Under the surface, in the cold, in the salt, swallowed by waves, I pressed my eyes shut, letting myself sink. And in that moment a wild wishing came over me. I wanted to stay here, submerged forever. Above the surface, all the days of my life were waiting like a promise. There was nothing but a blank slate, and anything goes, and what if. My life could mean anything, I could become anyone, as long as I didn’t break surface, as long as I stayed here, suspended, in this beautiful, infinite now.
Chapter 35
Now
Coop’s voice tugged me back from the window like he had me on a string, my body responding before my mind fully realized it.
“What are you doing here?” I stumbled backwards. “How did you know where I was?”
He stood framed by the doorway, breathing hard, his hair sweaty and disheveled. He looked like he’d sprinted across the entire campus. He’d lost his sweater somehow; I imagined him tearing it off as he ran. Now he wore only a black T-shirt, the sleeves torn, threads hanging over his biceps. He clutched something in his right hand.
“Get away from there.” Coop slid over the wall of couches and lunged, pulling me back from the shattered window. He turned me so his back faced the open sky, his chest a shield, fingers gripping my shoulders. His heart drummed. I closed my eyes and memorized the pressure of his body, his scent—woodsy and wild, citrus and earth.
“How did you know?” I repeated.
I felt Coop’s chin drop on my head. “This was my place. When things were bad, you always found me.”
It was true. Back then, I’d always stumbled into him. A strange coincidence, except it wasn’t; it was a gravitational pull. Now, as he held me at the top of Blackwell Tower, it was like we were right back in junior year, back to a normal day. This moment—this precious bubble of time—was a gift, however long it lasted.
Coop pulled away from me, holding me at arm’s length. “Please tell me you weren’t doing what it looked like.”
And the moment was over.
I looked past him, out the window. Even now, at my lowest, I still couldn’t say it. Not to him.
His voice sharpened. “How could you?”
I jerked to face him, the fear swelling, and the words burst from me. “Because I killed her, Coop. I killed Heather.”
There—I’d confessed. And to the last damn person I would have chosen, the person who once stood in this very room and called me a sociopath. Well, he’d been right. Now we’d come full circle, and he could see every inch of the ugly truth for himself.
I tensed, waiting for him to shove me away.
Coop took a deep, steadying breath—and, to my surprise, put his hands on either side of my face, cupping my jaw. The tenderness wrenched my heart. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
The words spilled free after ten years of waiting. “All I know is I found out Heather won the fellowship and I hated her so much. I lost all sense. I took my Adderall and Courtney’s diet pills and chased them with whiskey. I got so messed up that I cut up those photographs. The last thing I remember is I had some plan to take revenge on Heather, make things right. Then I blacked out. And there’s nothing until the next morning, when I woke up covered in blood.”
Strangely, Coop didn’t blink. “That’s it?”
I forced the words out. “Coop, I wanted her to die. I remember thinking it. Picturing it.”
“You don’t remember coming to my apartment?”
I took a step back, and his hands fell from my face. “Your apartment?”
He blew out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. Strange—his fingers were covered in dirt. “You showed up at my door that night, wasted and covered in blood, then barreled your way inside. You kept saying you needed a safe place.”
My hands flew to my mouth. The blood. He’d known, all this time.
“I tried to clean you up, but you wouldn’t let me. You wrestled me when I tried to hug you, scratched my face pretty bad. Then you sat in the middle of the kitchen and poured your heart out. You told me all about the fellowship.”
I looked at him, disbelieving.
“And the letter,” he said softly.
A chill ran over my arms, dragging an army of goose bumps. “What exactly did I say about the letter?”
He clenched his fists. I followed the movement, looking down at what he was holding. “What’s that?”
He took a deep breath, then held it up so I could see. It was a diploma, handsomely framed, but covered in dirt, the glass cracked from corner to corner. A diploma from Harvard, the font and scroll unmistakable—it was what I’d memorized, coveted my whole life. The scroll announced the conferral of John Michael Garvey’s bachelor of science in economics.
