by L. E. Flynn
Until the day my aunt Leslie dropped by unannounced when we were lounging on the couch, watching bad reality TV in our pajamas. Aunt Leslie’s jaw practically dropped when she walked in the room and saw the mess. Pizza boxes and fast-food wrappers and two girls in the middle of it.
I froze in panic. I had convinced Mom I didn’t need a chaperone, and I knew Aunt Leslie would report back to Mom that I had been wasting my whole summer on a junk-food bender.
But Trixie somehow saved the situation. She got up and said hi to Aunt Leslie and asked her if she wanted to come shopping and out for lunch with us. She was perky and cheerful and so totally not herself. On our way out the door, Aunt Leslie stopped and asked Trixie her name.
“Sarah,” she said, without a pause or any hesitation. “Sarah Brown.”
I didn’t know why she lied. Obviously Mom would find out when Aunt Leslie described her. But then again, maybe not. She wasn’t the bleached-blond pixie-cut, lip-ring-wearing friend I first brought home. She had black hair extensions that week and fake eyelashes that made her eyes look enormous. Maybe Mom would think I made a new friend, someone who was a better influence.
So we took Aunt Leslie to a burger place by the pier. Trixie talked the whole time about her big plans to study law at Harvard and her volunteer work with underprivileged kids and her parents, who were abroad building houses. “You should see the pictures they send me of Africa,” she said. “It’s so serene. I’d like to join them there one day.” She told lie after lie without even stopping for a breath. She lied the same way she ate. Fast, without even chewing the pieces before she swallowed. Without letting anything digest.
When Trixie got up to use the bathroom, Aunt Leslie placed her hand on mine. “Your friend seems very nice, sweetie. But you need to take care of yourself, okay? You can’t live on junk food all summer. Promise me you’ll have some veggies, okay?”
I nodded, and it was that easy to get her off my back.
Afterward, we waited in the driveway and waved as Aunt Leslie drove away. I glanced over at Trixie and she was wearing this gigantic smile that I had never even seen before, a smile that showed all her teeth. The second Aunt Leslie’s car turned the corner and disappeared from view, that smile started to deflate.
“What was that all about?” I said. “Why didn’t you just tell the truth?”
She started walking back inside. “Because it was easy. Sometimes it’s fun to be someone else.”
It was easy, she said.
But it was way too easy for her.
32
TWO HUNDRED AND sixty-three million.
That’s how many Sarah Browns exist, according to Google. Too many to ever track down, even if I had a lifetime to do it. I almost don’t want to mention it to Jasper because I know he’s determined to move on, and also because after he lied about Toby being Trixie’s lab partner, I wonder what else he could be hiding from me. And why.
I’m sitting in my car eating lunch alone the next day when the passenger door opens and Beau is standing there, wild-eyed and frantic.
“I did something bad,” he says. “Something real bad. I need your help.”
I motion for him to get in and a bag of chips falls off my lap onto the floor. It’s hot in here, the kind of heat that makes you feel perpetually sticky, and the air gets even thicker once Beau gets in and shuts the door. He smells like alcohol and body odor, and his eyes are bloodshot.
“You need to hide this.” He thrusts a bag into my lap. It’s a black backpack and for a second, my stomach lurches because it looks exactly like Trixie’s backpack, right down to the white trim.
“Where did you get this?” I say. “This isn’t yours.”
He looks at me like I’m insane, and maybe I am. Then he flips the bag over and I can see that it’s not the same, that it has pockets where Trixie’s didn’t, and my breathing starts to go back to normal.
“I just need you to keep it here.” He leans in a bit closer, and the sour smell on his breath makes me want to gag when he whispers against my cheek. “I’m in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“It’s not important. I just need your help with this, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay.” It feels good to put up a fight. “Tell me what’s in the bag, or else I’m going to open it for myself anyway.”
