Hidden Pieces

by Paula Stokes

  “What?” I swallow hard. “If they don’t know who the girl is, how do they know she’s underage?”

  “It doesn’t matter, because he’s only seventeen. Isn’t that messed up? They’re trying to accuse him of spreading child porn where he’s the child. Apparently Oregon’s pornography laws are really draconian and he can get charged as an adult. Hopefully he can prove that Gmail account doesn’t belong to him and it’ll all blow over.”

  I think about what it would mean if Holden got arrested for distributing pornography. If he was convicted, he’d have to register as a sex offender. Even if he wasn’t convicted, that could still ruin his life. Not to mention make life pretty difficult for his mom. Holden said she’s been taking online classes, hoping to be able to move up to detective someday.

  I check my phone. No new messages from him. I wonder if he’s in the office or if he had to go to the police station over this.

  “Have you talked to Holden since all this went down?” I ask.

  Julia shakes her head. “I haven’t seen him at all today.”

  A couple of varsity hockey players named Eric and Alex burst into laughter as we pass them. “Hey, Julia,” Alex asks. “How about a ride home after school?” He thrusts his hips at her.

  “You want something more filling for lunch?” Eric pokes his tongue into the side of his cheek.

  Julia flips the boys off. “Pretty sure both of you together wouldn’t even add up to today’s chili dog.”

  “Only one way to find out.” Alex waggles his eyebrows.

  Julia rolls her eyes as we stroll past. “This is the bullshit I’ve been dealing with since I got here this morning.”

  “Why don’t you tell them it’s not you?”

  Julia spins around. “Hey, mouth-breathers!” she yells down the hallway. “By the way, it’s not even me.”

  “Can you repeat that?” Alex lifts a hand to his ear. “I couldn’t understand you with Hassler’s dick in your mouth.”

  Eric grins. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

  Julia turns back to me. “That’s why. Nothing better than brain-dead morons misquoting Shakespeare, right? Better to just ignore them.”

  “Okay, but you could probably get those guys in trouble if you want,” I say. “That’s straight-up sexual harassment.”

  Julia waves it off. “I don’t care about those assholes. They’re basically the poster children for ‘peaked in high school.’ I almost feel bad for them.”

  “You’re right, they’re probably not worth it. But let me know if you change your mind and need a witness.” I turn around and glare at the boys, who have forgotten all about Julia and are now engaging in what looks like a slap fight with a couple other guys from the team.

  Julia reaches out and gives me an impulsive hug. “You’re such a good friend, Embry.”

  If she only knew.

  Julia does a great job of ignoring the occasional bits of whispering and giggling as we go through the cafeteria line and carry our trays to our usual table. I take note of everyone around us who is acting like an asshole. A lot of them are people who made a point to suck up to Julia last year when she was the head of the junior prom committee. Now that we’ll be graduating soon, people are showing their true colors.

  “What’s wrong?” Julia asks. “You look like you just ate a piece of bad fish.”

  “Just thinking about how stupid people can be.” I take a big bite of my spaghetti, which is lukewarm at best. I wash it down with a swallow of milk.

  “Oh yeah. It’s an epidemic. Don’t let it get to you.” She pulls her water bottle out of her backpack and shakes it up so her diet drink mix isn’t all settled on the bottom. Then she leans over the table and speaks in a low voice. “Is it wrong that I want to know who the girl is?”

  I cough. “I thought you said you didn’t care—”

  “I don’t care that he’s moved on or whatever. I was just wondering if she’s the girl he cheated on me with.” She pauses. “Do you know? I know you two talk more than he and I do these days.”

  My spaghetti threatens to crawl its way back up my throat. “Uh, he doesn’t really talk to me about stuff like that.”

  Julia drizzles fat-free Italian dressing on her salad. “I guess it doesn’t matter. If he’s happy, I’m happy.”

