This Is How It Ends

“You didn’t know that Nat’s dad would be killed? After she saw that, you didn’t know?”

“I . . . I’d . . . I didn’t really think—”

“What about Tannis?” I pressed on. “And Trip?”

“I had no idea, Riley,” she said. Her voice was low and urgent. “You have to believe me. I didn’t know that would happen to Trip. I would never, ever have let it go—”

“Why didn’t you just tell us, Sarah?” I said loudly. “For God’s sake, it’s all we’ve talked about for weeks. This whole time, this whole charade about what they were—why didn’t you just confess?”

“And say what?” she asked miserably. “That I’d let Natalie’s dad die? What would you have thought of me? You can’t even imagine what I felt like. I didn’t want to believe it. I just meant to do what I’d been waiting so long to do.” Sarah squeezed her eyes shut again, hand pressing against her forehead. “It all went wrong. I tried to help. I thought if we could figure out what happened to Nat’s dad—who did it—maybe that’d somehow make it better.” She shook her head. “But it just got worse and worse—”

“How is it any worse—” The look on her face stopped me. “You know who did it?”

She didn’t answer.

“Sarah?”

She hitched her breath and said, “Ask Nat.”

“What?” I was incredulous. “She knows?”

Sarah nodded slowly, wiping at her eyes.

“So I should ask, and then what? She’ll just tell me? God, what does Tannis know, the cure to cancer?” I was really angry. All this time, all the things that had happened, and one after another, the people around me, my “friends,” had known the answers all along.

“Unlikely,” Sarah said, a flash of a smile, sad and tired, at the corners of her lips. “Nat wasn’t asleep,” she said. “And she wasn’t wearing her headphones that night.”

“So?” Then I got it. “She heard everything.”

Sarah nodded. “Tell her I told you that. I think she’ll tell you the rest.”

“Why don’t you?”

“It’s not my secret to tell, Riley,” Sarah said. None of them were, it seemed. She’d rather just let me flounder around like an idiot with half the story.

We stood there for a minute, me trying to calm down and Sarah watching me, her tears subsiding.

“They weren’t in your drawer,” she said finally.

“No,” I agreed. “I moved them.”

She nodded, not surprised. “Can I have them back?”

I wondered what she’d do if I gave them to her. Wondered what the right answer was. Finally I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Riley?” Tannis’s voice was faint, calling from somewhere in my backyard. “You okay?”

Sarah and I looked at each other.

“Yeah,” I yelled back to Tannis, my eyes on Sarah the whole time. “I’m okay. I’ll be down in a minute.” I waited, wondering how we would go on from here. What would happen next.

“Don’t tell her, Riley,” she said. “Please.”

“Sarah—”

“Think about it,” she pressed. “What did you say way back about Tannis? About how she’d feel if she knew it really was her future? Tell her they’re gone, disappeared. Tell her you destroyed them. But don’t tell her the truth.”

“What about Nat?”

She shook her head.

“So . . . we’re just going to keep this all a secret?”

“We’ve had a lot of practice, haven’t we?” Sarah said sadly. She leaned forward then and kissed me softly. I could smell the faint flowery scent of her perfume, the shampoo she used, could feel the warmth of her cheek as she pressed it against mine. “Be careful with them,” Sarah said. She turned away then, climbing deftly over the bramble of branches and moving along the trail, until even the red of her jacket faded away into the dark woods.

CHAPTER 34

I FIGURED WE’D TALK ABOUT it after I had time to think through everything she’d said, that I’d be able to ask all the questions that ran through my brain even as I walked through the woods back toward my house. I told Tannis I’d fallen and the person had outrun me. We searched my room—her and I—and I made like they’d stolen some money I’d had lying on the desk, a watch, and the binoculars.

“You need to file a report,” she insisted.

“Don’t you think the cops have enough going on?”

Tannis considered it. “Maybe,” she said. “Whoever stole them will get what’s coming to them with those binoculars anyway.”

I was relieved when Sarah wasn’t at school the next day. I still didn’t know what to say to her. Or how I felt. I was furious at first. And confused. Denying, then believing. Resentful. I knew that if it was true, I should blame her mom, and intellectually I did. But it was hard to feel much for someone I’d never met, so my anger was mostly directed at Sarah.

After two days I started to worry.

I never expected she would be gone.

Tannis and I went to Sarah’s house the third day she was absent, after her cell phone just rang and rang. We pounded on the door, peeked in the windows. It looked like it always had, boxes stacked everywhere. But all the plants were missing. Maybe she’d taken them with her or given them away. But that’s how I knew she’d gone, because she wouldn’t have left the plants in there to die without her to tend them.

Her note came a day later. I recognized her handwriting, spiky and cramped, on the envelope, and my heart sped up. It was postmarked somewhere in Delaware. I tore it open and pulled out the single page.

Riley,

I’m sorry to leave without saying good-bye in person. I wasn’t sure what was best. I never, ever meant for things to happen like they did. I didn’t know what we were getting into—what I was getting us into. I am so, so sorry. Please believe that.

I’m sure you’re angry. I am too, though I have no right to be.

I told my dad everything, and we’re going to find her. I deserve answers. We all do. I’ll see you in Cambridge, if not before. I hope by then we can both forgive me.

Love,

Sarah

I read it twice, then a third time, forcing myself to stop after that. I felt like I had when my dad died, a sudden hole ripped in my world. I couldn’t believe she’d just left like that.