Nate's eyes focus on Harry and a look of pure shock contorts his features. He takes a staggering step back, blinking as if not believing what he sees.
"Harry?"
Harry walks toward him. "Surprised?"
"What are you doing here?" Nate asks shakily. "I...I watched you die."
Oh my God.
Everything falls into place. It was Nate all along. Nate, who had been in Harry's shadow just as Max was, having to be the odd one out in their group of three with Harry and Max being closer to one another than they were with him. Nate, who is the father of Ava's baby. Nate, who has Paranoid Personality Disorder. Nate killed Harry. Nate is the murderer.
"You killed me, and I have unfinished business," Harry says. "So I'm stuck here until I can cross to the afterlife. Because of you."
"So...what are you?" Nate asks, eyes wide.
"A phantom," Harry says, his voice strong, his mouth curving into a smirk.
I suddenly look frantically at him, remembering that he's supposed to cross once he finds his killer, but he doesn't leave. He's still there, standing beside me.
"Harry," I say. "Why aren't you...why aren't you crossing?"
Harry moves his eyes from Nate to me slowly.
"Wait," I say, shaking my head. "You...you knew."
He looks down. "When I went into that room-my father's old study, I began remembering things. And then I reached down to touch the blood stain on the floor and...everything came back to me. I remembered who killed me and mostly everything that happened that night." He pauses, looking into my eyes. "I also realized that my unfinished business was not simply to find my murderer, but to in fact seek revenge on them."
I try to swallow, but my throat is dry. "What kind of revenge?" I ask slowly.
Harry's eyes burn with an emotion I can't place, and I see his old personality shine through, the one I did not like.
"Answer me," I say. "What kind of revenge?"
Nate looks from me to Harry. "I know," he says, eyes locking with Harry's. "He's here to kill me."
Everything I thought I knew about Harry crumbles as I take a step away from him. "You lied to me," I say. "Why did you lie to me?"
"If I told you I was going to kill the one who killed me, would you have agreed to continue helping me?"
"So you manipulated me," I say. "Why would you need me after the breaking into the room, then? Couldn't you have come here yourself?"
Before Harry can answer, Nate speaks up, malice building in his eyes.
"You really haven't changed," he says to Harry. "Manipulative in life and manipulative in death."
"You haven't known me in death," Harry replies, glaring at Nate.
"I know you now. Look at you. Using a girl who had nothing to do with this before to help you find me."
"Why'd you do it?" Harry asks. "What did I do that was so goddamn horrible you had to kill me?"
"Where do I begin? Oh, right. Let's start with the fact you made Ava abort the child. You never loved her, why would you care if she had the baby or not?"
"I didn't make her do anything," Harry spits. "She didn't even abort it in the end. She had a miscarriage."
"That was my child!" Nate shouts. "And you had the nerve to scream at her when she told you about it. You had the nerve to degrade her like that!"
"You think she loved you? She was drunk when you slept together. She told me herself. She always loved me, even if the feeling wasn't mutual. She never loved you for a second."
Nate takes a menacing step toward Harry, and Harry laughs. "You can't hurt me, I'm dead," he says, his voice dripping in venom.
"She would have been better off with me, someone who actually loves her," Nate growls. "She could have been happy with me."
"Happy with someone who threatened her?" I speak up. Nate looks at me. "Yeah, I know you threatened her if she told anyone you were the father. I'm not scared of you."
"Who knew," Nate says, turning towards me. "All this time you overlooked me, didn't you? Did you find the little note I wrote you?"
The note. Nate wrote the note with 'PPD' written on it. He knew I'd find it. "You planted that?"
Nate smiles. "I knew you'd snoop in Max's room. It was so easy to pin it on him. Good thing we look alike."
"You brought in the mirror," I say. "You posed as Ian Whitmore."
"Easy to pin it on Ian, too," Nate says, letting out a disdainful laugh. "You're smart, Jane, but you don't seem to understand the art of hiding in plain sight."
Flashes of the parties I'd gone to in hopes of getting new information go through my mind. Every time, there was Nate, sitting quietly, having normal conversations with everyone else. There was Nate, flying directly under my radar.
"Did you honestly think you'd get away with this?" Harry asks Nate. "Did you honestly think the police would never find out?"
"Yes," Nate says. "If it weren't for you remembering what happened, like you said, no one would have known. The case never would have been solved without the help of the phantom."
"You were my best friend," Harry says lowly.
"No, Max was your best friend," Nate snaps. "You couldn't care less about me half the time. It was always Max that you hung out with, Max you knew the longest, Max that was your partner in crime. I was always the odd one out, the outcast. But you and Max never cared, did you?"
"Why not kill Max too, then?"
"Because you had Ava. You always had Ava. Whether you wanted her or not, she was yours."
"Ava isn't just an object," I snap. "She could've been with whoever she wanted, and clearly she didn't want you."
"She wanted me," Harry says. "She probably still does."
"You treated Ava like dirt," Nate sneers at Harry. "You treated everyone like dirt. I did this town a favor by killing you."
Harry glares at Nate, his jaw locked tight.
