You Were Never Here

by Kathleen Peacock

  Her birthday was already three days past and I had gotten her a present, but she was looking at me with big puppy-dog eyes and I caved. Because I thought someone should keep an eye on her. Because over the past couple of months, it had increasingly felt like maybe Lacey was needing me just a little bit less.

  “Okay,” I’d said, thinking maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

  And it wasn’t. Not at first.

  After a little while, I’d even started to have fun. I talked to people. I drank. I let my guard down. Not all the way, but a little bit.

  And because my guard was down, I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t fast enough when someone grabbed me from behind and lifted me off the ground.

  Nick Ames was a senior who supposedly went to public school because it helped his father’s image as a down-to-earth man of the people when he was running for reelection. He was handsome, popular, and Harvard-bound. He was at the center of the sphere Lacey wanted to move into.

  He was also an asshole.

  “Just stay still,” he said, trying to lift me over his head as a bunch of his drunken friends cheered. Nearby, other boys grabbed other girls, all trying to do the same thing.

  Nick lifted me, kicking and screaming, and as he did, my T-shirt rucked up almost to my neck.

  “Nice chest!” someone yelled.

  Panicked, I elbowed Nick in the collarbone as hard as I could. Hard enough that he momentarily lost his grip. Hard enough that he hadn’t even tried to keep me from hitting the ground. I’d ended up on the floor, in a heap, while all around me, people laughed.

  Tears sprang to my eyes. Not because of the laughter—or at least that’s what I told myself—but because it had really, really hurt. I pushed myself to my feet, looking for Lacey. I caught a glimpse of her through the kitchen doorway. She was in the center of a big group of people, flirting with a girl from our chem class while Matt, her ex, glared from across the room.

  And I realized something: Lacey hadn’t talked to me once since the party had started. She said she needed me to come, but she’d been too busy to notice when I had needed her. Anger and hurt flared in my chest along with something else. She was always comfortable in groups. Always surrounded by other people. Always at the center while I was on the outside. It wasn’t fair. It was never fair.

  Limping a little, I’d started toward the door, but Nick grabbed me again. He was still laughing. “Come on, it was just a joke. We were just having fun.”

  His fingers were wrapped around my wrist, around a slice of skin my sleeve didn’t cover.

  For a moment, I lost myself. I was in his head, seeing what he was afraid of while he laughed at me. And then I did something I hadn’t done in five years: I said something about what I saw. I blurted out Nick Ames’s biggest fear in a room full of people.

  Given that his biggest fear was that people would find out his parents had paid someone to take his SATs and write his college admission essays, this was not a small deal.

  He shoved me. Shoved me hard enough to send me crashing into a nearby group of people. I was grabbed and I was pushed. Again and again. Someone asked me if what I had said about Nick was true. Someone else asked how I had known. At least one person called me a liar.

  I couldn’t answer. I could barely think. My head was full. Full of people’s fears, but also their desires. Mouths and bodies. Kisses and skin.

  The drinks I’d had earlier sloshed in my stomach as pain exploded behind my temples.

  And then someone else grabbed me. Hard. Around my arm, but not touching skin. Lacey yanked me through the crowd, down the front hall, and into the half bath. She pushed me inside, and I had to catch myself on the edge of the vanity in order to stay on my feet.

  I tried to focus my gaze. It was harder than it should have been, and I couldn’t tell if the pain rising to a crescendo in my head was from the drinking or from what I had seen. I gripped the counter a little more tightly, fighting the urge to throw up. I hadn’t drunk that much. Not nearly enough to feel like this. I picked something small to focus on in an effort to make the room stop spinning. A small pink rose. I blinked. “Did you put out fancy guest soap?”

  In the mirror, I could see Lacey cross her arms over her chest. “It’s nice,” she said, a defensive note in her voice.

