Page 28 of The Fall of Iris Henley
“Two more months,” Sophie says. Hayden’s birthday is in December; she’ll be the first of us to hit eighteen.
But Hayden just shrugs. “I’ll still have to live here until I have another option. She’s already started threatening to make me live at home and commute to UT next year. But the jokes’s on her, because there’s no way I’m getting into UT.”
“You don’t know that!” Sophie says. “Your test scores are good. Your grades…”
“… are not,” Hayden says shortly. She turns to look at me, arms over her chest. “Anyway. What did Ramos say? What’s going on? You haven’t answered any of my texts all afternoon, I’ve been kind of freaking out.”
I sit on the edge of the pool and slide my legs in. “He found out about the Sekrit post,” I say.
Sophie, who’s waded in to her waist, looks up at me wide-eyed. “Nuh uh.”
“Yuh huh.” I kick lightly at the water, sending gentle waves away from me. “He had all the comments, like, printed out on paper. My grandpa doesn’t even do that, and he thinks there’s a literal tube connecting his computer to mine.”
Sophie laughs, but Hayden just sits down next to me, hard.
“What’s hewant, though? Is he just looking at it as a dumb rumor, or is he actually thinking about reopening the investigation?”
She’s watching me so intently my shoulders hunch up instinctively, as if I could pull into a turtle shell and hide.
“He didn’t exactly share his thoughts. But he seemed to be… wondering if he closed the case too soon.” She draws in her breath sharply, and I grimace in acknowledgment. “Yeah. It’s messed up.”
“Did he actually say he was going to reopen it, though?” she asks.
“I don’t know. He asked a bunch of questions about Lynette. Like, why’d we stop being friends, what happened to mess that up. He kept implying there might be some motive for me to kill her,” I say.
Hayden nods thoughtfully. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
The words feel like a slap to the face, sharp and startling. My blood goes hot. “No it doesn’t. What are you talking about? No part of this makes sense.”
“No, I just mean looking at you as a suspect makes sense. He should’ve done it back in April,” she says.
“No, he shouldn’t have!” I scramble to my feet. Around us the cicadas start shrieking again, the final verse of their day. My eyes burn with a sudden sting of tears. “Why would you say that, Hayden? I thought you had my back.”
“Iris, Iris!” She’s standing now too, hands up in front of her in a placating position. “I’m not saying youdidanything, okay? I just mean I get what he’ssaying, about motive. He’s got to look into things.”
The tears are already escaping, though, coursing down my cheeks. My shoulders collapse into another round of sobs.
The smell of grapefruit envelops me—Hayden’s body spray, the same she’s been wearing for years. I feel her hot arms around my shoulders pulling me suddenly, savagely close.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers fiercely. “I’m a dumbass, you don’t want to hear that kind of stuff right now.”
I lean my head against her shoulder and weep. She makes a soft little tsking sound, trying to comfort me. I hear Sophie getting out of the water to join us, fitting her arms awkwardly around Hayden’s bigger frame. We’re so unbalanced then that I laugh a little through my tears.
“I just don’t know what to do,” I say, my voice muffled by Hayden’s hair. “I don’t know if there’s a way to clear my name. Is this just how it’s going to be forever?”
“Not forever,” Sophie jokes. “Just until graduation.”
I close my eyes. “I don’t know if I can make it that long.”
“Maybe everyone will lose interest soon,” Sophie says. But she sounds less certain than she did the other day. I guess between my locker and my ride to the sheriff’s office she’s starting to see that it’s real too.
“I’m just… scared,” I say. “I’m scared I’ll end up all alone. Like Lynette.”
“No way.” Hayden squeezes me again before letting go. “Lynette was a different story.”
“Hay’s right on this one,” Sophie says. “I’m not saying Lynette deserved to be an outcast, but she made choices that led to that happening. She isolated herself.”
No, says a small voice in my head.She had a problem we didn’t want to deal with. She didn’t isolate herself. We let her suffer.
