I started laughing. Only Amy could look at a complete meltdown and wonder if everything was still going okay. It wasn’t, but it was getting there.
“I’m back on the meds…obviously.” I grinned at her. It did seem a little funny. I mean, of course I was back on the meds. “I think it wouldn’t have happened if I had been more careful. I was supposed to follow rules, like no dating boys to make myself feel better.”
“Chris?” she sounded shocked.
“No. No, not Chris. Jared. Guys like Jared who you date and move on from. Only this time I wasn’t the one to move on. And then there was Chris.”
I wasn’t ready to talk about that. It sounded like she knew enough to piece together most of it.
I kept talking, trying to get it all out before I turned into a coward again. “And all the things I did that I wasn’t supposed to added up until I was walking this line I couldn’t handle.”
“Like in the bathroom that day?”
That seemed so long ago. Had it really been less than a month since seeing Jared with the next girlfriend sent me into a mini-panic attack?
“Yeah. Like that.”
“So, how long have you been…you know, taking meds and stuff for this?”
Translation: How long have you been lying to me?
Only that wasn’t Amy. I should have realized it sooner, but I was too busy trying to balance all the chaos going on in my head to realize she’d be like this. She’d be calm and smooth, and when it was all said and done she’d probably look at me and say, “whatever.”
“Junior high.” I stopped and thought back. “Actually, the anxiety and the looks-worry started sooner, but everyone chalked it up to puberty.”
I grinned, glad to finally have something to lay at puberty’s door. Before that—before the head-stuff started—I hadn’t cared about my looks. But, then I’d gotten nuts about everything being perfect and balanced.
Amy must have remembered the change too, because she gave a small nod. She hadn’t changed. She was still comfortable in a cute T-shirt and a ponytail. I envied her that.
“It took about a year to get the right diagnosis, but then they put me on anti-anxiety pills and started doing the therapy. Lots of therapy. I’m so sick of myself, I can’t even tell you.”
She laughed. She laughed right out loud, a warm relieved sound.
“You could have told me.” I’d been so afraid she’d be pissed, but she sounded more worried. More hurt. “You know that, right?”
I could have. I realized it wasn’t that I didn’t trust her that made me keep it a secret. It was embarrassment and fear that she’d see what I saw. Or maybe that she’d become like my sisters had that first month, afraid to talk or look or move for fear of setting me off. That when I told her, no matter how much she’d insist it didn’t matter, she’d see the freak I saw in the mirror.
“I know.” And I did. I was suddenly very sure. “I just couldn’t.”
“Okay.”
We laid there, just the two of us like we hadn’t done in months—since I’d gone away—and listened to the quiet. I was the one who finally broke it.
“What are people saying at school?”
She shut her eyes like she did when she was collecting her thoughts.
“Don’t lie, Amy. I need to know ahead of time so I can be prepared.”
“Well, a lot of people saw Chris trying to chase you down half-naked and limping.” She got this silly grin, the first relaxed moment I’d seen since she came in. “I wish I’d seen that. And then you weren’t in school, and he was drunk and living at the Parkers. People are guessing a lot of things.”
“About me?”
“Actually, not so much. You looked pissed when you left. It’s mostly falling on him. I mean, he was chasing you and he didn’t even have any pants on…or so I heard.” She grinned again. “I mentioned I wish I’d seen that, right?”
God, I loved her.
“Then he stayed and wouldn’t talk to anyone and drank until he couldn’t stand—which someone told me was weird. He hasn’t ever really been a drinker or anything. People are saying you ripped his heart out and just don’t want to deal with him.”
Wow. I couldn’t believe he’d let people say that.
“Did you?”
Did I? I doubted it. I mean, he was the one who didn’t want me.
“No. We just…we just didn’t fit.”
What else could I say? In the end, maybe that’s all it was. We just didn’t fit. Couldn’t fit.
“What are you going to do?” Her hand slid from the pillow and wrapped around mine.
“Go back to school. Try not to think about it. Stay on the meds until I’m even and see what my doctor says.”
It had taken me all of this to see that they were not a crutch or a red flag, but just something I might need. They weren’t the enemy. If next year I went off to college with a monthly prescription to fill, that didn’t make me any less Normal Girl than the next Girl.
It just made me someone who knew how to make things in my life work.
She nodded. Agreement. Support.
“What about Chris?” she asked quietly.
Seriously? I rolled on my back not wanting to think about him and how he might be the one person in the RV as screwed up as I was.
“What about him?”
“You’re going to have to talk to him eventually.”
I was thinking about that—how do you talk to a boy who forced you into your clothes, and then hooked up with some bimbo? How do you talk to a boy you were falling in love with but couldn’t trust?
Amy shifted away almost nervously. “You know…um…”
With everything we just talked about, there was still something she was afraid to say? How bad could it be?
When she didn’t keep going, I felt my heart start to pace and prompted her. “Amy?”
“So, when I talked to your mom, it wasn’t just me. She sat us all down while you were at the doctor’s and gave kind of an overview of everything so we’d know what was going on. So we’d understand and not push you and stuff.”