I looked up at Coop in wordless wonder.
His gaze was steady. “I’ve been keeping this for you.”
“How?” I could barely bring my voice above a whisper.
“Jess, you told me what Garvey did to you, and I wanted to kill him. Burn his house down. But you said no, said it didn’t matter anymore. I lost it. I wasn’t in a good place either, with everything going on with the dealers and the tweak. I think I scared you, ’cause you bolted. I always thought that’s why you stopped talking to me after that night.”
I’d told Coop about Dr. Garvey. This new information was dizzying. I resisted the urge to grip his arm to stay upright.
Coop’s eyes darkened, his lashes dipping as he looked at the diploma. “I had all this rage that had been building for days. When you left my apartment, I went to Garvey’s house and smashed everything with a baseball bat. I’m the criminal, Jess. I’m the one who wrote on his walls, caused all the damage.”
The enormity of what Coop had done started to sink in. “You could have been kicked out of school and thrown in jail for that. Law school, your mom—everything ruined.”
He gave me a fierce look. “Yeah, well, I don’t regret it. I wish I’d done more. At least what I did scared Garvey enough to leave Duquette. Good fucking riddance.”
I pointed to the diploma. “And you stole that. Why?”
“You told me about Harvard. How your dad went and you felt you could never live up. That he died at Christmas. I wish you’d told me when it happened. I would’ve come to Virginia to be with you at the funeral. I would have done anything.”
I’d told him about my father. The surprise nearly swept me off my feet.
Coop twisted the diploma. “I was in the middle of destroying Garvey’s house, and I saw this. I figured you should have it—to burn it, maybe. But after that night, you wouldn’t talk to me. So I buried it in the quad outside East House. Under our picnic table. It’s been here ever since.”
Magic in the soil, I thought dazedly.
Coop stood between me and the window, hair wild, eyes still blazing with hate for Dr. Garvey, like some dark, fucked-up version of a hero.
“So you knew—” I swallowed hard. “About Dr. Garvey, and the fellowship, and my dad—”
“Of course—”
“When you came to me on graduation day and asked me to marry you.”
Now it was Coop’s turn to look at his feet. Asked me to marry you. The words were so weighty, so forbidden, that I couldn’t believe I’d had the nerve to say them out loud. But I had to know.
Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.
“You would’ve married me, knowing all that.”
“I told you. Good or bad, it didn’t matter.”
We stood for a long moment, looking at each other. Then I reached out, took the diploma, and threw it, as hard as I could, against the wall. It shattered into splintered pieces of wood and glass, raining across the floor. In the end, such a fragile thing.
Coop stepped through the mess, picked up the paper, and held it out to me. I ran my fingers over the beautiful, embossed Harvard sigil, and for a second, the old dream resurfaced,
my father’s and my own, solid and silky under my fingertips.
But I shook my head. That was dead now.
I tore the diploma into pieces.
Then I stepped to the window, the autumn breeze lifting my hair. I opened my hands, and the pieces fluttered away like butterflies. Something in the wind whispered: You’re gone now, and your story’s closed. You are who you are.
I felt a door inside me shut.
Coop tugged me from the window and turned me so I faced him. He wore his private look, the one I’d discovered, too late, meant something long and deep, not short and secret.
“Thank you,” I said, my throat thick, “for what you did.”
“Two break-ins, one night,” he said softly, tracing my jaw.
“Two?” I pulled back.
Coop looked at me like I’d hit my head. “Of course. I broke into Garvey’s. After you broke into the Student Affairs office.”
I gripped his arms so I didn’t fall backwards. “I did what?”
And suddenly, like a key turning in a lock, like a slap to the face, I remembered.
