People Like Us

by Dana Mele

  “We weren’t together.”

  “Now we’re not allowed to be friends? Is that why you wanted to meet? To tell me that?”

  “No. God.” Shit. If I shine at one thing, it’s making a bigger mess of an already spectacular screwup. “I wanted to see you. Everything’s really messed up right now. But you keep telling me you love me, and that reminds me why we can’t—”

  “You’re right. That’s my fault.” He wipes his eyes on his sleeve. “I totally failed to pick up on that. Katie, you will not be loved by me ever again. My good opinion of you, once had, is lost forever.”

  “Were you watching Pride and Prejudice, too?”

  “It’s long. But it taught me it’s okay to marry beneath my station.”

  “Did you catch Death Comes to Pemberley, too?”

  “Come again?”

  “It’s another book. The gang gets back together and a minor character is killed off. It’s a murder mystery.”

  “Is it on Netflix?”

  “Spencer, we have to talk about Jessica.”

  He chokes on his coffee. “I thought you were done with this murder thing?”

  “Do you realize how serious this is? We are now the police’s only suspects.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I was at the scene of the crime, have no alibi, they found something of mine in Jessica’s room that night, and it turns out I did something pretty mean to her a couple of years ago.” He tilts his head, interested. “And the police may think she slept with you to get back at me.”

  “Well. Doesn’t that make me feel precious.”

  “It makes it look like Jessica and I had an ongoing feud or something.”

  “And I’m presumably a suspect because of my deadly sex curse. What about Greg?”

  I take a second doughnut and scrape off some of the glazed sugar absently. “He has no link to Maddy.”

  He takes a cautious sip of coffee. “Her death could be unrelated.”

  “Greg told me something else that’s interesting. The police think they have the murder weapon. And someone tried to frame him by taking one from his house and planting it in the lake. But now they have the real one and they’re running DNA tests.”

  He looks at me evenly. “Sounds like we’re in the clear, then.”

  “You’re not going to ask what the weapon was?”

  He holds my gaze for a moment. “Sure.”

  “A broken wine bottle.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I GRIPPED THAT bottle so tightly the night of the murder. I don’t actually remember putting it down from the moment I left Tai and the others and went looking for Spencer. It seemed like we had been kissing for hours when his phone rang the second time, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. In that time we’d made our way into his car, clothes off, underwear on, heat blasting, music pulsing. The buzz from the alcohol was fading into a smoother, steadier blur of desire and determination. I was determined not to think of Brie, not to picture Spencer with another girl, not to remember the look on his face when he saw me with Brie.

  I was so determined.

  And then his phone rang, and he pulled away.

  I grabbed it from him, breathless. “What the fuck?” It was an untraceable campus number. All Bates landline numbers are untraceable for security reasons.

  He reached for it. “Just let me answer.”

  I sat up. “Why?”

  “Because I was supposed to meet someone. You know I didn’t just randomly wander here looking for you. I’ll blow them off; just let me answer the phone.”

  I pulled the Gatsby dress off the floor, feeling like an idiot. “While you’re with me?”

  His eyes turned pleading. “It wasn’t like a date. She was freaked out and she wanted me to stop by and check on her.”

  “Stunningly original.” The phone stopped ringing.

  Spencer threw himself back against the seat. “Nothing’s ever good enough.”

  I punched the side of the car. “You do not pick up the phone in the middle of a hookup. Ever.”

  The phone started ringing again. It was the same scrambled campus number. I answered.

  “Spencer? Please hurry. I’m locked out of—”

  “Fuck off.” I hung up.

  Spencer grabbed his phone, threw on his clothes, and stormed out of the car. I grabbed for the bottle of prosecco and realized that I must have left it outside when we moved things into the car. But when I went back to the path to look for it, I couldn’t find it.

  I leaned against a tree and sighed. My buzz was totally gone and the night was ruined. There was no way I was going to tell any of my friends I went crawling back to Spencer to be humiliated after the night started with them hailing me as a campus hero, so I had to put on a bright, shiny, everything-is-awesome face and meet them on the green like nothing had ever happened. I decided to take the long way through the village to cool down, and I began to walk away from the lake toward the darkened shops.

  “Katie.”

  I turned back toward Spencer.

  “Can I fix this?”

  “I said everything I have to say to you.”

  “I can’t undo what I did. I can’t make her disappear.”

  “I can make myself disappear.”

  As I walked away, I heard the sound of shattering glass somewhere behind me.

  * * *

  • • •

  I WATCH SPENCER carefully across the table. “Where did you go after I left you that night?”

  “Home.” He doesn’t break eye contact.

  I decide to put all the cards on the table. “I think my bottle was the murder weapon.”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “That I killed Jessica?”

  “You were pretty adamant that I get rid of her.”

