And then at some point, she’s not gonna be around at all.
“I got nothin’. Sorry,” I say, dropping my head to hide my stinging eyes.
Nonny lets out a theatrical sigh. “Well, goddamn. You boys are pretty, but not helpful from a practical standpoint.” She rummages on the side table next to her bed and finds a rumpled twenty-dollar bill. “Lucas, go downstairs to the gift shop and buy three Snickers bars. One for each of us. Keep the change and take your time.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lucas’s eyes gleam as he calculates his profit. He’s out the door in a flash, and Nonny settles back against a stack of hospital pillows.
“Off he goes to pad his pockets, bless his mercenary little heart,” she says fondly.
“Are you supposed to be eating candy right now?” I ask.
“Of course not. But I want to hear how you’re doing, darlin’. Nobody tells me anything but I hear things.”
I lower myself into the side chair next to her bed, eyes on the floor. I don’t trust myself to look at her yet. “You should rest, Nonny.”
“Cooper, this was the least dangerous heart attack in cardiac history. A blip on the monitor. Too much bacon, that’s all. Catch me up on the Simon Kelleher situation. I promise you it will not cause a relapse.”
I blink a few times and imagine myself getting ready to throw a slider: straightening my wrist, placing my fingers on the outer portion of the baseball, letting the ball roll off my thumb and index finger. It works; my eyes dry and my breathing evens out, and I can finally meet Nonny’s eyes. “It’s a goddamn mess.”
She sighs and pats my hand. “Oh, darlin’. Of course it is.”
I tell her everything: How Simon’s rumors about us are all over school now, and how the police set up shop in the administrative offices today and interviewed everybody we know. Plus lots of people we don’t know. How Coach Ruffalo hasn’t pulled me aside yet to ask whether I’m on the juice but I’m sure he will soon. How we had a sub for astronomy because Mr. Avery was holed up in another room with two police officers. Whether he was being questioned like we’d been or giving some kind of evidence against us, I couldn’t tell.
Nonny shakes her head when I finish. She can’t set her hair here the way she does at home, and it bobs around like loose cotton. “I could not be sorrier you got pulled into this, Cooper. You of all people. It’s not right.”
I wait for her to ask me, but she doesn’t. So I finally say—tentatively, because after spending days with lawyers it feels wrong to state anything like an actual fact—“I didn’t do what they say, Nonny. I didn’t use steroids and I didn’t hurt Simon.”
“Well, for goodness’ sake, Cooper.” Nonny brushes impatiently at her hospital blanket. “You don’t have to tell me that.”
I swallow hard. Somehow, the fact that Nonny accepts my word without question makes me feel guilty. “The lawyer’s costing a fortune and she’s not helping. Nothing’s getting better.”
“Things’ll get worse before they get better,” Nonny says placidly. “That’s how it goes. And don’t you worry about the cost. I’m payin’ for it.”
A fresh wave of guilt hits me. “Can you afford that?”
“Course I can. Your grandfather and I bought a lot of Apple stock in the nineties. Just because I didn’t hand it all over to your father to buy a McMansion in this overpriced town doesn’t mean I couldn’t have. Now. Tell me something I don’t know.”
I’m not sure what she means. I could mention how Jake is freezing out Addy and all our friends are joining in, but that’s too depressing. “Not much else to tell, Nonny.”
“How’s Keely handling all this?”
“Like a vine. Clingy,” I say before I can stop myself. Then I feel horrible. Keely’s been nothing but supportive, and it’s not her fault that makes me feel suffocated.
“Cooper.” Nonny takes my hand in both of hers. They’re small and light, threaded with thick blue veins. “Keely is a beautiful, sweet girl. But if she’s not who you love, she’s just not. And that’s fine.”
My throat goes dry and I stare at the game show on the screen. Somebody’s about to win a new washer/dryer set and they’re pretty happy about it. Nonny doesn’t say anything else, just keeps holding my hand. “I dunno whatcha mean,” I say.
