Chelsea and Kayla put on their completely inadequate shoes and coats, and march out of the house, ignoring the rain still falling heavily. I slide into my own sneakers, but they are no match for what feels like an icy river forming outside the front door. My sneakers fill with mud and freezing cold water. I can’t wait to get home and away from this horror show.

But just before we can pile into Chelsea’s Beetle and get back home, she stops short. I hear the sharp inhale of her breath a second before I realize what she’s looking at.

All four of her tires have been slashed.

“What the hell?” she gasps.

We go around the side of her car to Shane’s Chevy, and the situation is the same. Tires slashed to smithereens.

“What the hell?” Shane is furious now as he examines the damage to his tires. “Who would do this?”

Kayla is stepping backward, hugging her chest as she shakes her head. “Somebody doesn’t want us to be able to get out of here.”

“Kayla…” Tim reaches for her arm. “Look, we’ll figure this out—”

“No!” Kayla jerks away from him, her eyes suddenly wild. “One of you killed him. One of you did this, and now you don’t want the rest of us to get away.”

“Kayla, that’s crazy,” Chelsea says.

“Is it?” Kayla blinks back tears.

“Yes!” Chelsea swipes a strand of her soaking wet black hair with bleached tips from her face. “Tim and Shane are not murderers. They’re not.”

“Maybe it was you,” Kayla shoots back.

“Me?”

“Sure, why not? After all, everybody knows Brandon was cheating on you. Maybe the two of you had it out, and it didn’t end well for him.”

Chelsea’s lips form a startled O. “You bitch…”

A tear escapes Kayla’s right eye. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, smearing mascara across her cheek. Her eyes dart between the four of us, her breaths coming faster with each second. “I’m getting out of here—car or not.”

“Kayla, don’t—” Shane starts to say.

But it’s too late. Kayla has turned around, and she’s running in the other direction down the poorly paved path to the farmhouse, the rainwater reaching up above her ankles like she’s wading through a shallow stream. Presumably, she’d thought she wouldn’t be outdoors much during this sleepover, so she’s wearing a pair of chunky heels with what had once been a stylish leather trench coat before the rain destroyed it. My coat and sneakers aren’t much better, but I’m still tempted to follow her.

She makes it barely twenty feet. I don’t know if her foot catches on something, but she takes a quick nosedive into the muddy water on the ground. Tim swears loudly, then races out after her.