As Good as Dead

by Holly Jackson

  And now for the last item on the list, which wasn’t really a specific item, more a problem to be dealt with. Pip thought inspiration would have struck her by now, but she was coming up empty. The Hastings family had fitted two security cameras to either side of their front door, since Pip vandalized their house months ago, after the verdict. She needed something to deal with those cameras, but what?

  Pip opened the door into the garage, the air cold in here, almost nice against her skin, still adrenaline-hot. She surveyed the room, her eyes flicking over her parents’ bikes, to her dad’s tool kit, to the mirrored dresser that her mom kept insisting they’d find room for. What could Pip use to disable those cameras? Her eyes lingered over her dad’s tool kit, pulling her over, across the room. She opened the lid and looked inside. There was a small hammer lying on top. She supposed she could sneak up and break the cameras, but that would make a sound, might alert Max inside. Or those wire cutters, if the cameras had exposed wiring. But she’d been hoping for something less permanent, something that better fit with the narrative.

  Her eyes caught on something else, head-height on the shelf above the toolbox, staring at her in that way inanimate objects sometimes did. Pip’s breath caught in her throat and she sighed, because it was perfect.

  A near-full roll of gray duct tape.

  That was exactly what she needed.

  “Fucking duct tape,” Pip muttered to herself, grabbing it and shoving it inside her bag.

  She left the garage and froze in the doorway. Her dad was in the kitchen, half-inside the fridge, picking at the leftovers and watching her.

  “What are you doing in there?” he asked, lines crisscrossing his forehead.

  “Oh, um…looking for my blue Converse,” Pip said, thinking on her feet. “What are you doing in there?”

  “They’re in the rack by the door,” he said, indicating down the hall with his head. “I’m just getting your mother a glass of wine.”

  “Oh, and the wine’s kept under that plate of chicken?” Pip said, walking past, shouldering her bag.

  “Yes. I’ll have to heroically eat my way to it,” he replied. “What time will you be home?”

  “Eleven-thirty-ish,” Pip said, calling bye to her mom and Josh, her mom telling her not to stay out too late because they were heading to Adventureland in the morning, and a small whoop of excitement from Josh. Pip said she wouldn’t, the normalness of the scene like a punch in her gut, doubling her over, making it hard to even look at her family. Would she ever belong in a scene like this again, after what she did? Normal was all she’d wanted, what all of this was for, but was it now out of reach forever? It definitely would be if she went down for Jason’s murder.

  Pip closed the front door behind her and exhaled. She didn’t have time for these questions; she needed to focus. There was a body fifteen miles away, and she was in a race against it.

  It was eight twenty-seven p.m. now, already behind schedule.

  Pip unlocked her car and climbed inside, placing the backpack on the passenger seat. She turned the key in the ignition and pulled away, her leg shaking against the pedal, stage one complete behind her.

  On to the next.

  The dark red door peeled open in front of Pip, the shadow of a face in the small crack.

  “I told you already,” said the shadow, registering who it was at the door. “I don’t have them yet.”

  Luke Eaton pulled the door fully open, dark hallway behind him, the streetlights outside illuminating the tattoos that climbed his neck like a net holding his flesh together.

  “Doesn’t matter how many times you text, from how many different phones, I don’t have it,” he said, a hint of impatience in his voice. “And you aren’t supposed to just show up like—”

  “Give me the stronger stuff,” Pip said, cutting him off.

  “What?” He stared at her, one hand running through his close-shaved head.

  “The stronger stuff,” Pip repeated. “The Rohypnol. I need it. Now.” Her face was blank, like a shield, or a mask, the girl back from the dead hiding behind it. But her hands might give her away, fidgeting nervously in the pocket of her hoodie. If he didn’t have it, if he’d already sold his whole stash to Max Hastings himself, then it was all over. Not one part of the plan could fail or it all did, a stack of cards precariously balanced on her back. And her whole life was right there, in Luke’s gray-tattooed hands.

