never one of them. I was a guy who worked for them.”

“And how do I know you’re not working for them right now?”

“Maybe you don’t, but I d-do,” Maggie says. “He let me tape a confession from him detailing everything he knows. It’s on my phone.”

“That doesn’t fix this,” I tell him. “Dr. Kirkpatrick is dead. You can’t fix that, can you?”

Adam doesn’t say anything at all. He nods once and then slips outside to the back steps where they must have found me. I half expect him to keep walking, but he doesn’t. He just stands there waiting, his profile frozen in the moonlight.

“It’s real, you know,” Maggie says quietly. “The way he feels about you.”

“Funny, I thought you were Team Stay-the-Hell-Away-from-Adam like two days ago.”

“I was.”

“And what? You find out he really is just as bad as you thought—hell, worse than that—and suddenly you think he’s hero of the day?”

“I d-didn’t say that. I’m still not sure what I think of him.”

I glance outside the back door again. He’s still there. “I know what I think. I think he betrayed me.”

Maggie sinks into a chair, sighing. “Yeah, well, d-don’t start flinging stones in your little g-glass house.”

“What does that mean?”

Mags looks at me with a flinty expression. “It means you b-betrayed me too.”

I wince at her words, torn between curiosity and dread. “What happened, Mags? Tell me what happened to us.”

“They happened to you, Chloe.” Her face goes dark and sad. “I t-told you that group was wrong. It was almost like a cult. You hung out at the same places, wore the same kind of clothes. You started d-dating each other, for God’s sake.”

I shake my head. “It still doesn’t make sense, Maggie. We didn’t stop being friends when you went through your Danny obsession or when I was on the volleyball team and at practice ten thousand times a week.”

“That’s because you didn’t insult me!” She takes a shuddery breath, and I can see that her eyes are too bright. Her chin trembles when she speaks again. “When I t-told you something felt wrong, you said I was paranoid. Time after time you blew me off, and then when ignoring me wasn’t enough, you staged an intervention. You sat me d-down with a couple of your study bitches and t-told me you wanted to help. You told me that maybe if I spent a little more t-time centering myself that maybe I w-wouldn’t, that m-m-maybe I wouldn’t…”

I fill in the blank with a hollow voice. “Stutter.”

It can’t be true. I can’t be capable of that. But somehow, her words prickle at my mind, whispering of a memory that’s waiting to be recovered.

“You always p-protected me,” she says, swiping tears off her cheeks angrily. “Even way b-back in the second grade, you never t-treated me different. Not until that d-day.”

I slump back against the wall, my heart in pieces.

We’re both crying now, quiet sniffs punctuating the silence of her kitchen. I finally brave my voice, which is every bit as weak and shaky as I feel. “I don’t even know what to say. I know sorry isn’t enough. I don’t know what would be. I don’t know how I could ever believe…”

She picks up where I trail off, stepping closer. “They made you believe. You b-believed these people and all the b-bullshit they fed you, Chloe. Maybe not as much as the others, but they had you.”

I repress a shudder, still revolted by the idea of those words on my lips. Maggie isn’t looking for me to talk yet though. She looks right past me to the back door where Adam is still waiting. I see his hard profile in the moonlight, his sharp jaw and thin nose.

“They had him too.”

***

I step outside and he turns to me. He is prettier than a boy has any right to be and far too beautiful for the ugly things he’s done.

“I don’t trust you,” I say.

He doesn’t look at me, but he flinches like it stings. But also in a way that tells me he gets it.

“It doesn’t change the fact that I want to help,” he says.

“Maybe I don’t want your help.”

Adam turns toward me then, his expression stony. “Then I’ll go to the police and tell them everything I know.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

I feel fury under my skin, heating me up despite the snow. “If you do that, we have nothing. We might never find the evidence I had.”

Adam shrugs and I feel my jaw clench.

“It’d be my word against Daniel Tanner’s, Adam! Do you understand that the only proof I have was stolen from a recent murder victim? He’d come through this smelling like a rose, and I’d probably look like the killer!”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care? You don’t care about the possibility of me being a murder suspect?”

“That’s right, I don’t! Because you’d be alive! If I go to the police, they’ll launch an investigation and you will be watched. Protected. He’d be too smart to come after you then because it would lead a trail of bread crumbs back to the study group and eventually to him.”

“So you’d let him get away with what they did to Julien? You’d just walk away?”

He closes in on me, his head bending down until his face is lost in shadow. His hand reaches for my cheek, and I hold my breath. When he speaks again, his voice is so low I can feel it as much as I can hear it. “You have no idea what I’d do to keep you safe, do you?”

The back door opens, and Maggie lets herself out. I’m half irritated when I turn to her, but the look on her face shuts my mouth. Her skin is pale and her eyes are wet. Too wet.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her.

“Look,” she says, pointing blindly back to the house. Her laptop is open on the kitchen counter. “I was j-just checking my stuff, and—”

“And what?” Adam asks. He moves his head, like he wants to see the screen. “Are they looking for us?”

Maggie shakes her head, and I see that her cheeks are wet. She’s crying. I reach for her hands. She’s cold. Shaking. “What is it, Mags?”

“It’s Julien. She’s d-dead.”

