Page 73 of Switching Graves
Fragile? Jesus Christ, I should have just made them leave when they offered.
“Just for a second. I won’t ruin it, I promise.”
All three of them watch me with wide, expectant gazes. Of course, Ava will be careful. She probably handles documents and texts way older than this journal on a daily basis. Aside from the increased risk of being caught, there’s something wrong about sharing these with other people. Like, they aren’t meant for justanyoneto read.
But Ava isn’t justanyoneand I think I can trust her—even if my judgment seems a little skewed lately. If I refuse any longer, it’ll only encourage them to pry harder.
With that thought in mind, I slowly hand the journal over to her waiting hands. She accepts it, her eyes lingering on my face before she slowly turns it around in a silent appraisal. Opening the front cover, her lips purse at the name scribbled on the first page. I gnaw on my bottom lip as she flips to the next page, her eyes scanning over Finley’s words.
I feel like a child who was caught stealing. And yet somewhere, deep in my chest, I’m relieved that someone else finally knows about the journals. Someone who actually cares about the implications they have, unlike Poppy.
“Poppy . . . ” Ava begins, and just I nod my head. “Whitlock had this?”
“What is it?” Beatrix interrupts.
Nodding, I keep my eyes locked on Ava. “There’s at least six of them. This is the third.”
Ava scans the next page, her brows pulled together in a disbelieving frown. “Why would he have these?”
My heart skips a beat as I excitedly blurt out, “I think the other boy is his family member. I’m not sure he even knows they exist.”
I had no idea how much I needed to talk about this.
“Hello? What does it say?” Beatrix tries again. When neither of us responds again, she looks toward Jonah with a frustrated huff.
“I don’t understand. This is dated after Ravenshurst was founded. How could a Landry have written about it when they were all dead?”
Beatrix steps forward and pulls the journal from Ava’s hands, earning a scowl from both of us as she roughly opens it up. Jonah leans over her shoulder to look, too.
“According to these, they weren’t all dead.”
“This is for a research project?” Beatrix asks, her voice raising in confusion.
Dropping my eyes to the floor, I admit, “Well, it’s more of a personal project.”
Ava blows out a breath. “This is huge.”
I bob my head in an excited nod, holding my finger up while I run off to my room to grab the others. When I return, I can’t help the smile that’s spread across my face when I hand them over to Ava.
“The first one talks all about what happened to his family. It’s brutal,” I explain in a rush. “A lot of it is his mundane, day-to-day musings, but it’s so interesting to see how he survived without anyone knowing. Especially at such a young age.”
Beatrix and Jonah sit back down as I recall the basics of what I read, not going into as much detail as he did when it came to the violence that the Landrys endured. Ava stands beside me and nods along, her expression unreadable.
“So, everything the university says about the Landrys is a lie,” Beatrix surmises.
I shrug. “There are a lot of inconsistencies.”
Lifting a single, perfectly manicured brow, Ava crosses her arms and shifts her weight to one foot. “How long have you had these?”
“A few weeks,” I admit, holding my hands up in defense when she pops her mouth open to yell at me. “I didn’t exactly get permission to take them, and I wasn’t about to risk taking you down with me if I got caught.”
“What do we do now?” Ava asks.
“There’s nothing we can do, right? It’s a sad story, but the school is already here and the town is pretty set in their history,” Beatrix laughs.
Ava furrows her brow and blanches at her friend. “So, we just let them profit from other people’s suffering? Leave the town looking like the heroes who honored the family they murdered in cold blood?”
“Maybe we can hunt down this Finley kid and see if he ended up having a family. Pay them reparations or something . . . ” Jonah suggests.