That Night

by Cyn Balog

  He nodded, contemplating this, and I thought, Okay, all is good. Then he said, “This may be out of left field, because I’ve never had a sister, but I’m pretty sure that if I did, I wouldn’t kiss her like that.”

  I froze, my hand in his, and despite the drafty Jeep, I felt my face heat. I had a sudden flash of memory of me in the Weeks living room, bombed, kissing a number of people. I recalled kissing Kane, but what I’d thought felt so right—the warm, soft pleasant feeling of his tongue melding with mine—now hit me like a wall of bricks. How incredibly wrong it was. How incredibly wrong I was.

  And I’d wanted Declan to send me a flower? I was lucky he was still speaking to me.

  “God,” I breathed. “I didn’t… I mean, I didn’t know…”

  There was no explanation for it. Saying I was smashed didn’t seem to be enough, because it still made me a jerk, since I’d gone and gotten myself that way. He shrugged, reached out, and smoothed my hair behind my shoulder. “It’s okay, Hail. It’s okay.”

  “Don’t be so nice about it!” I said to him. “Yell at me. That was horrible. Oh my God.”

  Suddenly, going out to the movies seemed like an exceedingly stupid idea. I wanted to crawl in a hole and die. At that moment, I vowed never to drink again.

  Instead, I said, “Declan. I love you. I don’t think of Kane that way at all. I must have been out of my mind. I am so sorry.”

  He nodded. “I know you are. It’s already forgotten.”

  But I could tell that it was still on his mind. Maybe I knew him too well. Declan felt emotions deeply, and I knew there were some scars in his life that he’d never forget, that he’d take to the grave. This would be one of them. This was my first relationship, so I didn’t realize it then, but sometimes the most innocent mistake can cause two people to stop heading in one direction and begin moving in another direction entirely. I felt like we’d turned that corner, and I didn’t like where we were going.

  And God, I would’ve given anything to turn us back.

  But I couldn’t cancel my little get-together. I’d orchestrated it. So I drove him to the theater, and we barely talked at all. I tried to convince myself it was because the wind ripping through the top made it too hard to carry on a conversation, but that had never stopped us before.

  The small, old theater was more crowded than I’d ever seen it. There was only street parking, and I had to parallel park, which I hate, in a spot about six blocks from Main. When we finally got to the lobby of the theater, it was after eight, and the movie had already started.

  Nina, Javier, Luisa, and Kane were standing outside, waiting for us. When Luisa whirled to look at me, I stopped in my tracks.

  Her stare fell on me, cold, and she didn’t say a word. No doubt she knew about what had happened on New Year’s Eve. Maybe she’d even seen us.

  Oh God. Could this be any more of a nightmare? No wonder she hadn’t responded to my text about the movies. She hated me.

  I avoided eye contact with her as we approached. Kane said, “Should we bother? We won’t get seats together.”

  We all agreed to go in anyway, because it was a horror movie that all of us wanted to see, and the previews usually took fifteen minutes anyway. It would have been a blessing that I didn’t have to sit next to Kane or Luisa anyhow. But when we got in the theater, there was only one grouping of three, one grouping of two, and single seats everywhere else.

  Luisa climbed into the grouping of three, then looked at me defiantly, as if laying down a challenge. I wasn’t going there and wasn’t going to split up Nina and Javier, so I ended up sitting by myself in the back corner of the theater.

  The movie was terrible. I watched the heads of Luisa, Kane, and Declan, silhouetted in the light from the movie screen, feeling like shit. Luisa was sitting between them, in the spot meant for me. Somehow she had gotten the two Weeks boys, and I got the back row next to an elderly lady who smelled like old cheese and kept elbowing me in an epic battle over the armrest.

  When I saw Luisa stand to leave midmovie, I pushed out of the seat and went after her, intent on clearing the air.

  “Luisa,” I called before she could go into the ladies’ room.

  She turned. “Don’t. Don’t even. You’ve always wanted Kane, and then I find out you actually slept with him?”

