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Annie thought about it. “Trying to get Mr. Norris to make out with me at prom wasn’t my finest moment.”
Lexie’s face twisted. “Agreed. You almost got him fired.”
“Like I said, not my finest moment. That the kind of thing you’re talking about?”
“Not really. I mean something dangerous. Something . . . destructive.”
All humor gone like a candle blown out, Annie stood straight and narrowed her eyes. “Where is this coming from?”
“Nowhere, just—” Lexie searched for the right words. Had she made a mistake bringing it up? Her throat felt dry, and her palms were sweaty. She’d always known that someday she would tell Annie the truth, she just hadn’t realized it would be today. “We were in senior year when you moved here, right? And you had a whole life in the city you left behind?”
“I’d call it more of a forced relocation on my part, but yeah, sure, I had friends and stuff. Of course.”
“Well, I had a former life too. I just never told you much about it because . . .” Lexie sighed. “I was ashamed. I wanted to pretend none of it ever happened, and you were such a whirlwind, and you came into my life at just the right time, you made it easy to forget.” She walked a small circle, caught off guard by the tears building in her eyes. Coming back around to face Annie, she said, “Look, the truth is, I’m not the ‘good girl’ you think I am. I’ve done things. I’ve . . . hurt people.”
“Okay, babe, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
“Isabelle.”
“You killed her?”
“What? No.” Lexie shook her head, choosing not to address the absurdity of Annie’s assumption. “I was friends with her, before you came here. I was friends with her, Darcy Walsh, and—” She couldn’t finish.
“And who?”
Lexie licked her lips. “Sara Riley.”
It took Annie a few seconds, but comprehension eventually flickered. “As in crazy old George Riley’s daughter? The one who went missing?”
“She didn’t just go missing. She was murdered.”
“Oh my god.” Annie’s recoil was the natural reaction to hearing such an awful thing. “How?”
Lexie paused to consider how to start such a long story. “We were young,” she eventually said. “And stupid. In high school we used to go out to parties together, tell our parents we were sleeping at each other’s houses, then get our boyfriends to drive us around. For a long time, it was just the three of us. Me, Darcy, and Isabelle. We were close. One day at school, we invited Sara to sit with us, and that’s when the trouble started. We felt sorry for her. Everyone knew she didn’t have the best home life, and she was so quiet and shy. We didn’t realize what she was capable of until it was too late.” Lexie licked her lips. “Anyway, we took her out, gave her a taste of freedom, but it was like we’d given a shark its first drop of blood. She was drinking, doing a lot of drugs, sleeping around, pushing the limits way further than we ever did. She was out of control.”
Deciding she couldn’t stand anymore, Lexie planted her butt on the nearest log and continued. “This one night, we snuck off the island to a big college party on the mainland. It was fun, but when it came time to leave, Sara refused to come back with us. She was drunk, of course.” She shook her head, annoyed even now. “After hours of chasing her around trying to convince her to get in the car, she eventually took off with some guy. We figured she’d have herself a good time, sleep it off, and we’d come get her in the morning, but when we got there the next day, we couldn’t find her. We stayed as long as we could, searched everywhere.” Lexie felt her eyes go distant as she remembered how her heart had pounded that day, the worry she’d felt, the guilt. She shook her head, letting a tear spring loose. “We called everyone we could think of, but we never saw her again. She never came home. Her parents called the police, and she was reported a missing person.”
Annie didn’t respond, just waited.
“Things were never the same after the night she went missing,” Lexie sniffed. “Sara’s parents isolated themselves in that old farmhouse. Darcy, Isabelle, and I, we drifted. Then you came to town, I started going out with Kyle, got married.” She shrugged. “I left it all in the past. At least, I thought I had—” Lexie’s voice cracked. “A while ago, we heard a rumor that she’d been killed. Stabbed to death by a man in Boston.”
Annie’s face had gone white. Lexie couldn’t stand the sight of it, knowing it was she who’d caused it, so she stood and turned away.
“We never confirmed it,” Lexie said. “Her name was never reported publicly and her parents hated us all enough to keep us in the dark, but that’s what some friends on the mainland said they’d heard happened to her. Now Isabelle ends up dead, the same way? It’s just odd.”
“What are you—are you saying their deaths are connected?”
“I don’t know, but Darcy came to see me the other day and she thinks they are, and it’s just freaked me out.” Lexie pulled her beanie off her suddenly too-warm head and ran a hand through her hair. “I know all fingers are pointing at Kyle as the one who killed Isabelle, but I just can’t help thinking maybe they’re all wrong. What if the person who killed her is still out there? What if—” She hated regurgitating Darcy’s craziness, but it had to be said. “What if the same person who killed Sara, killed Isabelle too? What if it’s the same psycho who killed them both? We were all friends. What if I’m on some kind of radical hit list?”
“Wait, hold on.” Annie raised her hands like she was struggling to keep up with the conversation. “If that’s true, then why would whoever did this wait so long to come after Isabelle?”
“I know it sounds insane,” Lexie replied, choosing to omit the other piece of information they’d heard through the grapevine, which was that Sara’s killer was apparently convicted and sent to prison, because just like the disturbing details of her death, she had no way of knowing if it was true, since the names were never revealed publicly. Telling Annie would only prompt her to think she was being ridiculous, as Lexie had thought of Darcy.
The term mass hysteria rolled through her mind. Maybe she really was crazy.
“What did you mean?” Annie asked, caution coating her tone. “When you said you’ve hurt people?”
“Not directly,” Lexie assured her. “I suppose it’s more that I feel responsible for what happened to Sara. I think—I know—that it was my fault, at least in part.”