  “Huh?” he said, studying her, but he wouldn’t get through the mask. “You sure?”

  Pip’s shoulders relaxed, the cards still balanced. He must have it, then.

  “Yes,” she said, harder than she meant, the word hissing against her teeth. “Yes, I need it. I need…I have to sleep tonight. I have to be able to sleep.” She sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  “Yeah.” Luke eyed her. “You don’t look great. It’s more expensive than your usual, though.”

  “I don’t care, however much it is. I need it.” Pip pulled out the small stack of notes from her hoodie pocket. She had a hundred dollars here, and she folded all of them into Luke’s outstretched hand. “Whatever this will get me,” she said. “As much.”

  Luke looked down at the money folded into his hand, a muscle twitching in his cheek as he chewed on some unknown thought. Pip watched him, urging him on, planting invisible marionette strings inside his head, pulling on them like her life depended on it.

  “OK, stay there,” he said, pushing the door almost closed, his bare footsteps carrying him away down the dark hallway.

  The relief was bright but short-lived. Pip still had a long night ahead of her, and a thousand chances for something to go wrong. She might be alive, but tonight she was fighting for her life all the same, just as hard as she had while wrapped up in that tape.

  “Here,” Luke said, returning, opening the door to only a sliver again, eyes glinting behind it. He held out a paper bag through the gap and Pip took it from him.

  She opened it and glanced inside: two small clear baggies with four of those moss-green pills inside.

  “Thank you,” Pip said, scrunching up the bag and stuffing it into her pocket.

  “Yeah, OK,” Luke said stepping away. But before the door closed, he came back, face hanging in the gap. “Sorry about the other day. Didn’t see you on the crossing there.”

  Pip nodded at him, arranging her mouth in a closed-lip smile to give none of herself away. “That’s OK, I’m sure you didn’t mean to.”

  “Yeah.” Luke nodded, sucking on his teeth. “Um, listen. Don’t take too much of that, OK? It’s a lot stronger than what you’re used to. One will be enough to knock you out.”

  “Got it, thanks,” she said, catching the look on his face, almost like he was concerned about her. The most unlikely of places for it, the most unlikely of people. She really must look terrible.

  Pip heard the door closing gently behind her as she made her way back to her car, walking past Luke’s bright white BMW, her reflection following her in its dark windows.

  Inside the car, she removed the paper bag from her pocket. Pulled out the clear plastic bags and looked at them in the glow from the streetlights. Eight pills, each inscribed with 1mg on one side. Luke said one would be enough to knock her out, but she wasn’t the one who needed to be unconscious. And she had to make sure it worked, quickly, but not enough to cause an overdose. That would make her a two-time killer in the same day.

  Pip opened both of the small bags and pulled out two of the pills from one of them. She dropped one pill into the other bag, five in there now. Then she snapped the last pill in two, dropping one half into each bag. Two and a half milligrams. She didn’t know what she was doing, but that seemed like it would do it.

  Pip replaced the baggie with more pills into the paper bag and stuffed it into her backpack. She’d get rid of them later, along with everything else. Didn’t
trust herself to keep them.

  But the other bag, with two and a half, she made sure the top was sealed up tight, and then she dropped the bag into the footwell, just in front of the pedals. Pip guided her foot over the bag and pressed down against the pills with her heel, hearing them crack. She ground her heel down hard, working at every lump, pushing and grinding until they were crushed.

  She picked up the bag and held it in front of her eyes. The pills were gone, replaced by a fine green dust. Pip shook it to make sure there were no remaining chunks.

  “Good,” she said under her breath, tucking the bag of powder into her pocket and patting it to know it was still there.

  Pip started the car, her headlights scaring away the growing darkness outside, but not the other kind that lived in her head.

  It was 8:33 p.m., now 8:34, and still three more houses in Fairview to visit tonight.

