Influenced by Eva Robinson (love story books to read .TXT) 📕

It wasn’t exactly reassuring, because in the nicest possible way, he’d laid the blame on her. He said she’d made a mistake.

“What did you do, Luke?” asked Hannah. “What was Peter talking about?”

He looked surprised when he turned to her. “I haven’t done anything different than what you’ve done. Remember that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Families are paying you for extra time on the college boards, aren’t they? You’re contributing to an unequal system. You’re just as much a part of this fraud as I am, so don’t think about getting on your high horse. But we didn’t invent wealth inequality. It’s just how things work.”

“So, what—you’ve been writing psychological reports like I do? That’s it?”

He shook his head. “No. But everyone’s trying to get an edge for their family, aren’t they? We’re all trying to get the edge. We live in a screwed-up country. You know that. How do you plan to pay for Nora’s college tuition?”

Hannah felt like the world had fallen out from under her. “What exactly have you done?”

Stella rolled her eyes. “Can we skip the drama, please? We’re all in this together. That’s the important thing. We all have something to lose if the truth comes out.”

“All I did was help other people’s children,” said Luke. “It’s not the crime of the century.”

But that wasn’t all he’d done, was it?

Rowan had gone so quiet that Hannah had almost forgotten she was there. And when she turned to look at her friend, she found Rowan typing away on her phone.

“What are you doing?” asked Hannah. “What are you typing?”

Rowan stepped forward, gripping her phone like it was her lifeline. “I don’t think you understand. Maybe you all think you can keep your secrets, but I can’t. I’ve already been tried and convicted. I’m already guilty. That’s what they think, isn’t it? And if they think I’m guilty, then I think I’m guilty. And they demand that I confess.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Hannah.

With a rising sense of panic, she reached for Rowan’s phone, but Rowan yanked it away.

Forty

Rowan turned away from them, trying to focus as the pressure built up in her mind. Veins of rot crawled around the fissures of her brain. Does she really think this will be enough? the voices asked. She’s already a grotesque corpse. It’s too late.

She needed them out of her head.

She continued typing her caption in Instagram, under the photo of her and Hannah together.

Everything in my life is a lie.

I don’t know who stole my laptop, but you can’t expose my secrets anyway. Because I’ll let them all out first.

You want to know how I got into Harvard, when I pulled straight Cs in high school?

Father pledged to donate $2.5 million the year before I applied. We paid someone to take the SATs for me. I never graduated. I could have—without even a ton of effort—but I was high for my entire senior year, and, frankly, I didn’t really care. It didn’t matter. I don’t need the degree. I don’t need a real job. It only mattered that I had the right image. The right branding. Branding, the demanding branding, landing, sadness in poetry… Rotten. Strangeness is a necessary ingredient—

She’d lost the thread of what she was doing, what she was trying to stay. There was something important. Why was everyone screaming around her? For the love of all that was holy, they needed to be quiet.

And yet—already, she could feel the vines receding a little, but it was so hard to focus on the words.

A hand grabbed at her arm, and only then did she hear the shouts rising around her. The hysteria. She elbowed the body out of the way, then started pacing on the deck.

“Rowan!” Hannah shouted. “Will you stop it, please? Not everything has to go on social media.”

“Shut up!” Rowan snapped. Because it was working now, wasn’t it? She could feel the corruption slipping away.

Hannah tried to grab her arm again, and Rowan jerked it away, anger rising.

She tuned out Luke’s irritatingly soothing voice and Stella’s rising panic. But her heart was still racing, and she turned back to type out her confession. “Think clearly, Rowan,” she said.

Marc. They all wanted to know about Marc. How had she screwed up the best thing in her life?

It was an easy answer.

Pacing, she started dictating into her phone.

“Marc dumped me because I stole his writing and passed it off as my own. Most of Fairytale Wanderings is his work, not mine. I stole journal entries off his laptop without him realizing, then hoped he’d forgive me, like he always did. But it was too much to forgive. I submitted it to my publisher. I did not have a ghostwriter. If I’d thought of a ghostwriter, it would’ve been a better idea.

“A writer who is a ghost. A dead writer. Bloated, grey, skin that turns into bone—”

Her thoughts had gotten knotted up again, and she had to unthread them. Why was it so hard to think?

“And then there was Peter.”

Someone grabbed her wrist, hard. They were trying to stop her. They wanted her to decay, to succumb to it. They wanted the vines to pull her six feet under the earth. Before they could take her phone away, she hit Share.

As soon as she did, a wild euphoria rippled through her. She was nearly free now, the ropes of decay receding from her skull. Wild laughter bubbled up. She was coming alive again, wasn’t she? Everyone would know. They’d screenshot the image right away.

But she wasn’t done yet, because she still had to confess about Peter. Hannah didn’t want her to do this, but it was for her own good, wasn’t it? Because you couldn’t hide forever. Rowan knew that better than anyone.

The screaming behind her was drowning out her ability to dictate.

Hannah reached for her phone. “Think about what you’re doing, Rowan.”

Rowan smacked Hannah’s hand away. “Get away from me.”

She scrolled through her photos and found a selfie