And she’s kicking the lockers now. Again, again, again, again, again. Kicking them so hard that her shoes leave slight dents in the metal. It’s extreme, even for Pet.
Her new skin, the one that makes her pirouette and attempt to steal from vending machines, peels away. And the truth about her, her heart and her guilt and her lies, is on display for the world to see. It’s a shame that it remains unreadable, unfathomable to me.
She collapses, slides down against the cream-colored lockers. Her butt hits the rich, burgundy carpet, and she makes this sound. Halfway between a sob and a swear word.
“I just can’t believe Amy would do this to us,” she says. “I can’t believe it.”
I don’t know what to say, because I can’t believe it, either.
Silence. The dust motes float over us, flashing through the red light and then the green light. Petal’s sitting in the blue light shredding her nail, as if she doesn’t know what else to do.
“Mark and I are going,” I say eventually, knowing that this is the only thing that might help her. “We’re going to the barn.”
I don’t have to ask whether she’s coming. She gets to her feet and follows me down the corridor. She throws me a weird look when Explosive Boy tags along with us. He gives her a wide berth. Even the grenade boy knows not to mess with Petal.
She watches him as we move through the corridors but doesn’t say anything.
And then Petal’s banging open the door that leads to the parking lot in that typical, melodramatic way that all of us have. Me included. Weak sunlight floats over E and me, who are left standing in the doorway.
E raises his brows at me. “Let me guess,” he says. “You’re all from rich-bitch central.”
Because melodrama like this is reserved for the wealthy? Please.
Only Amy was from rich-bitch central. And maybe me. I could have a locker in the hallowed older section of Sherwood High. God knows I would if my father had stopped working long enough to realize that the administration hadn’t already given me one. But this is my father and work we’re talking about—they’re going to the grave together—so that’s highly unlikely.
If he ever comes home again, or if I discover where he’s hiding, maybe I’ll tell him. Maybe the injustice of my locker location will recapture his attention.
“Just get outside, okay?”
Mark stands next to Cherry Bomb. She looks just like she usually does—like a cherry-colored bomb. Yeah. We’re really imaginative when it comes to naming things.
Mark looks like he usually does, too. Wonderfully idiotic. He’s smoking a lollipop. The strawberry-colored sphere disappears into his mouth, pops back out again. Puff, puff, puff. Imaginary bits of lollipop smoke cloud the air.
“Mature, man.”
Way. Too. Blunt. E.
Mark takes the lollipop out of his mouth. “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.”
“Well, at least I’m witty,” E returns.
And then Mark’s moving toward E, his lollipop held aloft like some kind of sword, and I want to laugh so fucking hard. Instead, I put myself between them before my best friend perpetrates an act of lollipop violence. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, ladies. Too much testosterone.”
Their laughs crack the air at the same time.
Ice breaks.
“Hey, man,” E says. “I’m Tristan.”
“We’re all calling you E,” I tell him.
“I don’t—”
“You’re E. Get the hell over it already.”
E looks at Mark, trying his best to pull off a lost-puppy-please-help-me look. It doesn’t work too well. E’s ember hair is burning up against the white sky. He may be a grenade and a Kid Whisperer at the same time, but he’s sure as hell no puppy dog.
“Don’t look at me.” Mark pops the lollipop back into his mouth, resumes his smoker act. “I still don’t like you.”
“What the fuck are you doing here, anyway?” Petal glares at Explosive Boy.
The broken ice freezes back over.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Ella just dragged me along.”
Spotlight on me.
“Fresh meat, shaking things up,” I say, rattling off the same excuses I gave Mark. Pet doesn’t look convinced, and the glare she shoots me is so frosty it stings. Well, I can be a frigid bitch, too. “How about I fucking wanted to, Petal, okay? How about this is exactly like us wanting to start Pick Me Ups in the first place? Like you wanting to join in.”
And just like that Petal looks as if I’ve snapped her in two. My words might sound inane on the surface, but if you dig a little deeper, the barbs will bite into your skin.
