by L. E. Flynn
“Trixie was his girl,” I say, and even though on some level I already knew, it’s so much worse now, radiating off Beau like a fever. Eight. Thirty-one. Seventeen. I had this thing with my lab partner.
Beau kind of nods, his chin trembling.
“She was his girl,” I say again, letting go of his hands, the sweat on my back turning clammy. “And you kissed her.”
41
YOU IGNORED BEAU at the party the night you disappeared. Even when it became painfully hard to ignore him, after he got so drunk that I thought Alison would have to kick him out. When he started calling everyone an asshole and an idiot and saying he hated everything.
I was standing in the kitchen when he came in from Alison’s deck. He was barefoot and his baseball cap was gone, so his hair was standing straight up. His face was flushed red, the same way mine had looked when I caught him and Jenny in the bathroom an hour ago.
An hour, or maybe it was two, or three. It was all spinning. The ugly wallpaper in Alison’s kitchen. The stainless steel of the fridge, adorned with a thousand sets of sweaty fingerprints.
But something had happened in that hour or two or three. Jenny had come in thirty seconds before Beau, her face down. I could tell she was crying. A thought had flashed through my mind. If this was a year ago and I had seen Jenny crying, I would have dropped everything to make her feel better. I would have sat with her and passed her tissues while she complained about some guy, and I would have said all the right things. You’re so much better than him. He’s an asshole. You’re better off without him.
Not that night.
That night, when I saw her make a beeline through the kitchen, down the hall, and out the front door, I felt this little tingle of excitement. Maybe that makes me a terrible person, but part of me wanted to jump in front of her and say, Serves you right.
I had looked around to see if Trixie was there to witness this, but she wasn’t anywhere.
When Beau came lumbering in, I barely recognized him. Of course I knew about Beau’s drinking. I had seen enough of him at school to know the rumors were true. But he had never been like that before, completely unhinged, like a wild animal. He had a bottle of something in his hand and was calling after Jenny, waving it around.
The whole party stopped. Everyone went silent. The thumping bass was in tune with my own heart. Boom-boom, boom-boom.
“What’s everyone staring at?” Beau yelled, and nobody said anything. He waved the bottle over his head and looked around the room, like he was trying to find something specific in every face.
Something, or someone.
When he got to me, he paused. I noticed how bloodshot his eyes were and I wondered if he had been crying. The thought was painful, like a dagger twisting in my gut. In that moment I didn’t understand why I loved Beau, and I wished I didn’t. It felt like a curse, something weighing me down, like chains attached to my ankles.
Then Alison made the mistake of reaching out and placing a hand on his arm.
He flipped out. Smashed the bottle on the ground, where it crashed into a bunch of pieces. Some big ones, a bunch of smaller ones, which he crunched over with his feet, apparently oblivious to the pain. One shard had fallen beside me and I leaned down to pick it up. When I stood back up, Beau was gone, leaving a trail of bloody smears on the tile floor.
Then Alison started to cry. She had been too distracted by a flip cup game to notice Jenny barge in before. If she had noticed, she would have done what the old me would have done and consoled her. If she had noticed, she probably wouldn’t have been around to try to calm Beau down, and he might not have thrown the bottle and cut his foot open.
And I might not have this scar on my back.
I was just drunk enough to think it was a good idea to go after Beau. But then Trixie showed up and slung her arm around my shoulder and held out another plastic cup.
“Did you see that?” I said, and my tongue felt thick in my mouth. I could tell I was getting drunk, reaching the point where I should probably stop.
“See what?” She clinked her cup against mine. “Drink up.”
I drank, because she was. I didn’t follow Beau.
“Where did you go?” I asked, and I could tell I was slurring my words, that the letters were strung together crookedly like little Christmas lights.
“Bathroom,” she said quickly, wiping her hand on her jean shorts. She did it fast, but I still noticed that her hands were shaking.
Something made Beau angry that night.
Something made Jenny cry.
Something made Trixie disappear.
What if it was all the same thing?
42
“IT WAS AN accident,” Beau says, yanking on his hair. “I never planned to kiss her. It meant nothing. But it meant everything to him. I was pissed because he was keeping this epic secret from me. So I found the only way I knew how to call him out on it.”
“Tell me. I need to know everything.” I’m talking, but I’m numb.
Beau bangs the back of his head against the counter behind him. It makes a dull thumping sound. “He was with Gabby. They were, well, you know. Good. He even had a ring.” He stares at the floor. “Then all of a sudden, he started acting shady. All summer, he said messed-up stuff, like he was going to quit the football team, even though he already had scouts from Princeton offering him the world on a platter. He got in a couple huge fights with my dad. And a few nights, he didn’t come home at all.”
He looks up at me and his face is pale and worn, with bluish half-moons under his eyes.
“I flat-out asked the guy if he was seeing another chick. He looked me in the face and said no. And I believed him. So I dropped it. But he kept acting strange. My dad was pissed. And Gabby was on my back, asking me why Toby was different now, why he didn’t pick up his phone and why she hadn’t seen him in weeks. I didn’t have the balls to tell her that he told us he was out with her. By then I knew he was seeing someone else. I just didn’t know who.”