  Julia and I talked on the phone a couple of days after she and Holden broke up. Apparently he told her the girl he’d hooked up with was “just some girl at a party.” She asked me then if I knew who it was and I told her I had no idea. I feel bad just thinking about it. I feel bad that I’m still lying about it. Unfortunately, feeling bad and doing something about it are two different things. Guilt is one of my superpowers. Confession, not so much. Soon, I promise myself. I’ll figure out a way to tell her soon.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get weird.” Julia reaches out for my arm. “I’m just glad I have you to go through stuff with. I wish I had been here this summer when your mom was sick. You should have called me.”

  “I knew you were busy. I didn’t want to burden you with my shit while you were studying and working.” And hanging out with Ness.

  “You still should have called me,” Julia insists.

  And it hits me like a kick to the chest that she’s right. I swallow hard and try to compose an answer, but I’ve got nothing. Maybe if I had called Julia, I wouldn’t have relied so heavily on Holden. Then we never would have hooked up and started sneaking around together. The Sea Cliff wouldn’t have burned, a psycho wouldn’t be tormenting me, random boys wouldn’t be calling Julia a slut.

  Maybe Holden is wrong. Maybe high school friends are real friends. Maybe I’m the only fake friend here.

  Eleven

  I DON’T SEE JULIA AGAIN until we meet up at our lockers after school. “Swim practice is canceled until January because Coach Smyth had to go out of town,” she says. “Do you want to go Christmas shopping with me?”

  “Here?” I ask. Tillamook doesn’t even have a mall. Unless Julia wants to buy antiques, gourmet cheese, or produce from the grocery store, Christmas shopping will involve a longer trip.

  Julia wrinkles up her nose. “What about Portland?”

  “That’s over an hour and a half each way,” I remind her. “Plus Portland traffic. Unless you’re planning on spending the night there, we won’t have any time to shop.”

  “You’re right. I guess I’m just lonely for civilization.” She sighs. “Maybe Lincoln City? I can probably find presents for my parents at the outlet mall.”

  “Let me check with my mom.”

  I text her and ask her if I can go shopping with Julia, telling her I’ll be home by nine p.m. She says it’s fine and that she might work late, but she can get away from the shop for half an hour to walk home and let Betsy out. I feel a little guilty putting the responsibility of the dog on her, but I know she hates it when I treat her like an invalid, and she did just tell me this weekend that I should spend more time with my friends.

  “Let’s do it,” I say.

  Ignoring a few more whispers and curious looks from our classmates, Julia and I head to the back parking lot where she parks her Subaru. We hop in, and Julia pulls her water bottle out of her backpack and puts it into the center cup holder. A slice of lime floats on the surface of the cloudy liquid.

  I scrunch up my face. “What is that sludge again?”

  “This sludge is super acai berry fat-burning concentrate.” Julia huffs. “And it tastes good, like raspberry tea.”

  “It looks like some old guy’s bathwater.”

  She smirks. “Whatever, skinny bitch. Been bathing a lot of old men lately?”

  “I’ve got to pay the bills somehow,” I say.

  Julia laughs as she starts the engine.

  We make our way through the town and quickly turn onto US 101, otherwise known as the Oregon Coast Highway. Julia fiddles with the radio while I focus on the landscape flying past.

  A recent hip-hop tune starts playing. “I love this so
ng,” she says. She bobs her head as she sings along under her breath. “Ness has seen these guys in concert twice. She says their live show is epic.”

  My mom and grandma took me to Burning Man once when I was five. Otherwise I’ve never been to a concert. “Cool,” I say. I can’t figure out why Julia seems so blasé about everything that happened today.

  As we travel south, tiny beach towns with faded pastel buildings are interspersed with gaps of coastline and the occasional breathtaking ocean vista. I snap a couple of pictures with my phone. They turn out blurry and distorted from the window and the movement of the vehicle, but there’s still something kind of magical about them.

  “You take great photos,” Julia says. “You should do something with them someday.”

  “Something like what?”

  “I don’t know. Enter them in contests? Or at least put them up on stock photo websites for people to buy.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” It’s not a bad idea. I don’t have a good enough camera to win contests, and most people just steal photos from online to decorate their blogs and web pages, but it’s always possible some ad agencies or small companies would pay to use my coastal pictures for official business.

