I bite my lip. We’ve reached the question I don’t want to ask and have to ask most. “Sorry, but . . . you guys haven’t had any sex? Like, no type of sex?”
Juni blushes all the way out to her ears. “I mean, it is legal. But he didn’t feel comfortable with it, so we haven’t. Strict cutoff at second base.”
Relief floods me. That makes me feel a hell of a lot better about García’s motives. If he was using her, screw what I promised Valentine—I would turn García over in a heartbeat. And if Juni hated me for it, well, too bad. I’d take the hit to keep her safe.
“Does anyone else know?” I ask.
“Not even my parents.” Juniper’s thin lips tighten. “I don’t know, maybe they haven’t noticed anything’s different. They’re so busy, and they’re getting scatterbrained . . . but still. They ignore me doing anything wrong. No consequences. And that sounds great in theory, but it’s its own type of invisibility, and it’s peculiarly awful.” She sighs. “I need to tell them—I know I need to. They don’t see it by themselves, though, and it’s so much easier not to say anything. But when they open their eyes, then what?”
I flounder in the deluge of her words. How has she been holding all this in?
At a loss for what else to do, I lean forward, wrapping her in an awkward bed hug. Her arms close around my back, crushing the air out of me. After a minute, I pull back. Tears rest in the corners of her eyes, but she blinks them away.
“The worst part was him ending things,” she says. “He was the one person I could talk to about it. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been on my own, feeling like . . . I don’t know. Marooned.”
“Well, you’ve got me now, for what that’s worth,” I say. “I’m not going to give you horrible lines over coffee, but you can tell me anything you need.”
Her smile fades as fast as it came. “I don’t know what to do about Claire.”
I furrow my brow. “I texted her. Like, a lot. Did she get in touch?”
“No.”
“Jeez.”
“I know,” Juni says. “I thought this might . . .”
“Knock her back to her senses? Me too,” I mumble, checking my phone. She still hasn’t replied to my texts, let alone called back. “I hate to say it, but I’d keep quiet. God knows what it would do at this point.”
“Yeah,” Juniper says. “It sucks, because I know she would want to know.”
“Hey, look.” I give a reassuring pat to a lump of covers that looks as if it could be her knee. “Seven people know, and it has to stay that way. She’d understand.”
Juni hugs Prisoner of Azkaban to her chest and stays quiet.
I check my watch. “I’ve gotta run a couple of errands, then get home.” She nods, and I hop off the bed, leaning down to give her a less awkward embrace.
Mid-hug, she says, “I’m scared.” Hearing her admit it terrifies me.
“I’ll do everything I can to keep this quiet,” I say. “I promise, Juni.”
“Thanks. For being here.” Her words are strained in my ear. “It means a lot.”
“Of course.” I back up toward her door, doffing an imaginary cap at her. “Sleep well, fair maid. Die not of consumption.”
She smiles as I shut the door.
“AND I’M DISAPPOINTED, VALENTINE.”
I’ve been lectured before, but nothing has ever sounded as gentle or as horrible as that phrase. If lectures are declarations of war, “I’m disappointed” is like a guerrilla attack, not least when it’s sprung on the way home from the grocery store. My mother strategically waited to start this conversation until I couldn’t escape without jumping out of a moving vehicle. Clever.
“It won’t happen again,” I say as we pull up the driveway. I suppose I should be glad she delayed this conversation this long—no escaping it forever.
“Valentine,” Mom pleads as I rush out of the car. She strides after me with her arms full of groceries. “How do you know this girl? Are you friends? You weren’t drinking, were you? Because your father and I have never been anything but clear on the issue of drinking. Only in the home, around people you trust, and no driving.”
I unlock the front door, not turning around. “This girl is not my friend. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, so you don’t have to be so—”
“Valentine.”
My mouth snaps closed as we walk inside.
“Who is this crowd you’re hanging around? Do we need to talk about—?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I say. How does she not understand that a single incident is not representative of someone’s entire life? “No, I wasn’t drinking, so can you please calm down?”