“Trixie,” I say weakly. I stare at the kitchen floor. It’s not tiled like Alison’s, but linoleum like the one at my house. Beau is playing with a piece against the counter that has curling edges. I wonder what would happen if we dug our fingernails in and ripped the whole thing up, what secrets would be buried underneath.
“I still didn’t know that. I didn’t even know who Trixie was until the night of the party. I wasn’t even planning on going to that party. I only went because you said you were going to be there and I had this thing I wanted to give you.”
You’ll be there tonight, right? Except, I wasn’t there, the night the world spun while I threw up.
“Anyway, by the time I got there, Toby was wasted. Slurring his words. At first he was happy to see me. He was, like, on top of the world, high as a fucking kite, jumping from one place to the next. I couldn’t keep tabs on the guy, even though I should have. Then I had to take a leak and there were a bunch of people lined up to use the bathroom, so I went out behind the back shed. And I saw Toby back there, with her. He didn’t see me. His back was turned to me. They were…”
“Kissing?” I say.
“Fucking. Right in the backyard, where anyone could have seen them. But anyone was me.”
I rub my eyes so I don’t have to look at him. It’s like he’s talking about a totally different girl than the one I knew.
“I wasn’t pissed that he was cheating on Gabby. Really, that wasn’t my business. What I couldn’t shake was that he lied to me. Looked me in the eyes and lied, like it was the easiest thing in the world. It was like our whole fucking relationship was a joke. Like being brothers meant nothing to him. I realized I didn’t know the guy at all.” He presses his palms flat on the floor and stares at his fingers. “I was going to walk right into the house and tell Gabby exactly what I’d seen. But when it came down to it, I didn’t have the balls for that either. I couldn’t do that to Toby. But then I did something worse.”
* * *
“Toby kep
t drinking and drinking. I let him. He liked to party, and I let him self-destruct. And the second I saw Trixie walk away alone, I followed her. I asked her who she was here with, then I kissed her before she could answer. She must’ve been in shock or something, because she didn’t stop me. Not for a few seconds. And when she did, she was looking past me. Toby was standing there on the deck. I’d seen my brother mad before, but I’ll never fucking forget how he looked that night. No matter how hard I try to get it out of my head.”
I stare at the broken clock, at the crooked clock hands and the water bottle on its side on the floor. I beg the clock to turn back time, plead with the water bottle to be just a water bottle and not a disease. I bargain with nobody and wish so badly I could erase Beau kissing Trixie, and Trixie covering it up by telling me how much she hated him.
“So what?” I ask. “You fought with him?” I already know this from what Jenny told me about the party, from the rumors that had ripped through the school. The fight between the Hunter brothers. Everyone had a different reason for what it was about. Most people thought it was about Gabby. Only Beau, Trixie, and Toby know the truth.
“That came later.” Beau rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “First, he just looked like I’d broken his goddamn heart. And Trixie, she tried to calm him down, but he went off like a fucking loose cannon. Started smashing bottles against the back of the house. Grabbed my neck like he wanted to strangle me. Told me whoever I was, I wasn’t his brother anymore. And that was the last thing he ever said to me.”
I press my hand against the floor and inch it forward to where Beau’s right hand is planted. I push my fingers into the open spaces between his. He doesn’t stop me.
“Did you have any idea what he was going to do?”
Beau stares at the ceiling and blinks. “I didn’t even see him leave. I ended up getting loaded for the first time ever that night. And then it was every night after that. Want to know the reason why? Because Toby was the one who always told me I should take up drinking. He meant it as a joke, but I remember him saying it was a great way to clear your head. I guess I just decided to take his advice.”
“But you don’t think he’s dead.”
Beau clenches my hand so hard it hurts. “He’s not dead. He’s out there somewhere. Toby used to swim in the ocean for fun. He didn’t go out there to die.” He sucks in a breath and holds it, almost like he’s underwater. “I think he planned it. He wanted out. Princeton, Gabby, the ring, the whole deal. And that was the only way.”
I focus on a muddy footprint near the door, feeling sick to my stomach. I think about all the headlines about Toby, about how rough the water was that night. About the person who almost drowned trying to save him. How the police said there was no way he could have made it back to shore. How the chances of finding a body were almost none because of the undertow. I thought about it last year, about what happened to what was left of Toby. If he sank in the middle of the ocean or was ripped apart by sharks.
But what if Beau is right? What if Toby planned the whole thing?
“So if he’s alive,” I say slowly, “why haven’t you tried to find him?”
Beau’s eyes are unfocused. He’s looking past me, to the water bottle on its side. “You don’t think I have? But it’s pointless. One thing people never knew about Toby was how good he was at disappearing. When we were kids, we used to play hide-and-seek. But Toby took it to another level. Nobody ever knew his hiding spots. He’d come strolling back hours after everyone else gave up, with this big goofy smile. My mom even called the police to report a missing person once. She was hysterical.”
“This is different,” I snap. “This isn’t some game of hide-and-seek.”
Beau laughs, a sharp, miserable sound. “Isn’t it?”
