“You didn’t do what?” I say. “You didn’t cause the accident? You didn’t try to blame it on Piper? What exactly didn’t you do?”

Kenzie’s eyes widen, nostrils flaring. She shakes her head. “I didn’t make her—”

“No,” I say. “You didn’t give her the pills, but you did walk away from the accident, and you’ve been walking away from Piper ever since.”

Kenzie turns toward Piper, who wobbles on unsteady legs.

“You were the one who hated me first,” Kenzie says. “Every time I see you in that chair, I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. What was I supposed to do?”

I move between them, the fire inside me roaring so loud, I can hardly hear myself think. Asad stands next to Piper, reaching out to steady her.

“Ava, stop,” Piper says. Her voice is tiny, almost a whimper.

I step toward Kenzie.

“You were supposed to be her friend. You weren’t supposed to text her that she’d be better off dead.”

Kenzie recoils from me like I’ve punched her in the gut as a wave of whispering surges through the crowd. “I didn’t do that,” she says. “I swear, Piper, I wouldn’t.”

“Just like you didn’t send that picture of me?” I say.

Kenzie glances around the crowd, down at the floor, anywhere but at me. She doesn’t answer.

“That’s what I thought,” I say.

I start dialing.

I feel a hand on my arm and turn to see Piper, eyes pleading, face white.

“Let it go,” she says. “It doesn’t matter.”

Why didn't you just die that night?

“Yes. It does,” I say. “And so do you.”

I press send.

My phone rings, and my eyes—all eyes—are on Kenzie’s pink cell, waiting for it to light up.

Beside me, Piper makes a choking sound as she twists backward, reaching into her backpack.

A familiar ringtone of synthesized piano breaks the silence, turning my insides to ice. I look toward the phone—not the one sitting dead silent in Kenzie’s hand but the one that’s halfway out of Piper’s backpack, ringing in time with my own.

Maybe you still should

49

Piper silences the phone, but it’s too late.

“I told you to let it go,” she hisses under her breath.

A hundred other pairs of eyes watch me, but mine are stuck to Piper. She looks again like the fragile girl in the hospital bed. And now I’ve pulled back her curtain in front of everyone.

“It was you?” I whisper.