Page 29 of The Fall of Iris Henley
But instead of saying so, I take a deep breath.
Then I jump into the pool.
I stay under for a moment, in the bright blue of the pool. The quiet is a relief. When I surface both of my friends are at the pool’s edge and dripping wet, looking stunned.
“What the hell was that?” Hayden asks.
“We were getting too serious,” I say. “Look, everything sucks right now. But can we pretend for a little bit that it doesn’t? How many more evening swims do we have ahead of us?”
Sophie’s hair is sodden from my splash. For a second I think she’s going to bitch about it. But then she sits on the edge of the pool and slides in after me.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” she says.
“Come on, Hayden. Feelings bad, swimming good,” I say.
“Don’t make us get out to push you in,” Sophie adds.
“You’re both nuts,” Hayden says. But she’s smiling. She hops off the edge into the water with us.
It doesn’t fix anything. I can still feel the tension, tight in the air: all the unanswered questions, all the worries and secrets. But for a minute, at least, I can swim with my friends and catch my breath.
For a minute, I can keep pretending that I’m different from Lynette, that the things she went through could never happen to me.
CHAPTER 18
MONDAY, OCTOBER 10, 9:24PM
HENLEY HOUSE
Mom and Dad are blessedly out at a movie when I get home. Hayden and Sophie left me feeling grilled enough about my little trip to the sheriff’s department; I don’t want to have to explain things to my parents too.
Noelle is sitting in the living room watching anime, reclining on the sofa with a cheeseburger perched dangerously on her stomach. Which of course is breaking every rule of Mom’s tasteful ecru living room, so I guess both of us are enjoying our brief time as latchkey children. I stop in the doorway and watch as, on the TV, a girl in a sailor suit raises her bow and arrow and shoots at a giant centipede.
It takes a moment for my sister to notice me.
“There you are,” she says. “I thought I was going to get a call from jail.”
“Oh, likeyou’dbe my one phone call.” The words are snide, but there’s no heat in it. Without my parents around, our barbs are more like the mild shit-talking you do during a board game.Which is honestly so fucked up, because neither of us really likes our parents, and we still let them pitch us against each other.
“What’d Ramos have to say to you? Are you, like, a suspect?” she asks.
I hesitate. Yeah, I do get along better with Noelle when my parents aren’t around—but that doesn’t mean I trust her.
“In what, the destruction of my own locker?” I say. “Or the cyberbullying? No, he just wanted to hear what’s been going on.”
“The marching band has a betting pool going,” she says, sitting up a little. “Over how long it’ll take you to completely lose your mind.”
“That’s nice. I hope you’re getting good odds.”
“Hey, I don’t bet against my own family. Even if they’re all a bunch of assholes. I’m like Tyrion Lannister that way.”
“Sure, sounds good.” I know perfectly well who Tyrion Lannister is, but part of our whole routine is to mock the other for being weird or nerdy or basic. “You’d better clean up this mess before Mom gets home. If she sees that burger wrapper in here you’re dead.”
I head upstairs before she can answer, slinging my backpack onto the floor of my room. I shut the door firmly behind me and take a deep breath.
Then I fall back on my bed, exhausted.
By the time I left Hayden’s, we’d made nice, but the truth is I’m still stinging over the way she talked about the accusations against me. She’d acted like Ishouldbe a suspect. Like she could imagine a world where I would kill someone.
