Page 6 of The Fall of Iris Henley
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I hop out of the car and shoulder my bag. My body aches more than ever, my calves thrumming with pain.
“Remember. Don’t reply to anything anyone says,” Sophie says anxiously. “You know it’ll make it worse. Put your phone in a different room.”
“Remember what happened to Sydney when she tried to get everyone to stop posting that picture?” Hayden says.
Of course I do. Last year someone put up a picture of Sydney Moss after she fell into the bushes at a party, drunk off her ass. Her skirt was flipped up and you could see her underwear—white with pink flowers, a creeper’s dream shot. She replied to the original post and first demanded, then begged, then threatened, but whoever originally put it up—they used a throwaway, so we still don’t really know who—wouldn’t remove it. And it didn’t matter anyway, because by then half the school had it saved to their phone, so any time she made a comment or a post on Sekrit, people would just reply with the picture. It was what they used to argue with her, even on unrelated posts. She’d write something likewasn’t the AP bio test a killerand people would just reply with her photo. She almost had a nervousbreakdown about it. Now she goes to an all-girls’ school in Austin, her dad driving her the hour and a half each way.
“I’m fine,” I say again, even though nothing has ever felt further from the truth. I wave them off; Hayden really will be grounded for life if she’s not in by midnight. They pull away from the curb, and I catch one last glimpse of Hayden’s Jeep as it vanishes past the streetlight, leaving me alone in the dark.
Everyone knows we had a cheer sleepover that night.Which is true. My parents were out of town for their anniversary that weekend and my sister was at a friend’s. There were seventeen girls at my house that night, all of whom went on the record that we were busy watching movies and eating junk food until twoAM.
But the thing no one knows except for me?
That was the night I got the last text Rocky ever sent me.
And it was actually meant for Lynette.
I’m at the cabin, where are you? I can’t stop thinking about you.
The sound of laughter, the bump of bass. I was in the kitchen getting a glass of water—I was tipsy, which wasn’t a feeling I liked very much, but there were certain things you had to do at a party. I looked down at Rocky’s text and my mind couldn’t quite make sense of it. He knew I had a cheer party that night. We were supposed to be picking out next year’s uniforms, though so far we’d just gone through the catalog with a Sharpie and drawn horns and tails on all the models.
Before I could process the message another appeared below it.
Sorry, Siri misheard me. The last part is true though.;)
I guess if things had been different I could’ve believed it. I could’ve shrugged, thought it was a weird mistake, moved on. But I knew. I knew it was meant for someone else. I knew because of that second text—Rocky wouldn’t have bothered correcting himself if he weren’t afraid of getting caught. Hewould’ve left me confused and brushed it off later. And that emoji? He’d never sent me an emoji in his life. That was desperate.
But it wasn’t just the text. I knew because I knew. Because I’d been trying not to know for months—I’d been building elaborate structures of denial around the fact. I’d been fighting not to think about the half-empty lip gloss I’d found under his car seat, the times he made excuses to get out of something we were supposed to do together, the fact that one of his favorite hoodies had vanished off the face of the earth and he “didn’t know where it went.”
I knew.
And I knew whatthe cabinmeant too. Because that was the place we would go to be alone sometimes. It was rustic—there wasn’t power or water—but we’d taken blankets and candles and a little Bluetooth speaker out there. It felt romantic, even with the dust and the cobwebs. It felt special.
Looking down at my phone, I knew it hadn’t been. It’d never been special. It’d never been ours.
“Hey. You okay?”
It was Sophie. She stood in the doorway, her baby-doll eyes squinting with the effort of focusing. Everyone but me was pretty trashed. The wordhypocritescame unbidden through my head, the way it always did when we got too fucked up. That was, after all, why Lynette had been kicked off the team. But it was different—of course it was different—because Lynette had a problem. She’d been unable to regulate it, to hold it together. And the rest of us?
We could.
Except now, standing there with Rocky’s lies in the palm of my hand, I didn’t feel like I could hold anything together. Sophie staggered in and opened the fridge, rummaging in the bins until she found the baby carrots. She tore a hole in thewrong side of the zipper-locked bag and then stared down at it and giggled at herself.
From the other room I heard dialogue from a rom-com, laughter. Molly shouting advice at the TV, like she always did. Everyone else telling her to shut up. I held my empty Solo cup, remembered the cold crisp water I’d come in here for.
Then, without a word, I went back to the living room. To the open bottle of vodka on the coffee table.
I don’t remember much of the night after that. I remember doing shots with Hayden, watching Bella vomit in the bushes outside, and laughing hysterically while we staggered around doing drunken stunts that could’ve broken our necks. I remember taking a little orange pill from Megan Gates and popping it in my mouth without even thinking about it. I remember the odd look Sophie gave me, like she couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or worried.
Hypocrites. Yes, of course we were hypocrites. But I was beyond caring.
At some point I must’ve blacked out. I don’t remember turning off lights or going to bed or anything. My memories just get more and more vague, and then trail away to nothing.
The next morning I woke up with the worst hangover of my life. Dirt and leaves in my hair, my shirt torn. My knee scraped. My head pounding like a drum. And the phone was ringing, ringing, ringing. It was ringing because Rocky and Lynette were dead. It was ringing because Rocky’s sister had just found their bodies, and everything I knew was about to change.
DAY TWO
CHAPTER 6
