I'd Give Anything

by Marisa de los Santos

  “I believe you,” I said, hoarsely. “I do believe you.”

  Trevor sat down on the rug. He looked as wrung out as I felt.

  “That’s why you stopped talking to me,” said Trevor, sadly. “After Mom sent me away. I thought you were just taking her side. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “That’s why,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you ask me about what you overheard?”

  I opened up my hands. “I heard you say the words. I heard you. I couldn’t believe that you would do something like that.”

  “But you did. You believed it.”

  “You hated her so much that it scared me sometimes. I thought you hated her enough to do it just to spite her. I couldn’t stand that you’d done it, so I tried to erase it. I told myself that it was possible to burn that conversation right out of existence so that it wouldn’t ruin everything.”

  “It ruined everything anyway,” said Trevor.

  “It came between me and my friends. And you, you left and never came back.”

  “I needed to get away. From Mom, yes, but not just her. I got stuck being this person who was always reacting to her or trying to drive her insane. When I think about it now, I think I needed to smash it all, my relationship with Mom and my connection to this town. I had to make sure there was nothing to come back to. So I could start over.”

  “Oh.”

  “Gin, you thought I set the school on fire? How could you think I was capable of a thing like that? You knew me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Then, Trevor said, “So you see why I got upset tonight, when I saw him here.”

  “Him?” I said.

  I had been so caught up in the revelation that Trevor hadn’t set the fire that I had forgotten all about how our conversation had started. But now I remembered.

  Daniel.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Avery

  Avery’s mother told her. She told her what those missing, erased (not missing, indelible) fifteen minutes had contained, the fifteen minutes that her mother had tried, when she was eighteen, to tear out and burn. She told her what she had thought was true for so long and what she knew to be true now. Her mother told Avery how she had lived for twenty years in the aftermath of a lie.

  “It never happened,” said Avery, awed. “The terrible thing that changed your life never happened.”

  “I know. I can hardly believe it. Trevor didn’t set the fire that killed Gray’s dad. He didn’t, didn’t, didn’t set the fire that killed Gray’s dad. I have to keep saying it to myself.”

  They were sitting in their favorite Sunday breakfast restaurant, a tiny French corner café and bakery that served warm croissants; eggy, fairy-light crullers; savory Pop-Tart-shaped hand pies; and fishbowl-size hot chocolates adrift with whipped cream.

  “You were just trying to protect Uncle Trevor. That’s why you didn’t want to tell.”

  “That sounds noble, but it isn’t the only reason. I believed I was to blame, too.”

  “How?”

  “Trevor and I, we’d struck a deal with each other to be rule breakers. For Trev, a lot of the rule breaking had to do with showing my mom that she couldn’t control him, and he probably thought the same went for me. I might even have thought that, too.”

  “But that wasn’t why?”

  “Maybe a little. Mostly, though, I just loved doing exactly what I wanted to do. I liked following through on my impulses. So when I was little, I’d always be the kid who climbed too high in the tree or went out too far in the ocean or got up and danced when I was happy at school. When I got older, I’d skip school or stay up all night writing or sneak out or decorate my boyfriend’s house with paper snowflakes.”

  “Or jump off cliffs in the dark,” said Avery.

  Avery’s mother shut her eyes and tipped back her head and smiled. “I’d stand on the edge of that quarry, with the air on my skin, and I’d feel alive in every cell. And jumping, jumping was like flying.” She opened her eyes. “I guess my wildness was actually pretty tame, but it didn’t feel that way to me.”

  “I don’t think it was tame. Zinny was awesome.”

  Her mother reached across the table and squeezed Avery’s hand. “I don’t know if she was awesome. But I know I loved being myself, even during those years when kids are supposed to be full of self-consciousness and doubt. I reveled in being Zinny Beale.”

