by TE Carter
But no one has ever been able to forget it when someone says that. It’s like the worst phrase possible if you really want someone to forget something.
“I can’t when you say it like that.”
Ryan sighs. “So I’ve told you most of the things about me you’d need to know. And there are, like, layers of those things, right?”
“How so?” I ask.
“I told you about the lawn ornaments because they’re just lawn ornaments. Most of the people in drama who know me know about that. They’re only a silly hobby. But even then, I don’t tell everyone.”
“I don’t…” I can’t finish, because I’m not sure what’s happening.
“It’s not easy for me, L. Until a couple of years ago, I was afraid to even come to school, okay? And now I’m not, but not because it’s changed. Not because people suddenly understand and are different. I’m only okay now because I spend a lot of time being someone I’m not.”
“What do you mean? You’re you. I don’t understand,” I say.
“No, I’m not myself. Not really. I’m not really outgoing. I pretend I am, but mostly I worry constantly about what people think. I can’t even tell people I make fucking lawn ornaments. And the real stuff … who I really am … I told you the other thing.…” He looks away.
“When we were outside? About Chloe and why you lied about us?” I ask.
“Yeah. I told you that, but nobody else knows. I don’t want them to know.”
“I’m honored you trusted me.”
“I guess,” he says. “Except you’re not the person I thought you were that night, and now you have that information and—”
“Whoa. Hold on. First of all, I am still the person I was that night. It’s only been a few weeks. Second, there’s no way in hell I’m ever going to use that against you. I don’t care what happens. That’s not who I am, and I’d think, regardless of what you thought my last name was, you’d have figured that out. Especially before you told me something like that.”
Ryan stands up and paces the aisle, not saying anything and not looking at me. I’m half hurt and half angry. He’s my friend. Probably my closest friend here. Maybe even a closer friend than Marcus, really. When Ryan offered his secrets to me, I held them and I kept them safe. It hurts that he thinks he can’t trust me to keep doing that.
“I’m not gonna tell anyone you’re not interested in sex,” I tell him. “Not that it matters, because Rory would be all over being your advocate. That’s, like, her thing.”
He turns around from where he’s pacing and faces me, the stage lights a halo around him. Because of the lights, he’s nothing but shadow. I can’t see his expression or his eyes.
“Maybe I don’t want a goddamn advocate,” he says. “Maybe I just want to get through fucking high school.”
It’s funny how sometimes things make so much sense at the worst possible times. Suddenly, under the glare of the stage lights, I see it all. I see myself in Ryan. I remember how it feels. Spending your days as a person wrapped in secrets. Needing to hide, and then having that safety stripped away by someone else. I remember five years of it. How I hated even going to the grocery store.
I told Ryan how important it is to believe in the fiction of yourself that you create, and suddenly I realize what I’ve done.
“I’m sorry. I am so sorry,” I say.
“I don’t know what happens next.”
“I don’t, either. But no matter what, I won’t tell anyone about you. You can trust me, Ryan.”
“That’s not the point, though, is it?” he asks. “If this stuff about you gets out … if more people know … it’s not something that people forget, you know? And if they know that, and if I’m around you … it just draws attention to me. You get that, right? You’re my friend. My ex-girlfriend, as far as they’re concerned. If they find out … they’ll start to look at me, Lexi. Really look. Don’t you get how badly I want to avoid them looking at me?”
I nod, because of course I do. Of course I know how hard it is to stay out of the glare of your own shame. “I do. But … you don’t have a reason to be afraid of people. Nothing’s wrong with you.”
“That doesn’t matter to people. You have to know that. I mean, when was the last time people went after someone because something was actually wrong with them?”
I wish I had an answer for him, but I remember the things they’ve said about me. I remember my parents. My mom crying in the kitchen because everywhere felt different. I remember Ben last year and how he started to avoid me. How Grace told people she felt unsafe around me. That she was sure I was only a moment away from snapping.
I think of Marcus and the drugs and the stories people tell. And how the truth has never mattered at all.
“They’re not going to turn on you,” I tell Ryan. “It doesn’t have to be like that, because they won’t find out. And even if they do, anyone who knows you won’t turn on you.”
I know I’m lying to him. I know how people are, but I hate myself for not thinking of him. For putting him here. I lie to him because I can’t accept what I might have done.
“How do you know that?” he asks. “How can you act like it’s that easy? Maybe you’re suddenly comfortable walking around and wearing your secrets for everyone to see, but I needed this. I needed to hide in whatever idea they had of me, whatever idea made them stop treating me the way they used to. I really needed to be okay.”
“Yeah, I get that. I’ve lived that way for five years.”
He leans against the stage and runs his hands through his hair. I want to go to him and tell him it will be okay. At the same time, I want to run away. I want to go home for Thanksgiving, do what I have to with Scott, and never come back here. I want to take back the words I said, but not for any of the reasons I was scared of. I just don’t want Ryan to feel like I have, and I especially don’t want to be the reason he does.