  I stared at her in shock. How had she found out? I hadn’t told anyone, so the answer was obvious. Kane.

  “N-no,” I stammered in a hoarse whisper, looking back at the darkened movie theater. The last thing I needed was for Declan to follow us out and hear this. “That was a long time ago. And we were stupid. And it didn’t—”

  “It didn’t mean anything, and yet you couldn’t keep your hands off him on New Year’s?”

  “I was—”

  “Drunk. Don’t give me that excuse. I see the way you look at him. You’ve always hated him being with anyone else, because you never wanted anyone else to have him. Admit it.”

  My face grew hot. “No, I—”

  Her gaze trailed past me. I looked over my shoulder. Kane stood behind us. Had he heard that? Shaking my head, I dodged Kane’s worried looks and stalked back into the theater, where I could disguise my tears.

  I cried quietly to myself through the rest of the movie, until the end credits rolled.

  Thursday, February 28

  Kane bailed on a ride home, and a ride into school the next day, so I now have this irrational feeling he’s avoiding me. Maybe it’s because of my talk with Luisa.

  If you want to know who killed Declan, look in the mirror. She’s insane, of course. Jealous, because I had Declan and Kane.

  Or at least I thought I did.

  The next time I see Kane, it’s in the science hallway. He has his tongue down Luisa’s throat, which only makes me feel more alone. Guess the whole “breakup” isn’t really happening.

  All yesterday and this morning, I’ve been replaying Luisa’s words in my head. She said that I hounded Declan. She thinks I failed him. That I’m responsible for his death. And I don’t even know what I did.

  I have to know. Even if Kane thinks I won’t like what I find out. It can’t be worse than not knowing.

  When I get back home after school, I can’t bother with my trig homework. I reach under my bed and pull out the box of stuff from Declan’s room. Since my parents are at work, I bring it downstairs, setting it on the coffee table, then open the flaps. This time, I dig through the entire box, pulling out ticket stubs from movies and concerts we’d gone to, napkins, matchbooks, toothpicks, all the junk that signified our life together. He’d piled them all in the top drawer of the dresser in his bedroom. I find the one for that cheesy horror movie. The last movie we’d seen in the theaters, and he hadn’t even really been with me. He’d sat next to Luisa and Kane, while I’d sat alone.

  Then I notice a stub for another movie. It’s a romantic comedy, a movie I know I’ve never seen. My eyes scan the date. January 16 of last year. A midnight showing, one month before his death.

  I stare at it. Declan liked romantic movies about as much as the next guy. Basically, he stomached them for me. But he’d gone to this movie…alone?

  Declan often liked to be alone with his thoughts. Still, I couldn’t imagine him spending much contemplative time at a midnight showing of a Reese Witherspoon flick.

  I check my phone. January 16 had been a Tuesday. Declan was usually one to cut things short on school nights so he could prepare for school and get a good night’s sleep for the next day. Nothing short of an emergency would’ve drawn him out of the house that late.

  Unless…

  My skin prickles. He went with someone else. To be alone with someone else.

  I drop the stub into the box as if it’s a hot flame, and text Kane: Do you think Declan was seeing someone else?

  No response. No three dancing dots. I stare at the phone, will
ing him to answer, then dig through the box again. I find a little stuffed bear but can’t figure out why Declan would have it. Did he have a history with someone else? Did he have mementos of a whole other life I knew nothing about? I feel sick, dizzy. Suddenly, everything inside that box is suspicious, even the most innocuous items, like the Holy Bible. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

  Oh God.

  My phone buzzes with a message from Kane. I jump on it and read: Why?

  I’m going to be sick. The room swims as I type. A movie ticket I found in the box his mom gave me.

  I want him to say that I’m being ridiculous and paranoid, that Declan was too good to do such a thing. Instead, his next message is: Can I come over?

  No. I sink down onto the couch and gather a blanket around me, hoping to ward off the chill that’s suddenly sunk into my bones. Because there is only one reason Kane would delay answering me. Why? Just tell me.