If Nonny notices my good ol’ boy accent coming and going, she doesn’t mention it. “I mean, Cooper Clay, I’ve been in the room when that girl calls or texts you, and you always look like you’re trying to escape. Then someone else calls and your face lights up like a Christmas tree. I don’t know what’s holding you back, darlin’, but I wish you’d stop letting it. It’s not fair to you or to Keely.” She squeezes my hand and releases it. “We don’t have to talk about it now. In fact, could you please hunt down that brother of yours? It may not have been the best idea I ever had to let a twelve-year-old wander the hospital with money burning a hole in his pocket.”
“Yeah, sure.” She’s letting me off the hook and we both know it. I stand up and ease out of the room into a hallway crowded with nurses in brightly colored scrubs. Every one of them stops what they’re doing and smiles at me. “You need help, hon?” the one closest to me asks.
It’s been that way my whole life. People see me and immediately think the best of me. Once they know me, they like me even more.
If it ever came out that I’d actually done something to Simon, plenty of people would hate me. But there’d also be people who’d make excuses for me, and say there must be more to my story than just getting accused of using steroids.
The thing is, they’d be right.
Nate
Friday, October 5, 11:30 p.m.
My father’s awake for a change when I get home Friday from a party at Amber’s house. It was still going strong when I left, but I’d had enough. I’ve got ramen noodles on the stove and toss some vegetables into Stan’s cage. As usual he just blinks at them like an ingrate.
“You’re home early,” my father says. He looks the same as ever—like hell. Bloated and wrinkled with a pasty, yellow tinge to his skin. His hand shakes when he lifts his glass. A couple of months ago I came home one night and he was barely breathing, so I called an ambulance. He spent a few days in the hospital, where doctors told him his liver was so damaged he could drop dead at any time. He nodded and acted like he gave a shit, then came home and cracked another bottle of Seagram’s.
I’ve been ignoring that ambulance bill for weeks. It’s almost a thousand dollars thanks to our crap insurance, and now that I have zero income there’s even less chance we can pay it.
“I have things to do.” I dump the noodles into a bowl and head for my room with them.
“Seen my phone?” my father calls after me. “Kept ringing today but I couldn’t find it.”
“That’s ’cause it’s not on the couch,” I mutter, and shut my door behind me. He was probably hallucinating. His phone hasn’t rung in months.
I scarf down my noodles in five minutes, then settle back onto my pillows and put in my earbuds so I can call Bronwyn. It’s my turn to pick a movie, thank God, but we’re barely half an hour into Ringu when Bronwyn decides she’s had enough.
“I can’t watch this alone. It’s too scary,” she says.
“You’re not alone. I’m watching it with you.”
“Not with me. I need a person in the room for something like this. Let’s watch something else instead. My turn to pick.”
“I’m not watching another goddamn Divergent movie, Bronwyn.” I wait a beat before adding, “You should come over and watch Ringu with me. Climb out your window and drive here.” I say it like it’s a joke, and it mostly is. Unless she says yes.
Bronwyn pauses, and I can tell she’s thinking about it as a not-joke. “My window’s a fifteen-foot drop to the ground,” she says. Joke.
“So use a door. You’ve got, like, ten of them in that house.” Joke.
“My parents would kill me if they found out.” Not-joke. Which means she’s considering it.
I picture her sitting next to me in those little shorts she had on when I was at her house, her leg pressed against mine, and my breathing gets shallow.
“Why would they?” I ask. “You said they can sleep through anything.” Not-joke. “Come on, just for an hour till we finish the movie. You can meet my lizard.” It takes a few seconds of silence for me to realize how that might be interpreted. “That’s not a line. I have an actual lizard. A bearded dragon named Stan.”
Bronwyn laughs so hard she almost chokes. “Oh my God. That would have been completely out of character and yet…for a second I really did think you meant something else.”
I can’t help laughing too. “Hey, girl. You were into that smooth talk. Admit it.”
“At least it’s not an anaconda,” Bronwyn sputters. I laugh harder, but I’m still kind of turned on. Weird combination.
“Come over,” I say. Not-joke.
I listen to her breathe for a while, until she says, “I can’t.”
