by L. E. Flynn
When I got up to leave, Trixie was outside Mr. More’s classroom, scuffing her flip-flops on the ground and smiling. And even though she never mentioned it, and I didn’t either, I wondered how much she had heard.
34
JASPER HOLDS OUT his hands. “No. Stop right here. I didn’t say I’d do this.”
I slam on the brakes. Jasper lurches forward, straining against his seat belt. “You told me you’d help. What better place to look than her room?”
He rubs his hands over his face. “I can’t do it. I can’t be there. It’s way too bizarre. Look, I told you, we should go back to my house. I have that globe that she liked. It might trigger something. A memory, maybe.”
“I don’t want to look at a globe,” I snap. “It’s pointless. I need to do this.”
He reaches over and grabs my shoulder, breathing heavily. Behind us, a car horn blares, but I don’t move. Our noses are an inch apart and then he’s kissing me. But not softly, like we did at the beach. Harder, more urgently, the palm of his trembling hand hot against my face, his thumb under my chin. I kiss him back even though it’s the worst form of betrayal. Or maybe that’s why I do it. Because she left me, she decided I wasn’t worth staying for. She sprinkled lies over everything and watched me eat it up and ask for seconds. I’m still asking for more.
My eyes are closed when he pulls away. When I open them, he’s undoing his seat belt. “This is a mess,” he says, his voice thick. The next second he’s gone, the door slamming behind him. I watch as he gets smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror, his coat flapping behind him.
I take a series of long, shaky breaths. My hands are all over the steering wheel and I probably shouldn’t even be driving, but Trixie’s house isn’t far away now. And as much as I don’t want to face Mr. Heller, this is something I have to do.
Turns out, Mr. Heller isn’t even home. His station wagon isn’t in the driveway, but I ring the doorbell about ten times anyway. I consider just leaving, but then I remember that I have a key. Trixie gave it to me ages ago when she asked me to pick up one of her textbooks that she needed to study for a test. When I went to give the key back, she told me to hang on to it. “In case of an emergency,” she had said, and this counts as an emergency.
I open the door slowly. “Hello?” I call, knowing that nobody will answer. I tiptoe inside, glancing around the foyer into the cluttered living room. Trixie once referred to her dad as a hoarder, and the description fits. He collects just about everything there is to collect. Old newspapers with articles about Elvis. Antique teacups. Brass animals. Prints of the walls of the Egyptian pyramids. Shot glasses from countries he has never been to. Mom would have a conniption if she ever saw this mess.
Seeing the mess, for some reason, is the most heartbreaking thing of all. He hasn’t moved a single thing, just added to it. There are rolled-up rugs piled in one corner and a bunch of lamps lined against one wall and a coatrack piled high with different hats. And Trixie’s not here to roll her eyes and tell him to get rid of it, that it’ll bury him if he keeps buying stuff and having no place to put it.
I slink up the stairs, gripping the railing with sweaty hands. Trixie’s bedroom door is the first one at the top of the stairs and it’s open. I walk in with my heart pounding, half expecting her to jump out from behind her closet door and yell surprise! But there are no surprises here. The room is neat and tidy, bereft of anything personal. A desk and a bookshelf and a closet full of clothes hanging neatly on hangers.
I don’t know what I’m looking for, exactly. Something, anything. A clue, a sign, a scrap of paper, a compass pointing me in the right direction. I open each drawer and rummage through the notebooks in them, but they’re all blank. There’s a photo album in the bottom drawer with no pictures in it. I think back to what the police said. People detach themselves from the past when they decide to end their lives. But they were all wrong. Maybe Trixie clung to the past, to Toby, like a barnacle. Maybe she wasn’t ending her life so much as starting a new one.
Underneath the photo album are our yearbooks. All four years of Robson, not a single signature in any of them. No Have a great summer or even a See you next year. I flip to the page she shared with Toby Hunter, year after year. I don’t know what I’m expecting. A heart around his face, or maybe a love letter scrawled between pictures of the chess club and the tennis team. But there’s nothing. The yearbooks don’t even look like they have been opened before.
