We climb the deck steps of our cottage, swing the door open, and sitting on the couch is Clara, but she’s not alone.
Clara’s limbs are entangled with Chad’s. She’s lying on top of him, her mouth suctioned against his. I go to jump in front of Drea, to pull her back outside so she won’t see, but it’s too late. Her mouth drops open at the picture of it—of them.
Clara peeps an eye open and sees us. “Oh, wow!” she yelps.
Chad jumps up, and I feel myself reach out to Drea. I clasp her forearm and can feel her trembling. Clara fumbles to sit up, covering the slit in her sarong, pulling at her T-shirt for proper placement.
“Drea,” Chad says, standing up. “It was an accident.”
“What? Did her lips fall on you by mistake?”
“Actually, that can happen,” Amber says.
“I hate you!” Drea shouts at them, though I’m not sure who she’s talking to, if it’s Clara or Chad. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t try and make it up to me. And save me the insult of trying to explain it all away.”
“You don’t understand,” he pleas. “It was a mistake.
Things just got out of hand.”
“He’s right,” Clara says. “I came here because I was upset. Chad was just trying to comfort me.”
“I could use a little of that kind of comforting,” Amber whispers.
I elbow her in response.
“I got more threats,” Clara continues. “Someone wants to kill me.”
“Well, he’ll have to wait in line,” Drea snaps.
A part of me wants to ask Clara about it, but I’m too concerned about Drea right now.
“Can we talk about this?” Chad asks her.
“I have nothing to say to you.” Drea takes one last look at him before taking off into the bathroom and slamming the door shut behind her.
twenty-nine
Instead of trying to make amends with Drea, Chad holes himself up in the guys’ room, slamming the door shut behind him. I tell Clara to leave, that I’ll call her later, and then Amber and I head into the bathroom to check on Drea. Despite her funk and fuming, she tells us that we should head over to the frat house to reserve our spots on the cruise ship tomorrow night.
“Don’t even worry about that right now,” I tell her.
“You have to worry about it,” Drea says, balling up a tissue to wipe at her nose. “I heard Sully mention yesterday that the cruise was filling up. I need to be on it. I need to get away from Chad.”
“How can you even think about the cruise?” Amber asks. “Five minutes ago that skank was lip-suctioned to your man. That boy’s gonna need some serious tetanus.”
Drea smiles slightly in response, but then her lips turn downward again. “Maybe there will be some cuter boys on the cruise—way cuter than Chad. Maybe I’ll hook up with one of them. How will he like that?”
“Yes!” Amber cheers. “Jealousy is the sweetest revenge.”
“It might be sweet,” I say, “but it isn’t smart.”
Amber rolls her eyes in response. “Leave it to Stacey Straight Lace to pee on our plans.”
“I really just want to be alone right now,” Drea says, pausing me from firing back at Amber.
“No way,” I say, presenting Drea with a fresh box of tissues from the bathroom closet. “You need us.”
“What I need is a long, hot bath with sea salts, my gel-filled eye mask, and lots of chocolate.”
“Are you sure?”
She nods. “I’ll be okay.”
“So I take it we’re not getting tickets for the guys,” Amber says.
A good question, but I don’t answer.
“I think we should let them sink,” Amber says.
“I second that.” Drea sniffles.
“This should totally be a girls’ night thing,” Amber continues.
“It’s not exactly going to be fun,” I remind her. “We do have Clara to worry about.” I glance up at Drea, almost regretting the mere mentioning of Clara’s name.
“Don’t remind me,” Drea says, grabbing another tissue to wipe her runny mascara.
“Yeah, but not until Friday,” Amber corrects. “That means we have all night Thursday to party it up.”
I sigh my frustration, not wanting to get into it with her—how little I feel like partying, how I’d give anything right now not to have Clara’s future sitting on my shoulders.
Before leaving, Amber and I set Drea up with bath salts, her freshly chilled gel mask (pulled straight from the fridge), some of my favorite bath oils (chamomile and rose), and a box of chocolate-walnut fudge Amber bought at the candy shop downtown.
We climb the porch steps to frat-boy central, the smell of stale beer mixed with sweat already thick in the air. Sully greets us at the door. “What’s up?” he asks.
But we’re still arguing over how many tickets to buy. “Hold up,” he says, interrupting us. “Your guys already bought your tickets.”
“Huh?” we say in unison.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Hold on.” He goes back inside, retrieving a clipboard from the kitchen table. He flips through several pages before finding our reservation. He nods, reading through all our names—all of us except Jacob.
“They’re so sweet,” Amber says.
“Wait,” I say. “What about Jacob?”
“The quiet guy?”
I nod. “With the dark hair.”
“Yeah,” Sully says. “He said something about not being able to make it.”
“Why can’t he make it?” I snap.
“Hey, don’t kill the messenger.”
Amber wraps her arm around my shoulder. “At least he bought your ticket.”
“So we’ll see you tomorrow night,” Sully says.
“Wait,” Amber says. “How many rooms did the guys reserve?”
Sully checks his clipboard. “Two.”
