“Shut up,” Riley says, staring down at her knife on the ground. But she doesn’t move toward it or threaten Brooklyn. “I told the truth,” she insists again.
“What about Grace?” Brooklyn searches the shadows in the corner for Grace. “Did you admit the whole truth about your little addiction?”
Grace’s eyes shift first to Alexis, then to Riley, and finally to me. She hunches up her shoulders, nearly disappearing into her oversize sweatshirt. “I told you I had a problem with drugs and I did,” she says.
“Ritalin,” Brooklyn corrects her. “Is that all you’ve ever tried?”
“No.” Grace’s voice breaks. She picks up the backpack off the floor where Riley dropped it and pulls out a bottle of wine. She yanks out the cork and swigs it back.
“What else have you tried?” Alexis asks. Grace takes another drink of wine.
“It was only Ritalin at first,” Grace admits. “I was only going to take a few to study, just like I said. But the high felt so good. It was like my brain went still, like everything fell away except for the thing I was doing. Everything just got so . . . easy.”
Grace pauses for a beat and shifts her eyes back down. Brooklyn taps her combat boot against the floor.
“Well?” Brooklyn says. “Don’t stop now. You were just getting to the good part.”
Grace weaves her hands around the wine bottle nervously. Her electric-blue nails stand out against the dark glass. I stare at them, remembering when I first met Grace, when she seemed impossibly exotic and cool. Now she’s vulnerable, naked.
“You don’t have to tell us this, Grace,” I say.
“We all have to come clean before God,” Riley murmurs. She stares blankly at the wall ahead of her. “She does have to tell.”
“You all do.” Brooklyn looks at me when she says this, and now I’m sure I hear amusement in her voice. Her eyes seem to peel away my skin and see directly into my brain, to the things I’m most ashamed of. I turn back to the wine bottle, focusing my attention on Grace’s chipped blue nails again.
“I should’ve stuck with Ritalin,” Grace says, almost to herself. “But I found Xanax in my mom’s bathroom one morning. That was even better. After that, I tried my dad’s Ambien and some X from a girl at school.”
“Grace, the Lord forgives you,” Riley says in a hushed voice. She takes the bottle of wine from Grace’s hands and drinks. “We all fall. All of us.”
Grace smiles through her tears. The candlelight flickers, reflecting the lines they made down her face. From behind her, Brooklyn starts to cackle.
“Are you kidding me?” she says. She leans her head against the pillar, laughing harder. “You’re still lying!”
“Grace, just tell her. Let’s get this over with,” Alexis says. Grace grabs the bottle back from Riley and raises it to her lips. This time, she drinks deeply. A red drip oozes out from the side of her mouth and dribbles down over her chin.
Gasping for breath as she lowers the bottle, Grace continues. “When my brother broke his leg this summer, he left his Oxy pills in the bathroom like they were nothing. I had to stare at them every morning while I was brushing my teeth.” Grace hiccups and takes another drink of wine. “What would you have done?”
Alexis takes the wine bottle out of Grace’s hands. “It’s okay,” she starts, but Grace shakes her head.
“It’s not okay!” she yells. Tears fall down her cheeks, faster and faster. She hiccups again. “I want to be cured. I want to be better. But . . . but I . . .” She can’t talk now—she’s crying too hard. She lowers her face to her hands, sinking to her knees. “I want to be better,” she sobs.
Alexis crouches next to Grace, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. “It’s okay,” she murmurs into her ear. Even Riley crosses the attic to kneel next to her. She closes her eyes, and her lips move in a silent prayer.
I move toward Grace, but Brooklyn lifts her head before I can crouch next to her. Her eyes widen, and she leans her head toward Grace. She’s trying to tell me something.
All at once, it clicks. Grace is an addict—addicts have drugs.
No wonder Brooklyn was egging Grace on. Drugs mean freedom—escape. If Grace has pills with her, I can find them and put them in the wine they’ve all been drinking. If I add enough, they’ll pass out.
Riley whispers “Amen,” and her eyes flicker open. She picks up the wine and takes a deep drink, staring at me over the top of the bottle.
I twist my face into what I hope is a sympathetic expression and stoop beside her, looping one arm over her shoulder and the other over Grace’s.
“Amen,” I whisper.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Who’s next?” Brooklyn asks. She’s trying to distract them. If they keep admitting their sins, they won’t pay attention to me. And I’ll have enough time to find Grace’s pills.
“How do you know all this?” Grace wipes her tears away with her palm as she turns to Brooklyn. Alexis pulls away from her, pushing her hair back behind one ear.
Brooklyn smirks. A wild thought flies through my head—maybe she reads minds. Maybe Brooklyn already knows everything we’ve done.
“Grace stares at the floor when she lies,” Riley says before Brooklyn can answer. “Anyone can see that.”
Grace blushes and pushes herself to her feet. She backs into an alcove just off the main area in the attic and presses her body against the wall, like she’s trying to disappear into the wood.
Brooklyn’s eyes linger on her. “It’s almost worth the fire, the drowning, and the brutal torture to hear about how shitty you all are,” she says.
“Do we need to gag you again?” Riley motions to the duct tape on the floor, but she leans over to pick up the wine bottle instead.
“What’s the matter, Riley?” Brooklyn groans, struggling to move beneath the layers of rope binding her in place. “Afraid what your friends will think when you really admit your sins?”
“I already admitted them,” Riley insists. She pushes a sweaty lock of hair off her forehead with the back of her hand, then drinks deeply from the wine bottle.
I scan the attic while Riley drinks, wondering where Grace stowed her pills. But Brooklyn’s words stay with me. Afraid what your friends will think when you really admit your sins?
I push the question away, and my eyes fall on the black backpack sitting by the stairs. Grace was the one who brought the bag up here. It would’ve been easy for her to slip a bottle inside.
“Or maybe you should go next, Lexie.” Brooklyn shifts her eyes to Alexis. “You could tell everyone why your sister’s really in a coma.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alexis hisses.
“I know more than you think.” Brooklyn’s wolf grin deepens.
Riley lowers the wine bottle. “What’s she talking about?”
Alexis leans back on her heels and grabs a lock of hair, winding it roughly around her finger. I think of the way she looked standing in that empty room with wispy locks of white-blond curls piled at her feet, like a fairy-tale princess stuck in a horror story.
“She’s just making things up,” Alexis says. The skin around her fingernail starts to turn blue, but still she winds the hair tighter.
I edge my way closer to the staircase and the backpack. Nerves pull at my skin like tiny, pinching fingers and my heart jackhammers in my chest. I move slowly toward Grace, inching my feet across the floorboards. She hums a pop song under her breath, her eyes fixated on her shoes.
“You said you hoped she’d never wake up.” Brooklyn allows each word to hang in the air for a beat before she continues. “That’s not the first time you wanted her dead, is it?”