The Dead List

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  helped me stand, my legs gave out on me, and the world, it went fuzzy.

  The next thing I remembered when I opened my eyes again, I was staring up at a plain white ceiling. Not the kind in the elderly couples’ house. My gaze was slow to drift down, over the pea green curtains, the little table to my right. There was a ceramic pitcher and empty plastic cups faced down.

  I was in a hospital room.

  Huh, when did that happen?

  Sensing another presence in the room, it hurt to turn my head to the left, but I did it and was rewarded with a beautiful sight.

  Jensen sat on the edge of my bed, arms folded in his lap.

  My heart turned over heavily. He was alive and he was up, moving around. Emotion clogged my throat as I stared at him.

  His chin was dipped down, and several dark blond locks toppled over his forehead. His was darker along side one side of his head, matted with dried blood I didn’t know if he was asleep, but I knew it had to be uncomfortable.

  I didn’t speak, but he seemed to become aware of me. Lifting his chin, eyes the color of dawn met mine. Relief splashed across his face.

  “Hey,” he whispered, one side of his lips curling up. “There’s my beautiful girl.”

  “Hey you.” I croaked and started to smile, but my lips felt too tight and hurt. I raised my other hand, reaching for my lips.

  Jensen caught my fingers. “Nah, baby, don’t do that.”

  “What’s wrong with my mouth?”

  “Your lip was split. There’re a couple of stitches.” A dark look crept across his striking face as his gaze dipped to my wrist. It was heavily bandaged, but a bit of red had stained the cloth. “God, Ella…” He choked off, closing his eyes as he bent his head, pressing a kiss to the center of the palm. “When they told me you’d been brought in, I feared the worst.”

  “I’m okay.” I pressed my hand against his cheek. “Are you? I was so scared. I thought—” My voice broke. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “My head is harder than it looks.” His eyes opened, the blue a startling color of the ocean. “Are you? Because they told me what happened—they told me who it was and what he admitted to you.”

  “He’s… he’s still dead right?”

  Jensen frowned at that question, and I got that it sounded weird, but whatever. “He’s dead, dead.”

  I drew in a deep breath and winced. “That hurt.”

  He shifted closer, his movements slow. “You’re pretty banged up, Ella. Busted lip and eye. Half your face is swollen. The nurse said your ribs are bruised.”

  “How about you?”

  A soft, tired smile appeared. “Bruises. A contusion. They’re keeping you in here for observation—both of us.”

  “I bet I look terrible.”

  “You look freaking beautiful.”

  I snorted. “So you have a concussion then.”

  “No.” He bent down, kissing the crown of my head. When he straightened a little, he swallowed hard. “I know he hurt you, but did he—”

  “No.” I knew where the question was heading. “It wasn’t about that. It was just he was… he was just crazy, Jensen. The things he said, I…”

  “It’s okay. They told me. You don’t have to go through it again.” Smiling again, he glanced over his shoulder. The bruise along his temple was still ugly and mean. “Your parents have been here, but they went to grab some food with Linds’ parents. You’ve been asleep for a while.”

  “I have? It felt like minutes.”

  He watched me intently. “If he wasn’t dead, I would’ve killed him for what he’d done to you.”

  “No,” I whispered, an ache piercing my chest. “You don’t want that on your hands.”

  The look on his face said he disagreed with that. “Can you roll on your side?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Why?”

  “I need to hold you right now and I’m going to make this work.” He glanced at the narrow bed and frowned. “Somehow.”

  My heart turned over happily. “I’m not sure the nurses and staff will appreciate that. Wait. Are you even supposed to be out of your room?”

  His eyes sparkled. “No. But I’m still in the hospital and that counts for something, right?”

  I laughed, ignoring the pain banging over my ribs. “I’m not sure they’ll think that.”

  “I don’t care.” Standing like a man four or five times his age, he made his way to the other side of the bed. “Let’s do this.”

  It took a while for me to get onto my side without killing my ribs, and then even longer for Jensen to lie down.

  “Ow,” we moaned at the same time, and Jensen chuckled as he readjusted himself so I wasn’t resting against his ribs. Obviously they must’ve been bruised when he fought Shaw. “We’re both kind of pathetic, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah.” I smiled in spite of the stitches. It was good being almost in his arms. He really couldn’t hold me, but we made it work, lying as close as possible. His warmth, very presence, chased away some of the darkness from the night. “But I love you.”

  His lips brushed along the nape of my neck, eliciting a shiver from me. “But I love us.”

  #

  The nurses did chase Jensen off, back to his room with fawn like expressions on their faces. I think I rolled my eyes so far back they almost rolled out of my head. They also chased off my parents after an hour or so of my mom, my dad, and Rose clucking over me like worried hens.