I nod, still confused about Jacob. Though with everything that’s been happening between us, I’m not even sure why.
“Should be a good time,” Sully says.
Amber takes a pause to openly ogle him up and down. “You can count on it.” We walk back to our cottage in silence, Amber’s arm still wrapped around my shoulder for support.
“One of us should check on Drea,” I say, once inside.
“I’ll go,” Amber says. “You have enough on your plate right now. Go fix things with your man.”
“Kind of hard to fix things when he’s never around.”
Amber responds by knocking on the guys’ room door. “What?” Chad hollers from inside.
“Is Jacob in there?”
“Nope.”
Amber’s lips bunch up in disapproval. But she couldn’t be more disappointed than I am.
“I told you,” I say.
Amber sighs. “Maybe Drea still has some chocolate left—I think I could use some right about now.” While she heads off to check on Drea and rob her of her edible vices, I distract myself with work by giving Clara a call.
“Hello?” she answers.
“Hi, it’s Stacey. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“I’ve been better.”
“So has Drea,” I say. A direct stinger.
Clara doesn’t respond.
After several seconds, I break the silence. “You said something before about getting more threats. . . . What happened?”
“We can talk about it later,” she says. “I’m going to a barbecue with my parents. . . . It’s at some friends of theirs. I should actually get going.”
“When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. I think it might be late. I can call you tomorrow.”
I hesitate a moment, but then remind myself that we still have more than twenty-four hours. “You’ll be with your parents all night?”
“Who else?” she says. “It’s not like they’re letting me out of their sight for more than five minutes.”
“Okay,” I say, biting at my bottom lip. “Then I’ll see you first thing
tomorrow. We have a lot to talk about.”
“I agree,” she says. But there’s something about the way she says it.
Like she has an agenda of her own.
thirty
I decide to end my day with a long walk on the beach, capped off with a much-needed meditation session. The outgoing tide helps to center me; it helps me imagine all the negative energy swimming out to sea. When I get back to the cottage, I decide to continue my blissful breather by turning in early. Drea has followed suit. She’s camped herself out in bed with a stack of Teen magazines, a box of chocolates, and her diary. Part of me wants to tell her what happened with Jacob and the tickets, but I feel like that would be almost selfish of me, adding the weight of my relationship stress to hers. Plus, it’s Jacob I should really be confronting.
I look at the clock. It’s just after nine. I know Jacob will probably come walking through the outside door any second now, that he’ll probably want to see me. But maybe I’m sick of being so accessible to him. Maybe he’s the one who should have to wait.
“How are you doing?” I ask, pulling the bed sheet up to my waist.
“I’m doing,” she says, continuing to scribble away in her diary, probably massacring Chad in cold, hard ink.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“He thinks he can fix all his screw-ups with chocolate. This is the third box in two weeks.”
“Why not hint at flowers next time? They’re much easier on the teeth.”
“Not to mention the waistline.” Drea holds the heart-shaped box out to me as an offering.
That’s when I notice. It’s the same box of chocolates I saw in my last nightmare about Clara. I clench my teeth and shake my head, wondering if she should even be eating them, assuring myself that they’re from Chad, that he would never hurt her.
“Good night,” she says, clicking off her lamp.
I click off my lamp as well and slide down into the bliss of cool cotton sheets, telling myself that it’s just a random case of déjà-vu.
The next morning, I’m the first person up. It’s 10:30, which completely surprises me since my body isn’t chemically wired to sleep in past nine. I slip into my fuzzy slippers, realizing that I don’t remember what I dreamt last night—or if I dreamt at all. I look over at my dream box, positioned on my night table with the lid closed. So maybe my body’s just telling me that I needed some extra rest, which is probably why my nose is still dry, why I’m not scrambling for a tissue.
I move into the kitchen to percolate some coffee, grab a box of Rice Krispies, and sit down at the table to enjoy the sound of solitude. Of course, no sooner do my Krispies start snap-crackle-popping than my solitude turns into an ice storm. Drea and Chad exit their rooms at practically the same time. Drea evil-eyes Chad before going into the bathroom, caddy of bathing products in tow, and slamming the door shut behind her.
“She hates me,” Chad says, grabbing a box of powdered donuts from the top of the fridge.
Amber joins us a few seconds later, still yawning as she plunks herself down at the table. “What’s for breakfast?”
I slide the box of Krispies her way.
“No way.” She gets up, fishes through the cabinets for jars of peanut butter and jam, and then grabs a spoon to dig in like pudding. “So what are we talking about?” she asks, propping her frog-slippered feet up on the table.
“Drea hates me,” Chad repeats.
“I wonder why.” Amber purposefully licks her spoon.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he says. “Clara totally went after me.”
“And your lips just happened to lose the fight?” Amber rolls her eyes. “How many times have I heard that excuse before?”
“She was upset,” he continues, “about some doll that was left in her room.”
“A doll?” I say, snapping to attention.
“Yeah, some whacked-up doll with pins stuck through the heart. She was convinced the doll was supposed to look like her.”
“How did it get in her room if her parents are home?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I guess her bedroom window was left open or something like that. The girl doesn’t think.”