“Okay.” I’m not disappointed. I never really thought she would. “But you need to pick a different movie.”
We agree on the last Bourne movie and I’m watching it with my eyes half-closed, listening to increasingly frequent texts from Amber chime in the background. She might be starting to think we’re something we’re not. I reach for that phone to shut it down when Bronwyn says, “Nate. Your phone.”
“What?”
“Someone keeps texting you.”
“So?”
“So it’s really late.”
“And?” I ask, annoyed. I hadn’t pegged Bronwyn as the possessive type, especially when all we ever do is talk on the phone and she just turned down my joke-not-joke invitation.
“It’s not…customers, is it?”
I exhale and shut the other phone off. “No. I told you, I’m not doing that anymore. I’m not stupid.”
“All right.” She sounds relieved, but tired. Her voice is starting to drag. “I might go to sleep now.”
“Okay. Do you want to hang up?”
“No.” She laughs thickly, already half-asleep. “I’m running out of minutes, though. I just got a warning. I have half an hour left.”
Those prepaid phones have hundreds of minutes on them, and she’s had it less than a week. I didn’t realize we’d been talking that much. “I’ll give you another phone tomorrow,” I tell her, before I remember tomorrow’s Saturday and we don’t have school. “Bronwyn, wait. You need to hang up.”
I think she’s already asleep until she mutters, “What?”
“Hang up, okay? So your minutes don’t run out and I can call you tomorrow about getting you another phone.”
“Oh. Right. Okay. Good night, Nate.”
“Good night.” I hang up and place the two phones side by side, pick up the remote, and shut off the TV. Might as well go to sleep.
Addy
Saturday, October 6, 9:30 a.m.
I’m at home with Ashton and we’re trying to figure out something to do. But we keep getting stuck on the fact that nothing interests me.
“Come on, Addy.” I’m lying across an armchair, and Ashton nudges me with her foot from the couch. “What would you normally do on a weekend? And don’t say hang out with Jake,” she adds quickly.
“But that is what I’d do,” I whine. Pathetic, but I can’t help it. I’ve had this awful sickening lurch in my stomach all week, as though I’d been walking along a sturdy bridge and it vanished under my feet.
“Can you honestly not come up with a single, non-Jake-related thing you like?”
I shift in my seat and consider the question. What did I do before Jake? I was fourteen when we started dating, still partly a kid. My best friend was Rowan Flaherty, a girl I’d grown up with who moved to Texas later that year. We’d drifted apart in ninth grade when she had zero interest in boys, but the summer before high school we’d still ridden our bikes all over town together. “I like riding my bike,” I say uncertainly, even though I haven’t been on one in years.
Ashton claps her hands as if I’m a reluctant toddler she’s trying to get excited about a new activity. “Let’s do that! Ride bikes somewhere.”
Ugh, no. I don’t want to move. I don’t have the energy. “I gave mine away years ago. It was half-rusted under the porch. And you don’t have one anyway.”
“We’ll use those rental bikes—what are they called? Hub Bikes or something? They’re all over town. Let’s find some.”
I sigh. “Ash, you can’t babysit me forever. I appreciate you keeping me from falling apart all week, but you’ve got a life. You should get back to Charlie.”
Ashton doesn’t answer right away. She goes into the kitchen, and I hear the refrigerator door opening and the faint clink of bottles. When she returns she’s holding a Corona and a San Pellegrino, which she hands to me. She ignores my raised eyebrows—it’s not even ten o’clock in the morning—and takes a long sip of beer as she sits down, crossing her legs beneath her. “Charlie’s happy as can be. I’m guessing he’s moved his girlfriend in by now.”
“What?” I forget how tired I am and sit up straight.
“I caught them when I went home to get more clothes last weekend. It was all so horribly clichéd. I even threw a vase at his head.”
“Did you hit him?” I ask hopefully. And hypocritically, I guess. After all, I’m the Charlie in my and Jake’s relationship. She shakes her head and takes another gulp of her beer.
“Ash.” I move from my armchair and sit next to her on the couch. She’s not crying, but her eyes are shiny, and when I put my hand on her arm she swallows hard. “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you say something?”
