Blood on My Hands

might go to jail. Yesterday it just got to be too much for me and I took a bunch of pills. Like, everything I could find in the medicine cabinet. But after I took them, I realized I’d made a mistake and I called 911. They brought me here and pumped my stomach and then someone came in … I think she said she was the staff psychiatrist or something, and she asked me why I’d wanted to kill myself and it all just came out. And she pretty much said I had to tell the police what I’d told her.
M    And since you’re eighteen, you’re not a minor and don’t need your parents’ approval to give this confession. But I’m curious why you haven’t consulted them.
J    They were here last night and again today, but I know what they’d want to do if I told them the truth about what happened. They’d want to hire a lawyer and try to get me off without being punished. And they probably have enough money and connections to do it, too. But that’s not what I want.
M    What do you want?
J    I … I need to take responsibility for what I did. Otherwise I don’t think I can live with myself.
B    Well, like I said, we appreciate that and what you’ve told us. Now, is there anything else you want to tell us that we haven’t asked about?
J    No, I think I’ve told you everything.
B    At any time during this interview did you feel coerced or forced to say something you believed was not true?
J    No. I told you everything I wanted to tell you. You didn’t make me say anything I didn’t want to say. I’m just … really sorry about what happened.
B    Ms. Sanchez, at any time during this interview did you observe Miss Jenkins being coerced or forced to say anything it appeared she did not believe was true?
NU    No. It appeared to me that she gave all the information willingly.
B    It is now 4:12 on September seventeenth. This concludes our interview with Miss Dakota Jenkins.

Chapter 50
    IN THE DAYS that followed Slade’s arrest, the news reported that the police had found traces of Katherine’s blood on the floor mat in Slade’s pickup. They’d also determined that the downward angle of the stab wounds on her body meant that Katherine’s killer was likely to be taller than she was and right-handed. And probably not a short lefty, like me. Finally, they’d found evidence, Slade’s DNA, under Katherine’s fingernails.
    Dakota had convinced Slade to hide near the dugout with latex gloves and a stocking over his head. Before the kegger, Dakota went to Katherine’s house, pretending she wanted to make up after their most recent fight. While she was there, she took one of the kitchen knives. At the kegger she met Slade by the dugout and gave him the knife. Later she told Katherine she wanted to speak to her in private about everything that had happened between them and suggested that Katherine go to the dugout and wait for her.
    Katherine went to the dugout, where Slade was hiding and drinking. He heard her coming and stepped out in his disguise with the knife. But Katherine recognized him. Assuming that he was only trying to scare her, and that this was his revenge for her getting me to break up with him, she laughed and taunted him, saying that if he was stupid enough to do something like this, then she was glad she’d gotten me to break up with him, because he really didn’t deserve me.
    Until that moment, Slade had believed Dakota’s lie—that I’d broken up with him because of another guy. But now he learned that it was Katherine who’d engineered the breakup. And he lost it. There was no other way to explain it. When he thought of all the pain she had randomly caused him, all the hope she had so easily and callously destroyed, he just plain freaked out.
    There was a slight struggle, just enough for Katherine to get some traces of his skin under her nails. Then he stabbed her.
    He ran across the ball field to his truck and left. Then he stopped and called Dakota to tell her what had happened and say that he was going to turn himself in to the police. But Dakota’s initial reaction was that she was almost as much to blame for the murder as he was, and she convinced him not to do it. She promised him she would take care of it.
    She had connections.
    Dakota took care of it by sending me to the dugout to look for Katherine, then following with a crowd of kids. She took the photo of me beside Katherine’s body, then posted it on the Internet.
    So why were the