  I don’t think you’ll like the answer.

  I draw in a breath, my body trembling. It’s nearly impossible to get my fingers to spell out my next text, because I’m half-blind from the tears in my eyes: So he was.

  I think so.

  Who? But I already know the answer. Maybe I’d known it all along. Luisa, right?

  Yeah.

  Turns out, I was wrong. There is something worse than not knowing. And it’s knowing.

  I’m not sure what happens after that. All I know is that I crash, my body collapsing in on itself, and every ounce of will that I’d been able to muster since I got out of Shady Harbor evaporates. All that’s left is pain. It’s so bad that I feel like I might die from it. Time speeds up and slows down at the same time, stretching and spiraling thoughts through my head. Declan, kissing me in the playhouse. Declan, the first time I met him, playing that guitar. Declan, singing that song to me on my sixteenth birthday. Declan, dead, his brains splayed out on the plywood wall of the shed. My world is ending. I wonder if this is how he felt before he ended his.

  Before I know it, Kane is sitting on the edge of the couch, holding a tissue box, watching me. My face is covered in tears and snot, and I know there’s plenty more where that came from. My parents usually don’t get home until seven on weekdays, and despite the darkness, it’s probably not yet dinnertime. He holds out a tissue, but I don’t have the energy to take it.

  “When?” My voice is choked.

  “I don’t know when it started. I think after New Year’s, last year. But maybe it was before then, and we just never noticed.”

  After New Year’s. After they saw Kane and me kissing. Was it revenge? Was that all it was? Declan didn’t strike me as someone to be vindictive. And I’d apologized, he’d accepted. It didn’t make sense. “Why?”

  “I don’t…” He stops. “I have something to tell you,” he says.

  Curled in a ball, I don’t say a word. I don’t like the tone of his voice. I don’t really want to know any more. It’s too much. My heart aches. Maybe it actually is broken. It feels heavy, swollen, on the verge of bursting.

  “I told you Luisa suspected something was going on between us,” he says. “But she didn’t suspect. She knew. Because I told her.”

  I don’t say anything. I was right. I can’t hurt worse. I only feel numb. “But nothing was going on between us.”

  “Something was,” he goes on. “I guess you and I… We kissed at midnight. And it was more than a little kiss. It got out of hand, Hailey. Luisa started asking me question after question about whether I wanted you or thought of you in that way, and I…” He shakes his head. “I was sick of it. So I told her. I told her what we’d done when we were fifteen.”

  It’s so ludicrous that neither of us can say it. Like it was so much of a mistake that we can’t admit that we had sex. I roll over on the couch, facing him. “And she told Declan.”

  He nods.

  “He hated me. He hated me after that. Everything I’d ever told him was a lie. And he…” I suck in a breath. All that time, he’d known. It would have been bad enough if he’d confronted me, but he never did…which was worse. He’d let the knowledge fester, stopped going to church, started seeing Luisa, and then…

  “Hailey. I’m sorry. But Declan wasn’t unbalanced. He didn’t kill himself because of that.”

  “He didn’t kill himself at all!” I fire back. I’m surer of that than I’ve ever been. Still, I know that sex was huge to him. All he ever did was talk about our first time. Our first time. And I never told him. I never admitted that everything he thought he knew about me was a lie.

  I let out a choked sob.

  “Hey,” Kane says, sitting me up and putting an arm around me. “Come on.”

  “I’m the worst person ever,” I sob, my body racked with convulsions. “I lied to him through our whole relationship. He had every right to get back at me.”

  “And then you got back at him,” Kane says quietly.

  “What?”

  He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a small bag. From it, he pulls a strawberry-colored Fujifilm Instax camera. I stare at it, two and two coming together in my mind. I remember sitting in front of the Christmas tree, unwrapping this gift as my parents snapped pictures, pretending I was six years old, and me indulging them since it was the first time since I’d gotten my car that they weren’t at each other’s throats. I’d kissed them both, then, since Declan wasn’t around, taken a bunch of pictures of the snowy outside before realizing I should have saved the film for New Year’s.

