The Deadly Sister Read Online Free PDF Page B

the godlike moment of changing thecurrents of someone’s life. Every time I said he was lying dead at the bottom of the ravine, there was a rush and a jump and the universe changed. Maya’s outline went hazy for a moment.
    She didn’t go pale—she couldn’t have gotten paler—but a sheen appeared on her skin. She was horrified. But she didn’t look surprised. Not quite.
    “Tell me you didn’t kill him, Maya,” I said.
    “I didn’t kill him.”
    “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
    “What happened? What do you mean?” It wasn’t really a question. It was a bid for time. I waited.
    “Maya. Only I know.” I left out Cheyenne, to keep my allegiances uncomplicated. I could lose Maya’s trust—whatever trust she had for me—so easily. “But someone else could be finding his body right now. We don’t have time. I need you to tell me exactly what happened last night.”
    She was scared now. Calculations passed just beneath her face. What I’d told her about Jefferson, perhaps slowed by drugs in her bloodstream, seemed to hit in slow motion. She staggered to her feet. “He’s not dead!”
    “I found him, Maya. And he is dead. Drowned, or hit on the head. Dead.” I felt sick and full at the same time.
    “Where is he?”
    “In the river. Right below where you met up with him last night. Did you hit him? ”
    “He was there to meet up with some other girl. But when I got there, she wasn’t there. I was confused.”
    “Start at the beginning. I was the one who told you he was with some other girl, remember? And you went to find him. Did you talk to him?”
    “Yeah. Oh my god. He’s not dead, Abby. He can’t be.” She twisted her arms together. Her torso hinged so she almost folded, left over right. I put my arm around her shoulders. It was the first time I’d touched her in a long time. She smelled like her room smells: that gasoline stench of old rolling papers; a potent, almost buttery pungency of candy; and cheap berry perfume. But she also smelled of clues to the other half of her life: invisible, unknowable, a challenge to the imagination. Chemical smells, unhealthy sweat. Drug vapors. Somewhere deep in the fibers of her shirt, she smelled like burnt detergent. I pulled her tighter, until she slipped free.
    She began hitting herself. The heels of her hands made soft thunks against her skull. I grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms down to her side. She was gorgeous for a moment. Gorgeous and otherworldly and profoundly ill.
    “Look, Maya,” I said. “You’re going to tell me everything that happened last night, and then we’re going to figure out what to do.”
    She didn’t nod. She just stared from the hollows of her face. Right then, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d passed out or bolted from the room. I had no idea what to expect.
    “For right now,” I continued, “you need to get grieving for Jefferson out of your head. Pretend he’s still alive. Dealwith that later. Your life is on the line, okay? Our priority is deciding what the police will think, and what that means for you.”
    At the mention of the police, a glass was lifted. She nodded, ran her tongue over her craggy lips. “Someone saw him parked at the Bend. So I went. I knew he was waiting for a girl to meet up with him. He’d met up with me there plenty often.”
    We’d been over this the night before. I was used to this frustration—Maya never quite seemed to be listening to me, asked only the most basic questions, regularly requested information I’d given her moments earlier. It told me, over and over, that she didn’t really care what I had to say. And whenever I asked, Did you hear what I just said?, she turned defensive. It’s weird that I was swelling with irritation even as something so serious was happening, but so be it.
    “So you went to the Bend…” I prompted.
    Maya nodded, and I watched her get temporarily lost in the details of the room: the paper on the table, the tubes and