They Never Learn, page 27
67 SCARLETT
I’m not sure how long Jasper was standing there in the doorway, how much of my conversation with Mina he overheard. His nose is red, dried blood scabbed around his nostrils, and suddenly I understand.
He’s the one who broke into Mikayla’s room this morning. The one she hit, the one she hid a knife under her pillow to protect herself from. It was him, not Stright. It was him all along.
“I knew you were behind that text.” Jasper looks haggard, his hair lank and greasy, and his white oxford shirt wrinkled like he slept in it. Mikayla must have gotten him with her nails too: raw red lines mar the skin above his collar. “She would never have done that on her own.”
Mina looks back and forth between the two of us. “What the hell is he talking about?”
“I don’t know what Mikayla told you,” Jasper says. “But that little bitch is so obsessed with me.”
Mina bristles. She may not know the whole story, but she won’t put up with him talking about Mikayla that way any more than I will.
All the pieces are coming together in my mind, the signs I missed because I was so focused on Kinnear and Stright: the petite figure by Jasper’s side the night I tailed Kinnear to the Gorman Tap. The lock-picking skills that must have gotten Jasper into Mikayla’s dorm. The way she reacted when he touched her arm in class. He was the only one in the room not disturbed by her outburst—because he knew it was about him.
“To be fair, though, Mikayla’s pretty obsessed with you too,” Jasper says, sidling closer to me. Mina shifts back a step as he approaches, but I force myself to remain completely still.
I could have killed Stright without remorse or hesitation. With Jasper, it isn’t so simple. He’s much larger than Stright, and I’m all too aware of the sinewy strength in those arms. If we were alone, I could seduce him. It would have been easy to pretend to reconcile, to get him down on the floor underneath me, where he’s been so many times before, and choke the life out of him.
“She talks about you all the time. Dr. Clark this, Dr. Clark that. I wonder what Dr. Clark will think of my term paper.” He traces his finger down my arm and around the point of my elbow. “I bet she’ll be so disappointed to find out her role model is a fucking murderer.”
Mina sucks in a sharp breath. I just stare at him. He wants a reaction, and I’m not going to give it to him. I’m saving all my energy to take him down.
Jasper grips my shoulders and hunches lower to stare me right in the eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Excuse me?” I try to pull away, but he holds firm.
“I wouldn’t have told anyone. I haven’t told anyone. I could have ratted you out to those detectives, but I didn’t. Doesn’t that count for anything, Scarlett?”
He’s squeezing me so hard now it hurts. I want to slap his hand away, but I know if I touch him I won’t be able to stop until he’s bleeding.
“I followed you to Kinnear’s house that night, you know.”
I didn’t know. I had no idea. He’s held the nails to my coffin all this time. So why didn’t he hammer them in? Why did he lie for me, tell the police I was with him all night? Jasper always did love to back me into a corner, but in his own twisted way, he does care about me. That doesn’t change what he’s done, though—or what I have to do now.
“I hated that bastard too,” Jasper says. “I could have helped you.”
No, he couldn’t. He disgusts me. He’s just like every other man I’ve murdered.
Jasper shakes his head. “But now…”
I can’t kill him yet. Not in front of Mina.
Keeping my eyes trained on Jasper, I reach back for her hand. “Mina. You need to leave.”
“No,” she says. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t want you to see this.”
I still can’t believe Mina is as understanding as she claims to be about my secret life. But knowing I’ve murdered dozens of men is one thing. Actually witnessing me take a life right before her eyes is something else. I don’t want her last memory of me to be with blood on my hands.
“I’m not leaving you alone with him,” she insists.
Jasper lets go of me but only so he can turn on Mina. “I’ve been alone with her more times than I can count.” He looms over her, lips stretched in a lascivious grin, and she shrinks away. “The things we’ve done, you have no idea.”
“Jasper,” I warn. “If you touch her—”
He laughs. “What, Scarlett? You’ll kill me too?”
68 CARLY
“Get your hands off her!”
