Kill Your Brother by Jack Heath

Kill Your Brother by Jack Heath

Author:Jack Heath [Heath, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2021-10-08T00:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER 25

Stephanie sat on the edge of the cliff, thinking. The brown water swirled far below, carrying dead leaves downstream. The clouds were pink and gold in one direction, bruised and stormy in the other.

She had picked this spot because it was isolated, and threatening. A good place to scare a confession out of somebody. But it turned out to be a good spot to reflect on death, too.

When she’d checked Zach’s pulse, she had been shocked, then scared. She had crossed a line. In fact, she had crossed it the moment she typed ‘how to make chloroform’ into a search engine, and now it was way too late to go back. The police would soon be after her. And she hadn’t found out why Zach had sent those messages. The whole exercise had been pointless.

There was another regret, from a darker place in her psyche. Zach had never known why she had killed him. He hadn’t had any time to feel fear, or to regret what he had done to Moon. She had snuffed him out in a few chaotic seconds.

A search of his schoolbag turned up nothing of interest. There was a tablet. A change of clothes for PE. A lunchbox containing mandarin peel and a mustard-stained scrap of a tortilla. She could bury or burn all that stuff when she got home.

But the phone in his pocket could be traced. She couldn’t take it anywhere near her house. Maybe she should chuck it into the river. If anyone followed the trail later, they might think Zach had gone to this clifftop and jumped.

Stephanie licked her teeth, mulling it over. Then she went back to her Barina and popped the boot. She used Zach’s soft, limp thumb to unlock the phone, then swiped through his messages.

She saw nothing interesting. Nothing coherent, even. Teen lingo had certainly changed since her day. Half the time Zach didn’t even use words—he expressed his emotions using pictures of celebrities or cartoon characters, none of whom Stephanie recognised.

She had the idea that she could message one of his friends about Moon. It was too late to make Zach regret what he’d done. But she could make others think he regretted it, enough to throw himself off a cliff. There was a certain symmetry in that.

Before she tried it, though, she searched for ‘Moon’ in his messages.

She found what she expected to. The messages he’d sent to Moon, the ones she’d seen already. But there were also messages he had sent to others about Moon.

Stephanie stared at the screen. It felt like she was falling—she had to steady herself on the side of the car.

Did you hear Moon Hartnell fucked a teacher?!

Under the message, there was a gif of a clown looking shocked.



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