by E. Lockhart
Mirren twists a strand of her hair. “I don’t know.”
“Did he go back with Raquel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did we fight? Did I do something wrong?”
“I don’t know, Cady.”
“He got upset at me a few nights back. About not knowing the names of the staff. About not having seen his apartment in New York.”
There is a silence. “He has good reasons to be mad,” says Mirren finally.
“What did I do?”
Mirren sighs. “You can’t fix it.”
“Why not?
Suddenly Mirren starts choking. Gagging, like she might vomit. Bending over at the waist, her skin damp and pale.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Can I help?”
She doesn’t answer.
I offer her a bottle of water. She takes it. Drinks slowly. “I did too much. I need to get back to Cuddledown. Now.”
Her eyes are glassy. I hold out my hand. Her skin feels wet and she seems unsteady on her feet. We walk in silence to the harbor where the small motorboat is docked.
Mummy never noticed the motorboat was missing, but she sees the bag of fudge when I give it to Taft and Will.
On and on, natter natter. Her lecture isn’t interesting.
I may not leave the island without permission from her.
I may not leave the island without adult supervision.
I may not operate a motor vehicle on medication.
I can’t be as stupid as I’m acting, can I?
I say the “Sorry” my mother wants to hear. Then I run down to Windemere and write everything I remembered—the clam shack, the pinwheel, Mirren’s dirty feet on the wooden steps, the book Gat gave me—on the graph paper above my bed.
45
Start of my second week on Beechwood, we discover the roof of Cuddledown. It’s easy to climb up there; we just never did it before because it involves going through Aunt Bess’s bedroom window.
The roof is cold as hell in the nighttime, but in the day there’s a great view of the island and the sea beyond it. I can see over the trees that cluster around Cuddledown to New Clairmont and its garden. I can even see into the house, which has floor-to-ceiling windows in many of the ground-floor rooms. You can see a bit of Red Gate, too, and the other direction, across to Windemere, then out to the bay.
That first afternoon we spread out food on an old picnic blanket. We eat Portuguese sweet bread and runny cheeses in small wooden boxes. Berries in green cardboard. Cold bottles of fizzy lemonade.
We resolve to come here every day. All summer. This roof is the best place in the world.
“If I die,” I say as we look at the view, “I mean, when I die, throw my ashes in the water of the tiny beach. Then when you miss me, you can climb up here, look down, and think how awesome I was.”
“Or we could go down and swim in you,” says Johnny. “If we missed you really badly.”
“Ew.”
“You’re the one who wanted to be in the water of the tiny beach.”
“I just meant, I love it here. It’d be a grand place to have my ashes.”
“Yeah,” says Johnny. “It would be.”
Mirren and Gat have been silent, eating chocolate-covered hazelnuts out of a blue ceramic bowl. “This is a bad conversation,” Mirren says.
“It’s okay,” says Johnny.
“I don’t want my ashes here,” says Gat.
“Why not?” I say. “We could all be together in the tiny beach.”
“And the littles will swim in us!” yells Johnny.
“You’re grossing me out,” snaps Mirren.
“It’s not actually that different from all the times I’ve peed in there,” says Johnny.
“Gack.”
“Oh, come on, everyone pees in there.”
“I don’t,” says Mirren.
“Yes, you do,” he says. “If the tiny beach water isn’t made of pee now, after all these years of us peeing in it, a few ashes aren’t going to ruin it.”
“Do you guys ever plan out your funeral?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” Johnny crinkles his nose.
“You know, in Tom Sawyer, when everyone thinks Tom and Huck and what’s-his-name?”
“Joe Harper,” says Gat.
“Yeah, they think Tom, Huck, and Joe Harper are dead. The boys go to their own funeral and hear all the nice memories the townspeople have of them. After I read that, I always thought about my own funeral. Like, what kind of flowers and where I’d want my ashes. And the eulogy, too, saying how I was transcendentally awesome and won the Nobel Prize and the Olympics.”
“What did you win for?” asks Gat.
“Maybe handball.”
“Is there handball in the Olympics?”
“Yes.”
“Do you even play handball?”
“Not yet.”
“You better get started.”
“Most people plan their weddings,” says Mirren. “I used to plan my wedding.”
“Guys don’t plan their weddings,” says Johnny.
“If I married Drake I’d have all yellow flowers,” Mirren says. “Yellow flowers everywhere. And a spring yellow dress, like a normal wedding dress only yellow. And he would wear a yellow cummerbund.”
“He would have to love you very, very much to wear a yellow cummerbund,” I tell her.
“Yeah,” says Mirren. “But Drake would do it.”
“I’ll tell you what I don’t want at my funeral,” says Johnny. “I don’t want a bunch of New York art-world types who don’t even know me standing around in a stupid-ass reception room.”
“I don’t want religious people talking about a God I don’t believe in,” says Gat.
“Or a bunch of fake girls acting all sad and then putting lip gloss on in the bathroom and fixing their hair,” says Mirren.