Wes. He’s here, on the roof. He’s running toward us, Allison right behind him.
That thundering sound I heard wasn’t just in my head: it was the two of them racing up the fire escape.
Coming to save me.
Bash turns languidly, like he has all the time in the world. My palms are still pressed into his sternum. The fog is so thick now, it’s hard to see where the roof ends and the open air begins.
“Hey, man,” Bash says to Wes, a lazy smile stretching across his face. “Chill.”
Wes responds by punching him in the mouth.
Allison shrieks, and Bash reels down, catching himself on the heels of his hands. He’s so close to the edge of the roof his fingertips wrap over the side. He scrambles backward, eyes wide with panic. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him truly afraid.
“She tricked me into coming up here!” Bash points a trembling finger at me, his voice keening unnaturally high. “She wanted it!”
“Just like I wanted it on Halloween, right?” Allison says. She’s trying to look strong, hips cocked defiantly and arms folded across her chest, but I can see how shaken she is.
Bash spits a mouthful of blood onto the roof, then glares up at Allison. “You did want it, you were practically begging—”
Allison kicks him hard between the legs, the same way I imagined doing. Bash doesn’t howl with agony like in my fantasy, though; he just curls up in a ball, hugging his knees to his chest.
“Shut the fuck up!” Allison screams, even though his pathetic whimpers are barely audible above the wind. It’s picking up, growing wilder now, like her anger is summoning a real storm.
She rears back, but before she can kick him again, he hauls himself to his feet. “Crazy bitches,” he mutters under his breath. He looks at Wes. “They’re all yours, man.”
Bash stumbles toward the fire escape, as fast as he can while still bent double with pain. Allison looks like she wants to go after him, land a few more hits, but she stays rooted in place, glaring at his receding back.
“It’s okay,” Wes says, putting his arm around me. “He’s gone. It’s okay.”
But the last thing I need is comfort. Wes made Bash bleed, Allison made him cry, and I did nothing. I failed, and Bash just walked away. He has a split lip, maybe some bruises, but that’s it. Nothing permanent, nothing truly damaging.
“What are you guys doing here anyway?” I shiver, and Wes draws me closer. But I’m not cold or scared. I’m vibrating with unspent rage.
“We couldn’t find you,” Wes says. “And Anna Turner told us—”
“Nice dress, by the way. I told you it would look good on you.” Allison gives Wes a pointed look, and he tightens his grip on my shoulders. “Didn’t I tell her?”
“Allie,” Wes warns.
“Did Bash like it too?” Her voice is dripping with venom. “I bet he did. I bet he couldn’t stop staring at you. Just like on Halloween, right?”
I’m confused at first: Is she jealous? Or just upset that I tried to get revenge on my own, without involving her?
But that’s not what this looks like. It looks like I stole her dress and dolled myself up and tried to hook up with her attacker, less than twenty-four hours after we got into a nasty argument on this very subject. After we kissed and she slammed a door in my face. This looks like revenge against her, not Bash.
“How could you?” Allison asks. The same thing I said to her when I dragged her away from Bash last night.
“You don’t understand,” I say.
And she never will. My plan seemed perfectly reasonable when I was thinking it up, but now even in my head it sounds completely unhinged. I was going to pepper-spray him and rough him up a little—and then when that didn’t work, I seriously considered pushing him off the roof to his death? I can’t tell her that. I can’t say that out loud.
“No.” The fire of her rage is fading already, her blue eyes icing over. “I really don’t.”
69 SCARLETT
Jasper holds my gaze as he seizes Mina by the shoulders. Daring me.
I lunge at him, but Mina doesn’t need me to defend her. By the time he slams her up against the whiteboard, she’s already shrieking and clawing at his neck and wrists. Then she rams the heel of her hand up into his nose.
He wheels back, letting go of her to clutch at his own face. She didn’t hit him all that hard, but with the damage Mikayla did earlier, it doesn’t take much to make him bleed.