He looks frantically behind him, in front of him, to the side, to make sure nobody is watching. Then he unzips the bag and pulls a bottle of vodka out. And then a bottle of something amber-colored. Finally, at the bottom, a baggie of weed.
“There, that’s it. Just stuff. It’s not a murder weapon or anything.”
Yes, it is, I want to say. You’re killing yourself.
“What if someone finds it here?” I say instead. “I can’t keep this in my car.”
“I don’t have a car to keep it in.” His voice is rough and scratchy, like he’s about to cry. “My dad drives me to school. I keep this in my locker and I’m the only one who knows the combination. But Coach Mortimer, he’s doing locker searches today. He heard a rumor from some narc that there are guys on the team doing drugs.”
I shake my head slowly. How could you be so stupid? How could you be so careless? But I guess I already knew that Beau is both of those things.
The worst part is, this isn’t the first time he’s asked me to store something for him. That was two years ago, when he had a bunch of books he’d taken out from the library that he told me he didn’t have time to stick in his own locker, because he was running late for practice. When I took the books from him, I got the feeling he just didn’t want anyone else to see that he had them. They were books of poetry by Lord Byron, who we had studied briefly in freshman-year English and whose poems I had glazed over, more preoccupied with cheerleading and my friends than the words of yet another long-dead white guy. But that day, I stood by my locker and read the poems, and with every line, it was like I knew more about Beau.
“Nobody will check here,” he says now, and he’s already shoving the bottles and the baggie underneath the passenger seat. “You won’t get into any trouble. I promise, nobody will ever know.”
He looks right at me and it makes my heart hurt. Beau is the only person who can do this, who can make me feel like he sees what other people never will. I don’t even have to say yes, because he already knows.
You have a problem, I imagine myself saying. You need help.
Anger starts to build up inside me and that’s what scares me, how it can come out of nowhere and clot everything else. I want to grab his shoulders and shake him and tell him I’m not always going to be here to cover for him. My body is about to capsize, like a punctured life raft. I can’t be your life raft because I’m sinking too. But instead, I just nod. Only when he’s already gone do I mutter under my breath, “I hate you.”
I find Jasper after last period. He’s coming out of the computer lab, staring at his phone, and I stand in front of him on purpose, knowing he’ll crash into me.
He whips his phone into his coat pocket and curls his lips into a smile that looks more like a grimace. “Fiona. Hi. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
For some reason, maybe because he’s the only person who wants to talk to me, everything I wasn’t planning on telling him all spills out. “I want to talk to you too. Did you ever hear Trixie mention Sarah Brown?”
He shakes his head. “No. Who is she?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nobody. Or maybe the person we’re looking for.”
I tell him the whole story, about how she already had the fake ID when we met. About how she never told me where mine came from, and never asked me to pay for it. Almost like she had been waiting for a Beth Winchester to come along the whole time.
“We should go to the police,” I say. “This is proof.”
Jasper shakes his head again and hair falls into his eyes. He leaves it there. “This isn’t proof of anything. So she had a fake ID. Lots of kids have them. It really doesn’t prove anythi
ng.” He lowers his voice. “I just think this trail you’re trying to follow leads nowhere.”
“Maybe it does. But let’s say she could turn into Sarah Brown. What else would she need to disappear and have nobody find her? A new passport? Credit cards? Maybe that’s how it was with Toby Hunter. Maybe he got fake IDs too, and he could have told Trixie where he got his.”
Jasper blows out a breath. “Toby Hunter is dead. And you said it yourself—Trixie didn’t ever mention him. So they have nothing to do with each other. All of this is a series of really bizarre coincidences.”
“I need to know for sure. We need to find out where she got it,” I say. I realize I’m using we, not I, and that it’s because I’m scared to do this myself. Scared of what I might find, or what I won’t.
“Well, I can’t help you with that. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m not exactly the kind of person with any use for a fake ID.”
It’s not what he says, exactly. It’s the way he says it, like he knows he’s not cool and he’s never going to be cool. I guess I always thought that Jasper was immune to the comments people make about him at school, things like freak and weirdo and loser.
