“Purgatory? I wish.”
“Well, it isn’t hell.”
“What makes this better than hell?” I asked, scraping the mayo off my bread with a plastic fork. Charly hadn’t thrown this many words in my direction in days.
“Me. Hell would be you sitting alone at this table. You’d be the sad, lonely mayo girl.”
“Wow. Thanks for making my life worth living, Charly. Where would I be without you?”
“You’re welcome.”
We sat in our own thick silence, conversations and laughter pushing in on us from all directions.
“So I told a few people.”
I put the sandwich down and wiped my fingers on a napkin. My mouth felt sticky from the mayo I’d missed. “Wow. I . . . ” I needed a minute before I opened my mouth and said something too mean to take back. “You didn’t waste any time.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. This guy in my English class asked me why I was here and I just said because I’m pregnant and I wanted to stay with my aunt until I had the baby.”
I glanced around me. The bubble around us seemed suddenly larger, more impenetrable, and the people on the outside were staring. Even the ones not looking at us. How long did it take for a tidbit of gossip to become common knowledge?
“And then this girl in Chem asked me the same thing, and I gave her the same answer.”
The stares intensified. All morning, I’d been floating from class to class feeling invisible, but now I realized that was all wrong. Charly and I weren’t invisible. We were the focal point. They all knew.
“You couldn’t have given me,” I sputtered, “I don’t know, a week, to meet a few people before turning us into sideshow freaks?”
She crumpled her brown bag and tossed it into the garbage can beside the table. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Like hell it doesn’t.”
“Are you going to finish that?” she asked, pointing to my half-eaten sandwich.
“No.” Before she could take it, I picked it up and threw it in the garbage.
• • •
As arranged, we met after school at the front doors.
We walked home in silence, daylight fading around us. It had finally stopped snowing and the air felt eerily still.
I didn’t want to find out how her appointment with the guidance counselor was. And I didn’t need to tell her how the rest of my day went, how there had been polite smiles, pitying glances, and a couple of timid hi’s from people already far enough on the fringe to not have to worry about their social status getting any worse—freaks and geeks.
It was cold, but I was bundled up enough, and mad enough, that I didn’t notice until my thighs were on fire. Silk long johns. Mine were still at home in the package. How was I supposed to know that frozen denim scraping skin felt like sandpaper?
By the time we reached Bree’s apartment it was nearly dark and my hands were shaking from the cold. It took me a good minute to get the key in the keyhole, and I suddenly remembered that Jack London short story we’d read last year in English where the guy freezes to death because his hands are too cold to light a match.
Bree was still at school, but she’d left a note on the table.
Hey Girlies,
I’ll be back at 4:30, but I have to leave again for McSorley’s at 6:00. Help yourselves to the leftovers in the fridge (shepherd’s pie.)
Bree
Almost forgot—Charly, I called and made your appointment with Dr. Young for next Tuesday at noon.
“Girlies,” I muttered. “Super awesome.”
Charly was already dishing the leftover pub food into a bowl.
“So your doctor’s appointment,” I said. “Am I supposed to cut class for that?”
“No.”
“Since when do you go to the doctor’s by yourself? I have to hold your hand for the flu shot.” I took a bite of the cold shepherd’s pie. Too salty.
“Bree will take me.”
Of course. I chucked the container back in the fridge. From the corner of my eye I could see Charly watching me, chewing like a cow.
“You aren’t going to heat that up?” I asked.
“What do you care?”
“Good point.” I left her, lugging my backpack up to our room. I had a surprising amount of homework, considering the pointlessness of my classes.
The wobbly card table in the corner was littered with Charly’s makeup and candy wrappers and People magazines, so I sat cross-legged on the bed and took out my CALM textbook. We were starting with personality testing and then moving on to career testing. Apparently I needed a textbook to tell me I didn’t want to work at McDonald’s.
Downstairs, the TV went on.
She’d chosen Bree.
The textbook sat on my lap, open to the wrong page, its corners digging into my thighs. I didn’t even try to find the personality test. I was pretty sure it couldn’t tell me why my own sister hated me, or motivate me to apply for a college I didn’t want to go to. The weight of the day pushed down on me. I leaned back into the pillows and closed my eyes. This was a different kind of exhaustion. Every inch of my body felt weary from cold and frustration, but I was too agitated to sleep.
I needed the old Charly. Or maybe Savannah.
I closed my textbook and went back downstairs to the computer, ignoring Charly and the booing fans on Montel in the background. And there it was, a single miraculous email from Savannah. It was like she’d known. Despite the entire continent and the curtain of lies that separated us, she could tell I needed her. I opened it.
Call me
I wasn’t supposed to do that. Grandma had assured Bree that we wouldn’t be racking up international call charges unless it was an emergency. I’d told Savannah that. My stomach churned. Call me. Something was wrong.
I dialed her cell, then tapped jittery fingers on the desk and imagined catastrophes. Maybe her parents were finally getting a divorce. Maybe she and Sebastian broke up. Maybe she’d broken her neck at cheerleading practice and was lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a ventilator. She picked up after the second ring.
