Page 6

“We’re leaving,” Alyssa says again. “I’m so sorry.”

Jenna’s boyfriend takes out his phone. “You have thirty seconds.”

Severed tendons. Broken fingers. The rope around her throat and all the blood staining the penthouse carpet.

Outside the condo building, in the crisp night air, Alyssa says, “You know, that’s her place. I don’t get why she and Jason couldn’t go to her own room instead of the literal bathroom?” Then: “What would he have even called the police for! It doesn’t even work like that. Not that he would know—”

I don’t respond. Talking is difficult.

Washington, DC, never shuts up, no matter how late it is. It’s almost midnight, and a big red bus hisses as it pulls to a stop; cars groan their way through the tangled Dupont Circle roundabout; someone honks and someone laughs loudly on their way home from a club. Two men in Commanders jerseys lean against the railing overlooking the Connecticut Ave NW tunnel, talking about their ailing mother next to a row of tents.

The Capital City. Miles of gray concrete, flocks of annoying tourists, and every single person somehow works for either a defense contractor or a politician you personally hate.

Alyssa walks me down the streetlamp-gold avenue toward the roundabout park, holding my hand like I’m a toddler at the intersection. I’m chewing on the scab of the hangnail I ripped up at USP East Early and staring blankly at her wrist. She’s wearing a pretty bracelet with a single pink bead. When we met during the trial—her dad is the former chief of police, Mom spent a lot of time at his house, etc.—I made her a friendship bracelet. She’d claimed she threw it away because boys don’t wear pink, but really she’d saved it, and years later the final surviving bead is threaded between designer charms.

Friendship is a weird way to phrase this; whatever this is these days. Yeah, we hooked up junior year, but sometimes I look at her and wonder if we were supposed to be siblings. It would make more sense if we were brother and sister. We almost were. We should’ve been.

Blood on the carpet, rope around the throat, if you’d just kept our little secret—

Alyssa pulls me across the intersection before the light changes and sits me down on one of the benches encircling the park’s central fountain. “Here,” she murmurs. I don’t fight her on it. “I’m gonna get you home. Take a second, and then we can get you on the train. Sound good?”

I manage five words: “Can I stay with you?”

I don’t want to go home. Mom’s still pissed about the phone, even though she bought a new one this morning, and I’m trying to avoid her as much as I can.

There’s a long silence before Alyssa responds, so I know what the answer’s going to be before she even speaks.

“Leah’s had a bad day, too,” Alyssa says. That’s her sister. “I don’t think she’ll take it well if there’s someone else in the house.”

If Leah was just a typical bratty preteen, I’d say she needs to suck it up, but unfortunately I understand the deep autistic distaste for people showing up at your house without at least forty-eight hours’ notice.

“Okay,” I say.

Alyssa stands in front of me in the dark, half illuminated by the streetlight, and I take one more deep breath.

Everyone thinks I’m going to hurt them, and sometimes they’re right.

Jane Doe’s blood drying on my hands—splattered across my shoes—heavy, reeking splotches soaked into my middle school uniform. The boy I put in the hospital freshman year. The therapist whose reputation I ruined. My hand around Alyssa’s throat. Mom’s shattered phone and splintered mirrors and broken plates.

And now there’s going to be a documentary crew watching my every move. I saw the way the producer looked at me when the phone hit the wall, when Mom turned to scream at me. He was hungry. They’re all just waiting for me to lose it. Wouldn’t that be such a satisfying conclusion? I can see it now: THE SLAUGHTER DYNASTY CONTINUES blazoned across the news tab of every social media site under the sun.

I could have taught you everything.

He needs to get out of my head. I can’t do this anymore.

“Alyssa,” I say.

She turns to me with an earnest blink.

“Do you remember—”A stupid opener. Of course she remembers. “The last girl. With the …” I gesture across my throat. “You know. Jane Doe.”

“Yeah?” She pops her hands on her hips. “Is this about the visit? I knew it.”

I tighten my sweater around myself. “No. I told you, it wasn’t—it was fine. I was thinking, though. They never identified her.”

Alyssa doesn’t react, visibly unsure of where I’m headed with this. On the other side of the roundabout park, a woman jogs on a late-night outing with her pit bull terrier. If she was in the city when the DC Ripper was active, the world must seem so much safer with him behind bars.

When you finally make a mistake, I won’t be there to save you.