The Dead Girl's Wheel of Wish novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Hartigan the Murderer

Brock's clip of Jo goes viral by dinner and Dane calmly lies about the seat. A stranger watching from the door is Corinna's brother, who says Corinna called her at 2:14.

By noon the clip had eleven thousand views.

Brock VanDerpool had posted it on the campus forum under the title "Hartigan the Murderer."

Somebody had added slow music.

I watched myself take Roxanne's phone out of her hand again and again, because the clip looped.

In the comments, a stranger had written: She better pray that girl's mom lives.

Under it, three hundred people had liked the comment.

I walked back to my dorm with my hood up.

Someone had written MURDERER across the whiteboard on my door in red marker.

I wiped it off with my sleeve, and the red smeared into a pink cloud.

Roxanne's phone was still in my hoodie pocket.

I had meant to give it back in the hall, but she'd left the room in a crowd of people who were patting her shoulders.

Now I took it out and woke the screen.

The wheel was still open on it, black arrow at the top.

At the bottom of the page was a small grey number I hadn't noticed on the projector.

It said 40.

I stared at it.

It had been nine days since Corinna died, and the counter said forty.

Forty-nine days was how long my grandmother's church said a soul stayed near its house.

I put the phone away and went to dinner anyway.

I wasn't going to hide in my room while they decided who I was.

The dining hall went quiet when I walked in, and then loud again, all at once.

Roxanne was at her usual table by the windows with four girls I had never seen her talk to.

I walked over and put her phone beside her plate.

"I didn't spin it," I said. "It's yours. I just didn't want you to."

Roxanne took it without looking up.

She held it in both hands in her lap, and her thumb moved on the glass.

"Is that all?" she asked.

"Rox."

"Is that all, Jo?"

I stood there, and nobody at the table said anything.

Then I felt a hand on my elbow, light and polite.

"Jo," Dane Whitlow said. "Can we talk for a minute? Privately?"

He had traded the letter for a clean blue blazer.

Behind him, Brock was leaning on a pillar with his phone already up.

"Here is fine," I said.

Dane sighed, a small tired sound that made him look reasonable.

"I know you were close with Corinna. Nobody here is trying to hurt you. But this morning you accused me in front of two hundred people."

"I said the seat was hers."

"The committee reassigned it. It's in an email."

"Then show me the email."

"It's confidential."

"Then say it to the room," I said. "Say you didn't take Corinna's seat."

The dining hall was listening now.

Dane smiled at me and held it a beat too long.

"I was given it," he said. "That's different."

"When?"

"Jo."

"When did they give it to you? Before she died, or after the rumors?"

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

Brock took one step off the pillar. "Leave him alone, Hartigan. He didn't push anybody off a roof."

"Neither did I," I said. "I'm the one who didn't spin."

A girl at the next table laughed.

I looked past her, toward the door, because something made me look.

A man stood in the doorway with a cardboard box under one arm.

He was tall, in a flannel jacket with the sleeves pushed up, and he wasn't looking at Dane or at Brock.

He was looking at me.

I had never seen him before in my life, and I knew his face anyway.

He had Corinna's jaw and her straight dark eyebrows.

Only his eyes were different, and they were flat and tired and angry.

I left my tray on the table and walked out through the side door.

The cold hit me in the face, and I took three steps down the path toward the quad before the door opened behind me.

"Hartigan," the man said.

I turned around.

He set the box on a bench, and I saw Corinna's pink desk lamp sticking out of the top.

"I'm Elias Newcomb," he said. "Corinna was my sister."

"I'm sorry," I said, and my voice broke on it. "I'm so sorry."

"I watched your clip too," he said. "You were the only one in that room who didn't want anything from her."

I couldn't answer.

He took a phone out of his jacket pocket, and it had a crack across one corner and a purple case with a sticker of a cartoon frog.

It was Corinna's.

"I've had this since the police gave it back," he said. "I read her call log last week."

He turned the screen toward me.

At the top of the list, in red, was the last call she ever made.

March 3. 2:14 a.m.

My name, and a duration of zero.

"She called you," Elias said. "You didn't pick up."

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