the others. She would have told them not to play the prank. She would have stopped them. She would have told Kyle. Kyle would still be alive.
Allie was struck by a wave of guilt so deep she almost burst into tears. Julian must have been the murderer. Or maybe Sasha was, since she’d been so mad at Kyle. David would never do such a thing, but even so they were all guilty. She wanted to tell her father, but she had to keep it inside. She pressed her lips together, tight as a seal. Jill’s mouth had looked like that at the viewing. Her lips had been stuck together, with wax. Allie had looked close, in horror.
“You’ll feel better in the morning, honey. Good night.”
Allie nodded because she couldn’t speak. She knew she wouldn’t feel better in the morning. She knew she wouldn’t feel better, ever.
CHAPTER 40
David Hybrinski
David sagged against the tile wall, crying in the shower. Hot water lashed onto his back, but he didn’t make it cooler. He’d been shaking since he hit the house, his knees weak. He’d hurried straight up the stairs, calling to his mother that he’d gotten caught in the rain, and she’d called back okay, with the twins in the family room. He’d raced to his room and jumped in the shower.
He folded over, his face in his hands, almost squatting, trying to erase every single image from his head at the same moment that he tried to remember, tried to understand, tried to process what happened. Kyle was dead. David had seen it. It happened right in front of him. Kyle had put the gun to his temple. There was an explosion. Smoke. Blood.
David had seen Kyle’s face go completely slack, his features edged in the shadow from the flashlight. David thought he had seen that much but maybe he hadn’t. It was dark. Maybe he imagined it, he didn’t know, but whatever he had seen was gruesome and he could swear he had smelled brains.
David covered his face, pressing his finger pads into his eyes, trying not to see. He thought of gouging his own eyes out, but the scene was in his mind’s eye, so even that wouldn’t help. Kyle falling over, dead. It was impossible. It hadn’t happened. But David could smell the smoke clinging to his hair. He reached for the knob with trembling hands and made it hotter, feeling the temperature rise, the water whipping his back. He deserved it. All of it.
David felt terrified to think of what would happen next. The police would come knocking at the door, and they would all be arrested. They would go to jail for murder, they would get caught. He remembered Julian asking him to throw away the bottles, and he had seen the Guptas’ green recycling bin and tossed the bottles in. He realized they would have his fingerprints on them, and he didn’t know if the police would check the fingerprints, and his fingerprints would be on the gun, and they were all going to jail now that Kyle was dead, and they deserved whatever punishment they got. David thought of what his parents would say, how heartbroken his mother would be, and Jason, and the twins, and his father would beat him to death.
Faggot.
He cried harder, knowing now it was true, because he remembered Kyle coming down the hill to see them, the sound of his voice, the way he walked, and he had a white shirt on, or maybe it was yellow, David couldn’t remember anything before the gunshot. The vodka had made him goofy, but he couldn’t lie to himself anymore. He remembered liking the sound of Kyle’s voice, cool, offhand, a little drunk.
And David hadn’t felt anything when he’d kissed Allie, not really. He knew that she had a crush on him, but he was using her, experimenting on her, trying to see if he felt anything after what his father had called him. David realized that he really was gay and he’d lied to Allie and every girl he’d ever kissed and every girl whose boobs he’d touched or anything he had done before. It was all lies, all of it. And he’d lied to himself because what had gotten him excited was Kyle. And now Kyle was dead.
David wondered if he had wanted Kyle dead, if he wanted to kill that part of him that didn’t want to be gay, because being gay meant the rage of his father, the disappointment