There’s another yearbook underneath the rest, and when I pick it up, I see what it says: Sunnyside Middle School, 2012–2013. When Trixie was in the seventh grade, before she ever started at Robson.
This yearbook has a cracked spine. This one has been opened and closed, and when I flip it open, I see that the front and back pages are covered in signatures and well-wishes. I keep flipping until I get to Trixie’s picture. She has braces and a bad haircut and a fake smile and there’s no Toby Hunter beside her, just a dorky kid with bad skin.
I grip the page between my fingers and let out a long breath. This is getting me nowhere. I should have known going back into Trixie’s past would be a dead end.
Then I see something on the bottom of the page. A purple arrow pointing to the next page. I turn it over, and there’s purple pen surrounding a picture of someone I know. Someone who was still the most beautiful girl in the room, even in eighth grade.
BFFS FOREVER! Love you like a sister! xoxoxoxo
Gabby Reynolds, the girl Toby loved.
35
I LIKED THAT it was only ever you and me. Maybe that was my problem all along with Jenny and Alison. We were one girl too many, unbalanced. I never considered that you were teetering on the edge the entire time, or that you might have your own friendship ghosts.
We were at Cabana Del Shit at the beginning of last summer, on a random Monday after her shift. It was the end of the night, and Trixie got one of the guys in the kitchen to make us a giant batch of nachos full of beef and melted cheese. I knew we’d eat it until we felt sick, but I kept shoveling gooey chips into my mouth and wiping my greasy fingers on flimsy paper napkins.
Trixie was telling me about all the gross things she found while busing tables that day when the little bell at the door rang and Gabby Reynolds walked in, lingering by the hostess stand.
I turned my face away and shrunk back in our booth. I didn’t want Gabby to see me pigging out on nachos like some kind of freak. When I tried out for the cheerleading team, Gabby had gone just before me, with a routine that brought the cheer captain to her feet. I expected her to be bitchy and mean, and when I wobbled during my routine, I figured she’d tell me to try out for a sport that requires less coordination.
But she didn’t. She smiled at me and it didn’t look fake, and when the list was posted and my name was on it, she told me she was happy we were both on the team.
Gabby had this perfect body, curvy in all the right places, and the thickest, glossiest blond hair I had ever seen. I figured somebody that beautiful must have a flaw. Somebody that sweet must have a secret.
But Gabby was also head of the math club, a peer mentor, first chair in band, and volunteered after school with disabled kids. And Toby Hunter loved her. They were the golden couple. King Toby and his leading lady.
The Gabby standing at the hostess stand wasn’t perfect. When Toby died, she turned into a shadow of who she used to be. She quit cheerleading. She got pale and bony and her hair started falling out in giant clumps. Jenny said it was because half of her was gone and never coming back, which was such an overly dramatic Jenny thing to say. To Jenny, they were a soap opera instead of real people.
I listened as Skylar approached the hostess stand, her shoes clacking on the ground. “Can I help you?”
A fly buzzed around my face. I swatted it away.
“I’m just picking up takeout,” Gabby said. “I forget my order number. It was a cheeseburger and fries.”
For some reason, Gabby doing something as simple as ordering a cheese
burger and fries made me want to burst into tears. I wondered if that was the hardest part for her, just doing normal things. The old Gabby would have been here with her friends. This Gabby was bringing food home, probably to an empty house. I pictured her eating it in tiny bites, trying to stomach it.
Finally, I realized Trixie hadn’t said a word since Gabby came through the door. She had stopped eating and was staring at her with this look I had never seen her wear before. It wasn’t pity and it wasn’t curiosity and it wasn’t sadness either.
It was pure and undiluted contempt. Her eyes narrowed into little slits and dents appeared in her forehead and she was biting her lip so hard that it was turning white around her teeth.