My mother’s lips tremble. She sets down the groceries and throws the front door shut with a formidable bang. I quail, surprised the window in the wood doesn’t shatter. “I am trying,” she says, her voice quaking, “to understand what’s happening here. Don’t you see that? Don’t you see how I’m trying?” She holds out her hands, as if offering me a platter with all her failed attempts heaped atop it. “Do you have any idea how scared your father and I were last night? After having no idea what you do with your spare time, the first peek we get into your life is that? Phone dead, not a text all night—and you coming home at one in the morning, pale as a ghost, talking about a girl in the hospital with alcohol poisoning? How do you think that felt?”
I’m lost for words. My mother has never let me see anything like this glimpse of insecurity about her parenting. I always assumed she thought she was doing a marvelous job.
“I don’t know what to do,” she says with a brave, obvious attempt to bolster her voice. “If you don’t want to see Dr. Hawthorne again, that’s your choice, but—”
“No,” I blurt. I am never setting foot in that nut job’s office again. I’ve never felt more naked or humiliated than after my one session with him.
“Then what?” my mother says. “What is your plan here? Can you talk to me?”
I wish. But no: I can barely muster words. “Juniper’s back home. She’s fine. Everything’s fine.” I stride down the hall, leaving her silent behind me. My dad peeks out of his office, his bushy eyebrows sky-high.
I close my bedroom door and lean back against it, feeling suffocated. My gaze trails across my alphabetized shelves, across the disaster area of my desk, over the book lying open beside my laptop—a thick reference text about the limbic system. Everything feels too small, and the walls are too close, crushing me with a sudden sense of claustrophobia.
My bedroom has a door onto the side porch. I could walk outside and onto the road, walk until I lost myself in a tangle of streets. Walk off the edge of the world.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I check it as a text bubbles up on the screen: Hello there!
It’s from Lucas, who ate with me at lunch this week and badgered me into trading numbers on Friday. I give myself a second to think before replying: Hello.
How are you on this lovely evening??
Not wonderful.
Oh sorry to hear that! Is it what happened last night? Or is something wrong??
I stare at the gratuitous punctuation and hear his quick, excited voice ringing in my ears. Yes, I type, and press send. After a while with no response, I realize that may have been a bit opaque. I send a second text: My mother reacted strongly to last night’s events.
Oh gosh, his reply reads. Well I hope she doesn’t disembowel you . . .?
No, that’s not the problem. I’m more worried that, for years, I may have been misjudging how my parents think of me. But I can’t send a casual text saying that.
I toss my phone onto my desk and hunch over it.
Sometimes I wonder why it’s so hard for me to talk to them. It’s not for the same reasons that I avoid conversation with everyone at school. I don’t have the patience for Paloma High kids, plain and simple—but my parents seem trapped behind a foot-thick glass wall; I feel that attempting contact would be useless. The same is true, to an extent, for my sister, alth
ough she hardly ever visits, so speaking opportunities are limited. Diana is a senior at Dartmouth, boisterous and tactless but well liked. I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with her that didn’t end in her laughing, saying “Aw, you little freak,” and ruffling my hair.
Of course I’m a freak. Especially compared with my normal, normal family.
My phone buzzes again. Look out your window, the text reads.
My heart gives a strange start. I twitch the canvas curtains open. A pickup truck sits in the road, a glow emanating from the driver’s seat.
You are not sane, I type. How did you know my address?
I passed your house on my way home and saw your car!!! Hope that’s not creepy. You want to go do something?? :D
Is anyone with you?
Don’t worry, recluse boy! Just me
I look back toward my door. Okay, I text him. On my way.
As I slip out my door, over the porch, and through my yard, I cast a glance back at my house. My mom and dad stand in the dining room, illuminated by the chandelier’s warm light. They stand too close, talking with arms folded and eyes downcast, like mourners. My dad’s hand trails back over his balding scalp. My mom shakes her head, and her gray curls bounce.