"And you," Nate says, turning to me. "You thought you could trust him, didn't you? Even after I know you saw those tapes. You trusted him, you fell in love with him, even when you knew how horrible he was when he was alive. And let me tell you something: he would have treated you the same way if I hadn't killed him. People don't change. Not even when they die."
"That's not true," I say. "You're wrong."
"Am I? Look at us now. He's going to kill me. He deceived you. Look at him and tell me he's not the exact person from those tapes-except, without a heartbeat."
"Tell her, go ahead and tell her," Harry shouts at Nate. "Tell her exactly how you killed me. Tell her what you did to me!"
Nate locks his jaw.
Harry looks at me. "We got into a fight a few weeks after we found out Ava miscarried, in my father's study on June eighth. He blamed me for it and we were yelling, and then he threw a punch at me. Max had left the room. So I fought back, and he slammed me against the mirror with brute force, and strangled me with his bare hands."
Harry remembered all of that and he didn't tell me. He told me he didn't remember anything when we broke into the room.
"I didn't mean to kill you at first," Nate says, his voice low. "At first, it was an accident. But after time passed, I was glad I did."
"Wait a second," I say. "You planted the note that read 'PPD.' Is it true? Do you have...?"
Nate smiles sinisterly. "See, that's a funny story. Dear Max believed I had Paranoid Personality Disorder, and tried to get his lovely father the leading psychiatrist to send me to a facility for treatment. But I didn't want to go, and my father didn't want me to go. So here I am."
I suddenly flash back to when I was in the library so many weeks ago, and heard Max speaking to someone harshly, urging them to go see someone. It must have been Nate. Max wanted Nate to go to a facility to be treated. Max is the Benvolio of it all-he stood by, knowing Nate had PPD. He left the room before Nate and Harry got into their fight the night of the eighth. All the fights Nate and Harry must have had leading up to the eighth, he must have stood by, letting them happen. He is the bystander.
"We grew up together," Harry says to Nate, shaking his head. "We were on the same soccer team every year, we went to all the same parties and everything."
"Then why didn't you act like it? You say that now, but you and I both know you never treated me like someone you knew your whole life. You couldn't care less about me. Or anyone, for that matter."
"So you had to kill me?"
"I told you," Nate says, his eyes flashing. "It was a happy little accident."
I stare at him, and I see how insane he is. PPD isn't the only mental disorder he must have. How sick must one person must be to call the accidental death of your close friend a 'happy little accident?'
"What about the clearing?" Harry asks. "You burned it, didn't you?"
"Of course I burned it. More of a warning to Jane than anything. I knew she had been snooping around and talking to Ava. I had to do something."
"You're sick," I say.
"That was the last thing I had left," Harry says through gritted teeth. "And you destroyed it."
"And now you have nothing," Nate says, smiling maliciously. "Nothing but hate for me and false love for her."
"It's not false."
"It doesn't matter," I snap. "This isn't about me."
Harry shakes his head at Nate. "You killed me for a petty reason," he says through gritted teeth. "Envy."
"Not envy," Nate says. "I killed you because you deserved to be killed. You deserved it more than anything. And you know what? If you were alive right now, I would kill you again."
"This ends now," Harry says, reaching into his pocket and retrieving something. He points a small pistol at Nate, malice burning behind his eyes. "Remember this gun, Nate? It was hung in my father's study, on the same wall you slammed me against to kill me!"
"Do it," Nate says, almost laughing. "Do it. Kill me. I invite it."
Harry steps closer to Nate, getting ready to shoot.
"No, stop!" In a rapid movement, I put myself between Nate and the gun, the metal barrel of the gun touching my collarbone.
"Jane, what the hell are you doing?" Harry lowers the gun, staring at me disbelievingly. "Why would you take the bullet for him?"
"If you kill him, you're no better than he is," I say lowly, searching Harry's eyes for any ounce of mercy. "I can't let you do this."
"I need to do this to cross," he says. "He needs to die."
"And then what? You cross, and he crosses too? Is that the outcome you want? You'd be a killer just as he is."
"You don't understand," Harry says. "This is the only way to the afterlife for me."
"Don't stoop to that level," I say, shaking my head. "I know you're better than him. I know you're not the things he says you are anymore. Prove that to me."
Harry stands frozen, staring at me. Slowly, I reach for the barrel of the gun, taking it from him and tossing it to the side. My heart is beating fast as Harry's eyes lock on mine, the cool jade color slowly being drained of vengeance. He reaches for me and I wrap my arms around him, his lips pressing against my neck as I hold him to me.
And suddenly, there's rustling behind me, and Harry and I let go of each other to see Nate kneeling beside Harry's grave, picking up the gun.
"Should've shot me," he says to Harry, lifting the gun to his head. "I haven't wanted to live for a long time."
Bang.
Nate falls to the ground, blood rushing out of his head. The gun slips from his fingers and he lays, lifeless, before Harry's grave.
My heart pounds as I look away, trying not to vomit at the sight. Tears make their way out of my eyes and down my face as I open my eyes, needing Harry to tell me it's okay, that everything will turn out all right.
But when I look around for Harry, he's gone.