“When they were talking about me … after that one rehearsal, you said it didn’t matter,” I remind him. “You said you didn’t care what people think.”
“I know. But there’s pointless high school stuff and then there’s…” He doesn’t finish.
Ryan’s secret isn’t even bad, but it’s his secret. It’s something he’s protected because that was what he needed to do to feel safe. What he needed to do to survive. And if it gets out, once it’s out there, there’s nothing anyone can do to put it back.
There are things you don’t get to escape. There are things people won’t let you forget. No matter how much you tell yourself it’s okay. No matter how much you want to believe there’s a tomorrow where yesterday isn’t always looming. There are some things that shape every minute of forever.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t think.”
“I want so badly to be your friend, L,” he says. “I can’t even explain it. I just feel normal with you. But…”
“Yeah. I know. But maybe it’s not what you think. Maybe nothing will have to change.”
“You don’t really know Rory and them. They’re amazing. Until they’re not. We never really talked about everything that happened before you came here, but trust me: They’re my friends now, but I didn’t forget how things used to be with them.”
“Well, you’re still my friend. No matter what happens. And I won’t betray you. But I understand … I get it. It’ll hurt like hell if that’s the way it goes, but yeah, I get it.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I’m not a better friend or a better person, but I have another year and a half left. I can’t survive on the wrong end of it.”
“I know.”
I try not to cry. I try not to make him feel worse, because I really do understand. And I hate myself more for it. I hate myself for not even thinking about Ryan. Not once since my parents showed up for lunch did I consider what I might be doing to him as collateral damage.
“I hope I’m wrong. Maybe they changed. Maybe it’s not…” He pauses and hugs me. “I really hope I’m wrong
.”
“Me too.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ryan isn’t wrong.
I’m lying on Marcus’s bed, trying to do homework. After the drama meeting and my talk with Ryan, I came to Marcus’s apartment, still crying. The worst is that I couldn’t tell him why. I couldn’t betray Ryan just because it hurt, so we sat for a while in Marcus’s room, neither of us talking, before I eventually got up and grabbed my books. You can only spend so much time thinking of what-ifs. Even when you’re me.
Now he’s working on something on his laptop, and I’m trying to focus on Supreme Court cases.
“Can I ask you something?” he asks, breaking the quiet for the first time in nearly an hour.
“Obviously.”
“If someone said something about you—something bad—would you want to find out from hearing it around or would you want me to tell you?”
“Who said something?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” he says.
I close my government textbook and sit up on the bed, pressing my feet against the floor. “I’d want you to tell me.”
He swivels in his chair so he’s facing me and hands me his computer, resting it on my lap with the screen open.
“Where’d you get this? What is it?” I ask.
“It was sent out with the student newsletter.”
“Oh. I don’t get that. I never gave them my email.” This factoid seems relevant or important. I don’t know why. Marcus doesn’t care, and it doesn’t change what everyone who has given their email to the student government sees.
On Marcus’s laptop screen are pictures of Lucy and Miles Cabot. The same pictures that graced the internet postings, TV, social media, newspapers, even national magazines for a time. The same pictures I tried to forget, to block out. To leave in the past, because I can’t bring the Cabots back. I used to sit awake at night, shaking, begging God to bring them back. But God didn’t listen, and it doesn’t work that way.
I know their faces because I used to dream about them. Until I made a conscious choice to forget them. Heath said the forgetting was a defense mechanism. It absolutely is, because as soon as I see them again, I can’t breathe. All I can think of is how I used to be afraid to sleep. Of how when I finally did fall asleep, I woke up later, sweating, with their faces hovering over me in the darkness.
“Why would they do this?” I ask. “Who would do this?”
I close my eyes, and it’s like time folds itself up and resets. I’m there again. That night. The weeks that followed. I’m in my dorm in Virginia. I’m at my grandparents’ house, trying to avoid Facebook and Twitter and even email while trying to pass classes online. I’m everywhere else, and I wonder what I was thinking. Why I thought anyone could be different. Why I thought I’d gotten better.
“I shouldn’t have shown you,” Marcus says. He sits on the floor in front of me, his hands on my knees, trying to keep me steady. I feel him lift the laptop away, but I can’t see him. I can’t open my eyes. I don’t want to look at him.
I thought it would be okay, but seeing Lucy and Miles there, bringing them into this room—it takes apart everything I built up inside myself to stay safe. I thought if my real world exploded into this one, it would be okay. That the pieces could come together and create something different. Something new. But this is just more of the same destruction my world always creates. Scar tissue of the things I’d thought could be possible. All the things that died five years ago. With the kids whose faces are still in front of me, even with my eyes closed.
“Lexi,” Marcus says, trying to bring me back to now. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have…”
“I’m glad you did. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to tell me. I don’t understand, though. I mean, I only told four people. It’s only been a few hours. They were okay. I mean, they wouldn’t…”
And yet they did.
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
I think of her smirk. I think of everything she’s said. Of how she told me that day by the prop room exactly what she’d do. I think of how much she hates me, and I hate myself for not listening.