“Amelia.”
The sound of her voice made me so happy I wanted to cry. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She didn’t sound fine. She sounded nervous.
“Fine.”
“Yeah. I mean, I miss you. Calculus sucks and I wish you were here to do my homework for me. I don’t know why I didn’t take it with you last semester. And Sebastian works 24/7, which means I’m spending way too much time with the squad girls. They’re driving me a little nuts.”
I exhaled warily. This was not emergency material, but her voice was guarded.
“So how is Canada?” she asked. “Are you loving it?”
I’d almost forgotten. Talking to Savannah meant suffocating in lies. “Yeah, it’s great.”
“Real convincing.”
“No, it is,” I said. “I’m just tired.”
“And is your aunt cool?”
“So, when you said call me . . . ”
She sighed. “Still just as anal as usual, I see.”
“I’m not anal. This isn’t my phone and you know I’m not supposed to call the States just to chat. I assumed call me meant there was some kind of emergency.”
“Fine, it’s not an emergency. I just needed to talk to you about something.” Her voice broke over something and all her oddness, the banal chatter, the twinge of hurt in her voice over my questioning her became clear.
She knew.
I felt cold, momentarily drained of blood and thoughts. Words wouldn’t come. I sank into a seat at the island, put my forehead on the marble, and waited.
She couldn’t know. There was no way.
“I heard something today at school,” she said. “At first I couldn’t even believe it was true, it was just so . . . ”
School. If someone at school knew, the whole town knew, which meant Dad was about to know. I felt sic
k to my stomach. Maybe he already knew. Or maybe he was finding out right now.
“ . . . I don’t know. I tried to write you an email, but it just felt wrong. Are you still there?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought it’d be better to really talk, you know?”
I wasn’t sure. Hearing about our scandal seeping through Tremonton like poison—how would that be any less sickening than reading it?
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” she asked.
“Because you’re freaking me out.”
“Don’t freak out.”
I waited for a reason not to freak out, but she didn’t give me one. She wanted me to ask what she was talking about, I could tell, and was most likely pissed that I’d lied to her—like that was even close to the worst part of all this. But I was too sapped to play along.
“It’s Will,” she said finally.
“Will.” His name, coming from my own mouth, sounded ridiculous. So short and dull and insignificant.
“He got back together with Luciana.”
“Will,” I said again. It sounded different this time. That single lame syllable stung. My whole body felt singed, and my lips ached with the effort, but I had to say his name once more. “Will did.”
“Yeah. But it’s more than that. They’re engaged. As in, going to get married. I keep thinking she’s got to be pregnant or something, but the rumor mill says she’s not and that they’re just total idiots. I mean, seriously, they’re seventeen. Supposedly his parents are freaking out.”
She waited for a few long seconds that I should have been filling with something dismissive, like surprise, surprise or give it up for this year’s prom king and queen, but I couldn’t. I might break if I tried to speak.
“I’m so sorry, Amelia. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. I feel terrible for, you know, making you think he might still be into you.”
Oh, that. She had done that. But this sensation of my heart being squeezed and crushed had nothing to do with anything Savannah put into my mind. I’d pretended my own way into this pain.
“I really did think he was going to try to get back together with you. Are you okay? I know you were kind of hopeful about things.”
Kind of hopeful. That was an interesting way of saying it. Humiliatingly and inexcusably kind of hopeful.
“Hey, crazy,” Charly muttered, “what’s with the pacing? I’m trying to watch TV here.”
I stared at her. She was on the couch, wrapped in a black crumb-covered throw, shoving the last cookie of an entire sleeve of Oreos into her mouth. I’d forgotten she was even in the room. And I was pacing—circling the couch, then the island, then the couch again, then the island again—but I didn’t even remember getting out of the chair.
I shook my head at her and turned the next corner of my figure eight. She had no idea. The devastation was so painful my chest might explode if I stopped moving.
Charly shook her head in disgust and turned back to the TV. “And I’m the one who has to go to counseling.”
Teenagers screamed out from the television. Montel was doing some my-kid-is-out-of-control intervention, and the delinquents were all getting sent to boot camp for a couple of days, wailing and kicking like it was death row.
“Amelia, are you okay?” Savannah repeated.
Will was engaged to Luciana. Was I okay? I didn’t own him. I’d never owned him, or if I had, it’d only been for a short while, before I’d been eclipsed by Charly. We’d been together for so long—eighteen months?—but how much of that had he spent falling out of love with me?
“Amelia?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I’m okay.”
Tears burned behind my eyes, so I squeezed them shut. It was all so screwed up. I’d wanted him, and I thought he’d wanted me, but then he’d wanted Charly, and then he was with Luciana, and I was with nobody, and Charly was with child, and that made me think he’d want me all over again? So stupid.
But if she hadn’t been so Charly in the first place, he would never have stopped wanting me. That I knew.
“You’re way too good for him,” Savannah said.
“No, I’m not.” I sunk down on the couch beside Charly. She glared at me and turned up the volume. Apparently my pacing the room was preferable to being this close to her.