My steps falter. They don’t deserve to worry.
But running has served me well so far. So I slip into Lucas’s car, and we drive away.
“WHERE ARE WE GOING?” I ASK.
“I don’t know,” Lucas says. “Back when I lived in New York, sometimes my friends and I would get on random trains. We got off at the stops with the funniest names, and then we’d wander around and find the smallest stores and the weirdest restaurants. Talked to strangers.”
“That sounds incredibly reckless and borderline dangerous.”
“Nah, it was awesome. There were always six of us, and jeez, it was worth it. I remember those days so much better than anything else.” His voice floats off, wistful.
Looking out the window, I imagine the New York City skyscrapers. Paloma must be so boring in comparison. The idea makes me feel strangely self-conscious, as if I’m responsible for this town’s thorough lack of luster.
“Sorry, by the way,” he says. “For kidnapping you. I have a lot of energy today.”
“Understandable.”
We share the silence for a moment, the knowledge of Juniper’s affair simmering between us.
“You really think we shouldn’t say anything?” he says.
“I want to know more. That’s all I think: that we don’t have enough justification to take any position besides waiting.”
He doesn’t answer. An idea sneaks into my mind. I debate with myself for a second.
“Stay on this road,” I say.
“You have a plan, huh?”
I nod.
We pass the strip mall, where storekeepers roll the grates down over their windows. In the evening, the town shuts down piece by piece. The few remaining lights glower like candles that have burned too low. The only thing still alive is the McDonald’s, glowing gloomily across the street.
We pass through Juniper’s neighborhood, with its arboreal street names and houses almost anonymous in their luxury. Then we twist through another neighborhood, whose wealth is all show: statues posing on lawns; tacky, sprawling villas pinned up in pastels, pillars, and BMWs. Finally, we cross a grid of streets with tiny bungalows crammed two to a driveway, and we leave Paloma.
“I don’t know where we’re going,” Lucas reminds me as we head into the countryside.
“Just keep driving.”
After a few minutes of darkening, thinning road, I throw out a hand. “There,” I say, pointing. Lucas jerks the wheel with the heel of his hand, and we careen hard left onto a dirt trail. His truck bounces, its frame producing a symphony of creaks and clanks.
Towering, dark trees whizz along to our right; a fallow field yawns unendingly to our left. An abandoned grain silo, half-buckled, juts out of the dirt like the hulk of a sinking ship. We cross a narrow bridge into the woods as the last sliver of sun collapses beneath the horizon. Lucas brings us poking through a copse of trees, casting wide-eyed glances out his side window. “Jeez,” he says, “I’ve never been out here. I thought I’d seen everything within ten miles.”
“Slow down,” I say. His foot jams the brakes too enthusiastically, and we jolt forward. I sigh, feeling a strange sort of affection for his awful driving.
The truck noses out from the trees, emerging at the top of a steep hill. We halt. Ahead, the road sweeps down and around the edge of a huge hidden lake.
Even from here, I can tell that the lake water is dirtier than I remember, scummy around the edges. It’s spiked with deadwood, and its banks are clogged with the skeletons of leaves. But Lucas looks as if he’s seeing God. “Whoa,” he breathes. He puts the truck into park, hops out, and jogs down the dirt path. I follow at a walk.
“Wow, wow,” he says, the words lost in the wind whirling down the hill after him. When the bluster calms, silence settles. In the summer, when I usually visit, this place is alive with the humming of insects, the screeching of crickets. Dark and quiet like this, it’s austere.
“You come here a lot?” he calls up to me as I walk down the last part of the hill.
“When I need to think.” I approach him, hands in my pockets, and stop at his side.
He nudges me. “Thanks for this. Rough weekend.”
“Yes,” I say.
For once, Lucas seems content to let the silence linger, rather than filling it with talk. I stare at the murky water, thoughts dancing in my head. It’s strange, this new capacity to share those thoughts with someone else. I’m so used to ruminating alone that the possibility of bouncing my feelings off another person feels oddly luxurious.