“There’s one place we can look,” I say. “But I’m kind of freaked out about going there. Maybe we can go together.”
Jasper sucks in a breath and bites his bottom lip, making it shiny and red. “Okay,” he says, and all I hear in his voice is hesitation. Not that I blame him.
We get in my car and I start driving. The passenger seat is still pushed back from the last time Jasper sat there, so this time his legs fit better. When I pull away from the school and make a sharp right-hand turn, the bottles Beau gave me roll out from under the seat. Jasper stops one with his foot.
“I didn’t take you as the type of person who kept an alcohol stash in her car,” he says, rolling the sole of his boot over the bottle. “Actually, I never pegged you for a drinker at all. This seems like more of a Trixie thing.”
“I’m not,” I say quickly, wondering how he could possibly peg me for anything when we’ve only really known each other for a handful of weeks. “I mean, I’ve had drinks. I’ve been drunk. But that’s not mine. A friend asked me to keep it there.”
“Okay,” Jasper says. “I’ve never liked the idea of alcohol. People drink it for an excuse to let their monsters loose.”
I wonder if he’s talking about Trixie or me or just people in general, if he has had personal experience with what alcohol can do. He clears his throat and changes the subject. “So where are we going?”
“We’re going to the one place she might have left a clue.”
Jasper taps his fingers on his leg. “And where’s that?”
“Her bedroom.”
33
YOU DIDN’T KNOW who I was before you. Maybe because you never bothered to ask. It was like you didn’t want that girl to exist anymore.
The Robson Red Flag pep rally was the school’s biggest pre-season event. The cheerleaders got dressed up in their game-day outfits and showed off the routine they had been working on for weeks, the tumbling passes they knew would have people on their feet. It was their turn to get the glory. I had already missed a few practices at that point, but I couldn’t miss the rally. The girls were counting on me.
“You could come,” I told Trixie, but even as I said it, I knew she wouldn’t.
“I have a shift at Cabana Del Shit,” she said, staring at her face in our locker mirror. “Besides, I’m not into the school-spirit thing. I thought you could come and hang out, and we could do something after. I’ll make you one of those chocolate milkshakes you like.”
Trixie had been working at Cabana Del Shit all through high school. Which was actually a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant near the beach called Cabana Del Sol. She was a dishwasher, a job that left her hands perpetually dry and cracked. She hated working there but loved complaining about her coworkers: Skylar, the bitchy waitress who had it out for her. Max, the hot but dumb bartender. The pervy line cooks who brought porn magazines into the bathroom.
“Oh.” I leaned into the locker beside ours. “That would be great. But I can’t miss the rally. Can I just come after?”
“Don’t bother.” She snapped her gum while she applied eyeliner in quick little strokes. “We don’t have to do everything together.”
“I’ll text you when it’s done,” I said.
“I have to go. See you later.” She scuffed down the hall in her flip-flops without looking back. No signature peace-sign wave, no smile.
The panic was instant. I knew I had screwed up, with Trixie and with everyone else. Getting ready for the rally was something Jenny, Alison, and I had done together since freshman year. We would braid each other’s hair and admire how good we looked together, my auburn head next to Jenny’s dark-brown one and Alison’s blond. We complemented each other, the perfect trio. Things had changed, but Alison had asked me that morning if I was going to be there and I told her I would. I wasn’t ready to not be part of that anymore.
I put on my makeup with shaky hands and changed into my uniform in the bathroom. It still fit, even though I hadn’t been taking care of myself. I had been eating all of Trixie’s favorite foods, the ones Mom never kept in our house. The fact that the uniform still fit made me think I could still fit. I could be a cheerleader and be friends with Trixie. I could have it all. I’d see Trixie later and make it up to her, tell her we could drive anywhere.
But something told me that wasn’t true. I had never been good at making decisions. Even the smallest choices, like whether to have garden or Greek salad for lunch, practically paralyzed me. I always knew that whatever I ended up choosing, I would want what I didn’t pick.
