Last Year's Mistake

by Gina Ciocca

“Your mom and I aren’t going to let anything happen to you. You know that, right?”

  I nodded, but I knew my face betrayed my confusion. “What’s going on, Dad?”

  My father shot a quick glance back at my mother. She gave a slight shrug, as if to say, Why are you looking at me when you’re going to do what you want anyway? My father turned back to me, smiling. “I have some good news. Or I hope you’ll think it’s good news. You girls know that I’ve been looking for work for some time. And while I have my book deal and that’s fantastic, I really need something full-time because, well, I have two growing young ladies in my care and higher education isn’t cheap.”

  I shuddered. Medical treatments had to be expensive too.

  “I’ve been looking for work all over Connecticut, but nothing has panned out. Then, late last week, I got a call from another school system I’d applied to. Your mother and I have discussed it at length, and we think it could be a great opportunity.”

  “What other school system?” I asked suspiciously.

  My father could barely contain his excitement. “Riverdale Junior High, in Rhode Island. Right outside of Newport.”

  Miranda gasped. I sat up straighter in bed and stared down at my father. “You were offered a job in Rhode Island?”

  “Yes. But I haven’t accepted yet. They don’t need me until next school year, and we wanted to discuss it as a family first.” He looked over at David. “You’re family too, David.”

  I’d forgotten David was still there. If he’d seemed uncomfortable a second ago, it was nothing compared to the way he looked now.

  “But, Daddy, what if—”

  I was going to say, What if I’m sick, but my father cut me off. “Kelsey, honey, I know you’re going to be fine. But, if there’s a chance you need some sort of treatment, we’d be better equipped to handle it if I have a real job lined up. And you and Miranda have always loved Rhode Island. I think this might be what’s best for all of us.”

  “But this is home,” Miranda said quietly. She looked shell-shocked.

  “We’re not making any decisions today,” my mother cut in. She motioned for my father to get up. The clipped tone of her voice told me the silent treatment would be in his immediate future. “Your father wanted you girls to be aware, and now you are. We’re not discussing it again until we hear about Kelsey’s results. She has enough on her mind.”

  I had plenty on my mind. Plenty of reasons why this was the best thing that could have happened.

  I didn’t love Norwood. I’d lived there my whole life, but I didn’t think of it as home the way Miranda obviously did. To me it was a place where I didn’t quite fit in anymore, where everything about me would always be second best. Where I’d always be itching to be somewhere else.

  On top of it, I now had the added bonus of not knowing if my health was about to go through the gauntlet the same way my reputation had. Everyone who’d been at Isabel’s house that morning thought I’d tried to hurt myself. What if word of my little bathroom incident wound up all over school? I knew firsthand that teenagers weren’t the most sympathetic species, and I’d had enough of people throwing things at my locker and looking down their noses at me.

  Starting over somewhere new sounded like a gift.

  Especially in the place where, for two weeks every summer, I felt like I was exactly where I belonged. Nothing made me happier than trading our tiny house and the claustrophobic overgrowth of our neighborhood for the manicured openness of Uncle Tommy’s cabin. The ocean air brought me to life the minute it filled my lungs. I closed my eyes for a second, thinking about staring out at the sea, leaning against the sun-warmed railing of the Cliff Walk, or strolling through Thames Street with the breeze from the harbor whispering in my ear. Telling me it wanted me there as much as I wanted to be there.

  Trying new things didn’t sound like such a bad idea after all. I couldn’t think of a single reason why I didn’t want to move to Rhode Island permanently.

  Until I saw the look on David’s face.

  Twenty-One

  Rhode Island

  Senior Year

  “Ryan Andrew Murphy, this room is a disaster.”

  I stepped around a pair of jeans and a polo shirt that were crumpled on Ryan’s bedroom floor, like a second skin he’d shed and then left there. Ryan took better care of his car than some people took of their pets, but you’d never know it by looking at his room.