Words come haltingly from my mouth. It’s the first time I’ve expressed something like this, let on to anyone anything besides self-assurance. “It’s my fault,” I say, “she wound up in the hospital.”
There’s a brief silence. Within those three seconds, every tiny social fear rips at me. What if he agrees? What if he scoffs at this feeling of guilt? What if he doesn’t care?
But when Lucas speaks, it’s soft and earnest. “Why?”
“I—she told me she needed to use the bathroom, when of course she wanted to go off and drink more, but I believed her, like a complete moron.”
“Hey, no. That’s not your fault. Anyone else would’ve done the same.”
“I’m not anyone else,” I say, affronted. “I should have known better.”
“Wait, were you drinking?”
“No, of course not. I’m just—I’m bad at telling when people are lying. It’s always been a problem.” My cheeks burn. “When I was younger, I didn’t understand sarcasm, either. It took me ages to learn it. So would someone else have realized she wasn’t being honest?”
Lucas shrugs. “Dunno. We all believe lies sometimes. That doesn’t make her choices your responsibility, dude. She wouldn’t blame you, and I sure don’t.”
His confidence is disproportionately reassuring.
“I get it,” he says. “Watching things explode like that is hard. You want to do something about it, and there’s nothing to do. But it’s not your job, okay? You don’t have to worry for the rest of the world. The world will do its own worrying.”
“Sure.” I look back at the lake. My eyes are bright, cleared by adrenaline, as if I’ve run a mile, rather than done something as mundane as talking about my feelings. How do people do this all the time, put their vulnerabilities on the line every day? How are they not perpetually exhausted?
“Do you like it?” I ask, gesturing at the water.
He bounces on his toes like a child. A six-foot-three, square-shouldered child. “Do I like it?” He laughs. “Do I like it? Come on. Look at this. It’s going on my list of favorite places.”
But he’s not looking at the lake. He’s looking at me, as if there’s something in me that’s deserving of his happiness.
I look away, back out at the still water, which blackens with the coming night, hiding a million complexities. Lucas starts telling me about the pond behind his aunt and uncle’s house in Florida; when he was young, he caught tadpoles in that pond by the handful. I tell him about the southern Darwin’s frog, whose tadpoles mature in the mouth of the father until he spits them out as full-grown adults. He tells me that’s disgusting. I agree.
We settle into a rhythm of conversation—a rhythm that’s starting to feel familiar—but it’s the pauses that wake me up. The moments where he stops his eager babbling to look out at the lake, or to wait for my voice to have its turn.
It’s remarkable. For once in my life, there is nothing here I find unsatisfactory, nothing worthy of critique. There is nothing I would change about standing here on this muddy bank, talking with a friend as the dusk bends down over our heads.
IT’S DARK BY THE TIME I GET HOME. I SET THE GROCERY bags on the table, jog up the steps, and knock on Kat’s door. Not that she asked about Juniper, but she could use the knowledge that one of my best friends isn’t dead.
After Kat’s usual grumble of admission, I push my way in. “Hey,” I say. “I saw Juni.”
She pauses her game and looks up. In moments like this, I see the old Kat flicker in her blue eyes, a hint of concern giving her away. But her voice, deadpan to the point of sounding robotic, shields any notion that she might care. “She’s okay, I’m guessing?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s really let herself go.” Kat taps her game back to life.
“Come on. Juni is having a tough time. She’s not letting herself go.”
“All right, whatever.” Kat glances at the door. “So, want to leave?”
“You realize that’s rude, right?”
“It’s my room.”
I realize my hands are shaking. I’ve reached the last of my patience.
“Why are you so angry?” I ask, meting out the words syllable by careful syllable.
“I’m—”
“And don’t say you’re not. Don’t say you’re minding your own business, so I should mind mine. You are my business, and you treating me like this? That’s my business, too, and it’s not normal. At least, it didn’t used to be. So spill.”
Seven Ways We Lie Page 18