While Jasper is still reeling, red pouring down his chin, I drive my boots into the backs of his knees, knocking him to the floor. He’s thrashing, furious, trying to throw me off as I climb on top of him. I jam my knee against his throat and slip the steak knife out of my boot.
Jasper’s eyes go wide when he sees the serrated blade aimed at his face, and he finally falls still. I tighten my gloved fingers around the handle, lining the knife up under his jaw.
“Stop!” Mina shouts. “Scarlett, don’t—”
She’s down on the floor with us, and she keeps grabbing at me, trying to pull my hands—and the knife—away from Jasper’s throat. For a second I think she’s bleeding too, but it’s only the red marker from the whiteboard, smeared over the back of her sweater. The list of names has been scrubbed into oblivion.
“Let me take care of this.” I press the knife down hard enough to draw a thin line of red from Jasper’s neck.
Why did I think it would be difficult to kill him? It’s so simple. It’s always simple, no matter how much careful planning and preparation I have to do. Cut them, and they bleed. Choke them, and they stop breathing.
Jasper gulps in a panicked breath, and the knife slices him again, a little slit over his Adam’s apple.
“You can’t,” Mina says. “You’ll go to jail.”
She’s desperate, pleading, tears running down her cheeks. But I know it’s hopeless, and, deep down, Mina must too. I’m going to jail no matter what I do now. I killed my boss, I’m attacking a student with a knife.
But I can do this. I can take care of him so he doesn’t hurt Mikayla anymore, so he doesn’t have the chance to hurt anyone else. I can’t kill them all, but I can kill Jasper.
“Please.” Mina wraps her fingers around my elbow. “Please.”
Jasper bucks against me again, knocking me to the side. The knife flies out of my hand, clattering to the floor, and all three of us dive for it. When we scramble back to our feet, I’m between Jasper and the exit. But he has the weapon.
He edges toward me, nostrils flaring, blood covering his face like a death mask. “Move, Scarlett. Now.”
I stand straighter, taking up as much space as possible. He’ll have to go through me. Mina tries to make another grab for the knife, but Jasper jabs his elbow back, cracking her in the cheekbone and sending her careening to the floor.
She smacked her temple against the corner of the desk on the way down, and she’s not getting up. I can’t tell if she’s unconscious or just stunned. And I can’t get to her, because Jasper is between us, brandishing the knife.
“Move,” he says. “Or I’ll fucking kill you.”
He levels the blade at me, but his hands are shaking. He’s not capable of this. He never was. He’s nothing but a cornered animal, and even without a weapon, I’m the dangerous one.
Mina stirs, propping herself up, pressing her fingertips against her forehead. They come away stained red. But she’s conscious, that’s all that matters. She’s all that matters to me.
Jasper is trembling more by the second. Pathetic. He has no problem intimidating a woman, violating her, but he can’t bring himself to commit actual violence. Like Mikayla said in class, though, it’s all the same crime.
“You’re a psychotic bitch!” He spits it in my face, his voice as serrated as the knife.
My mouth curves up in a smile. “Yes, I am.”
“Get away from her!”
Jasper’s grip was already tenuous, and the sudden scream startles him into losing it completely. The knife slashes down across my collarbone and falls at our feet.
What the hell is Mina doing? I told her to let me handle this, she’s in no shape to—
But then I see her, out of the corner of my eye. She hasn’t gotten up, she’s still prone on the floor. Only now she’s staring up in horror as Jasper stumbles away from me, clutching at his chest, his white shirt rapidly staining red.
70 CARLY
The receding stomp of Allison’s feet as she storms down the fire escape sounds like rocks tumbling down a well. I’ve really lost her this time.
I shudder, swallowing a sob, and Wes rubs my back.
“It’s okay,” he says again, like if he repeats it enough times it will magically become true.
None of this is okay. Allison is never going to speak to me again. Bash will never be punished. Everything is fucked-up and broken, and I can’t fix it. I’m a freak and a failure, and I shouldn’t have tried in the first place.
“You must be cold,” Wes says.
