They Never Learn, page 29
But they never ask the question I’m dreading: Did you push him? They have no reason to suspect me of doing something so awful. Samantha keeps her arm around me the whole time, holding me in place like an anchor.
When my parents get word of what happened, they want to pull me out of school the very next day. I talk them into letting me stay until Thanksgiving break, but they won’t hear of me coming back in the spring.
Within hours, Allison has cleared out her closet and gone to stay with some theater department girls in a house on the other side of town. I expect her accusation to spread across campus just as fast as the shocking story of Wesley Stewart’s death. I steel myself, waiting for the whispers to start: crazy, psycho, killer.
But instead of avoiding me, people seem drawn to me. They approach me in the cafeteria, the hallways of Miller, the middle of the Oak Grove, just to tell me how sorry they are for my loss. They tell me what a sweetheart Wes was, what a good friend. I smile and thank them, and all the while I’m thinking of that ugly sneer on his face when I told him to stop touching me. I wonder how many other girls got to see that side of him. I wonder if Allison’s ever seen it.
I don’t see her again until the day before Thanksgiving, when I’m standing outside Whit waiting for my parents to pick me up. The sky is dark, the first flakes of a coming snowstorm starting to fall. I see a car lumbering down the drive, and I pick up my bags.
The car gets closer, tires skidding over the slippery pavement, and I realize it’s not my parents’ vehicle at all. It’s a giant brown boat of a thing, with a big dent on the driver’s side door and Indiana plates.
Wes’s car.
Allison gets out and starts walking toward Whitten. She looks awful: pale and thin, her eyes shadowed and her cheeks hollow. She’s changed her hair again. It’s red now—much brighter than mine, the blaring red of alarm lights.
I set down my bags. When she sees me, her expression turns stone-cold.
“Don’t you dare,” she snarls. “I have nothing to say to you.”
It sounds like a line from a play, her voice ringing out as if we’re onstage. The snowflakes swirling between us make the scene feel even more unreal.
“It was an accident.” The words come so naturally now.
“No.” Allison shakes her head. “He wouldn’t have even been up there if it weren’t for you. Wes was careful, he was responsible, he was—”
“I was there,” I say. “I saw it.”
Allison’s gaze drops to the pavement under my feet. I’m standing right on the spot where Wes died. The campus grounds crew tried for days to scrub his blood out of the concrete, but the red is still there if you know where to look.
Her eyes narrow. “Did you.”
Panic flares in my chest, but I squelch it. I’m getting better at that every day.
What did I ever find so fascinating about her? She’s just a girl. A girl who has no idea who she is, who changes her hair color like she changes her underwear, who’s so desperate for attention she’ll accept it from men who hate her. I wish I could have done more to protect her. But she made her choice, and I’ve made mine.
“Fuck you, Carly,” she says.
I smile at her, so cold she actually shivers. “I’ll miss you, Allison.”
Whatever she came to Whitten for seems to be totally forgotten. She doesn’t take her eyes off me for a second as she backs up to Wes’s car and gets inside.
I watch her pull away. Even when the car gets to the end of the drive, I can see her red hair through the scrim of the snowflakes, bright as a flame.
By the time my parents arrive, the snow is coming down hard, drifts covering the ground.
My mother jumps out of the passenger seat before the car has come to a complete stop and runs to me, gathering me in her arms.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she says. “How are you? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I say, and it’s the truth, even though it shouldn’t be. Since Wes died—since I killed him—I’ve been sleeping better than ever. No bad dreams, no waking up with all my muscles clenched.
“Your hair,” she says, touching the red ends. I know what she’s thinking: my father will hate it.
Good.
She takes my bags and loads them into the trunk. Before I get into the back seat, I scrape my boot over the pavement until the red stain on the concrete is visible again.
My father doesn’t say a word as he steers the car away from Whitten Hall, but I can sense his ire just from the set of his shoulders, the way his hands grip the steering wheel, the flash in his eyes when they find mine in the rearview mirror.
I meet his gaze—steady, unblinking—and I think of the way that girl at the restaurant in Pittsburgh laid her long manicured fingers over his knuckles and laughed. He might be able to fool her and my mother, but he can’t fool me. Not anymore.