“Are you okay?” I asked. I figured her mind must be somewhere else, that that look was reserved for something besides Gabby Reynolds.
“Yeah,” she said, snapping back to reality. “Life’s just fucking peachy.”
Trixie stared at Gabby until she paid for her food and left, scurrying for the exit in worn-out ballet flats, Styrofoam container in hand. She saw us sitting there and gave a little wave, which I weakly returned.
“I need more sour cream,” Trixie said abruptly, getting up and darting back to the kitchen. I looked down at our plate. There was plenty of sour cream left.
When she came back to the table, her eyes were bloodshot. She said it was because she smoked a joint with one of the kitchen guys behind the restaurant. Except she didn’t smell like pot and I was pretty sure she had been crying. I didn’t call her out on it because I had no idea what had just happened, why she had turned from regular Trixie into somebody I didn’t know.
Maybe it wasn’t impossible to hate Gabby Reynolds after all.
36
JASPER IS WAITING for me at my locker—our locker—when I get to school the next day. “Sorry I got a bit wound up yesterday,” he says, pushing his hair behind his ears. “I just—I mean, I never even went over to her house when she was alive. With her. It seemed too strange to go there without her. Does that make sense?”
I nod. It does make sense. I try to picture it the other way around, me going to snoop around Beau’s bedroom without him, and that doesn’t feel right either.
“It’s fine,” I say, opening my locker. Eight. Thirty-one. Seventeen. The same reminder, multiple times a day, that she’s out there somewhere. Maybe with him.
“Did you find anything?” His voice is tentative, like he’s afraid to ask. Or maybe afraid of what I’ll say.
“Not really. I mean, maybe something. Did you know Trixie used to be friends with Gabby Reynolds?”
Jasper shakes his head. “No. She never mentioned it. I can’t think of anything they’d have in common.”
“Maybe they didn’t have something in common. Maybe it was someone.”
* * *
Gabby hangs out in the smoke pit at lunch. She fits in there, dark rings around her eyes and yellowing fingertips. My heart pounds as I walk down the stairs and take a seat on the bench beside her.
“Hey,” I say. “Mind if I borrow a cigarette?”
She laughs. It’s not the normal laugh I’m used to hearing from Gabby, the girly giggle that echoed through the gym. This one is brittle, like straw cracking.
“I believe the correct term is to bum a cigarette.” She hands me one with a wink. “It’s not like you’re going to give it back.”
I put the cigarette in my mouth and cup my hands while Gabby lights the end. I try not to sputter on it, the way I did when I first smoked a cigarette with Trixie.
“How are you?” My mouth floods with smoke and my tongue feels thick and fuzzy, like it’s too big for my mouth.
“Fine,” she says, nodding. “How are you holding up? I’m sorry, you know. That she’s gone. I obviously know how it feels.”
She stares at the ground, her eyes glassy. I realize I’m a terrible person for never saying anything to Gabby after Toby died. No I’m sorry or I’m here for you or I’m thinking of you. I guess I never thought I was close enough with her to make a statement like that, and I didn’t know how to say the words or even what words to say. Everything in my head sounded cheesy and cliché, but maybe it was what she needed to hear.
“I’m okay, I guess,” I say.
“I’d tell you it gets better”—Gabby taps the end of her cigarette—“but I don’t want to lie to you.” Her mouth forms a little O and she drags one of her fingers along her forehead, smoothing a line that appears there.
“I was going through her stuff,” I say. “I found an old yearbook, from Sunnyside. I didn’t know you guys used to be friends.”
Gabby takes her hair in her free hand, smoothing it over her shoulder. “Yeah, once upon a time. A million years ago. I had forgotten all about that.”
I take a quick drag of my cigarette. “Why did you stop?” I ask, pausing when I realize I don’t know how to finish the sentence. “Being friends. Why did you stop being friends with her?”