For a long time, I don’t say anything. I listen to his long, rattling breaths and think about how completely bizarre and messed-up this is. That it took two people to disappear—the two people who meant the most to both of us—to even get us in the same room after last year. To give us back the common ground we lost.
“But you think she’s with him,” I say, a sliver of relief opening in my chest that he could believe it too. “You think somewhere, they’re together.”
Beau pulls his hand away, leans his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know if they’re together. But I think she wants to be.”
I remember the time I came up behind Trixie when she was at her computer. She didn’t seem as mad as she did something else. Scared. Freaked out. All the time she spent on her phone, when she told me she was talking to Jasper.
It was Toby the whole time. Convincing her to disappear.
Beau starts to laugh again, and it sends shivers up my spine. “You know something else really messed up? She warned me not to go near you. The night she left. I told her to leave me alone.”
Fragments of the party come back, each one sharper than the next. Beau smashing the bottle. Jenny crying. Trixie walking in after them like nothing had happened.
“Is that why you and Jenny fought that night?” I ask quietly.
“Probably. Maybe. I don’t know.”
The sound of a car door slamming makes Beau jump up fast enough to smack his head on the underside of the counter. He runs to the front door and peeks out the curtain, then comes back rubbing his forehead. I grab my purse and prepare to leave.
“Don’t go,” he says. “Please. Just stay. Don’t leave me.”
But I can’t stay. Because there are questions I need to ask that I can’t possibly say out loud. There’s poison creeping over every memory of her, charring the edges, blocking out the light like a dirty finger over a camera lens. Everything is becoming thick and tarry, and I’m sinking in the muck.
Did Trixie only become my friend to get back at you?
Has my life for the last year been a lie?
Maybe Beau knows the answers, or maybe he doesn’t. Either way, I can’t stomach the truth. So I ask something even more sickening.
“The baseball cap,” I say. “She had it, and now you do. Were you with her? Did you ever sleep with her, after?”
He hangs his head. “Don’t ask a question you don’t want the answer for.”
It’s a thousand times worse than being betrayed by Jenny. It’s the worst pain I have ever felt, so intense I’m almost on fire. I pinch my skin, hoping it hurts badly enough to make everything else go away. I’m suddenly glad Trixie’s gone, because I honestly never want to see her again.
“Look, I was really messed up,” he says. “There was only one person who knew how messed up. I was only supposed to go over to get Toby’s cap. It meant nothing.”
“Who started it?” I blurt out, unable to stop myself from asking. “How many times did it happen?”
Beau shakes his head. For the first time, he actually looks scared of me, and for the first time, I’m glad to see him like this. Speechless. Ruined. Lost.
“When? When did it happen? I need to know when.” I need for it to have happened before I told her how I felt. I need I need I need.
“I don’t know. Like, October. I didn’t keep track of the dates.”
October. After she had listened to me that day in my car, after she told me he was a loser. A sob rises in my throat, and it’s like I’m naked and exposed except worse, like my skin has been stripped off and my insides are showing. When I speak again, my voice shakes and there’s a ringing in my ears.
“Did you know she was going to disappear? Did you have something to do with it?”
He blinks repeatedly. “I don’t know. But trust me, there are some things about me you don’t want to know. I’m not the same as I was. I won’t be.”
He’s not going to tell me anything else, so I force myself to stomp down the hallway, out the front door, to my car. It feels like I have weights strapped to my ankles, tethering me to the driveway. When I open my car door, hot air puffs out, just like it did the day I met Trixie. But this time, I beat the steering wheel so hard with my
fists that my hands turn red. I guess I always thought it was an accident that she was beside my car that day, that I was just in the right place at the right time to be her getaway.
But she was waiting for me. She already knew who I was. Maybe she had been waiting for days, weeks, for me to be alone out there. I’m coming to believe that there are no accidents at all.
43
I HEARD YOU in your bedroom with him once. I came over with two pints of Cherry Garcia because that was your favorite ice cream, and now I couldn’t get enough of it either.
I knocked on the front door and when nobody answered, I let myself in. The ice cream pints were starting to sweat in my hands and besides, Trixie let herself in to my house all the time, barged in like she lived there too. I figured she was doing homework in her room with the music cranked. Her blue baseball cap was hanging on the newel post, but I didn’t think about what that meant.
I heard the music when I started walking up the stairs, something loud and gritty. I hovered outside her door and almost put my hand on the doorknob when I heard something else coming from inside. A banging sound, something hitting the wall. Then I heard her, moaning. And grunts that were distinctly male.
I almost dropped the ice cream as I retreated back down the stairs. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I was embarrassed, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. As I got back in my car and drove away, the Cherry Garcia on the floor in front of the passenger seat—Trixie’s seat—I felt irrationally sad, like there was this huge part of her I would never know. In that moment, she seemed years older than me, years wiser, years more experienced, and I wondered if I’d ever catch up.
The ice cream was going to melt, so I pulled over on the next street and ate both pints with a crappy plastic spoon. I ate until my brain was frozen and my stomach was about to explode, until it stopped tasting good and started making me feel sick. I ate until I couldn’t hear Trixie and Jasper in her bedroom anymore.