  It suddenly hits me that this whole time everything I’ve been trying not to think about because it makes him look guilty has been weighing on him, too. Except to him, I’m the one who looks like the murderer. I was the one who kept insisting that she had to go. “I didn’t know who she was yet, Spencer. I heard you say the name Jess, but that could have been over a dozen people, and I’d never heard of Jessica Lane.”

  “What about that prank?”

  “It was anonymous,” I say desperately. The tables just turned on me dizzyingly quickly.

  “And Maddy? You just happened to be there to find her? You happened to be there to find both of them?”

  I feel my eyes welling up. “Spencer, you think I did this? I thought you would be behind me.”

  “No, you thought I killed them.” His eyes harden.

  “I didn’t think it. I just don’t know what to think. It’s you or me.”

  “Just because that’s all the police have come up with doesn’t mean that’s all there is. Are you sure Greg is out?”

  I gnaw on the lip of my cup until it begins to crumble in my mouth. “He says he is.” Spencer rolls his eyes. “I trust him. He has no link to Maddy, no easy access to campus. I’ve ruled him out.”

  “And how do I apply for that status?”

  “How about one more game of I Never?”

  “It could be arranged.”

  I kick my suitcase at him. “I’m staying at your place tonight. Too many enemies on campus.”

  “Does that mean I’m officially cleared?”

  “It means all things considered, I think I’m safer with one potential murderer than a campus full of them.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  27

  I feel like a fugitive revisiting the scene of the crime as I sit on Spencer’s bed in my pajamas. I haven’t been here since the night he walked in on me and Brie. So much has happened since then. This used to be such a safe and familiar place. I lie
down and press my face into the pillow and inhale deeply. It smells like the apple-scented hair product he pretends not to use. I miss that smell. Then I notice another smell, something like patchouli. I wonder if he and Jessica had sex in his bed, and I sit up abruptly. Just then there’s a knock at the door.

  “Yes?” I always use my super-polite voice at Spencer’s house. I want his mother to love me. I don’t know why. She’s just this adorable woman and you can tell she has a tough time of it. I want her to think I’m perfect. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. I hope his next girlfriend kisses her ass accordingly.

  I’m fairly let down when Spencer walks in instead. “Have everything you need?”

  “Actually, I was wondering if I could borrow a new set of sheets?”

  He blushes. “Oh. Sure, yeah.”

  “Thanks.”

  He disappears into the hallway and comes back with a mismatched top and bottom flannel sheet set and pillowcase, and we work together to make the bed.

  “We totally made out here,” he says with a juvenile grin.

  “That’s a collective we, right? You and all the ladies of Easterly.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Yeah. All.” He places the pillow at the head of the bed and sits on the floor with his legs crossed. “You were the cutest, though.”

  “Agreed.” I sit on the bed and draw my knees up. “You may pour.”

  He takes a bottle of vodka and carton of lemonade and mixes my favorite drink in two equal portions and sets them in front of us. I choose the one in a Care Bears glass, leaving him with Snoopy.

  “Before we begin, I would like to bring up a past game foul. The night we met, when we played, I said ‘I never killed a person’ and you drank.”

  He rolls his eyes. “You did, too, and you never killed anyone either.”

  My eyes fill up unexpectedly. “I told you my story.”

  “I’m sorry.” He leans over and hugs me. “I drank as a joke. I thought we both did.”

  “No jokes tonight. We’re playing for truth.”

  He clinks my glass. “May the worst player win.”

  I open to the point. “I never killed Jessica Lane.”

  No drink.

  “I never killed Maddy Farrell,” he hits back.

  “I never slept with Jessica Lane.”

  He drinks. “I never slept with Brie Matthews.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  Spencer looks relieved. I kind of want to punch him.

  “I never slept with Maddy Farrell.”

  He takes a sip. “You know all this.”

  “Lie detectors always ask control questions.”

  Spencer stirs his glass. “I never still love someone in this room.”

  We stare at each other. He takes a sip and I dip my pinkie into my glass and taste it.

  “It’s complicated,” I say. “I never had sex with Jessica in this room.”

  He puts his glass down. “You don’t want those details.”

  “I want all the details. That’s why we’re playing this game. You were one of the last people to talk to her. The police just don’t know it. There’s no way they could.”

  “No, I didn’t have sex with Jessica in this room. My turn. I never heard of a suspect besides me, you, and Greg.”

  I drink. “They aren’t serious suspects. Greg thought it might have been Brie for about five minutes because Jess and Brie didn’t get along first year.”

  “Oh, I would have loved that.”

  “And Brie thinks it’s my friend Nola. Which is also possible but I don’t like it.”

  “Why possible? Why don’t you like it?”

  I sigh. “It’s possible because Tai and I were bitches to Nola her first year, so she has a sort of motive for framing me. The killer also set up a blog threatening me if I didn’t get revenge on Jessica’s behalf for this prank we all pulled on her a couple of years ago. But Nola was one of the targets, she has zero connection to Maddy, and she’s also been a really good friend while the campus has decided all at the same time to get back at me for every shitty thing I’ve done to every student. Which adds up to a lot. I have a few things to atone for.”