  Her mother’s eyes got serious and she shook her head. “Trevor and I dared each other and pushed each other and never, ever, told on each other and always took each other’s side. But his hatred for our mother grew and grew, and it spurred him to go further and further, and I knew it was happening. I saw him getting too mad, pushing the boundaries too far, but I never tried to stop him. To even mention it would’ve been disloyal.”

  “You did, though. When he stole the stop signs.”

  “I can’t even tell you how many times my mind has gone back to the night of the stop signs. Over and over. How Trevor said he was afraid our mother was turning him into a monster like her. I tortured myself with that night. Because I let him off the hook too easily. So then when he set the fire, I thought it was partly my fault. I’d let it happen.”

  Avery said, softly, “But remember? He didn’t set it.”

  Her mother gave a startled laugh. “Right! He didn’t. Wow.”

  Avery sensed something coming alive in her mother, and she thought she recognized it, even though she’d seen it only in the pages of an old journal. Not just one thing, either: fierceness, courage. Avery looked at her mother and caught a glimpse of Zinny.

  “Someone did,” said Avery. “It’s weird to think that the whole time you thought Uncle Trevor did, the person who really did it has been walking around with that secret. I hope it wasn’t Daniel.” Her mother had told her about Daniel, about how a lot of people twenty years ago had thought he’d done it.

  “Mom, do you think it could have been him?”

  “No,” her mother replied after a pause. “My gut tells me that he couldn’t have endangered all those people. He’s the nicest person I’ve ever met, like instinctively nice. Nice without trying. But—”

  “But what?”

  “He was going through a hard time. He was angry about moving in the middle of high school and about not being able to find his place at his new school. Anger can push people. And so can alcohol. He drank too much back then. He told me that.”

  “You’d have to be really, really angry to set a fire,” said Avery.

  “I know. I can’t imagine the Daniel I know being that angry.”

  “Are you going to talk to him about it?”

  Her mother sighed. “There’s part of me that just wants to let it go. I like him so much, and I know whatever he used to be, he’s a good man now. I know it.”

  “Mom, can I say something crazy?”

  “Sure, baby.”

  “Maybe there’s a reason that you were drawn to Daniel. Like maybe somewhere in your head there was that picture of him you said Uncle Trevor remembered seeing.”

  “That’s possible. I was in a kind of heartsick haze when people were spreading that photo around, but I had to have seen it. Still, you’d think that if my subconscious recognized Daniel, it would also have sent me running straight in the opposite direction.”

  “Maybe. But maybe you’ve never completely thought Uncle Trevor did it. Maybe, deep down, you’ve always wanted to know the truth. Or maybe—”

  “What?”

  “Maybe it’s truth that pushed you two together. Like truth wants to make itself known. Does that sound crazy?”

  Her mother laughed. “Maybe just a teensy bit.”

  “Okay, but it’s not crazy to think the truth is better, right? Better than lies or secrets. Even when it’s scary or super hard to face or when it doesn’t set anyone free—because maybe it doesn’t always—the true story should still win.”

  “I think it’s taken me my entire life up t
o this moment to learn that,” said Avery’s mother. “And here you are with it already figured out.”

  Her mother raised her water glass. “Here’s to the true story forever and ever!”

  And, after a couple of seconds, Avery clinked her glass against her mother’s, and they both drank.

  That night, Avery wrote a note and sealed it inside an envelope, and the very next day, after school, before she could chicken out, Avery took the bus to the coffee shop where Cressida worked. When it was her turn in line, she asked the twenty-something-year-old woman working behind the counter if Cressida was coming in that day.

  “She’s down to just weekends now that track is starting up,” said the woman. “But she might stop in after practice this evening.”

  “I can’t stay,” said Avery, “but can you give her a note from me?”

  “Sure thing, honey,” said the woman.

  That night, when Avery was brushing her teeth, she got a text from Cressida: I got your note. Sure, I’ll meet you. Would it be weird for me to pick you up? We could get coffee and just sit in my car and talk. I’m finished with track at 5:00 tomorrow. If that works for you, send me your address, and if you want to meet somewhere else, that’s cool, too. Thanks for asking to hear my side of the story.