Savannah moved on to vilifying Luciana, but the chanting audience members were louder. I couldn’t focus. I ripped a hangnail off with my teeth and watching a single drop of blood spring to the surface.
“—supposedly she called him every night sobbing for the entire time they were broken up, but—”
I should have been loving her for this. This was what best friends were supposed to do, and she was good at it, so emphatic and blindly supportive. So why couldn’t I stomach it? I just didn’t want to be cheered up or lied to anymore. I closed my eyes and willed her to understand that I was finished pretending that Will was ever going to come back to me. But of course she couldn’t really know me anymore—there were too many layers of lies between us. It wasn’t her fault. My secrets, my deceit, my isolation. All for Charly.
“—and everybody knows that while they were broken up she hooked up with half of the—”
“Enough!” The anger in my own voice startled me.
A sharp intake of breath on the end of the line made my stomach lurch. Regret washed through me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I didn’t mean to yell.”
“Go somewhere else,” Charly hissed in my ear.
“What was that?” Savannah asked. “It sounds like you’re in a movie theater or something.”
“Nothing. Just Charly.”
Charly scowled and turned up the volume three more bars.
Savannah sighed, and pretended I hadn’t just yelled at her. “I feel like you need me. I hate that I can’t be with you right now.”
“Yeah, me too.” It was the right thing to say, and I wanted to mean it. I’d thought I did need her, up until a moment ago. But now I felt like metal, hard and cold, like I was beyond needing anyone at all.
“You know he wasn’t right for you, don’t you?” she asked.
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter anymo—”
“Go. Somewhere. Else!” Charly screamed without warning, her face so close spittle sprayed my cheek.
I turned and stared into her eyes. Huge pupils, bared teeth, she was practically vibrating with rage. She looked like a wild animal.
“I’m watching TV!”
I’d lost Will to this beast.
“Amelia, are you okay?” Savannah asked. Too much. The concern was thicker and sweeter than I could stand. “Is that the TV or Charly? Are you sure you—”
“I have to go,” I said. “I’ll call you later,” and hung up before she could say another word.
In a single second my blood surged from cold to boiling, pumping too fast to control how hard I slammed the phone down on the coffee table. The back flew off. The battery clattered to the floor.
No Will. No friends. No life. No Columbia. No future. My chest felt raw, like claws had ripped me open and scraped my heart.
“Hey psycho, you broke her phone!” Charly pointed to the piece that had spun to a stop in front of her. Montel hugged a blubbering reformed teen.
“Her phone? Her phone?” I was yelling now, louder than Charly, louder than the TV, louder than the screaming in my brain. “You broke my life, Charly! And if you weren’t such a slut I’d be at home right now. Instead I’m stuck here, watching both of our lives end.”
“Oh, poor you!”
“I wish you’d never been born!” I screamed, and paused long enough to suck in air for the death blow. “And if mom was alive she’d feel the same way.”
“So leave!” she yelled.
Suddenly I was watching, not acting or feeling, but watching myself get up off the couch, fumble with my boots, rip the door open, and slam it behind me.
Chapter 13
Outside.
It took a
moment to grasp what I’d done. At first it was all pain and heat and blood screaming through my veins as I ran down the stairs and onto the sidewalk.
But then I realized. Outside. Still in Canada, still winter, without a coat, I was outside and I couldn’t turn around. There could be no slinking back in for my coat and wallet.
My cheeks burned. I put my hand to my face and felt tears. Were they freezing to my skin? I wiped them with my sleeve as a gust of wind blew right through my sweater, wrapping cold fingers around my rib cage.
I stumbled forward. I had no choice. I walked. A gift shop, a bank, a church, the post office, a Sushi bar, another gift shop—I didn’t want to go into any of them. They were all too small and well manned to hide in. I needed somewhere big and warm and impersonal that didn’t want me to spend money, where nobody would come and ask me if I was interested in buying maple candies or how the weather at Lake Louise was. And preferably not somewhere with a CANADIAN GIRLS DO IT BETTER T-shirt in the window.
I closed my mind, and let the wind push me forward, farther away from Bree’s apartment, the opposite direction of school and McSorley’s and the roads I’d already explored. I couldn’t go back. I zigzagged, right on Caribou Street, left on Beaver, right on Bear, and then right again on Wolf, around and around until I had no clue which way I’d come.
Will didn’t want me. Columbia didn’t want me. Had Dad ever wanted anybody? And after everything I’d done for her, Charly didn’t want me either. Grandma only wanted me to be the Amelia she required me to be, and she clearly didn’t want me with her. Or if she did, she wanted her dignity and the Mercers’ tidy Christian image more.
My skin stung and my ears ached, but the pain felt deserved.
Block after block, I wandered on, the blur of garish ski jackets all around me, everyone moving forward, pushing toward the warm places they were heading.
Why was I trying to live in this godforsaken ice tomb when all I had to do was call Dad and tell him everything? I’d known that all along, hadn’t I? That I could just pick up the phone and this whole stupid thing would be over. But what if I did? Grandma would never forgive me and Dad would never forgive Charly. We’d be permanently broken.
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