’Cause Mark and I invented Pick Me Ups without Petal.
We invented Pick Me Ups without Petal because she wasn’t there. When she came out of her room, though, she saw things differently. She thought we’d spent the time bonding or something instead of just jumping off shit.
Now she feels like she’s the outsider, the one on the edge, even though it’s she and Mark who are trying to drug me with their sideways words. Even though it’s Mark and Pet who are holding back on me.
And now she’s looking at me, and I want to tell her I don’t mean it, any of it; but I won’t. I can’t.
I have to make her think it’s real. Because I can’t stand being the outsider, either.
“Okay,” Petal says eventually. She pulls herself together, stretches a smile across her face. Runs her tongue across her front teeth, up over the edge of her lip. “So, what are we going to do with him?”
What am I going to do with him? Send him spiraling into a Pick Me Up, yes. But how?
“Yeah, what are you going to do to me?” E asks.
I ignore him.
My hands are moving now. Fingers threading their way through Mark’s hair, disentangling today’s hippie scarf. It’s a lurid pink. Snap. Snap. Snap. I pull it taut between my fingers, grin at Explosive Boy.
He bends backward. “No,” he says.
I step forward. Back he goes again.
“Come on, E,” I say. And then, because lying is my favorite hobby, I add, “Pink’s really your color.”
“Where are you taking me?”
He’s still tilted away from me.
“The b—”
“—nowhere important,” I say, cutting off Mark. “You don’t know until you get there, okay?”
“Not okay.”
“Please. Your curious-bitch act is starting to annoy me.”
“Your bitchy-bitch act is starting to annoy me,” he says, but he stoops so I can wind the scarf over his eyes. Around, around, around. His nose and eyes vanish beneath the pink gauze.
When he’s properly blindfolded, Mark opens Cherry Bomb’s back door. Her familiar smell drifts to me. Boozy breath and late nights. Weirdly comforting.
“Ladies first,” Mark says, gesturing to the door.
And Petal, without being told, immediately gets it and shoves E headfirst into the car. Our teamwork. It’s a thing of beauty.
At least it would be if I didn’t know they were lying to me about Amy.
“Ouch,” Explosive Boy says, straightening himself on the backseat, on Cherry Bomb’s landmine-of-holes upholstery. I watch as Explosive Boy dips his fingers into one of these backseat potholes. He snatches his hand back and flinches.
We howl with laughter.
But it dies out quickly. Probably because we’re all thinking about how Cherry Bomb got those battle scars. Amy. Amy did that. When she was so fucking smashed after this party in tenth grade. Grabbed a rock from somewhere and started slashing at the material, singing “Amazing Grace” beneath her breath the whole time.
Mark let her do it. He just kept driving, letting her destroy his car.
“Relax. It’s stuffing,” Petal says to Explosive Boy, who’s still looking freaked-out. “You know the shit that comes out of cushions?” And that’s Petal. The Petal I knew before Amy died, who was truly fucking concerned about people beneath her diamond exterior. S
he’s not nice—none of us are nice—but Petal’s the closest. And she has this amazing ability to compartmentalize. Pet can make mincemeat of some kid at school and then go out all weekend and fundraise for starving children in Africa.
She’s the most loving misanthrope I’ve ever met.
She turns to me. “You sure you want this guy doing a Pick Me Up?”
I nod. The real reason I want Explosive Boy here goes beyond showing him I don’t need his pity. The real reason he’s here is purely strategic. It’s because I need to figure out what Mark and Pet are hiding. And to do that, I need someone else to be the outsider, to push against us.
Push us together.
“I’m sure,” I say. I nudge Mark. “Give me your keys.”
“Why?” Shock and horror crash into each other on his face, mangling his sweet baby-angel features.
“Seriously? You are afraid of my driving?”
There’s a reason Cherry Bomb is such a bomb. That reason is Mark.