  After they left, it was a few hours shy of morning. I was hovering back and forth between sleep when I heard the door creak. Figuring it was one of the nurses checking on me, I opened my eyes into thin slits. The pea green curtains fluttered.

  It wasn’t a nurse who walked in.

  I started to sit up, but my body screamed in protest. “Gavin?”

  “Don’t sit up.” He came to the side of the bed, sitting down just like Jensen had. His gaze drifted over me. “You look terrible, Ella.”

  He didn’t look much better. His forehead looked a bit swollen, and it was purple from where I’d hit him in the head. Oh dear.

  “Gavin, I’m so sorry. I thought—”

  “You thought I was the killer.” He smiled as he reached across the bed, wrapping his hand around mine. “It happens.”

  My brows rose. “I don’t think someone mistakes their friend as a killer that often.”

  “Well, with everything going on, it’s easy to imagine.” His shirt stretched over his shoulders as he shifted, the material torn over his arm. “Let’s not talk about that now.”

  He was taking this very well or maybe he just got one good look at me and felt too bad to really make me feel guilty. “Okay,” I said, squeezing his hand. “Did you have to… sneak past the nurses?”

  “Yeah, but I needed to see you.” He paused, pulling his hand free. “I tried to come by earlier, but you were with Jensen.”

  Before, I would’ve felt a tide of embarrassment and awkwardness, but after everything, I couldn’t muster the feeling. “The nurses ran him off back to his room. He should be let out tomorrow. Me, too.”

  Gavin reached up, scrubbing his hand carefully through his unkempt hair. “God, Ella, I can’t believe… things have ended up here.”

  I closed my eyes briefly. “Me neither, but I’m glad you’re okay.”

  His lashes drifted shut. “I think you’re mistaking what I’m saying.”

  Confused, I tilted my head toward him. “How?”

  He leaned down, placing one hand next to the shoulder furthest from him. The closeness wigged me out a little, but he was my friend, and I had knocked him over the head not too long ago. “I have a secret to admit,” he whispered.

  Something in the way he said that caused tiny knots to form in my stomach. “What?”

  “Shaw screwed up,” he said, and my eyes widened. “It wasn’t him that was supposed to die tonight.”

  My body jerked and I started to sit up, but Gavin moved incredibly fast, smacking a hand over my mouth as
he climbed onto the bed, forcing his weight down on my legs.

  A slow smile curled his lips, turning a familiar face into something never seen before. My heart kicked against my chest frantically as I breathed heavily out of my noise.

  “Oh, you look so, so surprised. Come on, you can’t be that dumb. Why would Shaw do this, if it weren’t for me?” He lowered his head until our faces were an inch apart. “Shaw, man, he didn’t want any of this, but he had to. He didn’t have a choice.”

  I dug my fingers into his hand, trying to dislodge it, but there was no moving it. All I could think of was what Shaw had said right before he fell to his death.

  You think this is over?

  It had been a warning—a warning I hadn’t even noticed. And it made sense now—the mask in my locker, my bedroom window—things that Shaw couldn’t have known or done. The footsteps we’d heard upstairs at Jensen’s house. It had been Gavin.

  Gavin chuckled low in his throat. “Ah, I see you’re putting it together. You’ve always been a smart one. It was cute how you defended me right up until you swung a skillet at my head. But it worked out in a way. Shaw got you, but that didn’t end the way I wanted. Shaw was supposed to be the one to take you out,” he said, dark eyes locked onto mine. “Because I thought it would be too hard for me to do it, but, you know what? It’s really not that hard.”

  Oh God…

  “I started planning at the beginning of summer. I tried it with Vee, and when that worked out perfectly, I tried to grab you. But, damn, Ella, you’ve got nine lives or something.” He drew back as I swung my arms at him. Catching one, he pinned it down beside my hip. “And, it was so much fun messing with you. The night with the mask in your bedroom? That was me. The dummy hanging in your house? All me, baby.”

  The smugness in his voice, which was so unlike Shaw’s resignation, chilled my very core, but I fought back, trying to catch him, but he kept out of my reach. The blows I landed bounced off his arm and chest to no avail.

  “And this whole time, you never saw what was right in front of your face,” he continued. “I think Jensen was beginning to see it, but not you. For all those years after Penn, I hated all of them—even you at times. But I still loved you.”

  My eyes widened further.

  “But I have to do this. I had to do all of this. It is the only way for me to make amends.” His hand moved off my mouth and then circled my neck, cutting off my air and ability to scream. Panic roared through me, surging like an out of control storm. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Don’t worry. When I’m finished with you, I’ll take care of him. Or maybe I won’t. Seems fitting he’ll live the rest of his life without you.” One shoulder rose like he was discussing the difference between salt and pepper.

  My eyes darted around the room frenziedly, landing on the heavy ceramic water pitcher. Could I reach it?