Chapter 36
February, senior year
The edges were fuzzy, but here’s what I knew: I was a dark goddess, a rageful, vengeful force, slicing through the night. Crossing the streets, away from the Greek houses and toward the administrative offices at the heart of campus. As I strode, I gained a second wind, my steps strong and swift. I passed a group of Chi Os decked out in pink and red, surely on their way to Sweetheart. They laughed and wobbled on slender heels, stopping to take pictures of themselves every ten feet.
I stalked past them and scoffed, loud enough for heads to turn. Imagine thinking the Sweetheart Ball was the most important thing happening. Tonight, when only hours before, lives had been torn asunder and scales had been tipped, injustice seeping out like a poison.
But I would fix it. Restore the balance, right the wrongs—take back what Heather and Dr. Garvey had stolen from me. It was simple, really. An idea the whiskey had unlocked, or maybe the pills—either way, I had a plan. I’d take what was mine. Take a page out of Heather’s book, or Courtney’s, all the powerful girls who got what they wanted.
The Student Affairs office loomed ahead, a small, dark cottage, nonetheless imposing. Inside it, a group of strangers had gathered around a table and made a decision that ripped away the dream I’d worked for.
At the front of the cottage stood tall double doors. I wrenched the handles, heels sliding in the grass, but the doors didn’t budge.
No bother. I moved along the perimeter, a thief in the night, feeling the prickling needles of bushes catch my legs. There had to be another way in. I finished my circle around the cottage, feeling a trickle of sweat creep down the back of my neck. Either the evening was strangely mild for mid-February or the whiskey was at work, warming me against the cold.
But there was no second door. I couldn’t let that stop me. Eyes searching the building, lit faintly by Duquette’s old-fashioned lanterns, I spotted my chance.
A single window, low to the ground.
I tried to pry it open, to jiggle and shimmy the panes, but the window was as securely locked as the door. I would have to dispense with politeness.
It’s funny how the world reshapes itself according to your desires, if you demand it. The wooden placard in front of the office, announcing Student Affairs in scrolling letters, was no longer a sign but a stake, especially once kicked until it snapped. A perfect battering ram.
I took the sign and swung it into the window, relishing the heavy smack it made when it connected with the glass. I laughed as I swung, again and again, almost wishing for an audience, wishing the administrative buildings weren’t tucked away in a part of campus students never bothered with.
The window cracked like it was supposed to. The glass made a musical sound as it fell, half into the bushes, half inside the office.
There. I’d made a door.
I heaved myself up, taking care to place my hands away from the glass shards that still poked like jagged teeth out of the windowsill. Up and over, through the window, landing almost gracefully on a rug inside.
I prowled through the office. So quotidian now that it was dark, the decision-makers gone, leaving behind boring desks and chairs and potted plants. I searched until I found the storage room and, inside, the file cabinet. A drawer labeled—almost comically—Post-Grad Fellowship.
Could this plan work? I felt a quiver of doubt. It had seemed so right in my bedroom. But now, standing in front of this file cabinet, in front of this tower of official documents, all this solid, printed proof of the committee’s decision, my plan seemed flimsy. Childish, a stupid shot in the dark.
No more doubting. I could fix this. I would pull my father out of that hole in the ground and take him with me, up, up, up.
I slid the drawer open. So many files, each labeled with a different student’s name. I found Jessica Miller, pulled it out. Found Heather Shelby, pulled it. Then another caught my eye: 2009 Committee Notes. I grabbed that too.
I opened Heather’s file first and parsed the papers. There it was, on thick Duquette letterhead, from Dr. John Garvey, just like Heather said. In the weak light, I squinted and scanned.
Dear Fellowship Committee, I write in support of an outstanding candidate, Heather Shelby. Heather is not an economics major, and normally I would not write to endorse her, as is my policy. But Heather stands out among my undergraduates. Last semester, she approached me after failing her first exam in my class and asked if I would write her a letter of recommendation for this fellowship if she could prove herself, turn her grade from an F to an A. This was highly unusual, to say the least. Disarmed by her brazenness—and frankly, expecting her to fail—I said yes.