“Fine.” He fishes the keys out of his jeans pocket. Tosses them to me. “But I’m riding shotgun to make sure you don’t kill us all.”
Petal winks at me. “Wonderful,” she says, slipping into the backseat. “I get to guard our prisoner.”
And then I’m hopping into the driver’s seat. Putting my hands on the steering wheel. Turning the key in the ignition.
It’s only when the engine roars to life and the entire car shakes around me that I figure out what I really want to do to E.
We’re not going to the barn today.
Chapter Eight
I PULL OVER next to the unnamed jungle park at the edge of town.
We get out of the car, shoes scuffing the pavement, kicking mushroom clouds of dust into the air. Petal’s holding Explosive Boy’s elbow, making sure that he doesn’t walk somewhere stupid, like back out onto the road. But she’s looking at me. Looking at me as if I’m tearing her heart into halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths. Shreds. As if I’m absolutely gutting her.
She thinks I’m going to keep us from Pick Me Ups today.
Where are we going? she mouths at me.
Trust me, I mouth back.
She digs her nails into Explosive Boy’s elbow so hard he jumps. “Shit,” he says. “What was that for?”
“Fun.”
Mark, who’s standing behind them, throws back his head and laughs.
I start walking toward the trees at the edge of the park. No one follows me. I slow down, wait for them. Nothing. The silent, dusty road breathes against my back. I pause. “Are you guys coming?”
“Coming where?” Mark says. “Let’s get back to the car. Let’s go.”
Let’s go. Let’s get into Cherry Bomb and speed toward the barn. Let’s speed toward our falls. Let’s slam into the hay. Feel our pulses dim. And let’s find that moment. That one moment in the fall that feels like absolution, like bliss, like a miracle’s taken place inside our bodies.
But we’re not going to the barn. Not today. Because jumping off shit in the barn isn’t working anymore. I need to try somewhere new. Something else.
I stare at the trees. They’re a mass of silvery brown, slurring and blurring into one another. Packed too close, like my mother packs her suitcases. But through a teensy-tiny gap between their trunks, I spot a rusty chain hanging from a green metal bar.
A swing set.
Once upon a time, this place must have been a real park. Tame and neat. Echoing with children’s laughter. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we found a lion prowling around here today.
Amy and I used to play here as kids, even though it was already wild by then. We used to play hide-and-seek. We’d curl ourselves into the weeds, hide away, and wait for the other to come looking.
I’d take hours finding Amy, inevitably losing other things in the process.
Lost: sandals, butterfly clip, jacket.
Found: Amy. Sometimes.
Now I look at the weeds and I wonder. I wonder whether, when she jumped off my roof and landed smack-bang in the curling, whispering weeds of my garden, she thought of this place.
The weeds we damn near lost ourselves in.
I think it’s time for me to get lost again.
I jump over a clump of them. My sneakers sink into loosely packed soil on the other side of the weeds.
“Trust me,” I say, out loud this time. “Do you have the gnome, Petal?” It’s my way of easing their concern. There will be Pick Me Ups today. We still need our ref.
They’re moving now, following me now, even though they don’t look too happy about it.
“Yeah, I’ve got the gnome.”
“What’s the gnome?” E asks.
“The gnome?” Mark replies. “He’s the one who’s watching your every move.” A laugh dances underneath the waves of his voice. Good vibrations.
“Sounds like some short commando dude or something.” Explosive Boy seems genuinely confused.
Drama queens like me are allowed to be into orgies, new-kid hazing, and lying. But garden gnomes? Shit, even I think that’s screwed up.
They’re moving faster now. I wait for them to catch up, too scared to brave the park on my own.
Petal’s nearly there now. She jumps over a clump of weeds and joins me under the cool shade of the trees. She’s frowning, but she’s staying with me. She and Mark are both staying with me. It feels good not to be alone.
I wonder how Amy felt. No one jumped after her.
“So where the fuck are we going, Ella Logan?”
