Chapter 4

Fueled by a fresh wave of indignation, Ava started flipping through the diary again, searching for more evidence to condemn me. She wanted to prove to everyone, and to the gnawing doubt in her own gut, that she was on the right side of this.

"There has to be more," she muttered, her thumb smudging the ink on the old pages.

She found it a few pages later. An entry from the summer before college. The handwriting was shakier than usual.

July 22nd.

Something is wrong with Liam. We were at the lake house, the three of us. My parents were gone for the weekend. Ava was swimming. Liam and I were making sandwiches. He made mine. I took one bite and it tasted... wrong. Bitter. Chemical. I spat it out immediately. My throat started to burn. My stomach cramped so badly I fell to the floor. Liam just stood there, watching me, his eyes wide.

Ava' s blood ran cold. She remembered that day. Daniel had gotten violently ill. They' d had to rush him to the emergency room. The doctors said it was a severe allergic reaction to something he ate.

Liam had been so apologetic. He' d cried. He said he must have accidentally used a knife that had touched shellfish, which I was allergic to. A simple, stupid mistake.

She had comforted him. She had told him it wasn' t his fault.

The comments section paused, the rapid-fire hatred slowing to a crawl.

TrueCrimeJunkie22: Whoa. Poison?

user8871: Liam tried to poison him?

LiamIsAnAngel: NO! It was an accident! Daniel even said he was allergic to shellfish! Liam just made a mistake!

Ava seized on that explanation. It was the only one she could stomach.

"It was an accident," she said, her voice trembling slightly. She was talking to the stream, but she was trying to convince herself. "Liam didn' t know. He has a shellfish allergy too, he gets them confused. It was a terrible, tragic mistake."

She wanted to stop reading. She wanted to close the book and throw it into the fire Liam was so eager to build. But she couldn' t. Her eyes were glued to the page, reading the next paragraph against her will.

I believed him at first. I told him it was okay, that accidents happen. But something felt off. The way he looked at me when I was on the floor... it wasn' t concern. It was... disappointment. Later that night, when he thought I was asleep, I used his laptop to look up directions for the nearest hospital. His search history was still open.

Ava' s heart stopped.

He hadn' t been searching for hospitals. He had been searching for 'household products that mimic shellfish allergy' and 'lethal dose of bleach for 180-pound male' .

A collective, virtual gasp went through the comments.

OMG

HOLY SHIT

user_h8s_bullies: He... he tried to MURDER him.

LiamIsAnAngel: NO FAKE FAKE FAKE

The flimsy defense of an "accident" shattered into a million pieces. This wasn't a mistake. This was premeditated. This was attempted murder.

Ava looked up from the diary, her eyes wide with horror. She looked at Liam.

He was no longer the grieving, haunted victim. His face was pale, his eyes darting around nervously. He looked like a cornered animal.

He looked guilty.