That semester, she worked harder than any student I’ve ever witnessed to turn her grade around. And though she ended my class with a B and not an A, I felt that she proved herself to be intellectually capable. But more than that, Heather is dogged in the pursuit of her goals. She goes after what she wants, and she clearly wants to win this fellowship. It is this single-minded attention to achievement, this ability to hold steadfast in the face of obstacles, that will serve her well in graduate school and life after. And that is why I am wholeheartedly recommending her for this award.
I dropped the letter, stunned. Heather had lied to my face. She’d said she applied on a whim, that Dr. Garvey had approached her, but this letter said the opposite—proved she’d been planning her application, had maybe even wiggled her way into Dr. Garvey’s class in order to get his all-important recommendation.
A second thought punched me in the gut: If Heather had lied about that, could she have lied about what she’d done to get the letter? Did she go to dinner with Dr. Garvey and then back to his house, just like me? When I’d asked her, heart in my throat, if she had—with all the other questions thrumming underneath: are we the same, do you understand why I did it, do you lie awake at night and feel his hands on you—she’d denied it. Had she meant for me to be buried alone under all this shame?
Swallowing nausea, I tore open my own folder, searching until I found twin letterhead, a twin signature slashed across the bottom of the page.
Dear Fellowship Committee, I write to recommend Jessica Miller, whom I have taught in four classes here at Duquette. Jessica is a talented student, as evidenced by her high grades. She has demonstrated sophisticated thinking for an undergraduate, as I have remarked on her papers.
My heart started to sink. I scanned down the letter, the words hitting like fists: pleasant, important contributions, sure to have a successful career.
It was so tepid, so perfunctory. So unlike his letter for Heather, full of tangible respect. He could have slipped any name in place of Jessica Miller and gotten the same result.
This was what I’d bought with my soul?
I slumped to the
floor, dizziness from the mix of pills and cheap whiskey making my vision swim. I’d thought, for a few stupid, hopeful minutes, that I could steal Heather’s file so there was no record of her application, and the fellowship would have to go to me, the runner-up. I’d thought I could scratch her name out and write mine in. Type up a new decision on Duquette letterhead, forge committee signatures, if I had to. Whatever it took.
Now that I was here, the dumb futility of my plan was plain. The righteous rage that had convinced me it was possible was dissipating. Numbly, I flipped open the folder labeled 2009 Committee Notes. My breath caught.
It was the line-up of winners. First, second, and third places. I should be there, typed in black and white print, under second place. But there was no Jessica Miller.
First place: Ms. Heather Shelby. Second place: Mr. George Simmons. Third place: Ms. Katelyn Cornwall.
I wasn’t even on the list. I stared at the names, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a different kind of truth hit me.
My father was dead, and he was never coming back. I couldn’t rewrite him, couldn’t turn him into a person who was successful by proxy, who loved me, who was happy. Nothing I could do was going to change the man he’d been. He’d squandered his chances. Hadn’t lived up to what anyone expected of him, least of all himself. And that was who he was going to be forever—a man with wasted potential, who died bitter and alone. That was who we were going to be forever, him and me—never close, never forgiven, never redeemed. The ink on the story of my dad and me was dry. The book was shut.
I clutched my chest, heart hammering. Coming here had been a terrible idea. I had to get out.
I shoved Heather’s file back in the drawer but couldn’t bring myself to put mine back, let them have this record of my failure. I slipped the committee ranking into my folder and slammed the drawer shut, then ran to the window, wanting to be out under the night sky where there was room to breathe.
I threw the file out the window and scrambled after it, thinking only of getting out. But I was clumsy—the window’s jagged teeth caught my hands and thighs, tearing at me, trying to keep me pinned. I cried out at the pain, like lines of white-hot heat opening in my skin, felt the slickness of blood on my hands. I used all my strength to keep moving, to tip and tumble out the window.
In My Dreams I Hold a Knife Page 23