“It was Chloe,” I say. “Right? It had to be Chloe.”
Marcus doesn’t respond, and I reach for the computer. To see if there’s some sign of who sent it. To see her name there, showing me what kind of person she is. Proving me right. I shouldn’t have told her. I should have asked her to leave, or told Rory I needed Chloe not to be there. Three of them were my friends, but Chloe was just waiting for this.
I should have known.
Marcus moves the computer out of reach. “It doesn’t matter, Lexi.”
“Of course it does. Let me see it.”
“I don’t think you want to.”
“Don’t tell me what I want,” I snap. I feel instantly guilty, but it doesn’t stop me from reaching for the laptop again.
“This isn’t going to make it better,” he says, but he gives in. What else can he do?
But it’s not what I expect. It’s not Chloe’s name. The name isn’t even a secret. It’s there on the screen, and I don’t understand. If I were planning to ruin someone, I’d probably try to cover up my part in it. I wouldn’t want everyone to know I did it. And yet, there it is. A name. An email address.
“Rory?” I ask. Her name feels like a foreign word in my mouth. Or like poison. Something that doesn’t feel right. Something wrong.
She added her own note when she forwarded the article:
It’s on all of us to protect our school—and our community—from monsters.
Marcus takes the computer back and hugs my legs. “It doesn’t matter, Lexi.”
“I don’t understand. Why? She was always nice. She cares about people. She makes it a point to care about people. Why would she do this?”
He shakes his head. “Sometimes people are kinder in theory than in real life.”
“No, it just doesn’t make sense. Like, Rory is the first person to defend anyone from anything. She spends more time online fighting for people she’s never met than she does doing her damn homework, but she still does fine in school because even teachers love that about her. She wouldn’t. It doesn’t make sense.”
But her name’s there. And no one else would dare use Rory’s name.
I know what Heath would say. He’d tell me I’m separating truth from my perception, but this time it’s reversed. Usually he tells me that when I become convinced everyone’s talking about me. When I used to sit in his office, crying and shaking because I said something weird, and I was positive everyone was still making fun of me for it. That I imagined people coming together just to talk about how wrong I was. He’d tell me that was only my reality. That it wasn’t the same as something being real.
“I don’t … I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow,” I say. “I’m gonna be sick.” I want to escape. To hide. To forget all of this. To pretend I never came to Westbrook. I think about my arms, my torso. The scars. I wonder if I have anything in my apartment. Anything to make the hurt stop hurting. To make it bleed out from my skin and let the poison spill from my flesh.
Marcus holds me and rubs my shoulders. “You can do this. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
But I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t walk into school tomorrow and see them. To go into the cafeteria at lunch and know what she did. I don’t know if she’ll admit it to my face—or, worse, if she’ll pretend, like she did earlier, that everything is fine. If she’ll call me brave while she plans to ruin me.
I can’t get on the bus and see Ryan and Eric. Ryan, who’s so wrapped up in his own fears of the things people say that he won’t be able to handle my stuff, too. And Eric, who I don’t even know that well but has always been nice to me. Everyone will stare, but they won’t be able to see me. They’ll only see Miles and Lucy and the crime scene photos, and I will never escape it. No matter how far I go or how many names I use or what I do to change it, I will never get away from this
.
I will never be allowed to exist.
“Lexi,” Marcus says. He’s holding me, and I don’t know when he joined me on the bed, but he keeps holding me and rocking me while I try to hang on to something.
I knew this could happen. I did this to myself. Now that it’s here, now that it’s happened, I need to keep going. I can’t fall apart. I made this choice.
I just didn’t think she’d do it this way.
I didn’t think it would be her.
“I don’t want to go back there tomorrow,” I tell Marcus.
“So don’t. You can take a day off.”
“But they’ll all be talking about me. I can’t sit at home and wonder what they’re saying.”
“Then you go.”
“Everyone will stare. They’ll whisper. I won’t be able to breathe. They’ll all be looking at me.”
“Maybe they will,” he admits. “But you don’t have to listen to it.”
“I do.”
“Don’t go tomorrow. Don’t go this week. Talk to guidance about tutoring or something. Go home for Thanksgiving and maybe stay a little longer than you’re supposed to. Take as long as you need before you go back. Let them find something else to distract them first,” he says.
I shake my head. “I can’t. That will be worse. I’ll just be imagining what they’re saying. And the longer I wait, the worse it will be. The more I’ll imagine what was said. The more every whisper and smile and laugh will break me into a million pieces. I’ll create a reality in my head, and I’ll never come back if I run away.”
“I wish I could be there. At school. It’s so hard knowing I’m right there and I still can’t be there for you.”
“They’d just make it worse for you. At least you don’t have to be caught up in it all.”
“I can go on the bus tomorrow,” he offers. “I can sit with you.”
“No. Thank you, but no. I like that there’s something they can’t get to. I like this. Being with you is the safest I’ve felt in forever.”