I like her. I actually do really like her. I don’t want to have to do this. But she did something really, really stupid when she sent that text, and now I have no choice. She’s forced my hand, really. If anything this is her fault.
The sense of injustice boils up again. This is so unfair.
“I never wanted any of this, you know,” I say to her as she sinks down onto one of the chairs, staring into the flames. She is shaking. I’m not sure if it’s cold or shock.
“What?”
She looks up, and I feel anger bubble up inside me, and then I push it back down. Has she even been listening?
“I said I never wanted this.” I sink down into the armchair opposite her. I stare at the fire, feeling its heat on my face. “I would never have killed any of them if I could help it. I’m just as much of a victim here.”
She blinks—and for a minute it looks like she’s going to say something, but then she seems to think better of it.
“Tell me about it,” she says. And so I do.
ERIN
Snoop ID: LITTLEMY
Listening to: Offline
Snoopers: 5
Snoopscribers: 10
I am lost in thought as Liz sits down opposite me, and it takes me a moment to realize she is talking. What she is saying doesn’t make sense—some nonsense about her being the real victim in all of this.
I look up, and I meet her eyes, and I am overwhelmed with the urge to slap her, to shake her, to scream, You? Are you kidding me? What about Eva? What about Elliot? What about fucking Ani, who never harmed a fly?
But I don’t.
Because I suddenly know what I have to do here.
I have to humor her. I have to keep her talking long enough for Danny to get back here with reinforcements. He has seen the text. He knows what it means. He will be doing everything he can to help me. I don’t know what time it is, but it must be way after midnight. If I can just keep Liz talking long enough, I may be able to survive this. I may even be able to get justice for all the people she has killed.
Because I am a survivor, that’s what Liz doesn’t know about me. She sees a soft, posh girl from the same background as Topher and Eva, someone who has never had to work for her living, to scrap for survival.
But that’s not true. Not in my case. In spite of my family name, I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, not in the way Topher and Eva did. I’ve always known that I was second best, and that I would have to fight for myself. I know what it’s like to clean up other people’s messes for a living.
But more than that, the most important thing about me, something Liz will never understand, could never understand, unless she had stood in my shoes: I looked death in the face once, and I turned him away.
I can do it again.
“Tell me about it,” I say. There is a catch in my throat, and my voice is shaking with the effort of keeping it calm, when I feel anything but. But Liz doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, she smiles. Incredibly, unbelievably, she smiles.
And she begins to speak.
LIZ
Snoop ID: ANON101
Listening to: Offline
Snoopers: 0
Snoopscribers: 1
“You don’t know what it was like, starting at Snoop,” I say. It is easier not to look at Erin while I’m telling her this, so I look away again, into the fire, remembering that first day—opening the office door, and seeing them all, lounging around inside, laughing, bantering, so effortlessly, searingly cool. “It was like walking into a different world. Like something off the TV, where people were sleek and beautiful and witty. They were like a different species, and I wanted to be them so much. School—school was so horrible. I can’t explain it. I knew I was different from the other girls in my class, I knew they all laughed at me. But somehow I thought when I got to my real life it would be different. I thought that maybe I was just an ugly duckling.”
I swallow. It is strange saying all of this—unwrapping secrets I have carried for three years.
“But when I got to Snoop I realized that wasn’t true—I wasn’t going to magically grow into a swan overnight. Eva and Topher, even