  THIS ENDS HERE.

  “This is your camera,” he says. “You took that picture of them. You showed it to me. You’re the one who gave that picture to Declan.”

  26 Days Before

  “You’re coming with me,” Nina said, grabbing my hand and yanking me toward the stairwell.

  It was Friday afternoon, and I was congratulating myself on having survived what had been the worst two weeks of school ever. Not only did I have to deal with Luisa’s eye daggers, but Kane and I had agreed to maintain a distance, because we didn’t want to cast any more suspicion on ourselves. I knew that was a good move, but it didn’t stop me from missing him.

  But I missed Declan more. We went on as if life was the same, but there was a subtle shift. Every time Declan blew me off, despite having a good excuse, I worried. In the first weeks of the new year, he was always busy with some school project. This time was worse than when he’d ignored me before. He wasn’t fixing up a new car for me. He said he was busy because he’d missed classes while he was out with the flu, but he definitely didn’t have the senioritis that had hit most Deer Hills seniors.

  It was more than that, though. Whenever we kissed, he felt stiff in my arms. I couldn’t help but think he was imagining me kissing Kane. He’d never been much of a talker, but he was quieter than usual. I’d vowed to be extra sweet to him, bringing him an extra boat of french fries for lunch, leaving notes in his locker. He used to call me the best girlfriend ever and pull me into his arms every chance he got. Now he smiled mirthlessly, and we barely touched.

  Our whole group of six had fractured, and it was all my fault.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Nina, confused. It was after last period, and I’d gathered my books for weekend homework so I could make a quick getaway to the junior parking lot.

  She winked at me and showed me three of her dad’s credit cards. “To the mall. My dad was feeling generous last night.”

  “I thought we were going to the basketball game.”

  The Deer Hills High basketball team had finally gotten into the playoffs, which had never happened before, so the entire student body was having an unusual fit of school spirit. Deer Hills excelled at baseball and football, because of Kane. But we’d sucked at basketball. So everyone was wearing Deer Hills red today, and we’d had a big pep rally after lunch.

  I’d
noticed the problem then, when I’d seen Nina sitting alone, cheeks red, face scrunched in a snarl. Nina never sat alone. Javier was so attached to her that he might as well have been a wart.

  She shook her head. “Not us. You really care about basketball?”

  The answer to that was no. But I did care that the six of us would finally be together again. Maybe we could heal some rifts, bonding over our shared school spirit. Mostly, I wanted to heal with Declan. I wanted to make things right, so much so that if I could’ve subtracted years from my life in order to turn back time to before New Year’s, I would have. “Well…”

  “Javier and I broke up,” Nina announced grandly.

  “You did? Why?”

  It wasn’t much of a shock. They’d broken up at least three times that previous year, because they were polar opposites. “Because he’s a turd, that’s why. He’s always looking at other girls. And then I heard he was flirting with a freshman saxophone player in band.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Luisa’s not going, and—”

  “She’s not?”

  “Yeah, have you noticed? She has the biggest stick up her butt, lately. Ever since New Year’s. She doesn’t want anything to do with us anymore.”

  Not us, I thought. Me.

  “And I’m not going either, if it means being with Jav. So do you really want to go to the ball game with the three stooges?” she asked me. Without waiting for an answer, she said, “Thought not! So you’re coming with me. To the mall. I want to get a hot outfit so I can show Javier what he can’t have.”

  “Um…” I’d long since lost interest in the mall. Ever since Declan and I had become a couple, I’d kind of let my appearance go, wearing jeans and sweatshirts everywhere, since I’d been so comfortable with us. But maybe that hadn’t been wise. Maybe I should have been making more of an effort to look nice for him. Despite having been in relationships for longer than I’d been, Nina and Luisa always dressed to impress. I could also get the stuff I needed for Declan’s scrapbook project at the mall…