Tragedy Girl

by Christine Hurley Deriso

  “Blake, I know all about—”

  But he’s not listening.

  He starts tearing down the hall, pumping his arms and pounding his feet as if his life depended on it.

  “Officers, this is all a big mistake.”

  Blake is smoothing his hair as the security officers stop him in mid-stride.

  One officer radios for backup, and another asks Garrett and me what’s going on.

  “My brother tried to kill that patient,” Garrett says, his forceful voice betrayed by only the slightest tremor. “He killed his girlfriend over the summer, and the patient in that room knows it—it’s Jamie Stuart, his best friend, and Jamie helped him cover up the crime. Jamie just tried to commit suicide, and Anne and I walked in on Blake trying to smother him with a pillow.”

  “That is ludicrous !” Blake howls. “This is all a big misunderstanding. A huge, ridiculous—”

  Garrett starts sobbing and falls into my arms.

  “Drink, drink.”

  Aunt Meg and I have led Garrett to a chair in the waiting room and are trying to get him to sip some water. He’s shaking so hard, he knocks the bottle from Aunt Meg’s hand.

  “They need to arrest me too,” he tells us in a spent voice, his eyes haunted. “I knew. I covered it up for him.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re the one who caught him!” Aunt Meg says. “You saved Jamie.”

  Garrett shakes his head. “I knew about Cara. Not at first … not until a few weeks ago. Jamie told me. The guilt was eating him alive. Cara told Blake that night at the bonfire that she was pregnant … pregnant with Jamie’s baby. She said she wanted Blake to hear it first, before she told anyone else, even Jamie. I confronted Blake after Jamie told me. At first he denied it, but after a while, he confessed that he’d blown his top that night, and … ” Garrett can’t quite spit out the words.

  “But he told me it was an accident,” he continues. “I wanted to believe that so badly … ”

  He drops his head into his hands and sobs.

  “How did he kill her?” I ask.

  “He slammed a rock over her head. At first, he told me that she’d accidentally fallen against the rock—that he’d shoved her out of anger after he found out about her and Jamie, after he found out she was pregnant—and that she’d stumbled and fallen. But then one night a few days ago—one night that he was furious at me for trying to keep him away from Anne—he spit it out. Actually bragged about smashing the rock over her head. He was almost proud, you know? Like she deserved it. Like he had every right to decide whether she lived or died. She’d messed with his ego. He couldn’t handle it.”

  Garrett’s teary eyes narrow as he gazes into space.

  “He has, like, the world’s craziest sense of entitlement. He’s always been that way … but once he got cancer, he was the golden boy who could do no wrong. Nobody questioned him anymore. The brakes were off.”

  I shake my head. “But Jamie wouldn’t have just gone along with him … would he?”

  Garrett squeezes his hands together to stop them from shaking. “It was after Blake smashed the rock over Cara’s head that he ran back to the bonfire to get Jamie. He said he needed a little help.” Garrett’s face crinkles like a leaf as he repeats bitterly, “A little help.”

  “So … she was already … ”

  He nods. “He took Jamie to the rocks and Jamie saw Cara lying there bleeding out her ear … and Blake told him she was dead, that she’d fallen. He lied to Jamie too.”

  A clock on the wall ticks off each second. Everyone else has left the waiting room to check on the ongoing commotion with Blake in the hallway, so the room is eerily silent … just me, Aunt Meg, Garrett, and his terrible story.

  He looks at us, then his eyes wander blankly into space again. “Blake told Jamie that he owed it to him to fix this, to keep him from having to spend the rest of his life in prison. He ‘owed’ him, since Jamie got his girlfriend pregnant. Jamie … I dunno … I can’t imagine how confused and devastated he must have been. He finds out all at the same time that Cara is pregnant, and now she’s dead, and his best friend killed her, and … ”

  He runs his fingers through his hair. “So he panicked. He did what Blake told him to do. He got his jet ski, and they squeezed Cara between the two of them, and they drove the jet ski into the ocean, and … ”

  I squeeze my eyes shut.

