Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later

by Francine Pascal

  All my good sense and fairness and even honor, ’cause I have honor, are way out of reach. All I feel is passion, that same wild passion that I felt five years ago. It’s all back. I’m out of control. And so is he. And we kiss and it’s so deep and I need it so badly.…

  But I can’t! I lean my face away from him. I’m still in his arms.

  “Oh, my God!” It’s not my scream. It’s Elizabeth’s. She’s standing in the doorway.

  Todd and I look at each other in horror, too shocked to let go.

  “Oh, no! This is a nightmare!” Elizabeth puts her hands to her face and sobs.

  Now we turn and I see Bruce standing behind her, just watching.

  I don’t know what to do, and then I do what I have to do: I rush over to my sister.

  “Lizzie, Lizzie, this is so terrible. I can’t believe it’s happening!”

  Elizabeth takes her hands from her face, all shiny with tears, and stands there shaking her head, whispering over and over again, “No, no.”

  I turn to Todd, hoping for help, but he’s still frozen to the spot, watching my sister’s agony.

  “What can I do? What can I say?” I put my arms out, but I can’t bring myself to touch her.

  “There’s nothing to be said, is there?”

  “No,” I say. “Nothing.”

  “Ken found us at Pizza and told us.”

  I don’t hear her right.

  Behind me I feel Todd move and then come over to Elizabeth.

  “Ken?” he says.

  I don’t know what they’re talking about.

  “The housekeeper found Winston and went running over to Ken’s house. She’s the one who called the police.”

  “Winston?” It’s something with Winston. It’s not us. I don’t dare look at Todd. Or Bruce.

  “Can you believe it? He’s dead. Winston is dead!”

  A minute ago I’d lost everything, and now I have a reprieve. Winston’s death. Death trumps betrayal. How disgusting am I?

  “I still can’t believe it,” I say.

  Yes, I’m fast on my feet. I have to save us. For now, anyway.

  “How did it happen?” Todd asks.

  “Nobody knows for sure. It looks like he fell off the balcony.”

  “Wow, that’s a good twenty feet,” he says.

  He’s with me. We’re like criminals.

  “What do you mean, it looks like he fell?” I really want to know. It’s all so weird. For a second it’s like nothing happened before. Except when I catch Bruce’s eyes, I don’t like the look.

  “Of course he fell,” Elizabeth says, and I can see she’s a little impatient with me. “But they don’t know. I mean, it could have been one of those silent heart attacks or something. Who told you, anyway?”

  “Out in the street,” I say. “Everyone knows.”

  “It has to be Caroline.” Elizabeth turns to Bruce. “Don’t you think?”

  Bruce nods in agreement, but he doesn’t answer. He just watches us. Not good.

  Elizabeth puts her arms out and we both, Todd and I, go to her.

  I see Bruce leave.

  “How about we catch a movie?” Now Todd was worrying about Jessica, pulling her out of the bad thoughts he knew she was having. They took turns worrying about each other.

  “Sure,” she said. “Whatever you want.”

  12

  Sweet Valley

  Liam had left for Los Angeles a couple of days earlier to see his parents. He and Elizabeth planned to meet up the afternoon of the party at LAX airport in Los Angeles and drive down to Sweet Valley together.

  Elizabeth’s plane was arriving at three thirty, which would leave enough time, even with delays, to change clothes in the ladies’ room, drive down, and be at the club by seven for the dinner. Elizabeth had planned it so she and Liam would arrive after everyone else. Her parents knew she was coming, but she had asked them not to say anything to spoil the surprise for her grandmother, not to mention her sister and Todd.

  This was all very devious for Elizabeth, but the circumstances called for taking any advantage she could get. After eight months and all that had happened it was beyond difficult.

  Her parents wanted her to come enough that they agreed to keep her secret from Jessica, at least until the day of the party.

  The six-hour plane trip passed quickly, so absorbed was Elizabeth in how she was going to handle everything from the trivial—her entrance—to the stomach-turning first sight of her loathsome betrayers. Eight months she’d spent with a wound that would never close, not even with the power of anger or revenge. Now she would see them for the first time since that day when the two people she loved most in the world had decimated her life.

  How perfectly they had carried it off. Even at Winston’s funeral. She remembered every moment of it.

  The day of the funeral is gray and stays that way until the rain starts, around eleven o’clock in the morning. By twelve it’s gone dark with sheets of driving rain. We all go together, the three of us, and arrive at the church just after noon, racing from our cars to avoid getting wet, but the wind catches the rain and blows it horizontally, sweeping it under even the biggest golf umbrellas. No one escapes a drenching.

  By the time the people—and there are at least two hundred and fifty—arrive and shake off their umbrellas and take off their dripping raincoats, it’s almost as wet inside as out.

  “The only advantage of dying young is the big turnout you get at your funeral,” says Jessica, looking around.

  By the time the dampness combines with the natural mustiness and hollowness of the dark church, the event takes on the tragic feel it deserves. No matter how much people liked him or didn’t like him, when a twenty-seven-year-old dies, there is a terrible sadness about it. The fact that it was an unnecessary accident only compounds the grief. According to the coroner’s report, Winston fell from his twenty-foot balcony and died when he hit the unforgiving white marble floor below.

