Page 4 of The Fall of Iris Henley
Carter rounds on Bryce and for a moment there’s fire in his eyes. The girls tense up next to me, but I just shrug. Carter’s always on edge about Rocky. He was Rocky’s best friend, and probably as hurt as anyone about what Rocky ended up doing. It’s the one thing I have in common with him. We’re both stuck going round and round, loving Rocky and hating Rocky, missing him, fearing him. Pitying Lynette and missing her and hating her too.
And feeling guilty for whatever part we may have had in all of it.
“Someone should’ve beat the shit out of them,” Bryce says, shadow-punching the air, drunkenly oblivious to Carter’s growing rage. One of Bryce’s fists whistles unnervingly past my ear. “Bam, bam—”
“Bam,” Carter says with a sudden smile, sucker punching Bryce in the stomach. Bryce goes down with a groan. For a second, I worry there’s going to be a fight, but then Bryce and Carter both burst into laughter.
“That was weak, dude,” Bryce says, gasping as Carter helps him back to his feet, both boys stumbling.
“Just doing a public service. These ladies were sick of hearing you talk,” Carter says.
“Classy,” Sophie mutters. She loathes Carter, though she tries to keep it under wraps for Hayden’s sake.
“Whatever. You know I’m right. They knew what they were doing.” Bryce’s eyes fix on me for another moment before going out of focus again. “They should just sell the ranch and get out of here the way the Zeigers did. No one wants them around anymore.”
Hayden darts a quick glance at me, then stands up to put her arms around Carter’s neck before he has a chance to respond to Bryce. “How about you and Bryce head back up to the bonfire,” she murmurs. “And I’ll meet youafterthe party.”
I know this is for my sake. She and Sophie talked me into coming tonight, but when it became obvious I wasn’t ready for the crowd, they didn’t complain, just followed me down to the river. But all at once, I decide this is just as bad as not coming at all. “We’ll all go,” I say. “I want a smarchmollow.”
Sophie laughs loudly. Hayden looks at me, head cocked. “You sure?”
“Yeah.” I stand up and brush the dust off my bare legs. “I need to run up to the bathroom anyway. I’ll meet you guys over there in a few minutes. Get me another beer?”
“Sure,” Hayden says. She throws Sophie’s sneakers toward her. “Here, put those things away.”
I listen to them squabble behind me as I walk away. Hayden shrieks as Carter swoops her up in his arms, and Bryce is busy bragging about his one pass that traveled more than fifteen yards.
Carter, dumb and falling-down drunk as he is, is right. The river’s darkness may feel safe, anonymous, but it’s time to join that circle of light reaching out from the bonfire.
CHAPTER 4
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 11:23PM
BILLY SCHULTZ’S RANCH
Inside the barn someone’s set up a crappy old sound system, the bass vibrating so wildly I can’t even tell what the song is. Ashlynn Duvall is playing beer pong with Javier Rodriguez and Preston Holmes. I hope they realize she’s going to destroy them. A bunch of other people are sitting on a water-stained living-room set, shouting to be heard over the speakers. An ancient smell of horse lingers on the air. Billy’s family built a newer barn closer to their house a few years ago, letting Billy and his brothers use this one as a kind of rec room ever since. There’s no AC out here, but there are also no parents. So it’s a trade-off.
There’s a line at the bathroom, of course, and it’s almost entirely girls. The boys just pee in the bushes. It’s okay. I don’t really have to go. I just want to take a minute behind the closed door to fix the makeup I feel sweating down my cheeks and to make sure I’m ready to face the crowd at the bonfire.
I lean against the wall and close my eyes, letting the thrum of the bass and the sound of conversation wash over me. The party feels strangely far away tonight, even when I’m in the middle of it. It would be easy to blame the Koenigs, to say that their appearance at the game is what has me so off-kilter. But it wouldn’t be true. The truth is, Rocky and Lynette are never really that far from my mind.
Bryce’s words keep running through my mind.Rocky’s parents just showing up like their kid didn’t blow some girl’s head off. Caustic and glib, obviously—but it’s also not lost on me that he didn’t say Lynette’s name, even though he’d been in school with her since elementary school, just like the rest of us.
He’s not the only one. Mostly, no one brings up Rocky or Lynette—but there are people that think Lynette did something to “make” him do it. They said she’d manipulated him into a pact of some kind or that she’d gotten him hooked on drugs. A few people even blamed me. What kind of girlfriend doesn’t know her boyfriend is cheating on her? What kind of girlfriend doesn’t stop it? What kind of girlfriend is boring or bitchy enough to drive her boyfriend to another woman?
Sophie always gets mad about it. She says questions like that are shitty and misogynist, and she’s probably right. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t ask them sometimes too. Not that I think either Lynette or I were to blame—just that I wonder how the boy I knew turned into a boy that could do something like that. Or had he been a secret monster all along? Had I been blind to it, or had he been that good at hiding it?
In the bathroom I do my best to clean up, dabbing at the sweaty smears under my eyes, putting on a fresh coat of lipstick. I run my fingers through my hair and knot it at the top of my head. There. Look at Iris Henley, pretty (not pretty enough to keep her boyfriend on a tight leash), and popular (popularenough to weather the fallout after his crime), and put together (on the outside, at least). I move my head right and left in the mirror, making sure I look fine from all angles. Then I take a deep breath and head back out there.
It takes me a few seconds to feel the way something in the air has shifted, and it takes a few more to realize what. The line outside the girl’s room is quiet, watching me. A few push themselves against the wall as I walk past, like they are recoiling. My face goes warm. Is there lipstick on my teeth, toilet paper on my shoe? I do a quick scan of my body, but nothing’s out of place.Assholes, I think. They were talking about me while I was in there. Maybe telling some dumb freshman the story of who I am, what my boyfriend did.
Outside the barn a strange energy’s taken over. People looking at their phones, faces lit up, eerie in the glow. People hurrying across the clearing to talk to a friend. I can’t hear what anyone’s saying under the thrum of the music. Something’s probably making the rounds on Sekrit. I fumble my phone out of my purse but it’s totally out of battery now.
Hayden and Sophie are both at the bonfire, heads together, whispering urgently. When I see their faces, I know. Somethingismaking the rounds. Something they want to keep from me.
Sophie’s the first one to speak. She looks up with a shaky smile and shoves her phone quickly into her pocket. “There you are. Hey, the keg’s totally empty, so we were thinking we should just get out of here. Hayden says she’s sober enough to drive. We could go to Buc-ee’s…”
Her voice trails off as I snatch the phone right out of Hayden’s hand. Sekrit is right there on her screen, open to a fresh post. Time stamp: 11:27. Probably the moment I locked the bathroom door behind me.