  Avery thought that the text seemed nice enough, but anyone could sound nice in a text. She thought about her house, how it had always been a completely safe place. Even on the really bad sleep nights when she had felt the need to get away, be anywhere else, leaving was really just a way to hit the reset button on her spinning carousel of a brain. She was always happy when her mom pulled onto their street and the house stood waiting, yellow light glowing in the windows. The sight always filled her with peace. Maybe that was why she left in the first place, not to get away, but so that she could come back and be home.

  She finished brushing her teeth and wrote: Thanks for texting back. I actually have to stay at school tomorrow to do group work, so you could pick me up there. I go to Lucretia Mott. If that’s okay, you can come to the front entrance, and text when you’re there, and I’ll come out.

  When Avery first got into Cressida’s car, she could barely look at her. Her palms were sweating and her stomach hurt and it felt like bells were clanging inside her head. Usually, Avery was good at managing her own exterior, at making sure that, however exhausted or unfocused or anxious she felt on the inside, she could keep the outside smoothed down and confident and glossy. But now, when she would’ve given anything to come across as mature and calm, she believed she might, at any moment, collapse into a thousand stupid, fidgety, fluttery pieces.

  “Hey,” said Cressida.

  “Hey,” said Avery.

  “Should we get coffee?”

  At the play, Avery had really only heard Cressida sing. Her speaking voice was different from what Avery had expected, higher, younger. Right then, Avery decided that if she was having this conversation in the name of getting to the truth, she might as well start by telling it.

  “Honestly, I’m pretty nervous. Caffeine is probably the last thing I need.”

  “Ugh, same here,” said Cressida, making a face.

  “Really?”

  “The entire way over here, I was wishing I hadn’t answered your text. I mean not really. I want us to talk, but I—don’t know. I can’t even imagine what you’ve heard about me.”

  “Well—” said Avery.

  “No, actually, I can imagine it because I’ve heard it about me, too.”

  “Rumors suck,” said Avery. “It’s like people think if they just put ‘I heard’ in front of it, they can say anything. No one really cares about the truth.”

  “I know.”

  “But I do.”

  Cressida didn’t answer, and Avery gathered her courage and glanced over at her, bracing herself to take one look and get completely intimidated. But it didn’t happen. Yes, Cressida was pretty, even in sweats, even with her hair in a high, messy knot and her mascara slightly smudged under her eyes. Her profile was lovely and long-necked with a clear-cut swoop of jawline and a delicate slope of nose. But she wasn’t the movie-star-polished, glossy, light-emitting princess from her social media photos; she didn’t look like she had just stepped off an airplane from a trip to Paris. She looked like what she was: a genetically blessed but normal human girl, not so different from Avery herself. Avery would have supposed that this discovery would’ve made things easier. But somehow it shook her.

  Oh, Dad, she thought.

  They parked in a shopping center parking lot, one with a different coffee shop in it, not Cressida’s, not Avery’s. After Cressida turned off the engine, no one said anything. Avery watched a family—a man, a woman, and a boy of four or five—walking out of the coffee shop. The parents had white paper cups, and the boy between them held a big muffin in both hands as carefully as if it were a kitten curled up in his palms.

  “I didn’t do any of those things people are saying about me. I wouldn’t. I’m not like that,” said Cressida.

  “Okay,” said Avery. “But something happened that shouldn’t have. Because my dad got fired.”

  Cressida turned to her. “Are you sure you want to hear about this?”

  “Yes. I’m scared to hear about it, but it’s better to know the truth.”

  “Okay. Well, I don’t know where to start.”

  “How about at the beginning?” said Avery.

  Cressida nodded. “All right, well, so my teacher, Ms. Holt, told me to apply for the internship. The thing about me is that I’m smart. But a lot of people don’t see me that way. They look at me and make assumptions about who I am. Probably that happens at your school, too.”