“Which is why she kissed you,” Amber says.
Chad ignores Amber to continue his groveling at me. “I was trying to calm her down, you know. But I could tell she had another agenda.”
“And jamming her tongue down your throat was the first item on it?” Amber asks. “She really doesn’t think.”
“I’m serious,” he continues. “She kept staring at my mouth and getting closer until she was practically sitting in my lap.”
“So why didn’t you just get up?” I ask him.
“I don’t know; I didn’t want to be rude.”
“Wow,” Amber gasps. “That would have to be the worst excuse ever.”
He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. “I know. I messed up.”
“Big time.” I push my cereal bowl away and glance back up at the clock, thinking how I should probably go ask Clara about the doll, how I probably won’t have much alone time with her later since we’ll be on that stupid cruise amidst a hundred drunken frat boys. “I should go check on Clara.”
“Do you want me to come?” Amber asks.
I shake my head, hoping that Clara might confide more if we’re alone.
“Good luck to you,” Chad says, with a raise of the eyebrows.
“You’re the one who needs luck,” Amber says to him. “You think you’re in trouble with the police? Wait till Drea gets through with you.”
“What are you talking about? Why am I in trouble with the police?”
“Haven’t you heard? When Drea and I talked to the police yesterday, they were extra quizzy about you.”
“Why?”
Amber shrugs. “They made it seem like you’re a suspect.”
“Me?”
She nods. “It almost seemed like they thought you and Clara have something scandalous going.”
“Are you kidding me?” His eyes are completely bulging now.
“Imagine that,” she says, licking the spoon again.
“You should probably go and talk to the police,” I tell him. “Set them straight. Maybe Clara got the wrong idea about something.”
“How?”
“How?” Amber gasps. “Are you for real?”
“Just tell the police the truth,” I say. “You have nothing to hide.”
“Are you kidding?” he says. “I know that drill. I go talk to them; they start asking all these tricky questions; the next thing I know I’m their number-one suspect.”
I can understand his reluctance, to a point. When Drea was being stalked junior year, Chad, after agreeing to tell the police his side of the story, ended up as one of the police’s prime suspects. “I still think you should go and talk to them. I mean, if you don’t have anything to hide.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe I should have something to hide. Maybe they’ll twist this whole thing into something it isn’t. That’s obviously what Clara’s done.”
“I have to go,” I say, looking toward the guys’ room door. “Is Jacob still in bed?”
“Yup.” Chad grins. “You had him up pretty late last night.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He didn’t get in till after three.”
“He didn’t?”
Chad’s face falls, realizing maybe that he just screwed up. “Oh,” he says. “Forget I said anything. I was probably just dreaming.”
“Thanks a lot.” I bite down hard on my teeth and turn on my heel, suddenly realizing perhaps who my real friends are, suddenly more than anxious to lose myself in someone else’s problems.
thirty-one
I head over to Clara’s cottage. It’s completely sweltering outside, the sun beating down on the crown of my head, sending trickles of sweat along the back of my neck and between my shoulder blades.
I climb the steps and ring the doorbell, the sou
nd of her bamboo wind chimes, bonging just behind me, making my head ache. Several seconds pass—still no one has come to the door. I move to peer over the side of the deck, toward the driveway, but I don’t see a car either. Did she go out again with her parents?
I knock. Still no response. I try the door and, this time, it’s locked. Perfect. I walk around to the front of the cottage. There’s a car parked out front; the license plate says New York, even though I could have sworn Clara said she was from Connecticut. Still, the back is packed up with luggage, so I’m assuming it’s her parents’ car, back from their friend’s place, finally. I begin toward the steps, but the trashcans catch my eye. Amber’s always talking about how on cop shows they find the good clues by sifting through the trash.
The two aluminum cans are sitting on the curb between Clara’s neighbor’s cottage and hers. I study the sides, looking for a last name or number to indicate whom they belong to, but only find dents. I casually glance around to see if anybody’s looking and lift one of the lids. Sheer grossness—spaghetti mixed with soggy paper towels and coffee grounds. I try the other lid—paper goods, quite doable. I pick through coupon flyers, old newspaper ads, and a bunch of chocolate-bar wrappers until I get to the bottom.
There’s a small can of paint sitting there. It’s tipped onto its side, the bright cherry redness spilling onto a wad of orange peels. I look closer, noting how there’s a smudge of red on the cap as well, wondering if it’s the same shade as the paint used to graffiti Clara’s bedroom wall.
So who threw it away here? I look to her neighbor’s house, wondering who lives there, if these trashcans belong to them. Or maybe whoever graffitied Clara’s walls threw it away on their way out—to get rid of the evidence. But that doesn’t make sense either. Why would someone choose to throw away evidence at the scene of the crime?
Instead of trying to figure it all out right here and now, I reach in, grab the paint can, and make my way up Clara’s front steps. I ring the doorbell once more just to be sure there’s still no one home—there isn’t—and try the doorknob. It turns. “Hello?” I call, edging the door open. “Clara?”
03 - Silver Is For Secrets Page 15