  The Reynoldses’ house on Cedar Way looked like a face. Pip had always thought so, ever since she was little. It still did now, as she walked up the path toward its toothy front door, windows staring down at her. The steadfast guardian of the family inside. The house shouldn’t let her in, it should turn her away. But the people inside wouldn’t, Pip knew it in her gut.

  She knocked, hard, watching the outline of someone approach through the stained glass of the door.

  “Hell—Oh, hi, Pip,” Jamie said, a wide smile stretching onto his face as he pulled the door open. “Didn’t know you were coming round. The three of us were just going to order pizza, if you want to join?”

  Pip’s voice stalled in her throat. She didn’t know how to begin, but she didn’t have to, because Nat appeared in the hallway behind Jamie, the ceiling lights gliding off her white-blond hair, making it glow.

  “Pip,” she said, walking over, slotting in beside Jamie. “Are you OK? Ravi called me a while ago and said he couldn’t get hold of you. He said you were coming round to my house to talk to me about something, but you never showed.” Her eyes narrowed, flicking across Pip’s face. Nat might see behind the mask; she’d had to learn to wear one herself. “Are you OK?” she asked again, confusion making way for concern.

  “Um…,” Pip said, her voice still gravelly and raw in her throat. “I—”

  “Oh hey, Pip,” said a new voice, one she knew well. Connor had emerged from the kitchen, eyes flicking from the gathering at the door and down to his phone. “We were just going to order pizza if—”

  “Connor, shush.” Jamie cut him off, and Pip could see the same look in his eyes as Nat’s. They knew. They could tell. They could read it on her face. “What’s wrong?” he asked her. “Are you OK?”

  Connor sidled in behind, staring at her too.

  “Um.” Pip took a breath to steady herself. “No. No, I’m not OK.”

  “What’s—” Nat began.

  “Something’s happened. Something bad,” Pip said, glancing down and noticing that her fingers were shaking. They were clean, but blood was leaking out the ends, and she didn’t know if it was Stanley’s or Jason Bell’s or her own. She hid them inside her pocket, alongside the bag of powder and one burner phone. “And…I need to ask you for help. All of you. And you can say no, you can say no to me and I promise I will understand.”

  “Yeah, anything,” Connor said, his eyes picking up on her fear, darkening with it.

  “No, Connor, wait,” Pip said, glancing between the three of them. Three of the people she’d thought would look for her if she disappeared. Three people she’d been with through the fire and back. And she realized, then, that those same people, the ones who would look for you when you disappeared, they were the same people you could turn to if you needed to get away with murder. “You can’t say yes yet, because you don’t…you don’t…” She paused. “I need to ask you for your help, but you can never ask me why, or what happened. And I can never tell you.”

  They all stared at her.

  “Never,” Pip reiterated. “You have to have plausible deniability. You can never know why. But it’s…it’s something I think we all want. Make someone pay, get what they deserved all along. But you can never know, you can never…”

  Nat stepped forward, over the threshold, and placed her hand on Pip’s shoulder, her grip tight and warm and quieting.

  “Pip,” she said, gently, eyes hooking on. “Do you need us to call the police?”

  “No.” Pip sniffed. “Not the police. Ever.”

  “What do you mean, make someone pay?” Connor asked. “Do you mean Max? Max Hastings?”

  Nat stiffened, passing it down through the bone in Pip’s shoulder.

  Pip lifted her head and nodded, ever so slightly.

  “Put him away. Forever,” she whispered, pulling out one hand and resting it on top of Nat’s, stealing its warmth. “If it works. But you can never know, I can’t tell you, and you can never tell anyone—”

  “I’ll do it,” Jamie said, his face hardening, a determined set to his jaw. “I’ll do it, whatever it is. You saved me, Pip. You saved me, so I’ll save you. I don’t need to know why. Only that you need my help, and you have it. Anything to put him away.” His gaze softened as his eyes moved from Pip to the back of Nat’s head.