A stark fear ripped through me about who the “we” was. I know my mom. I probably didn’t have to ask. But, a girl could hope, right? “We who?”
“Me and Luke. And Ben asked if he could come.” Her eyes met mine. I could see she was forcing herself to hold my gaze. “And Chris.”
Crap.
Chapter 26
It’s all in my head. It’s all in my head. It’s all in my head.
Except there was a very good reason I felt like everyone was staring. They were.
I pulled the sleeve of my sweater further down over the bandage on my hand and walked on, hoping Amy would be at our lockers when I got there. I made it to the Crossroads and kept my eyes straight ahead. Just keep moving. One step at a time, just like every other aspect of my life.
Get out of bed. Don’t stretch to see if your body feels awkward. Don’t look in the mirror. Shower without thinking about how big your feet look. Ignore your stomach while you towel off. Get dressed in the safe clothes you laid out the night before. Deep breaths before you leave your room.
Step. By. Step.
But now, everyone was looking and I could feel my hands start to tremble and my skin heat all over, worse than a normal schoolgirl blush. Worse than Chris’s ears when I caught him at something. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if a full-fledge attack hit me in the hall.
I clutched my good hand into a tight fist, willing the tremors to stop, when a large hand closed over it. I wanted it to be anyone but him. I wanted absolutely no one but him. I wanted it to be him more than I wanted my next breath. More than I wanted my sanity at that moment.
“I thought you might need that friend.”
I let my fist slip, just enough so Chris could slide his fingers between mine.
He led me down the hall and straight past my locker, ignoring all the gazes following us. I hesitated only a heartbeat when he ducked his head in the boys�
� locker room and shouted, “Hello?” tugging me in behind him when no one answered.
We passed several rows of lockers, and I should have been thinking, “What am I doing? I can’t trust him.” But instead the only thought running through my mind was how bad it smelled in there.
At a glass door, Chris stopped and gave my hand a tight squeeze before knocking.
“Yeah!”
Chris shoved the door open, keeping me close but a little behind him.
“Coach, I was hoping, just this once, that you might give us a pass for first period.”
His gaze dropped to where Chris’s hand wrapped around mine, and then glanced to my other hand peeking out from beneath my sleeve. I stuck it behind my back, my biggest fear—that someone thought I tried to kill myself—churning my stomach.
“Don’t make this a habit, Kent.” Coach opened his top drawer and tossed a set of keys to Chris. “Coach Johnson’s office is quiet.”
“Thanks, Coach.” I could hear the tremor in his voice, and I wondered if my hand shook in his or his was shaking in mine.
Probably a little bit of both.
He unlocked the door and pushed it open. For the first time in over a week, he stopped and looked me in the eye.
“Do you want to be here…with me?”
I wanted to hate him. I really did. But I thought of all the people I’d lied to and hurt by accident and wanted to give him that one chance to apologize so we could let it go and maybe be friends again. Maybe not friends. Maybe just people who needed to survive being in the same school together.
“Yes.” I couldn’t even hear it myself, but he must have read the answer on my lips, because he pushed the door open to let me pass in front of him.
“Kent!” Coach’s voice came as if he were standing right there with us instead of two doors down. “Leave the shades up.”
I couldn’t help myself. I was nervous and exhausted and more than a little anxious about what Chris was going to say. But, “leave the shades up” seemed so beyond anything we needed to be worrying about, that I couldn’t help the laughter slipping out of me.
The tips of his ears flushed pink against his pale blond hair as he pushed the door shut and leaned against it.
After a second, I decided to sit. I might as well be comfortable for the most uncomfortable talk of my life.
And then I waited.
This was his gig. He was going to have to do the talking. Apologize, simplify, and move on. Then we’d be finished and I’d have a semblance of that section of my life flying normal. Another step-by-step done.
“You were right. It wouldn’t have been just sex.”
Oh God, I was going to be sick. I’d honestly thought he was just going to say something more like, I screwed up, but you lied and let’s get over it and be friends again.
What the hell was I supposed to do with that?
“It would have been a lot more. I freaked out because all I could think of was all the girls who’d meant nothing and doing the same thing with you …I didn’t want it to be nothing…but it scared the hell out of me to be something too, you know?”
Maybe? I wanted to say, but kept my mouth shut.
“And then—and then, yeah. I have no excuse.” He dropped his head, a hand coming up to cover his eyes. “Rachel, I was right and that’s why, no matter how much I want to be with you, I can’t. I don’t think I can even really be your friend—not that you’d have me. You shouldn’t. But it doesn’t even matter.”
It sure as damn well mattered to me, and I couldn’t even figure out what he was talking about.
He just stood there, head lowered, sucking in air. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I went to him and pulled his hand down in mine.
When he looked at me, those deep green eyes were flooded with tears that seeped over his pale lashes.
“I’m just like him. See? That’s why I can’t even say I’m sorry.”
My heart shattered into little pieces…the dust of the dust.
“You’re not sorry?”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry that it’s not even the right word.” It sounded like his heart was breaking too.
“Tell me why, Chris. Tell me why you were in that room with her.”