  “Not murder, though.”

  I glare at him.

  “Double checking.”

  “I never let a loved one off easy because I wanted them to be innocent,” he says softly.

  I drink the entire glass down and get up. “You made your point.”

  He takes my hand. “Katie, I’m being serious. It’s not just about Todd. Why didn’t you come to me sooner if you actually thought I could have killed Jess? You mentioned Maddy to me, but you went out of your way to avoid talking about Jessica, and I think it’s because you really thought I might have done it, and it was your fault for telling me to get rid of her and then vanishing into the night. Todd, then me, now Nola. Is there any chance Brie’s right? As much as I hate to say those words?”

  I sit again and rest my chin on my hands. The vodka shot straight up to my brain, and the lemonade is making my mouth feel sticky. “Brie made her best argument, and all she could really say convincingly was that Nola was motivated to frame me. Not that she actually killed Jessica or Maddy.”

  Spencer shrugs. “You’re just as smart as Brie and Nola’s your friend, right? What do you think?”

  “I think there’s no evidence.” I pause. “I went home with her and she acted a little weird around her family. She lies a lot. Fights with her parents. But so do most of the people I know. I’ve met killers. No one else gets it. There are no obvious tells. It’s not always a certain kind of person. It’s not someone who’s more or less loved. It’s just something someone decides to do. Or it’s an accident. Anyone could be a killer under certain circumstances. That’s what no one else gets.”

  Spencer pours me another drink, this one almost all lemonade. “So who was it?”

  “There’s a detail somewhere that’s going to make something click.” I tap my fingers on the side of the glass, then stop abruptly. The sound of it makes a shiver run down my spine. “What happened to my bottle that night?”

  Spencer takes a thoughtful gulp. “Gotta catch up with you there. I left right after you did.”

  “And you didn’t see anything?”

  “How could I?”

  “I heard glass breaking as I was walking away. What if that was—”

  “What if it was?” He gazes up at the stars on his ceiling, and I turn off the light so we can watch them glow. “You’ll drive yourself crazy if you think that way. There was no reason to do anything other than what we did.”

  “Jessica called you because she thought someone was following her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Greg? Because of their fight?”

  “Maybe.” He sits up. “No, she said she at one point. Something like ‘she’s still out there,’ or ‘she’s still back there.’ It was definitely a she.”

  I punch a pillow. “Oh my God, Spencer, why wouldn’t you tell me this before now?”

  “Because you flipped out at me when you answered the phone and heard her voice.”

  “That was before I was suspected of murdering her.” My mind races. “She. Tell me everything else she said.”

  He pushes his hair back from his forehead. “I don’t remember every word. I’m sure the police have my written statement. ‘Blah blah can you come? Blah blah scared. Blah blah thee thou whatfore. Blah blah hurry.’”

  “Thee thou what?”

  “Whatfore.”

  I furrow my brow and shake my head, uncomprehending.

  “There was some old-timey English mixed up in it. I had my phone on speaker in the car; it was hard to make out.”

  “Jessica talked to you in Old English? Like Beowulf?”

  “No, like Shakespeare or something.”

 
“That’s not—never mind.” But I have a sinking feeling in my stomach already.

  He chews his lip nervously. “That was the last thing I heard. The freaky thing is, she suddenly sounded so calm. What if it wasn’t Jess speaking?”

  A chill runs down my spine. “‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come’?”

  He points at me. “That’s it.”

  I close my eyes and rest my forehead on his chest. “Shit.”

  28

  I leave the next morning before Spencer wakes up and take a cab back to campus. The sun is just beginning to rise over the towering pines when we pull up to the dorms, spilling golden light onto the surface of the lake. It’s not frozen over yet, but it will be soon.

  Brie is an early riser, and I can smell strong coffee and hear strains of Schubert when I knock on her door. She looks pleasantly surprised when she sees me, and then a little puzzled as she notices my suitcase.

  “Late night?”

  “I stayed with Spence.”

  She opens the door, and I walk in and sit on her bed as if the past month never happened. Brie places a bookmark in her copy of Othello and leans back at the edge of her desk. “I could use a study break.”

  “How long have you been up?”

  “Too long.”

  For the first time I notice Brie has come to resemble me in these past few weeks. She’s dropped weight, there are circles under her eyes, and her smile is three-quarters strength. I feel a pang of guilt for ignoring her calls. She offers a box of pastries from the good bakery and I take one. Buttery flakes and smooth chocolate center.

  “So, you and Spencer?” Before I can protest, she pours half of her coffee into a second mug and hands it to me.

  “Just friends. I’m not stealing your coffee.”

  “I insist. Have you given any more thought to our conversation yesterday?”

  I take a sip of the aromatic French roast. “Quite a bit.”

  “And?” Brie tosses me a sugar packet and I catch it without breaking eye contact.

  I study her placid face. “What if I told you I killed Jessica?”