***

The bright future of a former local honor roll student was cut tragically short when she took her own life—

I stop reading. I’ve already read the post a half dozen times. We all have. I don’t know why. Maybe we think reading it over and over again might make it untrue.

But it is true. Julien is dead. Mrs. Campbell found her hanging in her bedroom two days ago.

I try to think of Julien dead, but the truth is, I don’t really know what death looks like unless you count my glimpse of Dr. Kirkpatrick. I mean, I saw my grandpa Frank at his visitation, but I was eight and all I remember thinking is that he looked kind of orange and that he probably wouldn’t really like the lacy satin pillow under his head.

But he was old and Julien isn’t.

Wasn’t.

God, this just shouldn’t be possible. I’m pretty sure I should feel something other than this. Because I don’t feel anything. I’m just…numb.

Adam lets out a low sigh and pushes his fingers into his hair. Maggie sniffs into a tissue, and I wince. Her crumpled face makes me ache, but is that for Julien or for Maggie?

And what about Mrs. Miller? I remember her so vividly, her soft hands closing around the bag of maple nut clusters. Her tired eyes and perfect smile. She found Julien.

She found her daughter hanging in her room.

“We need to do something,” I say. Not that I really have any ideas. I had to say something though. Because I can’t think about Mrs. Miller. Not for one more second.

“L-like what?” Maggie asks.

“We can’t bring her back,” Adam says. He too looks shaken. Stunned.

And I’m still sitting here, cold and hard like a stone while, somewhere in California, Julien is dead. She killed herself, and it wasn’t because of a bully or a bad breakup. It wasn’t anything stupid or childish. It was because of Daniel Tanner.

“We can’t let him get away with this,” I say.

“No,” Maggie says, and her eyes go flinty.

“How?” Adam sits back in his chair, shoulders slumped. “I’ll do whatever you want. You know that. I’ll do anything. But we don’t have proof.”

“I do have proof!” I say, and then I wince. “I did. I had it before.”

“Do you remember anything?” he asks.

Swirling snow. My tires slipping on the pavement. Dirt crusted on my half-frozen fingers. I remember so much. And nowhere near enough.

I shake my head, and Maggie touches my hand. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not okay. I need to figure it out.”

“It’s locked somewhere in your head,” Adam says. “It’s not like you can just force something like that out.”

I don’t say anything, but I know he’s wrong. They’ve already forced my mind to forget things. And if they can do that…

“Let’s go,” I say, standing up.

“W-what? Where are we going?”

“We’re going back to the school.”

“Why? What for?” Adam asks, though he stands up with me.

I know what I have to do. It scares me to death, the idea of someone poking around in my head for the second time. But I can’t let this rest. I have to try.

I push down my fear and square my shoulders. “What do you guys know about hypnosis?”

***

We decide to meet at the school. Mags needs to check in with her mom, who’s still at the bakery, and I need to pick up a couple of reference books from home, including the one I checked out of the library. I don’t know why I have Adam drive me, because I don’t exactly trust him. But the world still feels steadier when he’s close.

I’m grateful that I don’t need to explain this to Maggie, who watches us from her front window as we drive away.

Adam tunes the radio to a station playing Christmas carols, and I stare out the window. Houses draped in pine swags and twinkle lights drift past. For a moment, I can almost pretend this is a date. That we’re two normal people, stretching out the last bit of a perfect evening.

“It’s different now,” I say, maybe to remind myself more than anything.

“Maybe,” he says. “But it doesn’t change anything. Not for me.”

He pulls to a stop at the curb beside my driveway, and then he comes around to my side of the car, and everything’s just like it was before. Except we don’t touch. We don’t hold hands or sling arms around each other’s shoulders. We just walk side by side, crunching up the snowy sidewalk until we’re at the foot of my porch steps.

“Chloe,” Adam says, moving in front of me.

I suddenly feel like I’ve run a marathon. Breathless and light-headed, I can’t seem to do a thing but watch him as he slides his hands to my face. “I’m a liar and a thief and thousand other shitty things, but I would never hurt you. I need you to know that.”

I nod because I know he wouldn’t. Truth told, I don’t think he’d hurt anyone. Except maybe himself.

“I don’t deserve you.” He moves in, and I could sooner resist breathing than I can resist curling my hands in the edges of his coat, pulling him until I can feel the heat from his chest and breathe in the smell that I now know as well as my own.

My hands are shaking and cold when I press them to his cheeks. He doesn’t flinch or pull away; instead he breathes harder, like every whisper of my fingers is magic.

“No more lies,” I say.

He nods but doesn’t say anything. Like he knows I’m not done.

“I don’t know what this means,” I say. “I don’t trust you now. I don’t know if I ever will.”

“I’ll wait,” he says, and I think he will. I think he’ll wait forever if that’s what it takes. And it might.

Still, I pull him down and kiss him until the cold disappears. His hands are tangled in my hair, and the world is a tiny, insignificant thing sliding sideways beneath my feet. It feels better than good. It feels right.

When we pull apart, the snow has stopped. The moon is bright and full in the star-pricked sky. I gaze at the pale ring around it, remembering that it’s an omen of something the future will bring. I wish I could remember if it’s good or bad.