  “Do you want to know why?” he asked, his lips brushing my bruised cheek, startling me. “Why now? Why four years later?” Then he leaned down again, his fingers loosening around my neck, allowing some air in. His mouth then brushed my ear as he whispered, “Penn didn’t kill himself.”

  Everything stopped.

  He waited until my wide gaze found his. “Penn wanted to go look at birds and he didn’t want to wait until you and Jensen got there. So I went with him, and I was still pissed about you and Jensen skipping his party for Brock’s. Hell, I was more pissed that Penn let it slide. He never stood up for himself. Never. And I was so sick of him being a doormat for everyone. I told him that. I told him that you two couldn’t really be his friends for bailing on him, and he started to cry. To cry, Ella.” His eyes took on an unfocused, glazed over look. “I don’t even know how it happened. I told him to stop crying. But then he said—he said that he trusted you two. That he knew you two were really sorry and that I was the bad friend for even bringing it up. Me.”

  Oh my God…

  “I pushed him,” Gavin said, closing his eyes. “I pushed him, not that hard, but he lost his balance. He fell, Ella. He fell, and I panicked. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just wanted him to stand up for himself. I wanted him to see that I was the better friend. It was an accident. I didn’t know what to do. I ran home and I… and I called Shaw. He came right over. He knew that I was in trouble. That no one would believe it was an accident. He’d helped me cover it up, plant the note in Penn’s bedroom. And Shaw, he helped me now. He knew it wasn’t my fault.”

  Cleaning up the mess. Shaw had said that.

  “It wasn’t my fault.” Gavin’s fingers tightened on my throat again. “None of this would’ve happened if they didn’t bully Penn. If you and Jensen hadn’t chosen them over Penn. You all forced me to do this, because I had to somehow make it right, because it wasn’t my fault. You all made me do this. So I created a list—a dead list. Shaw figured it out pretty quickly. And he had to help me. You see? Because If I got caught, that meant he got busted for covering up Penn’s death. He had no choice, but you want to know a secret?” His eyes gleamed oddly. “I think he liked it.”

  My thoughts whirled with the reveal. Penn never killed himself. It had been Gavin—Penn had been his first victim. All that guilt… none of it mattered right now.

  Self-preservation consumed me.

  I stretched out my arm as I tried to get him to let go of my other, hoping that would distract him. The tips of my fingers brushed the handle of the pitcher as the edges of my vision started to turn black. Blood rushed my ears, drowning out whatever crazy crap Gavin was spewing. My fingers wrapped around the handle.

  Swinging the pitcher at his head, the impact shattered the ceramic. Bits of sharp clay flew in my face and across the room. His hands loosened immediately, and I dragged in air, as he rolled off the bed, hitting the floor.

  Scrambling from the bed, I hit the call button as I backed up. The IV in my hand caught and then ripped free, but I barely felt the pain.

  Gavin climbed to his feet as I edged away, through the curtains, and he came forward, blood running in rivets down his face.

  “That’s the second time you’ve hit me in the head, Ella. That’s not very nice.”

  “You’re trying to kill me,” I gasped out.

  His eyes narrowed. “Good point.”

  And then he charged me.

  I didn’t think as I raised the part of the pitcher that had remained intact, the handle and its ragged, wickedly sharp edges. Gavin smacked into me—into the broken handle. Red splashed everywhere.

  Gavin stumbled a step, his arms rising to his slashed throat. He looked at me with eyes wide, as if he couldn’t believe what I’d done. Then he smiled as his legs buckled and hit the floor.

  I backed up until I hit the wall behind me. My knees gave out and I slid down the wall, clutching the jagged piece of ceramic in my trembling hand, shaking all over as I watched the puddle of dark blood under Gavin spread further.

  Then

  The four of us lay side by side on the floor of the tree house, staring up at the bright and dewy green leaves. I was sandwiched in-between Penn and Jensen, and Gavin was on Penn’s other side. I really had no idea what any of us were doing, but I was happy and I was smiling.

  “What do you guys want to do when you grow up?” Penn asked, tapping his fingers off his belly.

  Gavin made a choking laugh sound. “Not clean offices, that’s for sure.”

  I didn’t think cleaning offices and houses were bad. His parents seemed to enjoy doing it.

  “Then what?” Penn persisted.

  “I don’t know,” he grumbled. “It’s a stupid question.”

  Jensen elbowed me in the side as he said, “It’s not a stupid question. I want to be a coach or maybe a teacher. I could be both.”

  “Oh man, that really is lame. A teacher?” Gavin laughed again. “You’d be stuck in school forever.”

  “What?” Jensen tilted his head, and I could tell that he was grinning. “You get summers off.”

  I giggled, thinking I liked the wa
y he thought.

  “What about you?” Jensen nudged me with his elbow.

  Wiggling my toes, I thought real hard about that. High school was so far away, college even further. It was like forever from