“See,” he said, “this isn’t so bad.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” I dropped my hands to the mattress on either side of his head.
“Afraid you’ll like this a little too much?”
I laughed, nodded, and moved to kiss him again. I kept myself elevated for a few minutes, just feeling his lips and tongue move against mine. It was when my arms started shaking (I’m not sure if it was fatigue or excitement) that I lowered myself. And the heat of his skin against mine was one of the best feelings I’d had in my life. Kind of like a tall glass of ice water on the hottest summer day. Refreshing and painfully good at the same time. It didn’t take long for me to wish that I’d left my bra hanging on the door handle of my closet. About a minute later, I unsnapped the thing and flung it to the floor.
Max started to say something, but I pressed a finger to his lips. “That’s all I’m taking off,” I said. “No more.”
And I kissed him again. And again. And again.
That was how we rang in the new year, totally unaware that millions of people were celebrating across the country, oblivious to the fact that the ginormous ball in Times Square had made its descent, and deaf to the voices that sang along with the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.”
Saturday,
January 2
18
You Don’t Want to Know
“No freaking way,” Elle said, nudging the open pizza box away from Coop’s outstretched hands.
Coop flopped onto the couch so hard my soda can wobbled. “You two are never going to finish a large pepperoni and sausage by yourselves.”
“Never know.” I shrugged and popped half of a greasy square into my mouth. “This is Girls’ Night. Anything goes.”
Coop leaned forward and grabbed a handful of squares before Elle could stop him, so she smacked him on the arm. “Ouch! That was not necessary,” Coop said. “And to think I was just about to offer to buy you an extra pizza if you want more once this is gone.”
Elle looked at me. I shrugged. “We do have all those brownies up there,” I said.
“Chocolate icing?” Coop ducked against the side of the couch and raised his arm in defense.
“You ate them?” Elle smacked him again.
“Just one. Then I smelled the Marion’s pizza drifting up the steps and decided to hit the basement for some of Centerville’s finest instead.”
“You’re the most obnoxious brother in the history of the world.” Elle grabbed the remote from under Coop’s thigh.
“How was your movie?” he asked, kicking the Cruel Intentions DVD box with the toe of his gym shoe.
“Totally heart-wrenching,” Elle said. “I can’t believe he died.”
“Tragic,” Coop said sarcastically.
“For real.” Elle nodded as she flipped through the channels trying to find something worth watching.
I took a bite of my pizza, and as I pulled it away from my mouth, half of the cheesy topping slid forward, slapping against my chin. It was that exact moment when Elle shot up from her seat between Coop and me, her plate and several small squares of pizza flying into the air.
“What the hell are they doing?” Elle’s voice was icy cold. The pizza squares landed with a plop, facedown on the tan carpet.
Coop sat forward, his eyes darting from the TV to Elle. “You know them?”
“Shh!” Elle reached back and Coop grabbed her hand, pulling her to the couch, but she resisted.
I looked to the TV, where, on one half of the screen, a blonde woman sat at a news desk, her mouth tight and her eyes crinkled, nodding. The other half of the screen framed two teenagers, a guy and a girl who were both so pale it seemed like they hadn’t seen the sun in years. They sat on a brown couch with a picture of a country scene hanging on the wall behind them. It was obvious that they weren’t on the news set but were somewhere off location.
“Tell us about the first time you saw her,” the reporter prompted.
“We saw her around a buncha times.” The girl propped her hands on her lap, clutching them tightly together.
“But we met her one day when I almost ran into her with my skateboard,” the guy said.
“She almost jumped out of her skin.” The girl’s large eyes avoided the camera trained on her face, which seemed unnaturally round due to her fluffy brown hair. “I felt awful he scared her so much.”
“She was always kind of skittish, though,” the guy asserted.
“What else can you tell us about her?” the reporter asked, leaning forward with the hope of some juicy details.
“She was different.” The girl scrunched her lips together.
“Yeah. Like, really different.” The guy snorted and ran a hand through his short hair. “Always serious. It was really hard to make her laugh.”
“Wonder why, asshole,” I said.
“He looks dirty.” Coop made a face like he’d just smelled something rotten.
“Hmm.” Elle clasped her hands together as she stood in front of the television. “You summed up Kevin Staples with the most appropriate word in the English language,” she said over her shoulder. “Maybe you actually are perceptive, like you were talking about a while ago.”
“You want to hear more of my thoughts about the Chipster?” Coop asked.
Elle hit the volume on the remote, and Kevin’s raspy voice filled the room.
“There was this one time we were all hanging out, you know, not doing much, and we saw this … whaddya call it?” Kevin looked at the girl sitting next to him.
“A press conference,” she said.
“Yeah. One of those. The mom and dad of this kidnapped girl were being interviewed, saying all kinds of sappy stuff about their daughter. They even flashed some pictures of her.”
“And the crazy thing is,” the girl interrupted, “we said how much Elle looked like that kidnapped girl. Asked if there was anything she needed to tell us. We were being sarcastic, right? But she had a chance to tell us everything. We could have helped her.”