  The high percentage of alcohol in his system more than certainly contributed to the accident.

  People who didn’t know him would have thought Winston was a winner, but we knew he was the model of a true loser. After making gobs of money in the dot-com venture with Bruce—and getting out just before it all crashed—Bruce was better than ever, but Winston was the classic spoiled-by-success story. He hardly had any friends and those were mostly hangers-on, a coterie of people who sucked up to him for whatever they could get.

  I don’t know what caused the transformation, but whatever it was, it was really sad because he’d been such a funny guy in school—goofy funny, who could really make me laugh. After, he morphed completely into an arrogant, self-centered rich man who flaunted his wealth. Because he was still single he was much sought after, despite the fact that his ears still stuck out and his Adam’s apple jumped up and down on his long, skinny neck. More important, he treated women badly.

  He was the perfect proof of my theory that you only see the truth of people when they’re on top. Everyone’s nice on the bottom when they need something.

  Still, Winston’s death is one of those tragic, wasteful accidents. Except to Caroline Pearce, who is already spreading a story that has nothing to do with an accident. Even at the funeral, she was whispering, “Cherchez la femme,” and because people like action, they’re eating it up.

  “Caroline has no boundaries,” I whisper to Jessica, who is sitting next to me.

  She nods, but it’s like she’s somewhere else.

  I poke Todd, who’s on my other side. “Thanks to Caroline, people are going to have a good time gossiping about Winston, aren’t they?”

  He barely nods. He seems very distracted, understandably. Even though they weren’t close anymore, Winston had been his best friend in high school and Todd really feels the loss.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking like that,” I say, taking his hand. Normally, he would squeeze my hand in response, but now he simply lets his rest, limp, in mine. I look at
him to see if he’s heard me, but like Jessica, he’s somewhere else, too.

  The minister, Reverend Archer, is a warm and kindly man in his fifties, and he’s talking about Winston’s place in the great hereafter. All I can think is that if all the beautiful stories about heaven are true, Winston will still have his awful pretentious white-and-gold house. And it won’t ever get dirty.

  Just that silly thought makes me tear up. He was an old friend, maybe not a friend anymore, but still someone who would always be part of my history, part of those indelible high school and college years. With his disappearance from the world, a small part of me disappears, too. When tears begin to slide down my face, they’re for both of us.

  And also for some strange, unnamed unhappiness I feel that has nothing to do with Winston or his death. I’m still holding Todd’s hand, but I let it go, maybe too abruptly, and that wakes him from his daze. I guess he sees my tears, and he puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me closer.

  I feel Jessica’s body move in against mine and we’re joined.

  “I know he turned out to be a real shit,” Jessica says, “but maybe I had something to do with that.”

  “You?” I say. “How?”

  “Because I was always turning him down. Like in high school, when he would ask me to some dance, I would like practically laugh at him. I should have been way more understanding. And it wasn’t just me. All the girls he really liked treated him like that. I mean, he was goofy-looking and dorky, but that didn’t stop him from having crazy crushes. Maybe that’s why he was so cynical and nasty when he got rich and the A-list girls all started chasing him.”

  “So we should forgive his disgusting misogynistic behavior because he was rejected by cute girls in high school?”

  “Actually, yes. It like scarred him.”

  “Maybe it did, but he still should have been better than that.”

  “I would forgive him. It’s important to forgive.”

  Even though this is slightly out of character, I can see that Jessica is really sincere and that this does matter to her. Maybe my sister is finally maturing.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I suppose that rejection stuff could have had some effect on him.”

  “He couldn’t help the way he felt. Sometimes people can’t even stop if they know it’s way wrong and it’s going to hurt other people.”

  She knows how to get to me. “He really was such a nice kid in school, sweet and funny and all that, wasn’t he, Todd?”

  But Todd is barely paying attention. He’s lost in his own thoughts and my question goes right past him. So I say it again.

  “Yeah, he was a good kid,” he says.

  “We should have been way more understanding,” Jessica says.

  “You’re right. We should have been more forgiving,” I say, and hug my sister.

  Now Jessica begins to cry and I hold her closer. And love her more.

  The service goes on with Winston’s father and a cousin getting up to speak. Mr. Egbert’s reminiscences of his son’s boyhood, and of how sweet and funny Winston could be, touch the audience. Despite the fact that most everyone knows what a bastard he became, I can hear the sniffles and see people reaching for their tissues.

  Except not one old friend gets up to speak. Todd said he felt uncomfortable and considered saying something, but it seemed so dishonorable, considering that most people know he and Winston didn’t like each other.

  It must be worse for Bruce. There is no way he could get up and give an honest eulogy. Everyone knows how badly their partnership ended.

  I see Bruce when we first come in and ask if he wants to sit with us, but he says, no, he’s going to stay in the back.

  Since Winston was cremated there will be no cemetery service. Instead, everyone is invited for a reception at Winston’s home.