“God,” I quip, “you make it sound like funerals aren’t any fun.”
“Seriously, Cady,” says Mirren. “You should plan your wedding, not your funeral. Don’t be morbid.”
“What if I never get married? What if I don’t want to get married?”
“Plan your book party, then. Or your art opening.”
“She’s winning the Olympics and the Nobel Prize,” says Gat. “She can plan parties for those.”
“Okay, fine,” I say. “Let’s plan my Olympic handball party. If it’ll make you happy.”
So we do. Chocolate handballs wrapped in blue fondant. A gold dress for me. Champagne flutes with tiny gold balls inside. We discuss whether people wear weird goggles for handball like they do for racquetball and decide that for purposes of our party, they do. All the guests will wear gold handball goggles for the duration.
“Do you play on a handball team?” asks Gat. “I mean, will there be a whole crew of Amazonian handball goddesses there, celebrating victory with you? Or did you win it by your lonesome?”
“I have no idea.”
“You really have to start educating yourself about this,” says Gat. “Or you’re never going to win the gold. We’ll have to rethink the whole party if you only get the silver.”
Life feels beautiful that day.
The four of us Liars, we have always been.
We always will be.
No matter what happens as we go to college, grow old, build lives for ourselves; no matter if Gat and I are together or not. No matter where we go, we will always be able to line up on the roof of Cuddledown and gaze at the sea.
This island is ours. Here, in some way, we are young forever.
46
Days that follow are darker. Rarely do the Liars want to go anywhere. Mirren has a sore throat and body aches. She stays mainly in Cuddledown. She paints pictures to hang in the
hallways and makes rows of shells along the edges of the countertops. Dishes pile in the sink and on the coffee table. DVDs and books are in messy stacks all over the great room. The beds lie unmade and the bathrooms have a damp, mildewy smell.
Johnny eats cheese with his fingers and watches British TV comedies. One day he collects a row of old tea bags, soggy ones, and tosses them into a mug filled with orange juice.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Biggest splash gets the most points.”
“But why?”
“My mind works in mysterious ways,” says Johnny. “I find underhand is generally the best technique.”
I help him figure out a point system. Five points for a sprinkle, ten for a puddle, twenty for a decorative pattern on the wall behind the mug.
We go through a whole bottle of fresh-squeezed juice. When he’s done, Johnny leaves the mug and the mangled, leaking tea bags where they lie.
I don’t clean up, either.
Gat has a list of the hundred greatest novels ever written, and he’s pushing his way through whatever he’s been able to find on the island. He marks them with sticky notes and reads passages aloud. Invisible Man. A Passage to India. The Magnificent Ambersons. I only half pay attention when he reads, because Gat has not kissed me or reached out to me since we agreed to act normal.
I think he avoids being alone with me.
I avoid being alone with him, too, because my whole body sings to be near him, because every movement he makes is charged with electricity. I often think of putting my arms around him or running my fingers along his lips. When I let my thoughts go there—if for a moment Johnny and Mirren are out of sight, if for even a second we are alone—the sharp pain of unrequited love invites the migraine in.
These days she is a gnarled crone, touching the raw flesh of my brain with her cruel fingernails. She pokes my exposed nerves, exploring whether she’ll take up residence in my skull. If she gets in, I’m confined to my bedroom for a day or maybe two.
We eat lunch on the roof most days.
I suppose they do it when I’m ill, too.
Every now and then a bottle rolls off the roof and the glass smashes. In fact, there are shards and shards of splintered glass, sticky with lemonade, all over the porch.
Flies buzz around, attracted by the sugar.
47
End of the second week, I find Johnny alone in the yard, building a structure out of Lego pieces he must have found at Red Gate.
I’ve got pickles, cheese straws, and leftover grilled tuna from the New Clairmont kitchen. We decide not to go on the roof since it’s just the two of us. We open the containers and line them up on the edge of the dirty porch. Johnny talks about how he wants to build Hogwarts out of Lego. Or a Death Star. Or wait! Even better is a Lego tuna fish to hang in New Clairmont now that none of Granddad’s taxidermy is there anymore. That’s it. Too bad there’s not enough Lego on this stupid island for a visionary project such as his.
“Why didn’t you call or email after my accident?” I ask. I hadn’t planned to bring it up. The words spring out.
“Oh, Cady.”
I feel stupid asking, but I want to know.
“You don’t want to talk about Lego tuna fish instead?” Johnny vamps.
“I thought maybe you were annoyed with me about those emails. The ones I sent asking about Gat.”
“No, no.” Johnny wipes his hands on his T-shirt. “I disappeared because I’m an asshole. Because I don’t think through my choices and I’ve seen too many action movies and I’m kind of a follower.”
“Really? I don’t think that about you.”
“It’s an undeniable fact.”
“You weren’t mad?”
“I was just a stupid fuck. But not mad. Never mad. I’m sorry, Cadence.”
“Thanks.”
