Prompt: Guess I better come clean/ I was lying through my teeth (Someone New, The 77's)

"I expect you know why you're here, Mr. Faber?"

"Yeah. Yes, I do."

"Start from the beginning, please."

Ty took a deep breath, tugging at his sweater sleeves. "Yeah, okay."

Detective Bentley leaned over the table, hands pressed against the sterile surface, as clean and white as the rest of the interrogation room. "We don't have all day, kid. There are parents out there who want to know how their kids died."

"Okay... It was the five of us - Vince, Landry, Eliza, Bryn, and me. We'd been friends since grade school and we did everything together. So we were studying for exams, right? Midterms are coming up, and we were studying for calculus."

He faltered, biting his lip.

"You came here to tell us what happened, kid. Come on."

"I know, it's just - God. Freaking calculus."

Bentley crossed his arms. "If it makes you feel any better, the more you tell us, the sooner we can arrest those responsible."

"All right, okay. Well, calculus is hard, and even Vince, who's the smartest of all of us, he can't make heads or tails of it. The rest of us rely on him and Landry for studies just a bit, you know, so we're going to flunk this exam with a zero if Vince can't do it. Which cannot happen, 'cause our parents all went to Rice together, and if we don't get into their alma mater we're facing big-time trouble. My dad gets crazy mad when I let him down, you know?"

"So you decided to cheat."

"The calculus teacher, old man Webster, he hasn't changed the test for 20 years. Some guy who was a senior a few years back got a picture of the key. We got in touch."

"You have a name for me?"

Ty closed his eyes and tightened his fists. "Yeah, but you won't find him now."

"Why not?" Bentley furrowed his brow.

"It was part of the deal. We would get the answers if we sold to our friends."

"A drug dealer? Effective, I suppose."

"Yeah. His name was Clarence Krum. He supplied us every Sunday and we were sold out the next week around."

"You go to Saint John's, right? Classy private school. Rich kids are smarter than that."

Ty shook his head, smiling ruefully. "Most of them were seniors, like us. Exam week was coming up, too. We just wanted to have a little fun, you know? Mess around a little, and the highs were epic." His smile fell into a sour expression.

"But you wouldn't know, would you?"

The boy jumped, startled. "What?"

"Drug dealers don't let their runners use their products."

"Y-Yeah. Exactly. So we were selling like crazy, making good money, and sure enough, we get the exam key. I'm ready to step out of the picture, 'cause we have all we need for the exam and all..."

"But this Clarence won't let you go. Threatens to turn you in to us, right?"

"And we knew he would be a ghost. You'd never be able to catch him." Ty slumped in his chair and Bentley shook his head.

"Cliche. But continue."

"Right. So, besides that, we're flying high, until a girl gets killed."

Bentley rifled through one of the files strewn across the table. "Ariana Howe?"

"She was in our class. Vince sold to her. He said one night she bought from him and must have gotten really high. Hit and run."

"We found her body. Her injuries suggest that you're telling the truth. She also had massive amounts of crack in her system."

"It's not my fault what they do with the stuff! We just sell it." Ty took a shuddering breath. "We knew we were in deep stuff then. Ariana was dead, man. Vince was a wreck afterwards. Tortured himself about it every minute of the day. Bryn freaked about it, too. She knew Ariana pretty well, and it was a big shock to know that she had kind of helped kill her. She wanted out."

Bentley frowned, flipping through the file. "I have record that Bryn Endress is dead."

"Eliza was into it. She liked selling, and we were getting a cut of the profits, too. Out of the five of us she was easily making the most. She was always the rebellious type, too, so this was right up her alley. When Bryn chickened out Eliza didn't want her to tell the cops about us. Besides, both had dated Vince for a while. There was some enmity there."

"Bryn Endress was stabbed fifteen times with a kitchen knife."

"Oh, God..." Ty held his head in his hands. 

"Come on, kid. What else happened?"

"Landry came the next day with a black eye. This other guy, Walter - he's a huge football jock - he wanted in since we were making boatloads of money. And Walter gets what he wants, you know? He was blackmailing Landry, trying to get in. Landry wasn't a tough guy, either. He was going to cave in."

Bentley looked up at Ty. "I'm guessing Eliza didn't like that?"

"She totally freaked. Said if any of us told she would do us worse than a black eye. She was rabid. Feral. Vince tried to calm her down, but she was uptight. Scared Landry straight, he vowed never to doubt again. But Walter kept pushing and pushing."

"Landry never called the cops."

