Blood on My Hands

don’t think they’re home.”
    He gives me a searching look. “You’re not planning on doing anything bad to me, are you?”
    It seems like a strange question from a guy who’s nearly a foot taller than me, but I’ve begun to perceive a softness and a frailty in him. It’s hard to imagine how he could have been mixed up with the likes of Dakota and Katherine. “No. I was just hoping to find out some things.”
    He tilts his head curiously. I get up quickly, but he takes longer, groaning and rising slowly and stiffly. We each take a strap of the backpack and lug it behind the hedge. Griffen sits down on it and dabs his knee with the napkin. I sit cross-legged on the grass and look up at him. Again I have that feeling I’ve seen him someplace before. I just can’t figure out where.
    “Last spring something happened between Katherine and Dakota and I heard you were involved,” I tell him.
    Big frown. “Look, no offense, but you’re wanted by the police. This is a mistake. I shouldn’t be talking to you.” He presses his hands against the backpack as if to rise.
    Desperate, I grab the sleeve of his blazer. “Have you ever been blamed for something you didn’t do?” I ask, holding on. “Try magnifying that feeling about a hundred thousand times. Then add a life sentence to it.”
    He stares at me.
    “I swear I’ll never tell anyone we met,” I say.
    He thinks it over. I let go of his sleeve.
    “So you want to know what happened with me and Dakota and Katherine?” he says. “I met Dakota at a cotillion and she seemed really interested. I mean, it was kind of weird. Like, I’m not the type who has a steady stream of girls trying to knock down the door, you know? But she was just really, like, insistent. So we started to hang out. And then somewhere along the way, she introduced me to Katherine.” Griffen pauses and winces slightly. “And I mean, she … I mean, Katherine …” He shakes his head and seems to shiver. “She told me all kinds of things about Dakota that … sounded really bad.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like that she was a total slut and had even been treated for an STD and that if I went out with her, I might catch something.” He pauses to bend his knee and winces again.
    “So what happened next?” I ask, trying to keep him on track.
    “Then Katherine made this big play for me. And like I said, I’m not exactly used to that kind of attention. And she swore she’d never tell Dakota. And”—he shrugs—“I fell for it. And the next thing I knew, Dakota knew all about it, and she just went totally bonkers.”
    “So you think Katherine told Dakota?”
    “Or she told someone else, who told Dakota. Doesn’t really matter.” Is that a trace of remorse in his voice? He can’t enjoy admitting that he was duped. Still, it’s incredibly helpful news, because if Katherine stole him, it gives Dakota a motive for wanting revenge. And I’m wondering about something else. “I guess the thing I don’t understand is how Katherine could do that to Dakota and then two weeks later they were acting like best friends again.”
    “That’s what happened?”
    “You didn’t know?”
    He shakes his head. “I haven’t talked to either of them. To tell you the truth, I’m totally fine with that. I mean, at first I felt pretty bad about Dakota. It was probably stupid of me to believe all that stuff about her being a slut and having STDs and all. But …” His voice trails off.
    “But?”
    He seems reluctant to say more.
    “Please, if there’s something I should know …,” I say, urging him. “Something that would help prove that I didn’t kill Katherine.”
    “Well … I don’t know what this’ll prove, but when that whole thing happened, when Dakota found out about me and Katherine … I started getting some really freaky texts. The callback number was blocked, so I could never completely be sure who they were from, but I’m almost positive they were from Dakota.”
    “What did they say?”
    “Really bizarre threatening stuff. But the thing is, like I just said, I can’t swear they came from her. I mean, it makes sense that she’s the one who sent them, and it wasn’t like anyone else had a reason to send me things like that, but the police said—”
    “The police? How did the police know?”
    Griffen looks surprised. “We told them. I mean, the texts were totally threatening. As soon as I got them, I told my parents and they went to the police. But the