  It’s funny, both my mom and Julia telling me I should try to make money from my pictures. I’ve never really thought much about trying to turn my photography hobby into a career. I’m like Holden in that way. He says he doesn’t want to make his art his job, because then he’ll lose the joy, but I think a lot of losing the joy is when you try to sell your art and no one buys it. Even if you have confidence in your work, it’s probably hard to hold on to it after you’re forced to realize no one else loves what you do as much as you do.

  It’s only a little after four, but already the sun is starting to drop low, coloring the sky a mix of pink and orange. The road inclines for a short distance, and I manage to snap a great picture contrasting the blue of the water with the soft pastels of the sky. It reminds me of one of the Monet paintings I learned about in Art Appreciation class.

  It’s not just the ocean that’s beautiful here, though. The coastline is a mix of soft sand and dark jagged rocks, of cliffs and flat areas dotted with driftwood. Even the towns have a quiet beauty about them. Holiday banners hang from ornate lampposts that look like they belong in another time. Quaint shops selling antique furniture or fancy chocolate are intermingled with gas stations and convenience stores.

  I watch a family of four make their way down a narrow sidewalk, stopping in front of a seafood restaurant to consult a menu. The mom carries a toddler dressed in a fur-lined white jacket in her arms while the dad keeps a firm grip on an older girl—maybe six or seven.

  I think about that life a lot—what it would have been like to grow up with two parents and siblings. It feels like a fairy tale to me.

  My phone buzzes in my purse. I dig it out and tap at the screen. It’s a text from Holden. I want to read it, to know for sure that he’s okay, but it feels weird to do that around Julia.

  The phone buzzes a second time, and then a third.

  Julia accelerates through a sharp curve. We’re in between towns now, a wide-open road in front of us. She hits a giant pothole at about sixty miles per hour and my shoulder bangs into the side of the door.

  “Whoops. Sorry.” She glances over at me. “You going to answer those?”

  Crap, now it’ll look weird if I don’t. I flick my phone on silent. “Um, yeah,” I say. “It’s Holden, actually.”

  Holden: I was wrong. Maybe lives can be ruined.

  Holden: My mom is freaking out. She’s worried I’m going to get arrested. I’m being investigated by some hard-ass detective.

  Holden: Are you with Julia? Neither one of you is answering my texts.

  Me: Yeah. We’re headed to Lincoln City.

  Holden: Call me later?

  Me: Sure.

  “Is he in trouble?” Julia asks.

  “Maybe,” I say. “His mom is freaking out about stuff. He says he texted you too.”

  She nods. “I got a message in sixth hour but haven’t had time to reply yet. He heard I got called down to the office and wants to know what I told the principal, and the police.”

  I start to slide my phone back in my purse.

  “You can call him, if you need to,” Julia says. “We’re still friends, you know.”

  It takes me a second to realize she’s talking about her and Holden, not her and me.

  “Tell him I’ll call him later tonight,” she adds.

  “Oh, okay.” I swipe at the H in my contacts menu.

  Holden’s phone rings twice. Then he says, “Hey.”

  “Hey.” I clear my throat. “Are you going to be okay? Surely they can figure out it wasn’t you who emailed that video around, right?”

  “Hopefully,” he says. “The cops should be able to track the IP address. But if it was sent from public Wi-Fi, I’m not sure if that’ll rule me out or not. Either way, until they’ve investigated thoroughly, I’ve been asked to stay home from school. Good thing I don’t care about my class ranking.”

  “They suspended you?” I ask.

  “Seriously?” Julia says. “That is bullshit.”

  “Unofficially suspended,” Holden says. “The school wants me to take the next couple days off, and then it’ll be winter break, so . . .”

  I relay the info to Julia. “Still bullshit,” she says. “They have to know he wouldn’t send out something like that.”

  “You’ll be okay,” I tell Holden. “You could probably skip all your finals and still stay in the top five.”