  “It’s stupid.” Whatever was causing all the pain in my head had also made me lose complete control of my tongue. I turned, putting the counter at my back. “Lacey, in another hour, they’ll be trashing the apartment. None of them are going to notice that you’ve put out fancy soap.”

  “What did you say to Nick?”

  The abrupt shift in topic cut through some of the pain. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? He just stormed out of here, telling anyone who’d listen that you’re a crazy, lying bitch.”

  “So? Who cares what he says?” I tried to sound flippant, unconcerned, but a thread of fear wormed its way through my stomach and worked its way up to my chest. An awful lot of people cared what Nick Ames thought and said. Including, lately, Lacey.

  She just stared at me. I could hear the noise of the party through the closed bathroom door, but the silence between us was thick and awkward. I found myself babbling to fill it. “I can’t believe he called me a liar. Do you know what he did? Do you know how he got those amazing SAT scores or why he got into Harvard?”

  “Stop.” Lacey’s eyes flashed. “Do you have any idea who his parents are? Or how much people listen to him? You can’t just go around saying stuff like that.” Her eyes narrowed as another thought occurred to her. “Wait—did you call him out in front of everyone? Is that why he’s so angry?”

  My cheeks grew hot.

  “Jesus, Cat. How do you even know he did anything?”

  I let out a long, deep breath and just looked at her. I was tired suddenly, so tired of always hiding. “I just know.”

  Lacey swallowed. For just the tiniest of seconds, she looked more uncomfortable than angry, and I wondered: How much has she figured out? Because she had to suspect something, after four years. She had to suspect something even though she never, ever asked.

  She exhaled, and the sound seemed to fill the room. Her lower lip trembled and a muscle tensed in her jaw, like she was trying not to cry. “God. Why did you even come if you were just going to ruin everything?”

  “Because you asked me to.” Four years of listening to her had made me a good mimic. In a voice that almost anyone would mistake for hers, I said, “‘You have to come. You can’t just stay home. I need you.’”

  Except Lacey’s voice wasn’t quite that insipid.

  Hurt flashed across her face. “I didn’t need you to do this,” she said, stepping toward the door and reaching for the knob.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going back out there, and you’re going home.”

  Without thinking, I reached for her hand—just to stop her, I think, though I’ve never entirely been sure. Maybe I only meant to stop her, but just before my skin touched hers, I wondered what Lacey was afraid of—not the fears she shared with me, but the ones she kept to herself. I tried to actually see what she was afraid of, certain it would help explain why she was acting this way, why she was choosing the people out there over me—

  Red hair, wide hips, freckles. I saw myself. Not my reflection or a picture, but the way Lacey saw me.

  And as I looked at myself, I felt like there was a massive weight pulling me down. Down, down, down . . .

  The bathroom came rushing back as Lacey yanked her hand away.

  As far as fears went, it was practically a walk in the park. Just a pretty girl who wanted to transition from popular to really popular and who was worried that her friend was going to hold her back.

  I rubbed at my eyes angrily with the back of my hand. “So that’s it, right? You think I’m some kind of liability.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You don’t have to. God, Lacey. You’re acting like I want to be here. Just admit it: You w
anted me here so that you could feel better about yourself. You make me go places so that you have someone looking out for you. Someone to take care of you if you drink too much or someone comes on too strong or you lose your phone or your purse. And you pick me because I’m safe and because you can look at me and feel better about yourself. Your self-esteem is that low. You’re that pathetic. You use me.”

  “And you don’t use me?” Lacey’s own voice rose until it almost drowned out the background noise of the party. “You put up all these stupid walls so no one else can get close to you and then you hold me up to everyone to prove that you’re not alone. You need me to be in the middle of things because then no one looks directly at you. I’m not even sure you like me half the time.” Her voice began to tremble, and her eyes filled with tears. “I tell you everything, and you never trust me enough to tell me what’s going on with you.”

  “Lacey . . .”

  “You use me every bit as much as I use you. Maybe more. Just . . .” She pulled in a deep, shaky breath. “Stay in here and sober up and then go.”