  There were two paths of uncluttered blue carpet, one leading to his desk and one leading to his bed. The rest of the floor was strewn with schoolbooks, college pamphlets, clothes, baseball memorabilia, and empty bowls with spoons in them. Ryan had a habit of eating cereal after dinner every night, and the routine didn’t always include bringing the bowl back to the kitchen.

  “I know,” Ryan said with a guilty smile. His dimple made it a little harder to be disgusted. “My mom’s been on me all week.” He flicked on the TV, then pulled his sheets and white and blue plaid comforter into some semblance of neatness. He sat on the bed, patting the spot next to him. “Come over here. We’ve got a few minutes before Crowley and Candle get here. We can watch TV.”

  Watch TV, my ass.

  Sure enough, the minute I’d settled in next to him, he rolled onto his side and kissed my earlobe. I kept my body stiff, trying not to wrinkle my white blouse. Matt and Candy and Ryan and I were going out to dinner, and I didn’t want to get to the restaurant looking like I’d been playing Seven Minutes in Heaven. We’d invited David and Violet too, much to Ryan’s chagrin, but David had gone back to Connecticut for the weekend to visit friends.

  I tried not to think about which ones.

  Ryan’s lips grazed over my cheek, my jawbone, then my ear again, and soon I was giggling as he nibbled away. It wasn’t long before his hand slid beneath my shirt, skimming over the bare skin of my stomach, and he leaned over me to kiss my lips.

  Ryan had put his hands on my stomach plenty of times before, and he’d kissed me plenty more. So why my mind chose that particular kiss, that touch, to flash back to the last time someone who wasn’t Ryan had held me that way, I’d never know.

  It came back in a rush: warm, exploring fingertips on my skin, the taste of mint on his lips, the tenderness in the way he held me. . . .

  I had to turn away from Ryan to catch my breath. He tried to move right back in and continue the kiss, but I pushed against his chest and turned my face. “Ry,” I said. “Stop it. They’ll be here soon.”

  Ryan moved to my neck, undeterred. “I can’t think of a better way to kill a few minutes, can you?”

  “Yes.” I squirmed out from under him and straightened my shirt, sitting up on the edge of the bed. “We’re going to clean up this room.” To take the edge off my rejection, I added, “We can pick up where we left off later. Go wash your crusty cereal bowls and I’ll put some of this crap away.”

  Ryan groaned, but he turned the TV off and did what I asked. I grabbed a pile of dirty clothes from the floor and took them to the hamper in the bathroom, then went back to his room and threw his closet doors open. He had at least three piles of clean, folded clothes in various locations that needed to be hung up, so that’s where I started.

  As I tried to get a third shirt onto a hanger, Ryan’s cat brushed against my leg and scared the ever-living crap out of me. I dropped the shirt on the floor, but when I bent to pick it up, I got distracted by all the haphazard piles of shoes and tried to straighten them out. That’s when I spotted a plastic shopping bag in the corner. I was half afraid I’d find ancient dirty underwear inside, or worse, dirty magazines or some other horror to make me regret my snooping. But curiosity won out, and I grabbed for it.

  What I saw inside made no sense at all.

  Normally I wouldn’t have thought twice about finding a baseball jersey in Ryan’s closet. Except that the number on the back was thirty-three, and the white let
ters across the shoulder blades didn’t spell Murphy—they spelled ­Kerrigan. Why would Ryan have part of David’s baseball uniform hidden in his closet?

  I lifted the jersey out of the bag and saw four or five pouches of something green at the bottom. For a second I thought it was weed, and I felt rage bubble up inside me. For all his talk about wanting a scholarship and needing to play baseball in college. But my anger melted into confusion when I looked closer and realized the leaves inside were broad and spoon-shaped, and resting on top of Mrs. Murphy’s gardening gloves. I opened a bag. This wasn’t weed. It was . . . poison ivy?

  “Hey, look who’s—”

  Ryan cut off when he saw me sitting there, jersey in one hand, bag of poison ivy in the other. I looked up to see Candy and Matt standing in the doorway with him.

