And I slap him.
“You asshole,” I hiss. “All of that with Avery and Emma, and printing my admission news in the fucking paper, and you’re sitting on a secret admission yourself? You’re the third spot! The one who took it from Avery.”
At that he rolls his eyes—at least the one I can see. He has a hand pressed to the cheek I slapped. “Pot, kettle. We all took her spot. God, this is insane. It’s not even her spot. We don’t know which one of us is the reason Avery didn’t get in. Or even if it was because of us. This whole quota system you guys talk about isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. Anyway, what does it matter? She didn’t kill Emma over it.”
“Didn’t she?” I say, even though I don’t believe it. Not really. I don’t think. “I’m sure Cataldo also let you know that Tipton probably didn’t do it? That someone was blackmailing him, trying to get him to turn himself in for her murder. That means the actual killer is still out there.”
“Fuck. Seriously?”
“She didn’t tell you. What did you two talk about?”
“Tipton’s text string with Emma. All the stuff you and I investigated. Then softball questions about the SAT thing. She didn’t say anything about blackmail.”
“Well, it’s true. She showed me texts and emails between Tipton and someone who knew about him and Emma and wanted him to confess to the murder. They threatened to out him as a perv.” I catch myself falling into our regular pattern. Investigation, facts, trading theories. “We are not done with the fact that you’re a liar. All that time we were looking into Emma’s secrets and you were sitting on a major one. What if she wanted to come clean about things, and one of the people she helped cheat found out?”
Ethan snorts. “You’re delusional if you honestly believe that. Emma protected her own ass first and foremost. Why would she take down her enterprise?” And then he has the gall to appear wounded. “Hey, you lied to me, too, about my name being on the Ivies’ List. You tried to screw me over.”
“Apples and oranges. Except mine is like a baby orange. A mandarin. Tiny compared to your big-ass apple. I did mild scheming to get a résumé booster, which failed anyway. You published my Harvard acceptance in the paper, knowing I’d take shit from Avery. You hurt me on purpose.”
“I’m sorry, I…I thought it would take the heat off me a bit longer. If there were two Harvard acceptances she knew about, she wouldn’t find out about mine. While it’s pretty clear she’s not a murderer, Avery is vindictive. She’d make me pay for it in a way she’d never do to you. It was a dick move, I know.”
The apology is sincere enough, but the words slide off me. I am slick with disappointment, reeling from his betrayal. He’s a suspect now, I realize.
“I have to go.” I bolt up, wobble on my feet, and curse. Screw period-accurate footwear. I peel off my heels and lace up my Keds. I grab my favorite black cardigan off the back of the chair and slip it on. Inside the double pockets I find tissues. I’m about to need them.
I storm past Ethan, who isn’t even bothering to protest. He’s back to his respectful self, the perfect, passive little liar, who simply watches me go. I slam the door behind me and cut farther into the house. The kitchen is a zoo, and I can’t bear being on display. Instead I duck under the tasteless but effective police line do not cross tape strung across the basement stairs. It’s a rich person’s basement in their mansion in the woods, though, so it’s all high ceilings, sleek wood paneling, and functional living space instead of dank retreat. It’s cool and blissfully empty, the motion-sensor lights sultry and low.
The stairs spill out into a high-tech entertainment space, with a wall-size flat-screen TV and duplicate gaming system to the one upstairs. I fall back onto the leather couch and exhale deeply. I’ll just stay here for the rest of the party. I grab for my phone but realize I don’t have it. I left it upstairs in the guest room. With Ethan.
Ethan. He knew Emma far better than he ever let on. How close were they, really?
I think about everything else Ethan knew. Every way in which he inserted himself into the investigation. How convenient. He was the one who interviewed most people from the party. He created the suspects board. I trusted what he told me.
Ethan was the one who suggested Emma might have a second phone. Did he slip it into my room for me to find? He pushed me toward the supposition that Emma was hooking up with an older guy. Tipton.
But she was. That part was true. Everything with the phone that night at the memorial, that was me. My idea. That was real. Tipton was Beau.
Yes, but what if Ethan and Emma were hooking up, too? I think about how he helped himself to the whiskey at the bar in the secret room. He could have been pretending not to know about it, how to navigate the boathouse. Not to know about the code.
The blackmailer seems young. He didn’t know the age of consent in Massachusetts. Maybe because he’s Canadian?
No, no. I shake my head, shake away these toxic thoughts. Not Ethan. Just because he lied about that one thing doesn’t mean…
He lied about two things, I remind myself. Huge things.
I hop up and begin to pace. Loud music thunders down the stairwell, throbs through the ceiling. I can’t concentrate here. I wander down the dim hallway, past the gym on the left, and find a bedroom. Tyler’s room.
The bed looks tempting, but that would be weird. The entire experience of being in Tyler’s space is strange. To me, he is Emma’s cocky boyfriend, Avery’s model-hot stepbrother. And this is where he sleeps.
I walk the perimeter, getting a feel for it. It’s huge. Fancy-hotel-presidential-suite huge. The California king in the center of the room would fill my Maryland bedroom with only a couple of feet on either side to spare. But in here, the behemoth seems like dollhouse furniture. I cross to a set of patio doors where cold fogs the glass. Press my ear to the gap in the doors, the burble of the Charles River echoing in my ear. Out of curiosity, I pop into the bathroom and find a walk-in shower and a spa tub. Swank. The padded chair in front of Tyler’s Mac setup looks comfy, so I pull it out and plop down. The movement jostles his computer awake.
I’m not trying to snoop, not intentionally, but Tyler’s Mac isn’t password protected, so when it wakes, I get the entire desktop, which is littered with icons. I’m the kind of person who keeps her home screen maniacally clean—limited icons arranged in neat columns—so I can’t help but lean in to peruse the clutter. An icon in the lower right-hand corner catches my eye.
EMMA MURDER SUSPECTS
Why does Tyler have a murder board on his computer?
The urge to know overpowers any good sense I have not to sneak around someone else’s private files. I click on the program icon. What balloons up onto the screen is indeed a murder board. It resembles the one Ethan and I made, but digital. Tyler has used some program that digitally re-creates a corkboard with little index cards on it. There’s one at the top for each of Tyler’s suspects, and then cards below it list key facts. Something sour shoots through me at the thought of Ethan and our investigation. All the lies. And all my doubts. I push it down. But there’s no way to escape Ethan now. Because he is on Tyler’s murder board.