Don't Trust Her

by Elizabeth Boles

  Not that I’ve ever seen this, but that’s how he strikes me.

  So Tal and Scott are out, which leaves Paige’s husband, Derek.

  Now Derek…is another story. This guy is a real go-getter, the kind of person who wakes up at five a.m. to run ten miles. When he gets home, he showers, has a quickie with Paige, and then starts making breakfast. By the time she’s downstairs and ready to eat, Derek has the table set, breakfast spread on it. He eats his meal, kisses her on the cheek, and jets off to work, where he smiles, makes a million-dollar deal over eighteen holes at lunch, and then comes home, eats dinner, and starts the whole process again.

  No, I’m not exaggerating. The first part, I know from Paige, is how Derek starts his day. If there was a guy who was in tip-top shape, exuded confidence, and could pick up just about any woman he wanted, it would be Derek.

  But then why did Paige invite Blanche? If one of my friends screwed my husband, the last thing I would do was invite them on a weekend getaway.

  Unless the friend didn’t know that I knew.

  Too hard to follow?

  Say Blanche doesn’t know that Paige knows. Maybe Paige invited her to inform Blanche that she is aware of the affair.

  But from the way Blanche reacted at pulling the card, her explosion at Paige, I don’t buy that either.

  Of course, I could put all of this to rest by just speaking with Blanche. But I don’t want to do that, not with Faith and Paige downstairs. They might overhear.

  I don’t want to choose sides when it comes to my friends. It’s better to let some things just slip right on by.

  I watch Paige. She’s staring at her wedding band, turning it and watching as it orbits her finger.

  I rise. “Well, I’m off to bed.”

  “Me too,” Paige says. “I’ve got to get my beauty sleep.”

  Faith follows us as we climb the stairs. We say good night at the top, and then Paige and I splinter off to our side of the house.

  She stops outside my door and waits for Faith to slip inside her room.

  “I’m sorry things got so heated tonight.”

  “It’s okay.”

  She stares down at her finger again. Her mouth opens as if she wants to speak.

  I nudge her. “What is it?”

  “Have you…do you think that you could ever forgive someone for hurting you so badly that you want to erase that pain from existence?”

  Ah, so maybe Blanche and Derek did do it. “I once had to forgive myself like that.”

  She straightens, interested. “For what?”

  A thousand thoughts run through my head. I had to forgive myself for living when my sister didn’t. If it hadn’t been for the lightning that struck that tree, my life and hers would have been different.

  But I couldn’t just jump in and forgive myself right after it happened, so I blamed God. But eventually I forgave him for taking her. I also had to forgive fate for creating an addict, which was the reason we were out that day to begin with.

  If I hadn’t forgiven fate and all her whims, save for Jonas and my family, I would have been in the bottom of a trench years ago, curled up, unable to function. So yes, I have forgiven the unknown for twisting fate.

  Those first few days after the accident, when my mother lay in the hospital, all I could think was that it shouldn’t have been me who lived.

  My sister should have.

  But I say none of this to Paige. Instead I answer, “I had to forgive myself after Brittany died. I felt guilty for living.”

  She rubs her neck, glancing at the floor. “But if someone else had been responsible for Brittany’s death, could you have turned the other cheek? Even if that cheek was scarred, too?”

  I rub my arms, brushing aside a chill that spreads across my flesh. “I would like to think I could, though it would be hard. Dealing with that kind of pain is unimaginable. But there are times when you have to look past that and think of things and people other than yourself. That’s what’s kept me going.”

  She nods as if numb to her own feelings.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.

  “No, I’m fine.” Paige runs her fingertips through her hair. “You just get on to bed, now, and don’t worry about me. Enjoy your rest. I have one more surprise planned for tomorrow.”

  I force a smile because I don’t want to find myself on the other end of a surprise like what happened to Blanche. “Great. I can’t wait.”

  My words come out flat. But Paige is already down the hall. She didn’t notice how I responded to her.

  She must have other things on her mind.

  I slip inside the room, grateful to be alone. I shimmy into my pajamas and turn down the bed. As I’m about to slide under the covers, a quiet knock comes from my door.

  At least I think it’s a knock. The sound is so light it barely stands out against the hum of the heating unit winding warmth through the house.

  It comes again and I answer. Faith stands in the doorway in a long-sleeved pajama shirt and pants set. “Can we talk?” she whispers.

  I make room for her to enter, and she immediately crosses to my bed and sits. Her face is freshly scrubbed, her cheeks rosy from the exfoliating cleanser she uses. Her hair is pulled back with a band, and her breath smells minty.

  “What’s going on?”

  Her eyes pop. “Are you kidding? What was that whole thing with the white card and Blanche?”

  I think of so many sleepovers we had when we were young, when we’d stay up doing our nails and talking about boys. I would dial up the boy that Faith liked while she quietly listened from another phone. She would pretend not to be on the line while I grilled him about his feelings for her.

  “You want to talk about Blanche now? We could have discussed this downstairs.”

