Through all of this, from the moment that Perri had entered the room, Josie had not moved, had not spoken.
“We were never here,” Binnie said, breathing so hard her chest heaved up and down, as if she had just been in a race, and her features were tight and ugly. Her thinking face.
“But-”
“We have to leave now. They’ll find them, and it will look like what it is. Perri shot Kat, then killed herself. That’s all anyone needs to know.”
“But-”
“Josie, there’s no time. Let’s go.” Binnie gathered up the cell phones-the broken one she had dropped, the one that Kat had placed next to her lipstick, the one from Perri’s knapsack.
“We don’t want them to see the call logs. Now, let’s go.”
“I can’t go,” Josie said. “They’re hurt.”
“They’re dead, Josie. And if you’re smart, you’ll leave yourself out of it. As for me, I was never here. You owe me that much.”
She left with her armful of cell phones, running in her strange, loping style, and it was only when she was gone that Josie thought of objections, arguments, counterpoints. She owed Binnie no loyalty. She wasn’t going to lie for Binnie. But if she told why Binnie was there, she would have to tell the other whys, and Kat would never want that. Even with Perri holding a gun, Kat had tried to hold on to this secret.
So what should Josie tell the police when they arrived? Why was she here? Why hadn’t she left and gone to get help for her friends? Binnie was right; she should have run, but it was too late now. Rescuers could arrive at any moment, catch her trying to slip away. But if they found her here, then there should be a reason she couldn’t leave, right? She should be injured, too. If she were injured, she would not be questioned. And no one would have to know that she had simply stood there, incapable of doing anything, as her friends died.
The gun had fallen next to Perri’s body. Josie picked it up, examined it. How hard could it be to fire a gun? This one had gone off by accident, after all, and gone off again even as Binnie tried to prevent Perri from firing it. She hadn’t wanted to live, Josie realized. With Kat dead, Perri didn’t want to live. Should she make the same choice? Did she owe her friends that much? She placed the gun to her head, as Perri had. But the fact was, she did not want to die. Stranger still was the shame she felt at this thought. A good person, a true friend, should want to die.
Instead Josie sat, extended her legs, and braced her feet against the wall, aiming the gun at the place where the thong, topped off with a lovely tulle flower, separated her big toe from the others. The sandals cost $125, an amazing extravagance for Josie, but her mother had agreed they went so beautifully with her graduation dress that they were worth the splurge. She took them off, put them in her knapsack. Then she aimed again, and fired.
Fuck. It hurt, it really hurt. And there was more blood than she thought there would be. Kat had hardly bled at all, although Perri’s blood was still flowing, terrifyingly constant. Shit, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.
The door. She had forgotten to lock the door. Perri had locked the door, so the door should be locked, right? She did not stop to think this through but forced herself to hop to the door, turn the lock, and then hop back again. And the gun. She had touched the gun. What if they took fingerprints? She would explain that she tried to take the gun away from Perri, tried to keep her from shooting herself. Shooting herself or Kat. And Perri shot Josie in the foot, then shot herself. Yes, that was it. Josie had grabbed for the gun, trying to take it away from Perri, but Perri had shot Kat, then shot Josie and shot herself. That all worked. That would make everyone happy. Binnie wouldn’t be here. And Josie wouldn’t be a coward who had failed to save one friend, then failed to die with another.
If she had to do it over again, she would have told the truth from the very beginning. She wouldn’t have let Binnie leave. She wouldn’t have gotten up to lock that bathroom door, leaving those drips of blood that had showed she was lying almost the very start. She wouldn’t have removed her sandals and hidden them in her knapsack, much less arranged for Binnie to come get them later on, hiding them wherever she had tossed the cell phones. If she had to do it over again-but she did, Josie realized. That was the epiphany that had come to her onstage at graduation. She had to tell the truth, because Perri wasn’t going to do it for her. Until the moment she had heard of Perri’s death, she had been counting on just that. Perri was the talker. Perri was the one who was supposed to explain things. Let Perri tell.
“And you wouldn’t have shot yourself,” the sergeant put in.
“No,” Josie said. “I think I still might have done that.” Then she flushed, as if she hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud.
“How can you say such a thing?” her father demanded. “The risk you took, picking up a gun, shooting yourself. You could have hit a major artery in your leg and ended up bleeding to death. How can you not see how foolish it was?”
“We made a vow,” Josie said. “I told you-we made a vow.”
August
38
Every August in Maryland, there comes a moment when the wind shifts and, although the days remain hot and the nights humid, it is clear that something has changed. Summer is giving up, preparing to leave. It may linger for another few weeks, but its back has been broken, and everyone knows it. People suddenly have more energy, and only the youngest children mourn the passing of summer and the coming of school. Everyone else is eager for fall to arrive.
It was on such a day that Sergeant Harold Lenhardt asked Vik and Susie Patel if he could talk to their daughter, just one more time. They gave their permission reluctantly. They knew, intellectually, that the homicide sergeant had not caused them any harm; he was nothing more than a messenger, one who had no way of knowing what he was delivering. Still, they didn’t like him much and couldn’t help feeling he was somehow at fault for what they had been through.
Josie, however, didn’t mind Lenhardt at all. Her only grudge against him was that he had provoked her into ruining her best sandals, the very ones that she had been trying to save. She had given them to Binnie, who arranged for them to follow the cell phones-into the Muhlys’ compost pile.
“We’re releasing all the evidence, since the grand jury wrapped up,” he told Josie. They were in her room, at her insistence. Even when her parents were at work, she preferred the privacy of her room. “We don’t really have much of your stuff, but I thought you might want to see this.”
He handed her a piece of paper with just two lines: “I ask only that the truth be told. Love, Perri.” The word “only” had been crossed out. Josie studied the familiar handwriting, unsure what was expected of her.
“What does this have to do with me?”
“Well, nothing.” The sergeant perched on Josie’s bed almost gingerly, as if he feared mussing the spread. “We didn’t even present it to the grand jury, because it didn’t seem to have any bearing on anything. The thing is, Josie-why would Perri write something like this? It was addressed to Kat Hartigan, mailed that morning. But what was the point? She was already planning on confronting her at school. Why mail the letter?”