I wore my uniform out to the parking lot and saw Jenny and Alison jogging on the track, braids bouncing in unison on their shoulders. Jenny leaned in and pulled on the end of Alison’s hair, said something that made them both laugh. I wasn’t there, and it didn’t matter. They were still laughing. Probably at me.
I rubbed the red lipstick off my mouth and darted into my car, still wearing my uniform. I drove away from them, just like I did that day when I met Trixie.
When I showed up at Cabana Del Shit, Trixie looked surprised to see me. She was wearing a stained apron and baseball cap and carrying a giant bin full of dishes back to the kitchen, and her arms were shaking hard, like the bin could fall any minute. She made me a chocolate milkshake, just like she said she would. I sat at the bar, still in uniform.
“I thought you had some big rally,” she said.
“I did. But I decided not to go. I don’t think I’m a cheerleader anymore.”
She smiled. “You know, I used to wish I had a sister, when I was growing up. This is how I thought it would be.”
And just like that, quitting the squad was the best thing I had ever done.
* * *
A week later, Alison tried to pull me back. She thought I was sinking and wanted to throw me a life preserver, give me one last chance to get on the boat. She had it all wrong. She didn’t understand that I was flying, high as a kite, light as a balloon, and it really pissed me off that she wanted to yank me down.
“Fiona,” she called across Mr. More’s algebra class at the end of the day, over the sound of thirty students throwing books into their bags and gunning for the door.
“Hey,” I said, shoving my backpack over my shoulder.
“Can we talk for a second?” She sat on the edge of my desk, her stupid toned leg in my face. I didn’t want to be that close to Alison. It was easier when I was with Trixie and she was my shield, impervious to dents.
“Sure,” I said warily.
Alison stared at the ground, and that’s when I could tell she was nervous too. Usually, she was great at making eye contact and speaking her mind. That was why parents loved her so much. That was why she was a great student and the newly minted captain of the cheerleading squad. People like Alison had nothing to hide.
“I just wanted t
o say that we miss having you on the team. It’s not the same without you. And I miss hanging out with you. Did I do something to make you stop wanting to be friends?” She curled her fingers up in her lap, waited for me to speak.
I had no idea what to say. I couldn’t explain it to her. I couldn’t tell her that Jenny had ruined my life, that every time I saw her with Beau I felt like I was being kicked in the gut. Alison would say Friends always come before boys, even though she knew I loved Beau first and that Jenny didn’t pay me the same courtesy. I’d have to shake her until she realized how easily Jenny let me go, as if I were never even there to begin with.
“It’s not you,” I said, and I almost laughed because it sounded like the start of a bad breakup line, just like Brad Colton gave Alison when he dumped her last year. “I made a new friend, that’s all. And cheerleading isn’t for me anymore.”
“Okay,” Alison said. “But I’m worried about you. You kind of just shut us out of your life, right after you started hanging out with her.”
I couldn’t ignore the way she said her, like it was a wad of poison she had to spit out. I bristled, like a dog sniffing out an intruder. She didn’t know Trixie. How dare she blame her, when everything was Jenny’s fault?
“She’s my best friend,” I said, surprised by the anger in my voice. “She’s always going to be my best friend. You already have one. Now I have one, and it’s just the way it should be.”
Alison’s cheeks reddened and she started picking at the skin around her cuticles. I knew her well enough to know it was a nervous habit, one that her mom admonished. Put this oil on them, she would say when I was over at Alison’s house, doing homework at the kitchen table. Don’t ruin your fingers.
“All right,” she said, standing up and smoothing out her skirt. “As long as you’re happy, I guess I’m happy for you.”
I stayed rooted in my chair and watched her leave. A tiny part of me wanted to call after her and tell her to fight harder for me, but that tiny part was extinguished by a bigger part, an inkblot inside me staining everything else, covering the old memories in film.