  She plucks at a loose string on the bedspread. “I didn’t want to offend Paige. She seemed shaken by what happened. She wasn’t even talking.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Faith folds her legs up under her chin and hugs them. “So, what do you think’s going on? Is Blanche having an affair?”

  “I have no idea.” I slide my feet under the covers and lace my fingers behind my head. “If she is, she hasn’t said anything to me about it.”

  Faith nibbles her bottom lip. Even when she’s drunk, she’s thirsty to discover the truth. She’s not drunk anymore. Her gaze isn’t swimming. She’s focused clearly on me and the conversation. Which means now she is an alert bloodhound.

  “Do you think she’s screwing Derek?” she asks.

  The same question that I had. “But she loves Jeremy.”

  “But she got really upset at that answer. It said she was screwing her best friend’s husband. I know it isn’t Scott, and Tal is devoted to you, like, a thousand percent. If it’s not Scott and it’s not Tal, that only leaves Derek.”

  “I’d like to think that no one is doing any of that.”

  Faith rocks back and forth. “Did you see the way Paige kept looking at her wedding band?”

  “I didn’t notice.” I don’t think this is any of Faith’s business, so I’m not encouraging her.

  “Well, I saw her do it. She’s been staring at it and twisting it around and around.” She stops rocking and stares at me. “Something is off, and there was another thing. I didn’t say it when we were at the table because I was so surprised by Blanche’s reaction, but…” She stops, stares at the door. “Did you hear something?”

  I listen but can only hear the faint whir of the heat moving through the vents. “What did you think it was?”

  “Sounded like footsteps.”

  We pause for another moment but don’t hear any creaks or steps outside in the hallway.

  “Maybe it was your imagination.”

  Faith chews her lip. “I swear I heard it.” Then she shrugs. “Oh well. Anyway. What was I saying?”

  “There was something else that happened while we were at the table.”

  “Oh, right. Well, I don�
��t know if you noticed, but”—she leans in conspiratorially—“when I looked down at all the white cards in front of Blanche, there weren’t three in front of her. You know she accused Paige of laying down that card, and Paige kept saying that it wasn’t her?”

  Where was this going? “Yeah.”

  A spark flits into Faith’s eyes. “Well, like I said, there weren’t three cards in front of Blanche.”

  She wants me to ask. “How many were there?”

  Faith licks her lips. She’s loving having this information. “There were four white cards in front of her. Four.”

  Now it’s my turn to be confused. “But there should have only been three.”

  “Right,” she agrees. “There should have only been three. I don’t know about you, but when I’m choosing my cards, I’m not paying attention to what’s going on at the table, I’m looking at my hand. We all are.”

  “I have no idea what you’re suggesting.”

  Faith makes a little sound of pity in the back of her throat. She’s thinking that I was never good at solving mysteries—not as good as she was and is, apparently.

  “What I’m suggesting is”—she leans forward, drops her voice—“Blanche played that card herself. It wasn’t any of us. Blanche had that card ready and dropped it at just the right time to make it look like Paige had been the one who played it.”

  “Oh my gosh.” I didn’t see the card, but Faith wouldn’t lie about that. “You’re saying that Blanche made up the whole thing?”

  Faith nods. “She did. She made it up and then blamed Paige for it. None of us played that answer. Blanche did it herself to start drama. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  Faith glances at the door. “Her plan worked. She blamed Paige, and now she’s going to leave—just like she planned from the very beginning.”

  Chapter 13

  Charlotte

  October 2000

  Brittany says she dreams of leaving this town, of being on her own, of being different and liked for that difference. She stares at my ceiling as she says this, pointing to the glow-in-the-dark stars that constellate the smooth surface.

  At least you have a sister, I remind her.

  She smiles at me, her top lip flattening as she makes a quirky grin. Am I being selfish, she asks.

  I tell her that of course she’s not. But what about Tal?

  She groans and flips onto her stomach. “He wants to be my boyfriend.”

  “You should let him.”

  “But we haven’t even kissed.”

  She revises what she wants to do when she grows up. She wants to move away and marry Tal so that they can be together and no one will ever mistake her for Court.

  I laugh at that and throw a pillow at her, calling her a dork.

  She giggles back and takes a bottle of fingernail polish from my desk and starts to drape the wet brush over her fingers.

  “Do you really want to kiss Tal?”

  She’s not sure. Her nose wrinkles when she says it, and I realize that she does want to but she’s lacking opportunity.

  “Do you think that if you kissed him, then you’d let him be your boyfriend? If he didn’t fish-lip you, I mean?”

  She tells me that’s gross and shrugs, one shoulder hiking to her ear.

  I know where you can kiss him, I tell her. Where you can meet and no one will know.

  She perks up at this and asks me where.

  “Put that polish down and come with me.”

  Sam and I meet in the forest on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school. It becomes our regular two days. We smoke a little weed and then undress. No one ever sees us. We are discreet, as grown-ups like to say.

  We are very smart about how we act around each other. We don’t speak much in school. Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t break up with Court, but it doesn’t matter. I like the fact that he has a girlfriend, that I’m not shouldering any of his emotional junk.

  I don’t have time for that. After all, my family moves too much for me to have a boyfriend. I can’t get attached to someone, not like most people do.