I’m hot, actually, burning up like I have a fever, hair sticking to the back of my neck with sweat. But he’s already draping his heavy coat over my shoulders.
Wes slips his arm around me again. “She’ll calm down. She always does. She and her roommate last year fought a lot too, but they always made up.”
“Really?” I say.
“Yeah, there was a whole month last spring when they couldn’t even be in the same room without trying to kill each other. So Allison crashed in my room.”
“Is that… allowed?” I try to imagine them in bed together, Allison pillowing her cheek on Wes’s chest like I did during that strange night I spent in his room, but I can’t quite picture it.
Wes laughs. “No way. But you know rules never stop her. She snuck in and out through the window every night for weeks.” He shakes his head and laughs again, but it’s a harsher sound. Almost bitter. “All our friends thought we were sleeping together. Isn’t that funny?”
It’s not funny. And it’s not the same thing at all. Allison hates my guts, and she doesn’t even know the half of how fucked-up I am.
“Why were you up here with Bash anyway?” Wes asks, that bitter note lingering in his voice.
I can’t tell him about my ridiculous revenge plan either. I don’t even have the canister of mace anymore; I must have dropped it. It doesn’t matter now.
“It’s a long story,” I say instead.
“And you and Allison kissing at the party last night? Is that a long story too?”
I know he’s referring to the kiss on the dance floor, but my mind immediately goes to our other kiss—the real one. Her hands on my spine and her tongue in my mouth and her breath in my throat.
Wes doesn’t notice the tears filling my eyes, not even when he cups my face in his hands. “You deserve so much better than her,” he says, planting a kiss on my cheek. “You know that, right?”
He kisses my other cheek next, close to the corner of my mouth, but I barely feel it. My thoughts are racing, chasing each other in circles.
Then Wes leans in and kisses me for real.
It’s far from a friendly peck this time. His tongue is already past my teeth, his hands tangling in my hair. I manage to pull away long enough to say his name. “Wes, I—”
He kisses me again—even harder now—and I feel sick, I can’t breathe, I want to scream, but his mouth is covering mine, and how can he think I’m enjoying this? My body is rigid, my hands wrapped around his wrists like manacles, my face wet with tears.
“Stop it.” It’s not a plaintive whisper like in Alex’s office. I shout the words, shoving Wes off me so hard he stumbles back. “Stop.”
I’m expecting him to apologize, to say he got carried away, he’s so sorry, he doesn’t know what came over him. This is all just a misunderstanding. Of course he wouldn’t want to make me uncomfortable. Of course he’d never pressure me to do anything I don’t want to do.
Instead, his eyes turn hard and his mouth twists with cruelty.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he says.
71 SCARLETT
“You bitch, you fucking bitch!”
It’s not me Jasper is screaming at, or Mina.
It’s Mikayla.
After all, she is the one clutching the steak knife smeared from tip to hilt with his blood.
Jasper falls to his knees, a circle of red already spreading on the floor beneath him. I’m vaguely aware that I’m bleeding too, a pulsing sting below my throat where the blade bit in as he dropped it, sticky warmth soaking into my shirt.
Mikayla is shaking all over, gripping the knife so hard her knuckles turn pale. Her angelic face is a mask of horror, eyes unfocused.
She must have followed me here instead of staying in her room like she was supposed to. She shouldn’t have had to see this. She shouldn’t have had to do this.
“Mikayla.” I step toward her. “Give me the knife.”
“He was going to kill you.” She can hardly get the words out around the panicked gasps gripping her throat. “Wasn’t he?”
The pool of gore around Jasper swells, his skin looking more waxen by the second. Incredible that such a small blade could draw so much blood. She must have hit a vein.
Beginner’s luck.
“He was going to kill you, I had to, I had to…”
She collapses into sobs, clutching the knife dangerously close to her chest. I wrap my hand around hers, prying her fingers loose so I can take it from her. The blade nicks her under the chin as I pull it away, but she doesn’t even flinch.