“You had enough to worry about.”
“But it’s your marriage!” I can’t help looking at Ashton and Charlie’s wedding photo from two years ago, which sits next to my junior prom picture on our mantel. They were such a perfect couple, people used to joke that they looked as though they came with the frame. Ashton had been so happy that day, gorgeous and glowing and giddy.
And relieved. I’d tried to squash the idea because I knew it was catty, but I couldn’t help thinking Ashton had feared losing Charlie right up till the day she married him. He was tremendous on paper—handsome, good family, headed to Stanford Law—and our mother had been thrilled. It wasn’t until they’d been married a year that I noticed Ashton almost never laughed when Charlie was around.
“It’s been over for a while, Addy. I should have left six months ago, but I was too much of a coward. I didn’t want to be alone, I guess. Or admit I’d failed. I’ll find my own place eventually, but I’ll be here for a while.” She shoots me a wry look. “All right. I’ve made my true confession. Now you tell me something. Why did you lie when Officer Budapest asked about being in the nurse’s office the day Simon died?”
I let go of her arm. “I didn’t—”
“Addy. Come on. You started playing with your hair as soon as he brought it up. You always do that when you’re nervous.” Her tone’s matter-of-fact, not accusing. “I don’t believe for one second you took those EpiPens, so what are you hiding?”
Tears prick my eyes. I’m so tired, suddenly, of all the half-truths I’ve piled up over the past days and weeks. Months. Years. “It’s so stupid, Ash.”
“Tell me.”
“I didn’t go for myself. I went to get Tylenol for Jake, because he had a headache. And I didn’t want to say so in front of you because I knew you’d give me that look.”
“What look?”
“You know. That whole Addy-you’re-such-a-doormat look.”
“I don’t think that,” Ashton says quietly. A fat tear rolls down my cheek, and she reaches over to brush it away.
“You should. I am.”
“Not anymore,” Ashton says, and that does it. I start flat-out bawling, curled in the fetal position in a corner of the couch with Ashton’s arms around me. I don’t even know who or what I’m crying for: Jake, Simon, my friends, my mother, my sister, myself. All of the
above, I guess.
When the tears finally stop I’m raw and exhausted, my eyelids hot and my shoulders sore from shaking for so long. But I feel lighter and cleaner too, like I’ve purged something that’s been making me sick. Ashton gets me a pile of Kleenex and gives me a minute to wipe my eyes and blow my nose. When I’ve finally wadded up all the damp tissues and tossed them into a corner wastebasket, she takes a small sip of her beer and wrinkles her nose. “This doesn’t taste as good as I thought it would. Come on, let’s ride bikes.”
I can’t say no to her now. So I trail after her to the park a half mile from our house, where there’s a whole row of rental bikes. Ashton figures out the sign-up deal, swiping her credit card to release two bikes. We don’t have helmets, but we’re just going around the park so it doesn’t really matter.
I haven’t ridden a bike in years but I guess it’s true what they say: you don’t forget how. After a wobbly start we take off on the wide path through the park and I have to admit, it’s kind of fun. The breeze flutters through my hair as my legs pump and my heart rate accelerates. It’s the first time in a week I haven’t felt half-dead. I’m surprised when Ashton stops and says, “Hour’s up.” She catches sight of my face and asks, “Should we rent for another hour?”
I grin at her. “Yeah, okay.” We get tired about halfway through, though, and return the bikes so we can go to a café and rehydrate. Ashton gets our drinks while I find seats, and I scroll through my messages while I wait for her. It takes a lot less time than it used to—I only have a couple from Cooper, asking if I’m going to Olivia’s party tonight.
Olivia and I have been friends since freshman year, but she hasn’t spoken to me all week. Pretty sure I’m not invited, I text.
“Only Girl” trills out with Cooper’s response. I make a mental note that when all this is over and I have a minute to think straight, I’m going to change my text tone to something less annoying. That’s BS. They’re your friends too.
Sitting this one out, I write. Have fun. At this point, I’m not even sad about being excluded. It’s just one more thing.
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