  “What is this?” I said.

  Matt and Ryan exchanged a look. A look that told me I’d caught their asses in the act of something. And they’d better tell me what.

  “It’s nothing, Kelse,” Matt said. “Ry’s mom was ripping up some poison ivy in the yard the other day, so we stashed some. We were just going to play a prank on him, rub it inside his jersey. You know, haze the new kid a little. Harmless stuff.”

  I glared at both of them but mainly at Ryan. “You were going to put poison ivy in his jersey? What is this, fourth grade? Why would you do that?”

  Ryan shifted uncomfortably and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s no big deal. We just wanted to throw his game a little, make sure he couldn’t show off. The team was fine without him and he’s so fucking cocky.”

  I shot a questioning look at Candy, and from the wide-eyed look she gave back, I knew she hadn’t been in on this. I got to my feet, my jaw clenched and my hands still gripping the jersey and the poison ivy.

  “ ‘Cocky’? How can he be cocky when you haven’t even had a real game yet? You sound like a jealous three-year-old, Ryan! You can’t sabotage one of your teammates because you’re holding out for some eleventh-hour scholarship! You need to face the fact that you’re running out of options.”

  Candy mouthed the words Oh, shit and grabbed Matt by the arm, motioning for him to follow her and leave Ryan and me alone. “It’s my fault, Kelse,” Matt said as Candy tried to drag him away. “My idea. All me. Honest.”

  I held up the jersey. “Then why is this in his closet?” My death glare shifted to Ryan before Matt could answer. “I can’t believe you’d do something so juvenile. If you’re that worried about college, didn’t it ever occur to you to study?”

  It was a low blow, but I felt only a mild twinge of guilt. Ryan wasn’t stupid by any means, but he had a devil-may-care attitude toward school and that was no one’s fault but his own. It had never bothered me before, but at that moment it bothered me a lot.

  Ryan stormed over and grabbed the bag of poison ivy from my hand, snatching up the larger bag that contained the rest of them while he was at it. “Fine,” he said, slamming everything into the trash can. “Happy now? I’ll leave your precious friend alone.”

  Oh. So we were back to that again.

  “Ryan, this is an idiotic thing to do to anyone. I don’t remember Steve Koenig getting ‘hazed’ last year when he joined the team. Go ahead, try to tell me you’re not doing this because you’ve had a problem with David since the second you laid eyes on him.”

  As the words left my lips, David’s voice echoed in my head: He’s not the great guy you think he is.

  “Oh my God,” I said, interrupting whatever response Ryan was about to make. “Has this been going on all year?” I stepped closer to him, every part of me daring him to lie to me. “Is that what the fight in the hall was all about? You started something with him, didn’t you?”

  Ryan’s face turned bright red and his fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. “Go ahead, take his side!” he exploded. “You would! You would think it was me!”

  “I’ve asked you a hundred times to tell me what happened and you won’t! How do you think that looks right now, Ry?”

  Matt came over then, spreading his arms between the two of us. “Guys, enough.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Kelse, you’re right. The poison ivy thing, it was a stupid idea. We’ll wash the jersey and I’ll give it back to David and pretend I took it by accident, and we can act like this whole thing never happened.”

  “And do you know what happened in the hall that day?” I asked pointedly.

  Matt looked at Ryan through the corner of his eye, so quickly I thought I might have imagined it.

  “All I know is that David came at Ry. That’s all.”

  I inhaled and looked back at Ryan. “If there’s something you need to tell me, please tell me now.” My tone was softer, more pleading.

  “Give us a minute,” Ryan mumbled to Matt, who nodded and walked out, closing the door behind him.

  “Babe.” Ryan reached for me, and while I let him pull me closer, I kept my limbs stiff as boards. “I’m sorry,” he murmured into my hair. “I didn’t start the fight in the hall, I swear. But—but I know what really happened with you and Kerrigan.”

  My heart missed a beat. “ ‘What really happened’?” I repeated.

