The Killer She Trusted

Written by:[Archana Kaushik, Ba Program 1st year]

She trusted him.

He Killed her.

What if the person helping you find your killer was the one who killed you?

In Holly Jackson’s Not Quite Dead Yet, Billy is Jet’s partner in crime. Literally.

Her last hope to finish the one thing she started: finding the person who killed her.

But what if Billy was the one who attacked Jet?

If Billy had attacked Jet and doomed her to her untimely death a week later, that would transform the story from a tale of lost love into one of a living psychological nightmare.

He helped her throughout her last week. She trusted him enough to help her find her killer.

On her last day, when she was finally closing in on the person who had taken away her chance to live, she discovers the Coleby tool kit in Billy’s closet.

Her heart starts beating like the seconds hand on the clock counting down her ending life as she looks through the tool kit, desperate to find the yellow hammer with which she was attacked.

But she finds nothing.

Because Billy was the one who attacked her.

After he attacked her, he buried the hammer in the fresh cement of a new building that Jet’s brother was investing in. She knew subconsciously that she wouldn’t find the hammer there.

It was Billy.

The same Billy who had written songs about her. The same person who had held her as she cried about not wanting to die so soon. The same person who promised her that he would help her find her murderer.

Maybe Billy didn’t try to hide it so desperately.

In this ending, he lets her know that he was, in fact, her killer. No buried emotions, just true detachment. He lets her look into his eyes, so she would have the grim comfort of knowing that she solved her own murder.

This version of Billy did not love Jet.

In contrast, he was so obsessed with her that he was willing to kill her if it meant that she did not end up with him.

He gets irritated at first when he sees that Jet has finally learnt the truth. But then, there is a brief sense of relief as he realizes that he doesn’t have to hide it anymore.

And the only person who knows that he was responsible for dooming Jet was going to be dead soon.

Jet solves her own murder in the last moments of her life.

She stares blankly at the face of the person she was starting to fall in love with. The same blue eyes of Billy which once made her want to swim in them now make her feel like she is drowning, with no escape, no light.

She solves her murder, and it is the biggest betrayal of her life.

As Jet realizes that Billy killed her, she is robbed of comfort. She ends up dying with no closure, only knowing that the person with whom she was ready to risk her life was, in the end, the cause of her own.

Perhaps the cruelest part isn’t that Jet found her killer. It’s that she found him in the person she trusted most.

Edited by:[Akshita Chandel, English Honours 1st year]