  “It does,” said Avery. “I think people see me as smart but also as—I don’t know. Boring. Predictable. Like little boring, good-girl Avery.”

  “So you know what I mean. And the thing is you start to believe your own hype. So it took me a long time to think of myself as smart, even though I knew I always got good grades. But Ms. Holt is one of the people who thought I was intelligent. And, like, capable. So when she recommended me for the internship, I was surprised but also happy. And when I started last summer, it was awesome to walk into a new place, where no one knew me. I could be who I wanted to be.”

  “I can see how that would be nice,” said Avery.

  “I worked super hard and tried to represent myself as mature and professional with interesting ideas, and it worked. I’d feel so good walking into that building every morning in the summer. I didn’t even care that I didn’t have time for parties or the beach or whatever.”

  Cressida stopped and looked down at her hands in her lap. Avery noticed that Cressida’s nails were bitten, and she felt the shakiness again and something else, like protectiveness. For Cressida. For the girl who had wrecked Avery’s family.

  “Your dad saw me the way I wanted people to see me. Or I thought so. He was nice. He asked my opinion about important issues. He told me I had exceptional talent and potential. And then he arranged for my internship to extend past the summer.”

  “Oh,” said Avery. She wanted to say more, to tell Cressida that her dad was nice. He was just what Cressida had described: a person who saw the good in people, who lifted them up and made them see the good in themselves. But she could tell by Cressida’s face that she was getting to the hard part of the story.

  “And he arranged for me to be paid.” Cressida lifted her chin, defiantly. “But that’s it; that’s the only money I ever took from him, and I didn’t even ask for it. I would’ve worked weekends for free, just because I liked it and because it would look good on my college applications.”

  “Okay,” said Avery.

  “It wasn’t like things got weird overnight. It happened gradually. He started to send me these really long emails and not just during work hours. I’d get to school and check, and he would’ve sent one at like three in the morning. He never said anything obviously inappropriate.”

  “That’s goo
d,” said Avery, in a small voice.

  Cressida shook her head. “But they got weird. Just the tone of them. And he’d go on and on and on about how gifted I was, but also about a connection he felt with me.”

  Avery felt sick. She felt like shouting at Cressida to stop. But she’d come seeking truth, and even though Cressida might not be telling the truth, Avery needed to hear her story, all of it.

  “He’d say it was uncanny how in tune with each other we were. He said I understood him better than anyone else at the company. Once, he said it was as if I could read his mind. And he’d remember every stupid little thing I’d say. Like once, I said I liked oatmeal raisin better than chocolate chip cookies, and a week later, he brought me some cookies from a bakery. He said he was in a bakery thinking of me and the cookies just called out to him to buy them. Why was he thinking of me at a bakery?”

  Cressida sounded like she might cry. Avery sat very, very still and didn’t answer.

  “You just don’t think it could be happening, you know? That a guy older than your dad, and one who’s been so nice to you, is paying you the wrong kind of attention. I loved working at that place. I didn’t want to believe something bad was happening there. But then he asked me to lunch. I shouldn’t have gone. But I’d just sent my application to my early decision school and was really nervous about it, and your dad said he knew someone at the school and could maybe pull some strings. He invited me to lunch to discuss it.”

  “You should’ve said no,” said Avery.

  Cressida threw her hands into the air.

  “No kidding! Don’t you think I wish I had? Listen, are you sure you want me to keep telling you this stuff?”

  No, no, no, no.

  “Yes,” said Avery.

  “Fine. He took me to this fancy vegan place because I had mentioned one time that I was a vegetarian. And he didn’t say a word about the college thing.”

  She paused, and Avery saw that she had tears in her eyes.

  “He said he was sure I knew by then that he had feelings for me. He said he’d tried to fight them off because of our age difference, but they were too strong. And he said—”