  The crowd of two hundred and fifty seems to swell on the way back to the house. And as happens at these events, with the exception of a little staring at the balcony and the marble floor, the attitude might as well be Winston who? Mostly it feels like a school reunion.

  Todd, Jessica, and I only stay long enough to give our condolences to Winston’s father and relatives and then slip out.

  Though we didn’t eat at Winston’s, none of us are hungry. We all make some excuse and go off to be alone, Todd to his office, Jessica to her bedroom, and me to my bedroom.

  The house is painfully silent.

  Elizabeth remembered it all. Looking back, she wondered why she didn’t pick up on Jessica’s out-of-character compassion for Winston. Even taking the blame, and offering her forgiveness. “It’s important to forgive,” she’d said. Now, of course, Elizabeth knew why.

  And then there was Todd’s distraction. His unusual silence. He’d looked about as uncomfortable as she had ever seen him. But in her usual searching-for-the-best-part-of-people way, she’d worked everything into funeral sadness: the loss of someone who had been his best friend through all those school years.

  In truth, it was just plain old shit guilt. Both of them.

  13

  Sweet Valley

  “What do you think she’ll do? Do you think she’ll speak to me? To us?”

  Jessica had already tried on five different outfits. And then mixed and matched pants and shirts and skirts and blouses. All in all there were about ten different looks that were basically the same, dressy but not cocktail. And she wasn’t pleased with any of them. If only she could have asked Elizabeth. Elizabeth would know. Elizabeth knew everything about her and sometimes better than she knew herself. Not that Jessica always took the advice, but she needed to hear it.

  That was almost the worst part—not hearing Elizabeth for these last eight months. And maybe never again. Sure, there would be a hello or good-bye, polite, impersonal words, but never again would they talk as sisters. Never as people who unquestionably loved each other.

  A thousand times a day she needed Elizabeth, needed to see her in a crowd and know she was hers, to touch her skin, to brush her hair, just to push up against her, so natural as to not even be noticed, to pluck a piece of lint off her skirt, wipe a crumb from her chin, to be able always to enter into that private space that everyone else holds around them, inviolable.

  But not for them, not for twins.

  Another thing she would never again feel, Elizabeth’s arms around her, holding her. A feeling even more familiar than her mother’s embrace.

  There she was again, being Jessica, asking for everything when she didn’t deserve anything.

  Through all this, Todd was sitting on the bed, fully dressed in a blue blazer with beige pants and a blue-and-white-striped shirt, waiting. He was even wearing a tie, and he was watching her. She never asked him his opinion on any of the outfits.

  This was the shallow side of Jessica. The Lila-like side that he worried about. But the truth was, even just watching her changing clothes, throwing rejects aside, studying herself in the mirror, grabbing another skirt, another blouse, working herself up to a small frenzy, he loved her. Why she should fascinate him so much, he didn’t know. All he knew was that even through the pain and the guilt, this was the woman he wanted.

  “You know what I think?” Jessica asked.

  Todd shook his head.

  “I think she’s going to pretend we don’t exist. Look right through me like the spot was empty. I remember once I had this thing with Caroline way back when we were in the seventh grade. She told everyone that I let A. J. Morgan touch my breast.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Did you?” Todd smiled.

  “Of course, I did. That’s way not funny. I was, like, furious that she told everyone and I didn’t know how to get back at her. What was I going to say to her? And Elizabeth told me. Nothing, she said, just look right through Caroline like the spot was empty. That’s what she’s going to do to me tonight.”

  Jessica finally found the Betsey Johnson that looked a lot like the first outfit she’d tried on.<
br />
  She sat down on the bed in the middle of the sprawling clothes and wept.

  Todd took her in his arms and held her.

  But nothing could quiet her deep unhappiness. And with it came that terrible day and the explosion that ended everything.

  “Elizabeth’s not back yet?” Todd asks. I can see he’s not happy to run into me alone in the kitchen. He’s been in his office with the door closed all morning and probably thought he’d heard Elizabeth come in.

  “Not yet,” I tell him. “Regan’s coming here.”

  “Now?”

  “Either that or tonight or tomorrow morning.”

  “What’s he coming for?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what scares me, that I don’t know.”

  “What did he say when he called? How did he sound?”

  “He didn’t call. He texted me. And that’s all it said: ‘I’ll be there within twenty-four hours.’ That’s like him not to give a time. It’s like he has the advantage; he can jump out at me whenever. That’s what makes me so totally panicked.”

  “Take it easy. I’m here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Nothing. Just wait. I mean, he’s not violent. Is he?”

  “Not so far, but…”

  “What?”

  “He can be very jealous.”

  “Of who?”

  I shrug.

  Now Todd asks another question, and I can see his interest isn’t in Regan. “Does he have any reason to be?”

  I just look at him. He shakes his head, turns, and goes back to his office.

  We are so awkward together. But it’s not like the anger of before, it’s different now. Even harder.

  I sit on the windowsill mostly hidden by the curtain, but I have a clear view of the driveway.

  Elizabeth’s been gone since early morning, so she doesn’t know about Regan coming.