I pulled up a chair and took her limp hand. Her fingernails still had chipped blue polish on them.
"I'm going to figure this out, Sarah," I whispered, the anger overriding my grief. "I promise."
As I sat there, my eyes drifted to the small plastic bin resting on the counter near the sink. It was the personal effects bin the school had returned to us the day of the accident. It had her ruined uniform, her notebooks, and her locker contents inside.
I stood up and walked over to it, rummaging through the plastic.
I stopped. Wedged between the pages of her advanced anatomy textbook was a piece of paper I hadn't seen before. It was folded into a small, tight square.
I pulled it out and opened it. It was a receipt. But not from a store. It was a carbon copy of a St. Jude's equipment requisition form.
Item: Digital Voice Recorder - Lecture Series.
Signed out to: Liam Vance.
Date: October 14th.
The date was the exact day Sarah fell down the stairs.
Liam Vance. Chloe’s boyfriend.
My mind raced. Liam was the captain of the lacrosse team. He had absolutely no reason to check out a digital voice recorder from the media lab. Unless he was trying to record a conversation. Unless he was trying to catch someone saying something.
Wait. In the video I recorded today, Chloe had whispered, “Tell him she knows. Tell him to get rid of the drive.”
Could him be Liam? Was Liam the one on the stairs with Sarah? Was Chloe just covering for him, frantically trying to hide the drive that contained the voice recording?
I stuffed the receipt into my pocket and walked out of the room. I needed to find Liam.
As if summoned by the thought, I stepped out of the ICU doors and saw him. Liam was standing near the elevator bank at the end of the hall, wearing his letterman jacket, pacing back and forth nervously while aggressively texting on his phone.
I didn't hesitate. I marched straight down the hall.
"Liam," I snapped.
He jumped, almost dropping his phone. His head snapped toward me, his eyes wide and frantic. He looked terrible. His face was pale, his eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like he hadn't slept in a week.
"Maya," he stammered, taking a half-step backward toward the closed elevator doors. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm visiting my sister," I said, stopping two feet away from him. I crossed my arms, staring him down. "What are you doing here? You haven't visited once in two weeks."
"I was... I was just in the neighborhood," he lied poorly, stuffing his phone deep into his pocket. His eyes darted nervously down the hall, making sure no nurses were listening. "I heard what happened today. With Chloe. Maya, you need to back off. You're messing with things you don't understand."
"I understand that Sarah was pushed," I said, pulling the requisition receipt out of my pocket and holding it up. "And I understand you checked out a voice recorder the exact same afternoon. What were you recording, Liam? Were you and Chloe having an argument on the stairs? Did Sarah hear something she wasn't supposed to hear?"
Liam stared at the piece of paper, his breathing hitching. The color drained from his face completely.
"Where did you get that?" he asked, his voice a terrified rasp.
"It was in her textbook," I said. "Talk to me, Liam. Or I take this to the police."
"The police won't do anything!" Liam hissed, stepping forward and grabbing my elbow urgently. I yanked my arm away, but he leaned in close. "You think you're so smart, Maya, but you have no idea what's really happening. I didn't push Sarah. I wasn't even in the East Wing!"
"Then why do you look like you're about to throw up?" I demanded.
"Because I checked the recorder out for someone else!" he whispered fiercely, his eyes wide with genuine panic. "I checked it out because I was told to. Because if I didn't, I’d lose my athletic scholarship. You think Chloe is the monster? Chloe is terrified. We all are."
"Who told you to check it out?" I demanded.
Before Liam could answer, the elevator doors chimed and slid open. Liam flinched backward as if he’d been burned. He looked at me, his eyes full of desperate warning.
"Check the supply closet in the CPR lab," he whispered frantically as he backed into the elevator. "The one with the electronic lock. The drive is in there. Just... be careful, Maya. If he catches you, he'll kill you."
The doors slid shut, cutting him off.
I stood in the sterile hallway, my mind spinning violently. My theory was wrong. Liam wasn't the monster. Chloe wasn't the mastermind. They were foot soldiers. Someone else was pulling the strings. Someone who had access to the school, the power to revoke scholarships, and the ruthlessness to threaten high school kids.
“Check the supply closet in the CPR lab.”
Harper had put something in there while Chloe was slapping me.
I checked my watch. It was 7:30 PM.
St. Jude’s Academy was hosting its annual Alumni Donor Gala tonight in the grand ballroom of the main building. The campus would be swarming with wealthy donors, but more importantly, the side doors near the science wing would be unlocked for the catering staff.
I was suspended. If I was caught on campus, it was game over. Thorne would have me arrested, and my mom would lose the house.
I thought about my mom staring at the medical bills. I thought about the text on my phone.
I had to make an irreversible choice. Walk away and let my sister die forgotten, or risk everything.
Twenty minutes later, I parked my Civic three blocks away from St. Jude’s, hidden under the shadow of a large oak tree. The rain had started to fall, a cold, miserable drizzle that soaked through my jacket instantly.
I crept across the dark athletic fields, staying low until I reached the back of the science wing. Just as I hoped, the loading dock door was propped open with a wooden wedge to allow the catering staff to move trays of food into the main hall. The faint sound of classical music drifted through the damp air.