  “I know how you kissed him once.”

  I pulled away from him, eyes wide and heart racing. “What? Who—”

  “I tricked your sister into telling me.” My mouth opened, but Ryan held up his hand before I could say anything. “Don’t be mad at her. Or me. I told her you’d already admitted it.”

  I wanted to be angry, but I had no right. I’d lied to him, and he knew it. No wonder he’d been acting like such an ass.

  “Ryan . . .”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” The anger from a few moments ago had disappeared. When I looked into his eyes, I saw only hurt. It killed me.

  “I didn’t want to upset you over nothing. You were so jealous when I hugged him; why would I tell you about a kiss that happened before I even knew you?”

  “I don’t care that you kissed him, Kelse—”

  “He kissed me.”

  “And you, what? Slapped him across the face? Kicked him in the nads?”

  My hands twisted together. “No, but—”

  “Then I don’t care who started it if you didn’t stop it. But I do care that you’d try to cover it up. I care about that a lot.”

  I sighed. “Ry, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be shady. You understand not wanting to talk about something, right? You didn’t start the fight in the hall, and yet you don’t want to talk about it, which doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  I knew it was a cop-out. We were both being less than honest, and I’d basically implied that he didn’t have to show all his cards if I didn’t have to show mine.

  And Ryan took the bait.

  “Putting poison ivy in someone’s jersey doesn’t make much sense either, but I still thought it was a good idea,” he said. I folded my arms and Ryan smiled. “Okay, not funny. I get it. I promise you, this is the first and last time I try to play dirty.”

  “First and last?”

  He kissed the top of my head. “Unless it’s with you.”

  I let him kiss me then, but it felt wrong. The nagging feeling that I’d missed something, that I’d been deliberately left in the dark, wrapped itself around me like thick fog.

  Like David’s shirt, still wrapped around my fingers.

  Twenty-Two

  Connecticut

  Winter, Sophomore Year

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I knew it was happening again. I slammed my locker shut and turned around. Sure enough, two people a few lockers down immediately stopped their hushed chatter and averted their eyes.

  Things like that had been happening a lot since the night I went to the hospital. If people weren’t staring and whispering, they were asking how I felt, but in a very loaded way, li
ke they thought I might crumple at their feet if I had to think too hard.

  Honestly, I’d been feeling much better. I didn’t have leukemia. Or aplastic anemia, or anything serious. My family and I had cried our eyes out with relief when the results finally came back.

  After all the crap, all the drama, it turned out to be the sulfa antibiotics I’d taken for my sinus infection that started the whole thing. They’d caused my platelet count to drop, exacerbating a vitamin B12 and iron deficiency I hadn’t even known I had. That’s why I didn’t get better after I stopped taking the antibiotics—I’d had more than one factor working against me. But my doctor seemed confident that supplements and some changes to my diet would prevent similar incidents in the future, and I was beyond glad that I didn’t have to face what I’d feared the most.

  Unfortunately, when it came to not having anyone find out about me spending the night in my bathroom with a pair of scissors, that was where my luck ran out. No one had said anything about it, but I was sure Isabel had told. Why else would everyone be acting so whacked? People didn’t stare and whisper because a person had a blood transfusion.

  Then again, I never thought people would react so cruelly to a nosebleed.

  I couldn’t prove Isabel had talked. Especially with her falling all over herself to make a phony show of concern for David’s benefit. He never witnessed her fake smiles that turned into condescending smirks the moment he turned his back, or the looks she gave me—like I wasn’t worthy of following her dog with a pooper-scooper. But he did see her accompany him to my locker, put her hand on my shoulder, and ask how I was feeling.

  I wanted to take that hand and slam it in the metal door.

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m fine. Lucky that it was nothing more serious, but I wish I could’ve gone to the dance.”

  Isabel smiled, huge and fake. “Aw, Kelsey.” She flipped the ends of my hair with her finger, immediately making me self-conscious about wearing it down. “There will be other dances. Getting better is what’s most important.”