"I know, I know. Then Vince got caught."

"We found him in the park selling to freshmen. Vincent Allman's arrest record is here."

"Landry was terrified. He'd never been in trouble before in his life, and then he was knee-deep in drugs and murder. He was going to give in. Trembling all the time, wide-eyed, and that only made Walter pound him harder. He was going to snap. We tried to console him, even said we would give him a pinch of our stuff. He went crazy, threatening to turn us all in, no matter what Eliza would do."

"Let me guess - Eliza didn't like that."

"She was livid. Furious. Both of them were insane, absolutely mad. She was going to kill him, just like she killed Bryn."

Ty clenched his hands together and rocked back and forth in his chair.

"Hey, it's okay, kid. It's all over now."

"I know! It's just that Landry was a good kid, you know? He never got unhinged, he didn't even know which side of a gun fired until we told him And now he was going to get murdered." 

"I have Landry dead by blunt-force trauma."

"No, he got to Eliza first. He went to her house and took some of the own stuff he was selling. Put a needle in and dosed her as much as he could. She didn't stand a chance."

"Eliza Aikman's brain was practically fried. No joke he overdosed her." Bentley shuffled the file aside and pulled out a single page. "This is Landry's autopsy. Want to tell me what happened?"

Ty shook his head. "No. No."

"Listen, kid." Bentley reached out a hand and placed it on Ty's shoulder. "You said this was a good bunch. Some drug dealer screwed that up, and now not only their lives are ruined, but the lives of their families and friends. You want Bryn's mom to think her daughter was killed by gang violence? You want Eliza's friends to think she was depressed, to think they could have saved her?"

"Stop."

"Maybe they could have had her over for a sleepover! Maybe she wouldn't have killed herself!"

"Stop it!"

Bentley stood and began to pace back and forth. "How did Landry end up with blunt-force trauma to the head?"

Ty's voice was hollow. "It was me."

"You?"

"He came to my house one night. Shivering, trembling. I was scared first, because I knew it was him who had killed Eliza, and I thought he was coming for me. More money for him if I was dead or something, whatever. He said he just wanted to talk. My parents weren't home so I invited him in."

Bentley stopped pacing and faced Ty. "What did he say?"

"He wanted to back out. I could see why. He had been beaten by Walter and tortured waiting for Eliza to do him in. He thought if we both backed out then the deal would fall apart. After all, we had our exam answers. Exams! Jesus... Two dead for exams. He asked me if I would back out with him."

"What did you say?"

"No. I said no."

There was a silence Bentley glanced at Ty.

"Why did you say that?"

"I don't know, okay?" Ty shouted, slamming his fists on the table, then reeling back and pulling at his hair. "Maybe I was still mad he had killed Eliza. Maybe I liked the money. I was untouched for most of the time, so I didn't know what he had been through."

"What did Landry say, Ty?"

"His face was slack, horrified. He couldn't stand up to Walter again, I knew just by looking at him. If he gave in I would go to jail, though. So I stood, tried to be kind of threatening, you know, like, 'Now, Landry, don't you back out now! We've been doing this for too long, I'm not going to prison!' And he got scared, 'cause I started backing him into a corner. We were in the kitchen and he grabbed a paring knife, trying to keep me back. But you could see the change in his eyes when he realized I wasn't going to back out. He came at me with the knife."

"Did you retaliate?"

"I had to! I was not going to be the next Bryn. Landry's smart and all, but he's not too strong, so after a few seconds I shoved him, hard -" Ty's voice cracked and he buried his head in his arms. "Oh, my God."

"What happened, kid?"

"He tripped and fell backwards. Bashed his head on the edge of the counter. Dead before he hit the ground."

"That's when you called us." 

"Yeah. I wanted it over with. I was finished."

Bentley sat back down again, collecting the files into one big stack. "Two more questions before I leave, kid. Why did you really call us?"

Ty shrank back in his chair. "What do you mean? I meant what I said - I just wanted it over with. This whole stupid thing killed three of my friends, and put the other one in prison! Why would I not want to come clean? Speaking of coming clean, actually... Will I go to jail?"

"I'm not judge, but I'd say yes. And I have one more question. When were you supposed to take the calculus exam?"

Ty slumped even lower in the chair, defeated and jailbound. When he spoke again his voice was dull and flat. Broken. "Today. We were supposed to take the exam today."

A/N. Isn't this a great song? Random author's note, sure but I really like this song! Kind of reminds me of Back to the Future for some reason. :)