  “Lace . . .”

  “I mean it, Cat. Lock the door. Stay in here until you can walk down the stairs without falling and then get out. I don’t want you here.”

  “They mean that much to you? Nick and all his stupid friends?”

  She shook her head, and I realized the truth: It wasn’t that Nick and his friends were that important—although she desperately wanted them to like her so that she could be more popular. It was that I wasn’t important enough.

  Two days after the party, Nick’s parents hired a lawyer. Words were tossed around. Things like “defamation of character” and “libel.”

  Oddly enough, those words didn’t seem to help me when the first posts started going up. Posts that called me a liar. Posts that called me crazy. Posts that got dozens and then hundreds of likes.

  I give my head a sharp shake, pulling myself back to the present. In the distance, I hear sirens.

  The girl on the deck, the killjoy, finally notices me.

  “What are you looking at?” she asks, defensive and a little mean. She doesn’t wait for a response. She just stomps toward the house.

  I wonder if anyone notices her return.

  The sirens sound like they’re getting closer. Really, really close. A few people drift outside to see what’s going on. As I push myself to my feet, red and blue lights sweep the lawn and a harsh, amplified voice yells for everyone to stay where they are.

  People begin pouring out of the house, and I make a run for the yard just to keep from getting trampled.

  Cans and bottles hit the ground. Couples break apart. Someone rams into me from behind, sending me stumbling over the uneven ground. I try to get free of the crowd, but it’s like being caught in a giant pinball machine. Most of the contact lands on my shoulders and back—safe zones—but every few paces, skin hits skin, so fast and furious that I can’t make sense of the barrage of images in my head.

  A hand seizes mine. I try to pull away and—

  A crowd of people, all running. A girl with wide green eyes and disheveled red hair and a faint constellation of freckles . . .

  I’m on my hands and knees at the edge of the yard.

  It takes me a second to realize where I am, to realize I must have stumbled and fallen when I got pulled into someone’s head.

  Not someone’s. Aidan’s.

  He grabs me—under my arms, where my shirt covers skin—and pulls me to my feet. “Come on, Cat. Run.”

  People hurtle past us, dozens of them. As he steps away, his hand grazes my wrist. The contact lasts less than a second and I don’t get pulled all the way under, but again, I see myself. Just the briefest of flashes.

  I force my body into motion, running clumsily with Aidan into the trees.

  We’re not alone. All around us, the woods are full of the sounds of stumbling partygoers, fear of police and parents outweighing fear of the woods at night.

  “Are you okay?” Aidan asks, pausing after a few minutes to study my face in the darkness. “Can you keep going?”

  Pain is blossoming along the edge of my skull, and my stomach rolls like I’m going to be sick. Too many people. Amber and then the crowd and then Aidan. I want to tell him no, that I can’t, but harsh, adult voices yell out for people to stop.

  I nod. I don’t have much choice.

  Aidan lets out a relieved breath.

  We duck under branches and clamber over fallen trees until we reach a trail. It’s darker, this far in. So dark that it’s pure luck we find the trail at all.

  Aidan pulls out his phone, thumbs on the flashlight app, and then turns in a slow circle, studying the path. A shout echoes nearby. I’m pretty sure it’s someone from the party, not the police, but Aidan still turns off the light and shoves his phone into his pocket.

  “I think this path heads up to the trailer park and then branches,” he says, once it seems safe to breathe again. “We should be able to follow it back down to Riverside Avenue.”

  “What about Chase?”

  “The cops probably won’t bust the jocks over just a party. Us, on the other hand . . .”

  I bite my lip. I can only imagine what Jensen will tell Aunt Jet if the cops pick me up or what Dad will say when he finds out. “What happens if they catch us and call your father?” I ask.

  Aidan’s shrug in response is tight and awkward, so unlike his normal, relaxed body language. “The worst he can do to me from across the ocean is yell.”