Petal’s mouth is close to my ear. She doesn’t want Explosive Boy to hear this. Warm breath sliding into my eardrums, swirling with the sound of her words. “This most definitely isn’t the way to the barn.”
I lean close to Pet, feeling bad about my own stale breath. “We’re going to the bridge.”
“Are you crazy?” she hisses.
But Pet’s always been bad at telling people not to do things that are unhealthy for them. She was born to be addicted to something, to everything. She loves her burgers and fries, her alcohol, her adrenaline rushes. Her Pick Me Ups.
And the bridge? The bridge is new and exciting. The drop isn’t far, but we’ll be falling into water instead of bales of fluffy hay.
Hopefully, it’ll be exciting enough that I’ll get a memory back.
“You’re crazy, too,” I say, and continue marching through the weeds.
Mark rolls along with it, even though he still has no idea what’s happening. He laughs and chants, “Left, right; left, right. You lead the way, Sarge Ella.”
I hear E’s soft cursing, the breathy fear in his voice. That’s right. I smile to myself as I keep rhythm with Mark’s chanting. What the fuck have you gotten yourself into?
Chapter Nine
THE BRIDGE ISN’T really a bridge—not for cars, at least. It’s a walkway. There’s a river in our town, and people built the walkway to make crossing over easy. Now, though, the stream’s pretty much dried out. In some places, like under the bridge, it gushes and roars. Mostly, though, it trickles along as slow as life in this town, becoming a creek as it passes through people’s backyards.
Crisscrossing through gardens. Connecting the dumbass townspeople.
The kind of dumbasses who won’t demolish a rusty, rickety health hazard of a bridge and a cluster of abandoned houses.
It’s not as if we need the bridge anymore, because if you wander a half mile downstream you can just walk across the river. Sure, it’ll slosh around your legs a little, but most people would rather risk wet jean bottoms than walk over the rusty, fall-apart-in-a-second bridge.
Not that anyone bothers to cross the bridge, anyway. Abandoned houses aren’t most people’s cups of tea.
We call it Ghost Town. It’s empty. Small. Haunted by ghosts and local children who go there to throw sticks and stones at each other. To break each other’s bones with their cruel words. No adults, no limits. It’s the secret motto of every kid in this town.
As we approach th
e bridge, I can see the rust flowering over it, can see metal beams that look less stable than rotted wood. Just walking over this thing would be a risk. Jumping from it would take a lot of guts.
Mark, Pet, and I have a lot of guts, so that’s okay. But it’s E who is going first, and no one in his right mind steps off a bridge because his new maybe-friends say so.
If you barely knew the person who was asking you to jump, there’s no way you’d go for this.
Unless you were blindfolded and didn’t know you were going.
Closer and closer. The air seems to buzz.
Part of it is that this place is overdosing on lavender, and bees like lavender, and bees buzz.
Part of it is that E doesn’t have to ask “Are we there yet?” because Mark’s stopped his army chant.
E’s breath catches, and the smell of gunpowder intensifies.
I crunch the last twig, step over the last clump of grass. Then I step onto the bridge. It squeaks beneath my feet like a seesaw. I can hear the bridge, feel it swaying beneath my feet.
I whoop.
On the edge of the bridge, E laughs. “Oh,” he says as he steps onto the bridge. It creaks and crackles. “I know where this is.”
None of us reply. We just step along the bridge. Normal people would tiptoe, afraid of sending the bridge crashing into the river. Mark and Pet don’t tiptoe; but they both move lightly, on the balls of their feet.
I stride. I thunder like an elephant. Rust flakes away into the rushing white water below.
Clearly, I think as the metal jolts beneath my feet, I’m not normal.
“So, what, are you going to push me off the bridge? That’s really not that crea—”
Mark grabs the back of E’s jacket, lifts him a little, and shoves him over the safety railing. I watch Explosive Boy fall, watch his red hair blow up from his face, his black jacket buffeted by the wind. And that’s when I realize the blindfold might not have been such a good idea.
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