  “Yes.” Connor nodded, dark blond hair falling into his freckled face. A face she’d watch grow up, shifting with the years, just as he had with her. “Me too. You were there when I needed you.” He stretched out his angular arms in an awkward shrug. “Of course I’ll help.”

  Pip felt her eyes filling up as she glanced between the Reynolds brothers. Two faces she’d known as far as memory would take her, two players in the history of who she was. Part of her wished they’d said no, for their own sakes. But she’d make sure they were safe. The plan would work, and if it didn’t, she would be the only one to pay. Her silent promise to them all. This never happened; Pip never stood at their door and asked them for help. None of them were here right now.

  Pip’s gaze trailed over to Nat, seeing her own face reflected in the brilliant blue orbs of Nat’s eyes. Nat was the one who truly mattered. They hadn’t believed her as many times as they hadn’t believed Pip; that unthinkable violence of not-believing. They shared that darkness, and Pip had taken on Nat’s scream that day, the day of the verdict, as though it were hers, binding them together. They looked at each other, past the masks.

  “Will this get you into trouble?” Nat asked.

  “I’m already in trouble,” Pip replied quietly.

  Nat breathed in, slowly. She let go of Pip’s shoulder and took her hand instead, gripping hard, fingers interlocked in hers.

  “What do you need us to do?” she said.

  Courtland. One of those roads in Fairview Pip couldn’t extricate from herself, from who she’d become, mapped inside her in place of an artery. Back here once more, like it was something inevitable, this very journey inscribed within her too.

  Pip glanced up, the Hastings house coming into view up ahead on the right. Here it had all started, a branch of beginnings all those years ago. Five teenagers one night—Sal Singh, Naomi Ward, and Max Hastings among them. An alibi Sal always had, snatched away from him by his friends, because of Elliot Ward. And here Pip would end it all.

  She checked back over her shoulder, at the three of them sitting inside Jamie’s car, parked farther down the street. Her car was nestled behind it. She saw Nat nodding to her from the darkness of the passenger seat, and that gave her the courage to carry on.

  Pip held on to the straps of her backpack and crossed the street. She stopped at the outer fence around Max’s front drive, peeking through the branches of a tree. Max’s car was the only one in the drive, as she’d known it would be. His parents were at their second house in Santa Barbara, because of the emotional distress Pip had caused them. And—if she was right—Max should have returned from his evening run around eight, if he’d been on one. Turned out all
those months of running into each other wasn’t for nothing after all.

  Max was alone inside, and he had no idea she was coming for him. But she’d told him. She’d warned him all those months ago. Rapist. I will get you.

  Pip focused her eyes on the front door, picking out the security cameras mounted on the walls on either side. They were small, pointed diagonally down to face the path up to the front door. They might not be real cameras, might just be for show, but Pip had to assume they were real. And that was OK, because they had a clear blind side: up against the house approaching from the other end. A blind side she would disappear right into.

  Pip patted her pocket, checked the duct tape was there, as well as the burner phone, the bag of powder, and one set of latex gloves. Then she placed her hands over the top rail of the outer fence, waist-high, and swung her legs over the top. She landed silently in the grass on the other side, just another shadow among the branches. Keeping to the right-hand perimeter of the front yard, up against a hedgerow, she skirted toward the house. Toward the corner, and one of the windows she’d smashed open months ago.

  The room beyond was dark, some kind of office, but she could see through an open door, into the hallway where the lights were on.

  Keeping herself flat against the wall of the house, Pip sidled up behind the unsuspecting camera. She glanced up, positioned almost underneath it. Reaching into her pocket, she removed the duct tape and found its ragged end. She pulled a length of tape from the roll and ripped it free. Pip stretched to full height, on her toes, arm snaking up beneath the camera, the tape ready and poised against her fingers. She pressed it over and around the glass, fully covering the lens. Another piece of tape to be sure it was all blocked.