A smile spreads across my lips, even colder than the snow.
You’re next, motherfucker.
Epilogue SCARLETT
“Hold still,” Mina says.
She tilts my head to the side so she can wind the braid tighter. I lean back against her legs, shutting my eyes. I’ll never tire of the sensation of her hands in my hair.
We’re still settling in to our new home in London, boxes of books waiting to be unpacked into the built-in shelves around the fireplace. The one-bedroom flat is cramped and drafty, with pockmarked plaster walls and a scenic view of a soot-stained brick chimney, but it already feels like home. Because we’re here together.
Abbott and Flynn spent months investigating, trying to re-create the exact sequence of our struggle with Jasper. But in the end, they couldn’t prove who was holding the knife at the moment it went into his chest, whether it was accidental or intentional—at least, not conclusively enough to hold up in court.
Following Jasper’s death, it seemed like half the campus came forward with their own damning anecdotes about him. Even Stright proved oddly useful: he took every opportunity to regale the police with tales of Jasper’s creepy behavior and the protracted grudge he’d held against Alexander Kinnear.
Because Jasper followed me to Kinnear’s house on Halloween, his cell phone records placed him right at the scene of the crime—circumstantial at best, but with most of the concrete evidence compromised by the fire I set, and Jasper no longer around to tell his side of the story, it was enough to pin the murder on him, for the sake of the paperwork anyway.
By the time both cases were officially closed, Mina was practically living with me—spending every night in my bed, her clothes crammed next to mine in the closet, her favorite brand of tea sitting by the stove. So when I was free to travel to London, I didn’t even have to ask her to come with me: she resigned immediately and booked a ticket on a flight a few days after my own.
There were many times over the past few months when I thought I was doomed, that I was going down and taking Mina with me—or even that the police would refocus their suspicions on Drew again and I’d have to confess to clear his name. He was promoted to department chair at the start of the spring semester, and he’s already proving himself the capable leader I always knew he could be. One of his first acts as chair was introducing a stricter code of conduct to protect students from predatory faculty and staff. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.
I know Sharon Abbott suspects what I am, even if she can’t prove it. If she discovers any of my other crimes, I could still face consequences. Mina knows that too, but she’s stayed by my side through all of this, unwavering. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to account for every detail on my own.
Mina finishes tying off the braid and starts coiling it at the base of my skull—her improvement on the hairstyle I used to wear for my kills. She’s right: it does stay in place better, even with vigorous movement.
“I wrote in the Great Court at the British Museum for most of the day,” she says as she sticks pins through the knot. “I stopped off at Sainsbury’s on Tottenham Court Road to buy wine.”
“I was at the archive until five fifty-two p.m. Then I took the tube straight home.”
While I work at the Women’s Academy, Mina’s making progress on a research project of her own involving statistical analysis of domestic abuse reports to predict future offenses. Despite the distraction of the police investigations, she managed to wrap up the task force’s work before joining me in London—though, of course, her final report to the university administration made no mention of the fact that some of the campus suicides weren’t suicides at all.
Even though we’re across the ocean, we make sure to check in on Mikayla weekly, and she’s doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances: still excelling in her classwork and seeing a therapist who’s proving very helpful even though Mikayla can’t share the full story.
Mina slides in another pin, tamping down a few stray hairs on the side of my head. “We had lamb vindaloo for dinner. I had a cup of tea and you had wine, and we watched a documentary on Netflix about Egyptian tombs.”
I nod. We’ve been over all this before, but we agree that you can never be too prepared. “We fell asleep by eleven.”
She leans over my shoulder, looking down at me. “Will you be home by then?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ll do my best.”
She smooths her hands over my hair. “Take the Piccadilly line back. It’ll be faster that time of night—and fewer passengers.”
Mina is the one who brought me this latest target: Edward Victorson, a Southwark barrister she saw screaming at his wife in the middle of Potters Fields Park.