  Light flashes in the distance, cutting in and out between the trees. It’s far off, but still too close for comfort.

  “Come on,” Aidan whispers.

  We manage to stay on the trail, but it’s slow going in the dark.

  “Did you find Amber?” Aidan asks after a while.

  “Yeah, but she was pretty out of it.”

  The path begins to slope steeply upward. Before long, my calves are burning, and by the time we reach the top of the hill, my breathing is ragged and my chest feels like someone has taken a jackhammer to it. “Running up and down the woods was a lot easier before I got fat.”

  Aidan turns to study me in the dark. “You’re not fat.”

  I don’t know how to respond to that. What do you say when every magazine and TV show says the opposite? When there are only a handful of stores where you can shop? When you want to love yourself but there are a hundred promoted posts in your social media feeds designed to make you feel weak and inadequate?

  But it’s not like I can explain that to the beautiful boy in front of me. And, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I really want to—not if he doesn’t see me the way so many people seem to want me to see myself.

  Aidan steps toward me. “Cat . . .”

  Whatever he was going to say is interrupted by the crackle of a police radio.

  “Shit.” The word slips out before I can stop it.

  By unspoken agreement, we leave the path and start pushing our way through the undergrowth, but the noise from the radio keeps getting closer. At one point, I’m sure I hear Chief Jensen’s deep baritone, and the sound makes me stumble.

  We take twists and turns through the trees until the trail is just a distant memory and I lose all sense of direction. As bad as the pain in my head had seemed after Aidan pulled me from the yard, it abates quickly. Still present, but bearable.

  A dark shape hurtles toward us, and I let out a yelp as I jump out of the way.

  A doe crashes past, seemingly just as scared of me as I am of it.

  “This way,” I whisper, veering right, hoping that the deer makes enough noise to pull the police in the opposite direction.

  After a few minutes, we reach a narrow clearing. In its center sits an old, rusting trailer. The kind of mobile home that truly is mobile. A tin can you can hitch up and haul across the country.

  Even in the dark, I can tell the trailer is a wreck, but it’s something we can hide behind. At least until the cops get tired of trying to round
everyone up.

  Judging from the height of the surrounding brush, the trailer has been here for a few years. No more than four, though. As disoriented as I am, I’m positive we haven’t left the area Riley and I covered that summer. And an abandoned trailer in a clearing is definitely something we would have noticed.

  Riley would have been all over it.

  The door hangs off its hinges, leaving the trailer completely open.

  I step forward to peek inside, but Aidan’s voice stops me.

  “What would your dad do?” he asks.

  It takes me a minute to realize that he’s picking up the thread from our earlier conversation. “I don’t know,” I say honestly. Lacey hauled me in and out of trouble for years, but it’s not like we were ever picked up by the cops. Things have been different, though, since everything that happened with Nick.

  “Would he make you leave?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “That,” says Aidan, “would not be acceptable.”

  I bite my lip. I swear his eyes drift down to that spot, just for a second. “Why wouldn’t it be acceptable?”

  Instead of answering, Aidan leans down.

  I have a choice; I can pull away. I don’t. I’m tired of letting chances pass me by just because I’m too scared of what might happen. I want to kiss him. I want to know what it feels like to touch his skin and feel him against me.

  I know it will hurt, but I’m not sure I care.

  Heart thundering in my chest, I raise myself up on the tips of my toes and press my lips to his.

  The first time I kissed a boy, I saw his fear. Sharp and blinding, it ended everything.

  The second time I kissed a boy, I saw who he really wanted, and that person wasn’t me.

  When Aidan’s lips brush mine, I see myself. Only me.

  Somehow, seeing my own image keeps me anchored. It keeps me from losing myself.

  Things inside me tighten as the kiss deepens. The difference in our heights is big enough that I have to strain to reach. Aidan’s hands skim my arms and my shoulders and my collarbones. He pushes me back gently, and my spine hits the trailer.

  I shiver even though everything inside of me feels hot.