  “I guess. At least I’m not trying to get into a fancy college. I’m glad whoever this asshole is, they went after me instead of Julia.”

  “Speaking of Julia, she’s driving right now but says she’ll call you later.”

  “Thanks for getting me called down to the principal’s office, you dirty perv,” she yells from the driver’s seat.

  Holden laughs. I can’t help but smile. For a second, as messed up as things are between the three of us, I feel a flash of hope that somehow everything might turn out all right. But then I remember the secrets I’m keeping, the lies I’ve told, the horrible things I’ve done. And that momentary sense of lightness sinks like an anchor.

  Twelve

  WHEN WE GET TO LINCOLN CITY, Julia snags the first spot we find in the outlet mall parking lot, and we make a plan to work our way from one side to the other.

  “Want to try on some dresses?” She cocks her head toward a store called Red Carpet—a new addition to the mall since the last time I was here.

  I smile. “Let’s do it.” It might be just the thing I need to get my mind off what happened at school today.

  A few minutes later, Julia and I are inside the store flipping through racks of glamorous party dresses. “What categories are we going to do?” she asks me.

  Sometimes when we go shopping for clothes, we pick categories ahead of time and then find outfits that work for them. I think for a moment. “Best-dressed list, worst-dressed list, matchy-matchy.”

  “Works for me. What about this one for best dressed?” Julia holds up a black velvet gown with an asymmetrical hemline and spaghetti straps made of rhinestones.

  I tilt my head to the side. The dress is gorgeous, but the black makes Julia look even paler than she is and washes out her blond hair. “Does it come in other colors?”

  Julia finds the same dress in royal blue and holds it up. She does a twirl in the middle of the store, the toe of her ankle boot getting caught in the thick carpet, causing her to stumble.

  I laugh. “Perfect. Now me.”

  Julia and I dive back into the racks, looking for my best-dressed gown. Unsurprisingly, she’s the one who finds it. It’s green and flowy. The bodice is strapless and made of overlapping satin and lace. Julia assures me this will make “the girls” look bigger.

  We change to a different rack full of dresses with lots of tulle and feathers. Julia’s face is a mask of
concentration as she pores through the possible offerings for our worst-dressed contender. She holds up a gold dress with a skirt made of overlapping peacock feathers.

  I shake my head. “Not tacky enough.”

  She finds the same dress in red and then grabs a green cardigan from a rack across the department and layers it on top.

  I laugh. “There we go. Très festive.”

  For myself I pick out a dress that’s a mess of pale pink tulle with a white satin bodice. “Imagine this, with black thigh-high boots.”

  “And a hat!” Julia snatches a black fedora off a nearby mannequin and tosses it to me.

  “Sad ballerina is sad,” I say.

  “It’s terrible to be sad at Christmas!” Julia exclaims.

  We both giggle. It hits me that this is the most normal I’ve felt in days.

  “And now for the matchy-matchy gowns.” I cross the store to a rack of Grecian-inspired draped gowns in ivory and pale gold. “Goddess-style?” I hold one of the pale gold gowns up to my frame.

  “Goddess-style,” Julia agrees. She finds a gold one in her size and we head to the fitting rooms, our arms laden with tulle and taffeta. As always, we share one of the larger rooms, helping each other with straps and zippers. We slip into our best-dressed gowns, and I can’t help but gasp at my reflection in the mirror. The cut of the dress adds soft curves to my boyish frame, and the green color brings out the golden tones of my hair.

  “Embry, you look amazing,” Julia says. “You should totally buy that.”

  The price tag reads $159.00. “In my dreams,” I say.

  Julia twirls in front of the mirror in the royal-blue dress. “How much is this one?” she asks.

  I find the tag, dangling from Julia’s left armpit. “Two hundred and eighty-nine dollars,” I tell her. “So basically not even in my dreams.”

  She laughs. “Yeah, I don’t think my parents would go for that either. I got my New Year’s Eve dress from Nordstrom and it was only a hundred and twenty, but that’s partially because it was a discontinued style and I had to buy a six instead of an eight.”