  We’re always quick in the woods. Sometimes Sam likes to try to talk after, about sports, but I’m always up and dressing, ready to get home. So he stops talking and follows.

  Court doesn’t suspect anything, and that’s how I plan to keep it.

  Brittany doesn’t suspect anything either, which is why I take her there, show her how to slip into the forest where no one can see.

  Brittany’s nervous because she plays by the rules. Her homework is always turned in on time, and she never says a bad word about any of the teachers. Even if they’re boring, she likes them.

  But she is, by nature, shy, not one to take risks. So she needs a little shove.

  When she sees the forest, the cliff and its beauty, her opinion changes. It’s gorgeous, she tells me, arms wide as if she could spread her wings and fly.

  It is magical, I admit.

  She asks how I know about it, and I shy away from the issue, just saying that one of the stupid boys from school brought me there to try to feel me up, but I didn’t let him.

  Of course she asks who, but I tell her that it doesn’t matter.

  We could be arrested, she reminds me, for being out here.

  If they didn’t want anyone here, someone should be checking the fence to make sure we’re kept out.

  She doesn’t say anything at this. Her lips quirk, and I suspect she thinks I’m right.

  We sit atop the uneven stone slab that Sam and I have screwed on numerous times. It almost makes me laugh that I’m keeping this secret from her. That she’s right on top of it. If the secret were a real thing, it would be close enough to bite her.

  I point to the cliff, where one rocky finger juts out before a knuckle joins it to another craggy digit.

  “The kids used to jump from one tip to the other,” I say. “That’s why this place got shut down. Because a kid dared another to do it, to make the leap, but the kid didn’t make it across.”

  “That’s stupid,” she says, “daring each other.”

  We peer over the edge. A drop filled with teeth and claws stares back at us. There are stone hooks and knives until the very bottom, where a mound of overgrown earth and stone lies below.

  She asks how far down I think the drop is. I have no idea. It looks like it’s taller than a second-story window, or maybe it’s about the same height. It’s impossible to tell.

  “It’s peaceful here,” she admits.

  I take this as a good sign, one that I can use in the future. “Would you come back with me one day?”

  She gazes out at the swaying trees and inhales, her chest inflating. Brittany feels the power of this place, how it’s not reckless to sneak back here but instead brave.

  Finally she nods. Yes, she’ll come back.

  But it won’t be me that she’s meeting.

  I have a plan. It’s simple and should work. In fact, I bank on it working, that no one will overthink what I’m about to do.

  It starts with a simple note.

  I write one to Brittany, asking her to meet me at the bluff on Friday, after school. I make sure that it’s not Thursday or Tuesday. Can’t have her catching me with Sam out there, now can I? That would be bad.

  I tell her to meet me at the stone slab, that I have something important to tell her, something that I can’t say anywhere else.

  It’s bullshit, but what I’ve learned about girls my age is that they all love a fucking mystery. In fact, Faith has some sort of mystery book club where she and her friends compete with each other to see who can figure out whodunit or something like that.

  Talk about lame.

  But anyway, the note explains that I can’t walk with Brittany out to the bluff because I’m afraid we’ll be seen together.

  It’s a load of bull, but she’ll buy it.

  She might back down and not go. But I work hard to keep her interest. All day, after I hand over the note, I make sure to lo
ok sad and worried, not saying much and barely eating at lunch.

  Which sucked because it was pizza day and I love pizza day.

  She tries to talk to me about it. I shut her down and say that I’ll explain when we meet and not before.

  She says okay, and I smile secretly to myself.

  Brittany will come.

  Part two of my plan is a sure thing.

  I slip a note into Tal’s locker and pretend it’s penned from Brittany. He probably doesn’t know her handwriting. At least, I hope he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter, though. He likes her so much that he’ll fall for it. Tal would do just about anything to be alone with her. He won’t have any problem sneaking through the fence and following the directions I lay out in the letter.

  I stalk near his locker, watching when Tal finds the note, folded into a football, and opens it. He instantly reads it and glances around, looking for her.

  But Brittany is already gone, and I smile because I know he will do this. Even if he has to call his mother and tell her that he’ll be late from school, even if he has to skip math club, he’ll do it.

  I feel like a matchmaker doing a good deed. It almost makes up for the bad deed that I’m doing with Sam.

  Almost.

  Curiosity will keep me worked up all weekend if I don’t spy on Brittany and Tal, see if my plan works.

  There is a perfect spot, a hedge of bushes a little ways off from the stone slab. I arrive early and settle down, knowing that they’ll be along soon.

  And they are.

  Tal arrives first—of course he does. He stands on the slab, running his hands through his hair nervously. He lifts one arm, and I see a patch of sweat blotting his shirt.

  Poor kid, he’s so nervous.

  October in the South is hot, ungodly so. All the television shows start featuring beautiful orange leaves, people wearing knitted scarves and hats the color of pumpkins, but in this town I’m still in jeans and T-shirts.

  So is Brittany when she arrives. She hikes through the forest hesitantly, pushing the branches out of her way as if she’s afraid that they’ll bite.