  “I just found this out,” Garrett repeats, holding our gaze again as if desperate to convince us. “Just a few weeks ago … right before school started. When Jamie told me what had happened—at least what Blake said had happened, that it was an ‘accident’ like Blake insisted—I told Blake I’d keep his goddamn secret, mostly for Mom and Dad’s sake, but I’d never let him out of my sight again. I told him I’d watch him like a hawk, that he better never slip up again … ”

  The irony settles over us like a damp, heavy blanket. “He would have killed him,” Garrett adds in barely a whisper. “If we hadn’t gone into the room at that exact moment, that bastard would have killed again. And maybe I’d be next. I’m the one who knew it wasn’t an accident.”

  The words hang in the air, then he repeats them:

  “He would have killed again.”

  Epilogue

  “All the comforts of home.”

  Aunt Meg surveys my tiny dorm room, complete with cinderblock walls, and crosses her arms. “It’ll look like home when I’m done with it,” she assures me.

  And I believe her. With her knickknacks and area rugs and curtains, she’ll have this drab box looking fabulous within an hour. That’s Aunt Meg.

  She hugs me spontaneously. “This is gonna be so great.”

  I laugh at her earnestness, touched that she’s so fiercely intent on making my world as warm and cozy as it can be.

  Uncle Mark walks in behind us carrying the largest pieces of my luggage. A mini-refrigerator, laptop, area rug, and television set will be the last things to unload.

  “I accept tips,” he says, setting the luggage on the floor, and I offer him a fist bump.

  My roommate, a fellow premed student named Layla from the West Coast, has texted me that her plane lands in an hour. Assuming she’s not totally wiped out from the flight, she plans to grab a bite with Sawbones and me tonight for dinner. She and I have exchanged a few texts, photos, and emails, but otherwise I know nothing about her.

  Suits me. Where’s the challenge in living with someone you’ve actually met? I figure the odds that we’ll be best friends a few weeks from now are approximately the same as us loathing each other. Well-meaning relatives and acquaintances have inundated me with their own freshman roommate stories lately, and none of them have any gray area. Apparently, randomly matched roommates are destined to be either soul mates or mortal enemies. Nobody ever seems to say, “My roommate was a nice-enough person,” or, “Frankly, I was pretty indifferent about her.” I’ve been warned to expect high drama on the roommate front, for better or worse. The good news is that Sawbones is in the next dorm over. As always, he’ll be my touchstone when my life veers into Crazytown. Maybe I can even return the favor now and then. How cool would that be?

  I smile at the thought as I pull a lamp out of a box. High drama? Craziness? Bring it on. I’m getting to be somewhat of a pro at it, if I do say so myself.

  “Whatcha smiling about?” Aunt Meg asks as she places a stack of neatly folded T-shirts in a dresser drawer.

  “Just … psyched about a fresh start,” I say, and my spine actually tingles.

  She pauses to smile back at me. “Me too.”

  Aunt Meg and I have gotten really close over the past year. Yes, her perkiness still makes me wince (particularly when it goes into overdrive first thing in the morning), but she and Uncle Mark have been right by my side during my unwitting bit-part performance in the biggest scandal in Hollis Island history. Bla
ke’s trial is still pending, and the fact that Cara’s body has never been recovered, coupled with the charm he’s pouring on with a ladle on the local media, has some people suspecting he’ll never spend a day behind bars.

  But with Jamie and Garrett’s testimony, who knows? Maybe justice will prevail for poor Cara. Jamie will probably get a pretty light sentence based on his cooperation with the prosecutors, but everybody who knows him agrees that he’ll spend a lifetime imprisoning himself with guilt and self-loathing.

  I really hope not. Yes, I want both Blake and Jamie held accountable for what they did that night, but I can’t help having a soft spot for the quiet, tortured guy who paid the ultimate price for his allegiance to Blake. Christ, he almost paid with his life. That’ll be a different trial, and one I’ll no doubt get dragged into. But I can handle it. Garrett and I have stayed pretty tight since the whole debacle blew up in our faces, and we’ve resolved to have each other’s backs. I’ve asked him more than once how he can manage living under the same roof with Blake as his brother’s trial wends its way through the court system, and he says it’s actually easier living with him now than it was before the truth came out.

  That was the hardest thing he’s ever done, Garrett says: keeping his brother’s secret for those two weeks, thinking it was somehow in everybody’s best interest, or at least most people’s best interest. Garrett says his mother still vehemently defends Blake and won’t stand for anybody speaking ill of him, so he and his dad simply humor her.