“No.” Elle stepped forward, shaking her head at the screen. “You couldn’t have.”
“But she didn’t say anything.” Kevin rubbed two fingers over a large zit at the base of his nose. “Just shook her head and laughed.”
“Why do you think that is?” the reporter asked with a serious tone.
“She musta not wanted to go home,” Kevin said, putting his hands on his knees. “She had this thing for my mother’s—”
“Kevin.” The girl reached up and put her hand over his. When he looked at her, she shook her head.
“You were saying, Kevin?” The reporter was staring so hard it looked like her eyes might blast out of her head.
“My mom has this anxiety thing, so she takes some pills to help her sleep. And Elle, she … well, let’s just say some of those pills went missing every time Elle was at my house.”
With his twitchy nose and thin lips, Kevin reminded me of a rat. In that moment, I felt like I could dive through the screen and grab hold of the greasy kid’s neck. Squeeze. And shake and shake and shake.
Elle took a few steps back and buried her face in her hands. “Thanks a lot, Kev.”
Coop looked from the screen to Elle and back again. “Why’s he saying that?”
“Because it’s true,” Elle said, propped against the arm of the couch.
“I don’t under—”
“Shh!”
“Are you telling me she’s a drug addict?” The reporter’s eyes were actually twinkling with excitement. It was either that or the lighting crew had figured out some way for the overheads to enhance her thrill at uncovering an unsavory detail about Elle.
“I don’t know why else she’da taken ’em.” Kevin shrugged.
“That’s not what I think,” the girl said softly.
“Thank you, Julie,” Elle whispered, her body slumping.
“Why, then, do you think she would need those pills?” The reporter’s voice took on an interrogative tone. Her eyes
no longer twinkled but looked like small onyx stones.
Julie shook her head. “I don’t know, ma’am. But I never once saw her act like she was messed up.”
The screen did this kaleidoscope thing, and Kevin and Julie were sucked into TV land, leaving a single, live shot of the reporter. She was now wearing a few additional layers of makeup and had several more inches of poof teased into her hair.
“There you have it, folks,” she said with a fluid smile. “The first interview with two friends Noelle Pendelton made while she was in captivity. We’ve had panel discussions with various psychologists on Stockholm syndrome and other psychological side effects of surviving such a traumatic event. But these two kids have given us a vital snapshot, detailing this young girl’s actions during her two years away from her family.”
Elle punched the remote, and the television screen went black. “Bitch.”
“Elle.” I reached out to her, but she stood up and circled the coffee table.
I did the only thing I could think of to help in the moment. I knelt on the floor, peeling five squares of pizza from the carpet and blotting the stains with a paper napkin.
“Screw them!” Elle pointed at the screen, tears pouring down her face. “People think they could have helped me. What a joke. Charlie would have gone after every last one of them. And he could have, because if it hadn’t happened exactly like I planned, he would have gotten away. He’d be free right now, and everyone I ever cared about would be at risk.”
“You’re right, Elle,” I said, pressing the napkin into the carpet, thinking of the journal entry I’d read a few weeks earlier.
“And Kevin had to bring up those pills! Now people are going to think I’m some junkie when I was just trying to get some relief. A few freaking hours to myself.”
“No one will blame you for trying to escape mentally when you were stuck there physically.” Coop looked at me and widened his eyes in a what-the-hell-are-we-supposed-to-say look.
I got up, tossing the greasy napkin onto the table.
“See?” Elle clapped her hand against her thigh. “You’re my brother, and you even think I took them!”
I squinted, totally confused. “So you didn’t take them?”
“Just tell us, Elle,” Coop said, leaning back into the couch and putting his hands behind his head.
“I took them, sure.” Elle put a hand to her mouth and shook her head. “I mean, I stole them. But I never swallowed any.”
“Then why’d you steal them?” I asked, trying to make sense of the crazy direction the conversation had taken.
“For Charlie. I’d crush them up and put them in his dinner or his beer. Once a week. I swear, on Thursday nights he’d sleep so sound, I probably could’ve had him arrested.”
So why didn’t you? I thought. Why? Why? Why didn’t you try?
“You should call in to that show,” Coop said. “To explain yourself.”
Elle shook her head. “It wouldn’t help. People are going to think whatever they want. Nothing I say is going to change that.”
I shrugged. “It might.”
“Huh-uh. I’m not going to subject myself to some totally fake reporter who’ll ask a bunch of private questions.”
“But if people heard the real reason you stole those pills—”
“Coop, I could go to the trouble of explaining about the pills, but it would trip all these other subjects. Why didn’t I use those times to escape? Or call the police? Did I actually like being with him?”
“She’s got a point,” I said.
“The thing is, I could go public and answer every last question, hoping people will finally understand. But that’ll never happen. Not like I want it to. So I just have to sit back and wait until it’s over. Until the media has something else to cling to and exploit.”
“You’re sure?” Coop asked. “You have so much support from people. You could find a different reporter. One who’d—”
Elle shook her head. Chewed on her thumbnail. “I can’t open myself up, Coop. They’d ask me the one question I can’t answer.”