He picks up a handful of Legos and starts fitting them together.
“Why did Gat disappear? Do you know?”
Johnny sighs. “That’s another question.”
“He told me I don’t know the real him.”
“Could be true.”
“He doesn’t want to discuss my accident. Or what happened with us that summer. He wants us to act normal and like nothing happened.”
Johnny’s lined his Legos up in stripes: blue, white, and green. “Gat had been shitty to that girl Raquel, by starting up with you. He knew it wasn’t right and he hated himself for that.”
“Okay.”
“He didn’t want to be that kind of guy. He wants to be a good person. And he was really angry that summer, about all kinds of things. When he wasn’t there for you, he hated himself even more.”
“You think?”
“I’m guessing,” says Johnny.
“Is he going out with anyone?”
“Aw, Cady,” says Johnny. “He’s a pretentious ass. I love him like a brother, but you’re too good for him. Go find yourself a nice Vermont guy with muscles like Drake Loggerhead.” Then he cracks up laughing.
“You’re useless.”
“I can’t deny it,” he answers. “But you’ve got to stop being such a mushball.”
48
Giveaway: Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones.
It’s one of the Chrestomanci stories Mummy read to me and Gat the year we were eight. I’ve reread it several times since then, but I doubt Gat has.
I open the book and write on the title page. For Gat with everything, everything. Cady.
I head to Cuddledown early the next morning, stepping over old teacups and DVDs. I knock on Gat’s bedroom door.
No answer.
I knock again, then push it open.
It used to be Taft’s room. It’s full of bears and model boats, plus Gat-like piles of books, empty bags of potato chips, cashews crushed underfoot. Half-full bottles of juice and soda, CDs, the Scrabble box with most of its tiles spilled across the floor. It’s as bad as the rest of the house, if not worse.
Anyway, he’s not there. He must be at the beach.
I leave the book on his pillow.
49
That night, Gat and I find ourselves alone on the roof of Cuddledown. Mirren felt sick and Johnny took her downstairs for some tea.
Voices and music float from New Clairmont, where the aunts and Granddad are eating blueberry pie and drinking port. The littles are watching a movie in the living room.
Gat walks the slant of the roof, all the way down to the gutter and up again. It seems dangerous, so easy to fall—but he is fearless.
Now is when I can talk to him.
Now is when we can stop pretending to be normal.
I am looking for the right words, the best way to start.
Suddenly he climbs back to where I’m sitting in three big steps. “You are very, very beautiful, Cady,” he says.
“It’s the moonlight. Makes all the girls look pretty.”
“I think you’re beautiful always and forever.” He is silhouetted against the moon. “Have you got a boyfriend in Vermont?”
Of course I don’t. I have never had a boyfriend except for him. “My boyfriend is named Percocet,” I say. “We’re very close. I even went to Europe with him last summer.”
“God.” Gat is annoyed. Stands and walks back down to the edge of the roof.
“Joking.”
Gat’s back is to me. “You say we shouldn’t feel sorry you—”
“Yes.”
“—but then you come out with these statements. My boyfriend is named Percocet. Or, I stared at the base of the blue Italian toilet. And it’s clear you want everyone to feel sorry for you. And we would, I would, but you have no idea how lucky you are.”
My face flushes.
He is right.
I do want people to feel sorry for me. I do.
And then I
don’t.
I do.
And then I don’t.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Harris sent you to Europe for eight weeks. You think he’ll ever send Johnny or Mirren? No. And he wouldn’t send me, no matter what. Just think before you complain about stuff other people would love to have.”
I flinch. “Granddad sent me to Europe?”
“Come on,” says Gat, bitter. “Did you really think your father paid for that trip?”
I know immediately that he is telling the truth.
Of course Dad didn’t pay for the trip. There’s no way he could have. College professors don’t fly first-class and stay in five-star hotels.
So used to summers on Beechwood, to endlessly stocked pantries and multiple motorboats and a staff quietly grilling steaks and washing linens—I didn’t even think about where that money might be coming from.
Granddad sent me to Europe. Why?
Why wouldn’t Mummy go with me, if the trip was a gift from Granddad? And why would Dad even take that money from my grandfather?
“You have a life stretching out in front of you with a million possibilities,” Gat says. “It—it grates on me when you ask for sympathy, that’s all.”
Gat, my Gat.
He is right. He is.
But he also doesn’t understand.
“I know no one’s beating me,” I say, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “I know I have plenty of money and a good education. Food on the table. I’m not dying of cancer. Lots of people have it much worse than I. And I do know I was lucky to go to Europe. I shouldn’t complain about it or be ungrateful.”
“Okay, then.”
“But listen. You have no idea what it feels like to have headaches like this. No idea. It hurts,” I say—and I realize tears are running down my face, though I’m not sobbing. “It makes it hard to be alive, some days. A lot of times I wish I were dead, I truly do, just to make the pain stop.”
“You do not,” he says harshly. “You do not wish you were dead. Don’t say that.”