  My friendship with Lauren survived the trauma—she’s going to college closer to home than I am, and we’ll stay in touch and see each other on holidays and occasional weekends. But although Mel and I are always totally friendly, our relationship was one of the casualties of Cara’s murder. She never quite got over seeing Jamie’s near-lifeless body in the bed that day, and she never would have started dating him if I hadn’t started dating Blake. She’s never said that explicitly, but the tentacles of the whole ugly mess just reach too far to give our friendship any breathing room. We never managed more than pleasant smiles and banal conversation for the rest of our senior year. She’s going to college out west. I have a feeling I’ve seen and heard the last of her, but I wish her the best and am really happy she’s getting a fresh start too.

  I continued seeing Dr. Sennett through my whole senior year (you were prescient, Aunt Meg!), and she really helped me through some shaky times. It was hell learning to trust myself again after letting myself be lured into Blake’s web of lies, but Dr. Sennett pointed out that I hadn’t been fooled for long. I know it has a bit of a new-age vibe, but she’s even posited the idea that maybe I was meant to cross Blake’s path at that exact time to ensure justice for Cara and save Jamie’s life. How’s that for a noble spin?

  I’ll take it. I like the thought of destiny and grand schemes and big pictures. I’d never given much thought to an afterlife before Mom and Dad died, but I truly do feel connected to them in a very real way. Maybe some kind of cosmic string-pulling is going on. Or maybe I just like thinking so. Either way is fine. Either way, I’m gonna be okay.

  I open a text from Sawbones: “How’s your view, E? ”

  I glance out my dorm window to check it out and reply, “It’s a dumpster. Yours? ”

  He writes back, “My dorm’s oceanfront.”

  I smile. Smartass.

  “Don’t forget dinner tonight,” he texts, and I respond, “The Plaza, right? ”

  “Right, otherwise known as Rock-Bottom Burger Barrel on Fuller Street. Wear your leopard-print leggings, why don’t you? See you at 6.”

  I snicker. “Don’t forget I’m bringing my roomie, assuming she doesn’t flee in horror when she takes a gander at Aunt Meg’s pink dotted-Swiss curtains.”

  Aunt Meg looks over at me as she hangs clothes in my closet and asks, “Who ya texting?”

  “Sawbones,” I say. “Hey, do you and Uncle Mark want to stay for dinner? Sawyer’s meeting my roommate and me for burgers.”

  “Oooohhh, that sounds so collegiate!” Aunt Meg coos. “Count us in!”

  “Done.”

  It’ll be my little secret how relieved I am to have them by my side for a few more hours.

  I pull out the next item from the box I’m unloading, and I smile at a picture of me with Mom and Dad. We’re at one of Dad’s company softball games, and we’re all wearing ball caps and team shirts. The sun is in our eyes but we’re beaming into the camera, our hair matted and our cheeks rosy with perspiration. I remember what a great day that was. I wipe the frame with a dust rag and place it on top of my dresser. Uncle Mark notices and gives me a wink.

  I feel for a second that tears might spring into my eyes, but the moment passes. I’m still smiling, still excited, still optimistic about the first day of the rest of my life.

  I press Mom and Dad’s rings against my chest and reach for the next item in my box.

  Acknowledgments

  A huge thanks to my first and best readers/editors: Julianne Deriso, Taylor Deriso, Greg Deriso, and John Jenkins—amazing wordsmiths one and all, each with different strengths that enhanced my manuscript in myriad ways. I also thank the family and friends who endured my in-depth plot descriptions throughout the writing process, offering astute observations and great suggestions even when they had one ear peeled for the next question at our trivia games or needed to ring off the phone to get on with their, you know, lives. I offer my deepest appreciation to Ann Beth Strelec for jumpstarting this novel. Voluminous thanks also to Sara Crowe and Brian Farrey-Latz—agent and editor extraordinaire, respectively, along with the other stellar and encouraging staff at Harvey Klinger and Flux. Finally, my boundless gratitude to the bookends who have filled every moment of my life with love and inspiration: my parents, Gregory and Jane Hurley, and Dane Gregory Deriso, my goodest boy.

  Nicole Renee Photography

  About the Author

  Christine Hurley Deriso is an award-winning author of the young adult novels Then I Met My Sister and Thirty Sunsets, along with four middle grade novels. She blogs weekly at goodreads.com. For ongoing updates, like her Christine Hurley Deriso author page on Facebook.