Coop looked at me. I shook my head. But he asked anyway.
“Well,” he said, “why didn’t you try to get away any sooner?”
Elle just stared at him, tears dripping from her chin. For a second, I thought she might answer him. But what could she say? If she told him the truth, that keeping him safe was a link in the chain that had bound her to Charlie for two years, the guilt would break him.
“You don’t really want to know that, Pooper,” she said. “Trust me.”
Thursday,
January 21
19
Outta Me, Onto You
“I’m feeling a little overwhelmed here,” I said, tapping my fingernails on my desk.
“It’ll be fine.” Darcy reached over and covered my hand with hers. “Stop before you drive me insane.”
“Did they do this last year? Because I don’t remember—”
“Is there a problem, Tessa?” Mr. Hollon stood by his desk, his arms crossed over his chest.
Max laughed. “You know very well what the problem is, Mr. H.”
“I know it’ll be a challenge for you.” Mr. Hollon walked to my desk, his hands falling on the folder holding my most recent pictures. “From challenge comes growth.”
I snorted. “Or death.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic.” Darcy made a little pfft sound.
“Tessa, you’ll be fine, and you know it,” Max said.
“You people, with all your confidence,” I said. “You don’t get it.”
“It’s just an art show,” Mr. Hollon said. “You don’t have to stand next to your work and wait for a flogging if someone dislikes one of your pictures. You simply have to figure out which shots to include and how best to showcase them.”
“What if I decide not to enter?” I looked up at my teacher and saw that his left eyebrow was raised. Never a good sign.
“That is not an option, Tessa. It’s for a grade.” With that, he turned his back on me and walked away.
“I’ll just take a zero,” I said under my breath as I slid the envelope full of photographs off my desk, letting it drop to the floor.
“Not. An. Option.” Mr. Hollon threw his words over his shoulder without looking back.
I tried not to freak out. But it was all getting to be too much. I didn’t need some stupid art show to worry about on top of everything else. And the sound of Darcy’s fingernails clicking away at her phone while she popped little bubbles of gum against her teeth was about to send me over the edge.
I reached over and was about to tear her phone from her hands, but she twisted in her seat so I couldn’t reach her.
“You don’t want to do that,” she said.
“Yes.” I nodded. “I do.”
“Hang on.” She looked more closely at the screen, reading the words that her boyfriend had just sent.
“Like I want to hear some stupid love—”
“C hallway,” Darcy said, whipping her hair over her shoulder as she turned to look at me with wide eyes. “Hurry up! It’s Elle.”
I stood and stumbled over the manila envelope holding all of my pictures. Max reached out and steadied me with both hands.
“Is she—”
“She’s with Jessie. T wrote their names, C hallway, and one other word.”
“What?” I asked, grabbing my camera from my purse so Mr. Hollon wouldn’t ask where I was headed.
“Catfight.”
I used my hands and arms, even my knees, pushing hard a few times to split through people in the crowd. The circle surrounding Elle and Jessie was three rings deep by the time I made it to C hallway. They were gathered in front of the entrance to the boys’ bathroom, practically pulsing with excitement over the conflict brewing.
“I’m sure you heard that I’ve been gone for a couple of years.”
That was Elle’s voice. Someone behind me said, “Ouch,” and I didn’t know if it had to do
with my elbow in her stomach or Elle’s words.
“Like I’m supposed to care?” No doubt, that was Jessie. All around me, people sucked air into their lungs in this dramatic show of disbelief. “You want my pity?”
I shoved my way into the center of the ring just in time to see Elle prop one hand on her hip. “Seems more like I have something you want.”
Jessie rolled her eyes and looked to her left. Through the gap between Elle and Jessie, I found the reason she had diverted her attention from Elle. Supportive as always, Kirsten and Tabby stood a few feet away, their lips peeled back in these wicked grins. “I can have anything I want.”
Elle chuckled. “Really? From my perspective, it looks like the one thing you want to call yours is just out of reach.”
“You must be a little slow, since you had to take a few years off school and everything. Plus all those drugs you took … So let me help you out.” It was really hard for me not to step up and punch Jessie in the face. I sucked in a deep breath and looked away. From the other side of the circle, Tabby leaned forward. I swear, I expected to see drool streaming from her lips.
Jessie propped both hands on her hips and stuck her neck out as she spoke: “Chip Knowles is, and always will be, mine.”
Elle pushed some hair off her face, her glare never leaving Jessie. “That’s really sweet and all. But I’m pretty sure he’s tired of being your most important accessory.”
Jessie smiled thinly and shook her head. “You should have been smart enough to figure out the way things work around here before you stole someone’s boyfriend.”
“How many of you”—Elle acknowledged the group of people surrounding her—“think I would steal a person?” After a few seconds, Elle found me in the crowd. She rolled her eyes and pulled her shoulders back before facing Jessie again. I was proud, watching her stand strong, facing one of the most relentless adversaries in the building. “It must kill you that he doesn’t want you anymore. If it’s easier for you to think that I stole him, fine.”
The Tension of Opposites Page 16