“I didn’t. She stopped being friends with me.” Gabby leans in closer. “We were just kids. She had a thing for this guy we went to school with, and he ended up trying to kiss me at this dumb school dance. I didn’t let him, of course. She was my best friend. But she never forgave me for the fact that he liked me better than her. She cut me off, just like that. And in high school, we just never talked again.” She shrugs. “Girls do stupid things when boys get in the way.”
The bell rings and I drop my cigarette on the ground, accidentally on purpose. I watch it glow before grinding it into the pavement.
“As someone who used to be her friend, do you know why she would have done it?” I hate how idiotic I sound. “Do you have any idea why?”
Gabby purses her lips. “I’m coming to learn that there doesn’t have to be a why involved. It’s selfish, is what it is. They leave these people behind and don’t realize how bad it hurts, not having them here. I know I’m not supposed to say that because they were obviously messed up, but that’s how I see it. It’s an easy out, getting swallowed up by the ocean.” She tugs on her hair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I’m sorry too,” I say, even though it’s more than a year too late. “For Toby.”
She stretches out her arms and sucks in a breath, and I can tell she’s somewhere else, a million miles from here. “Me too.”
When I’m sitting in geography, I open my textbook to a map of the world. Earth is made up of 71 percent water. I guess if you were planning to get swallowed up by anything, that’s what it would be. There are no footprints left behind, no tracks, no clues. That’s when I realize how long she might have been planning this whole thing. It could have been arranged with Toby the whole time, him going first and her going after. Maybe she knew that she wouldn’t be around longer than August thirteenth.
Or else Toby Hunter came back from the dead.
37
YOU TOLD ME girls like Jenny were fake, as if the world was divided into two types of girls: real ones, made out of flesh and bones, and plastic ones packaged up like dolls. But you were wrong. Sometimes, Jenny got insecure. Those were the times I loved her the most, because when she got insecure, she got real.
“I feel like I’ll never fall in love,” she told me. It was just the two of us, on Alison’s deck. Alison had gone inside to get marshmallows so we could roast them over the fire pit. Jenny had a tendency to make big dramatic statements like that, to leave them hanging in the air, open for interpretation. I was supposed to say something like Sure you will. But that night, I said something else.
“I think I’m already in love. With Beau.”
Jenny grinned and threw her arms around my neck. “I knew it! You guys would be so cute together. Seriously, ask him out. He’s so shy, you’ll need to do it. Ali and I have been wondering when you two would finally hook up.”
I smiled too, but I wanted to know when she and Alison had been talking about me behind my back. And when Alison started liking the nickname “Ali” after previou
sly telling us how much she despised it. I shook off the feeling that it was always the two of them in step, with me lagging just a little bit behind. It was me and Jenny now, no Alison.
“What does it feel like? Being in love?” she asked. “Tell me all about it.”
“Different, I guess. But I just know. It’s hard to explain.”
It really was hard to explain. I couldn’t exactly tell someone that it felt like I had swallowed the stars, that I was filled with the sky.
“I just hope it happens soon for me,” she said. “I’m sick of waiting around for it. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.”
“There’s not. You’ll find someone. And when you do, it’ll be great.”
“And we can one day tell these stories at each other’s weddings.”
That made me laugh. It was just like Jenny to think ahead to marriage when the rest of us just wanted to get through prom.
When Alison came back with a bag of marshmallows, Jenny didn’t tell her about Beau. Alison already knew I liked him, but not that I had used the word love. It was a good feeling, that I could trust Jenny with something huge like that. When I looked at her face across the fire and passed her my burnt marshmallow because I knew she liked them that way, I had this surge of loyalty toward her, like I’d be her friend forever.
But our forever had an expiration date.
38
DURING THE MORNING announcements, there’s a special broadcast about the big football game after school today against the Tasker Titans. Part of me wants to go, but I know it will hurt too much. It will be a reminder of everything I used to have. Everything I decided was worth nothing when Trixie came into my life.
I find a note in my locker at lunch. Meet me at the parking lot after school. I’ll take you somewhere. J.