Fontaine Five

EIGHT

IT'S LATER THAN I would've wanted, but whatever, I'm here. My fingernails are shredded from biting on them the whole evening, knowing I would have to tell what I'd read - and then say I have no evidence, no journal or photos of it. And they would want to see it for themselves, of course, so they'd make me go back to that house. A third time. My footsteps speed up; I'm still a couple of blocks from the party.

What I can't figure out is why I'm not angry. Ellis wrote shit about me just as much as he did about the others, but I don't feel hurt. Maybe it's because I know deep down that his words have some truth to them. And so now I want to defend him, of all things. Never mind the fact that he can't defend himself, no; this is my way of easing the guilt from the possibility that I was an ass to him. I was, wasn't I? Was I?

Of course you fucking were. You slept with Jude. Your best friend. Ellis' best friend.

Shame raises goosebumps on my arms, my neck, my scalp. Something in my chest sinks, and I feel nauseous. I think I'll skip drinking tonight.

I enter the house, welcomed by the smell of people and, faintly, weed. Hoping it takes me a while before I find the others, it turns out to be just my luck that I bump into the back of Blair, literally. She's talking to Ken, who's propped up against the wall. By the very way she turns around - and that alone - it's evident Blair is in some mood. It always is; this time around, it's anger that's magnified by a lack of sobriety.

"Where were you? You never miss pregame."

I lie - "I had to babysit for the neighbors' kid last minute," - and I'm a good liar, but she doesn't buy it. Not much gets past her. It's just a matter of time before I have to say what I came here to say.

"Hm." The sound is sharp, short. She cocks her head to one side. "Your whereabouts - they never seem to add up. At least, not lately." Her tone drips with razor-edged meanness. It's a voice she saves for the people in school she doesn't like; a voice she's never used with me.

"What does that mean?"

She turns away slightly, back towards her girlfriend. Kendra's gaze flits between us warily. "Ask Lan." She dismisses me with a single wave of her hand.

"I'm asking you." Every word weighs on my tongue, and stills the air around us, despite the movements and noises of the bodies around us.

Blair faces me once more, features mesmerizingly contorted into a furious smugness, of all things. I know she's about to give me the reason for her being shitty to me on-and-off these past few days. "The night Ellis died," she begins, "after we'd all jumped? I just can't get out of my head that, despite everything, you were nowhere to be seen the whole night."

Immediately, I know what she's doing.

"There's only one path between that cliff and the beach, but we didn't see you on it," she carries on, slowly enough to let the words be absorbed. "Not once. Yet me, Lan and Jude found each other fine."

My breathing is louder, almost unbearably so. We can't keep talking out here with people listening, especially Kendra Willis, who has no business knowing any of this, to be quite honest. I pull Blair by the arm into the empty downstairs bathroom across the hall, and shut the door. "I told you, I was the very first person back on that fucking cliff. I could say the same about all of you -"

Blair is looking at me somewhat indifferently but it's obvious she doesn't buy it. She cuts me off. "I don't know, Rory. You and I both know your story sounds off. Don't get me wrong; I was in denial. I wanted so badly to give you the benefit of the doubt. But then Lan..."

"What, Blair? What about him?"

"Lan said he saw a girl running. Some blonde, away from the shore, sprinting down the dirt road like she was running from something bad. He tried calling out to her but she didn't stop."