He blinked and another few tears slipped out.
“She was there.”
I dropped his hand and stepped away. It was done. I couldn’t recover from that.
“She was there, and I was so desperate to forget that I took the opportunity. But for the first time I couldn’t forget. I couldn’t forget about you and how you made me feel and that I wasn’t good enough to touch you let alone think you’d…you know…want me.”
He stared at a spot over my shoulder, his red-rimmed eyes vaguely intense in the way they avoided mine.
My heart must not have been the ashy dust I thought it had been, because it suddenly ached.
“I just wanted to tell you so you didn’t think it was anything about you. That I didn’t want to be with you. I just knew that …”
“You knew what?”
“I just knew that once you got close to me, you wouldn’t want to be there. You wouldn’t want to be with someone who’s been so…used.”
If there were two more broken people in this world, I certainly couldn’t have named them.
He still wouldn’t meet my gaze, still couldn’t do this straight on. “I told my mom and we decided I should talk to someone.”
“You told your mom?” Oh my God. “About…”
“Yeah. About everything.”
“That must have been…” Awkward. Humiliating. “Hard.”
He choked out a laugh. “Hard. Yeah. She was pissed.”
“Why?” I thought of my own mom breaking down a door to hold me until help got there. Taking on bruises and cuts and heartache for me.
“Like she really wants two guys like my dad and me in her house.”
“You are not like your dad.” I didn’t realize I was shouting until the words echoed back off the tight walls of the office.
I took that hand I’d dropped in fear and disgust just a few moments earlier and squeezed it, keeping it wrapped in my two smaller ones.
“Yeah, well. She’s going to her parents’ house and joining AA. So, I’m staying with the Parkers.”
“And the talking to someone?”
He nodded. “I went twice last week. The first time we talked about me and everything going on. The second time he made an extra hour to talk about you.”
“Me?” He’d gone to therapy to talk about me?
Not that I hadn’t done a lot of talking about him. I went in to see Dr. Meadows six of the last nine days. We’d talked about Chris quite a bit actually.
“I wanted to understand what you’re going though, but your mom said you probably wouldn’t want to talk about it.”
He studied me a moment, his liquid filled eyes like a meadow after a hard rain. “I’m not going to ask. Whatever you want to tell me you can, but I swear I won’t put you on the spot. I’m talking to him and reading this book and just kind of waiting. So, you don’t need to talk to me if it’s too hard.”
His gaze strayed to the wall again. “Or, you know, if you don’t want to.”
“Chris.” When he didn’t answer or look at me, I took his chin and forced it my direction. His lashes were still damp with the tears he’d cried for both of us. “I’m not ready to talk about it. Yet.”
Those eyes slid shut, his shoulders lowered, and I finally realized how much tension he’d been carrying.
“Would you consider talking about it in three months?” His eyes fluttered open and sought out my own worried gaze. “My doctor …and I …think some time to get on track…”
Three months. It sounded like a long time, but in terms of where we both were, it was nothing. It might even be too soon. And who knows, maybe there’d be nothing to talk about in three months.
Okay, maybe he’d have nothing to say in three months.
“I might be.” That�
��s the best I had to offer. It was better than I’d had walking into school that morning.
~*~
The first day back was long. Long as in shouldn’t-there-be-hovercrafts-and-people-living-on-the-moon-by-now long. Amy, Luke, and Ben had been vigilant. I’d like to say suffocating, but really, that wouldn’t be fair. They were extra careful to keep things light while trying to have someone with me at all times. Ben had even shown up this morning with a vanilla flavored lip gloss.
After our talk, Chris had been…distant isn’t the right word. I was aware of him keeping watch, not quite hovering, but there. For me. Giving me the space we both needed. I kept telling myself, the first day is the hardest.
That afternoon, the deal was that Amy would meet me at my locker at the last bell. We’d get out fast before dealing with crowds and people got to be too much.
I should have known the simplest plan could go wrong. I should have met her at my car. I should have done a lot of things, but I didn’t.
What I did do was keep my head down and focus on my locker. I must have reorganized the bottom seven times waiting for her. I was just about to leave her a note when an all too familiar voice said my name.
It challenged every Be Polite lesson my mom ever taught me. Would anyone really blame me if I just kept sorting through my locker?
Probably not.
But, I had a core-deep feeling he wasn’t going away, so I turned to get one more confrontation out of the way.
“Hi, Jared.” Translation: Hi, you idiot who’s been ignoring me for weeks after dumping me when I thought everything was good and now waited till the worst possible time to speak to me in public, which will either cause pain, humiliation, or annoyance.
He couldn’t look me in the eye. Two weeks ago I would have assumed it was because of me—of how I disfigured I was—that he couldn’t bear to look at me.
Now I was guessing it was something else. Not guilt, but maybe guilt’s cousin.
“Hey. So…” Nice fadeout Jared.
I know Dr. Meadows would tell me I should grab the chance for closure and also not make someone’s life tougher. But, two things occurred to me as he stood there looking as bright as a burnt out headlight.
Secret Life (RVHS Secrets) Page 19