Brent’s smile is like a predator’s: shiny in the dark, all sharp teeth and hunger. “She was always a greedy little bitch,” he says. “That’s why I liked her so much.”

I swallow the taste of vomit. “Did you kill her, or did Misha?” I ask, even though I think I already know the answer. I bet Misha has barely blinked in the past ten years without worrying what Brent will say about it.

And now I remember thinking that Misha’s baby, Kayla, was surprisingly blond. Almost as blond, it occurs to me, as Brent.

Does Misha really believe that she might make Brent love her, by doing everything he says, by feeding girls into some sick program where they can be abused and passed around, by covering up for Brent? Does she think he’s even capable of love?

“It was Misha’s idea to put mercury in Kaycee’s paint,” he says calmly. “She thought it would be funny to convince Kaycee she was going crazy. And like I said, she always had a thing for me.”

No wonder I’ve been so sick. Kaycee’s old paintings have been shedding mercury all this time and I’ve been inhaling it.

“We weren’t thinking of killing her then, though.” He sounds bored. “Just making her look like a nutjob, to keep her from going to the cops, and to make sure they wouldn’t listen even if she did.”

Whenever he glances away, I work my wrists back and forth, to loosen the restraints. If I can just get my hands free I can jump, and worry about my ankles once I’m in the water.

I can almost slip a hand free. All I need is another minute.

“So why kill her, if you were convinced no one would listen to her?”

“You,” he says, and I almost forget where we are and what he’s come to do. “The last day of school, you remember what happened? Kaycee put that stupid dog collar in your locker.”

I stop moving. I never knew he knew.

He looks at me as if I’m on the other side of a telescope. “You told Misha that Kaycee had left it there for you as a clue.”

“I didn’t,” I whisper.

But of course I did. I remember now: flying at Misha, trying to hit her, trying to claw my fury at Kaycee out on her best friend’s face. What the fuck is your problem? A cluster of students gathered in the hall to stare. Misha drove me backward against the wall, I wasn’t strong enough to fight her. Are you deranged?

I was screaming at her. Inches from her face. Trying to bury the words inside her skin, trying to cut her with them. It wasn’t enough she poisoned my goddamn dog. She had to leave me a clue, just in case I forgot?

I remember Misha’s look of blunt shock, and thinking, for a second, that I’d finally gotten through to her.

Brent’s right. I am an idiot.