The last time I followed the not-so-happy couple, the weather was warmer, and Mrs. Victorson wore a sleeveless dress that showed off the bruises encircling her upper arms like grotesque jewelry. He kept telling her to cover herself up, but she refused. Whenever his back was turned, she glared at him like she wanted to throttle the life out of him.
But she doesn’t need to worry; I’m going to do it for her. Tonight.
I cinch the belt of my black trench coat around my waist, then check my bag to make sure I have everything I need. Mina watches me, her brow pinched with worry. She always worries when I go out hunting. She never wants to discuss the details afterward; she just asks, “Is it done?” And I nod, and we go right back to our cozy academic life—until the next one. For me, this work will never truly be done.
She opens the door, letting the misty night air seep into our entryway. The fog is so thick, you can barely see a foot in front of you. Exactly why I chose to strike tonight: Edward always goes out drinking with his colleagues after work and walks home alone along the Thames. He’ll never see me coming.
Mina pulls me in for a kiss, fingertips ghosting over the serrated pink scar across my collarbone—my lovely parting gift from Jasper Prior.
“Be careful,” she whispers against my mouth.
She looks so gorgeous, leaning against the doorframe, eyes glowing in the dim light, ringlets wreathed in fog. Sometimes I can’t believe she’s real. I can’t believe Mina can look at me and see everything—the woman and the monster—and love me anyway. Since the night I pushed Wes off that roof, I thought I had no choice but to live my life in jagged pieces. But for the time being, at least, I can have it all.
“Don’t wait up,” I tell her.
Mina smiles. “You know you can’t stop me.”
Acknowledgments
I have to start by thanking my friend and fellow Pitch Warrior Emily Thiede, without whom this book would never have existed in the first place. I should really frame that tweet of yours!
Massive gratitude of course to my editor, Kate Dresser, and my agent, Sharon Pelletier. Kate, not only have you made my writing better, you’ve made me better. Thank you for being both a brilliant teacher and a fierce advocate. And Sharon, when I signed with you, I thought you were my dream agent. Now that it’s been a few years, I can say for certain: working with you is well beyond my wildest dreams.
Thanks as well to Molly Gregory, Jessica Roth, Jen Bergstrom, Abby Zidle, Anabel Jimenez, Caroline Pallotta, Christine Masters, Anne Jaconette, Erica Ferguson, and everyone else at Scout Press. And to Laywan Kwan for the stunning, spooky cover—I may never stop staring at it!
Wendy Heard, thank you for helping me become a better (fictional) murderer and being the best goth sister-wife a girl could ask for. Halley Sutton, I believe fate brought us together, and I look forward to both your sure-to-be-phenomenal writing career and our future feminist world domination. And a shout-out also to Hannah Whitten, Bibi Cooper, Lisa Catto, and everyone else who read early snippets of They Never Learn or offered advice as I was working on it. I wrote Temper mostly alone, but this book I wrote surrounded by a community of incredibly smart, funny, and all-around badass women, and that’s made all the difference.
Finally, thank you to my family: my mom, my grandparents, my “aunt” Patty, and my faithful writing assistants, Finn and Tallie (who never fail to sit on my keyboard when they think I’m working too hard). And to my partner, Nate: just when I think I can’t possibly love you more, you go and prove me wrong. You deserve everything you want in life and then some.
About the Author
LAYNE FARGO writes thrillers about angry women. She’s a Pitch Wars mentor, vice president of the Chicagoland chapter of Sisters in Crime, and the cocreator of the podcast Unlikeable Female Characters. She lives in Chicago with her partner and their pets.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Layne-Fargo
SimonandSchuster.com
ScoutPressBooks.com
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ALSO BY LAYNE FARGO
Temper
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Layne Fargo
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Interior design by Michelle Marchese
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fargo, Layne, author.
Title: They never learn / Layne Fargo.
Description: First Scout Press hardcover edition. | New York : Scout Press, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020000147 (print) | LCCN 2020000148 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982132026 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982132033 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781982132040 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3606.A685 T47 2020 (print) | LCC PS3606.A685 (ebook) | DDC ;813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000147
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000148
ISBN 978-1-9821-3202-6
ISBN 978-1-9821-3204-0 (ebook)
Layne Fargo, They Never Learn
