Vaughn tugged my hand impatiently and I giggled, racing up next to him. We found an empty bedroom and soon Vaughn had me pushed up against the door, his mouth on mine and one hand sliding under the hem of my dress.
Truth be told, Vaughn wasn’t the best kisser—way too much tongue. I tilted my head back until his lips were redirected to my neck. I closed my eyes and smiled. That he was good at. “Don’t get too riled up,” I whispered, running my fingers through his hair before I remembered it was sticky from product. I tried not to grimace.
“Don’t be a tease,” Vaughn whispered against my throat.
“I’m serious,” I replied as his mouth wandered along my collarbone. “We can hook up after prom, if you’re good, but I don’t want to mess up my hair before the dance.” I pushed his hand out from under my skirt.
Vaughn groaned, kissing his way down to the neckline of my dress. “Seriously, Ket, what is the point of being with the school bike if you’re going to be all hot-and-cold?”
And just like that, I wasn’t turned on anymore.
I pushed him away, hard, and he was caught off guard long enough to stumble back against the bed. He stared at me, stunned, and I was pleased to see that I had ruined his stupid James Dean pompadour.
“The school bike?” I repeated.
“Yeah, you know,” Vaughn said, his tone puzzled. “As in, ‘everyone’s had a ride.’”
“I know what it means, Vaughn,” I said, my cheeks burning. “I just don’t understand why you’d say that to me.”
Vaughn sat back on the bed, hands on his knees, his forehead crinkling. “Because … you hook up with everyone. I didn’t think you’d care.”
That was not technically true. I’d only had sex-sex with five guys, and only two of them still went to our school. I had hit a few other bases with others, as well, which was probably the issue—every guy who’d ever touched my bra probably claimed to have visited Keturah’s Promised Land. But that was beside the point. Vaughn was a far bigger whore than I was, and he was calling me the school bike?
And yes, I know there’s a societal double standard when it comes to sex, and no, I’m not exactly interested in proving a big feminist point, but Vaughn calling me the school bike? VAUGHN? Where was the honor among thieves, dude?
“I care,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “Don’t ever say that to me again.”
Vaughn flopped down on the bed. “Jeez, Beauchamp, I thought you were cool. Learn to take a joke,” he said, the hint of a smirk on his face.
I hated that. Guys like Vaughn loved to make you feel stupid by pretending everything was a big joke, especially when it wasn’t. Then if you insisted on treating something serious seriously, they acted like you were some crazy person.
From his smirk to the challenge in his eyes, Vaughn was daring me to be “crazy.”
Challenge Accepted.
I scowled. “Forget about after prom. Ugh, I knew I should have been done with you.”
Vaughn rolled his eyes, finally getting annoyed. “I’m pretty sure I dumped your ass, Ket.”
“I’m pretty sure I was never your girlfriend, and therefore am, by definition, undumpable.” I opened the door of the bedroom to leave.
Vaughn reached over my head to shut the door and leaned down to whisper in my ear. “If I wasn’t your boyfriend, why did you come crying to me after Elin tried to kill herself?”
13
BEFORE
Elin Angstrom
December 31, 9:45 PM
It had been snowing all day, but it finally stopped.
Elin looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows, hoping the fireworks wouldn’t be cancelled due to snow. Rosie’s dad lived in the Avenues and had a view of the entire city, white and yellow lights twinkling under a fresh blanket of snow. Somewhere down there, her older sister Cat was partying. Elin shivered just thinking about it. Her eyes unfocused, the city blurring until all Elin could see was her own reflection, the reflection of the room behind her.
Rosie was sitting on the couch, sullenly flipping through channels, her lap covered with a ratty blanket. Teddy perched on the arm of the couch, his arms crossed over his chest, looking like a spring that was wound too tight. In the kitchen, Rosie’s father and his girlfriend—Amber, maybe?—mixed cocktails.
Elin and Teddy had made the drive down to Salt Lake City to keep Rosie company. She’d been stuck at her dad’s since Christmas morning, her IMs and texts becoming increasingly despondent.
“Are you sure you don’t want to hang out with Ben tonight?” Teddy had asked when he’d picked her up that afternoon. “I can go by myself.”
Elin had rolled her eyes, putting on her seatbelt and shaking the snow out of her hair. “I can hang out with Ben any night. Were you on this text chain? The one about him throwing out her copy of Looking for Alaska?”
Teddy nodded, sighing heavily as he pulled away from the curb. “I hate that douchebag.”
“Amen,” Elin said, buckling her seatbelt.
It was just the two of them. Jenna was babysitting her neighbor’s kids, Ket was grounded. Elin couldn’t even remember why—probably her moms making a pre-emptive strike against whatever shenaniganry Ket would get up to.
Elin knew why Teddy wanted to go to Salt Lake on his own. She felt guilty over keeping Teddy from a shot at the romantic evening he so desperately hoped for, but she really didn’t want to spend New Year’s Eve with Ben. It had been over three weeks since they’d had sex, and she knew he was going to want to do it. She couldn’t use cramps as an excuse again, and she didn’t want to talk about it, or worse, fight about it. Elin hated fighting with Ben.
Fortunately, Teddy never put his undying crush on Rosie ahead of his friendship with the rest of them. It was one of Elin’s favorite things about him.
“I left money for you kids to order in,” Rosie’s dad called, wrapping a thick scarf around his neck, snapping Elin out of her thoughts. “Not pizza. Pick something with culture, okay?”
Rosie rolled her eyes so hard, Elin worried she might go blind. Teddy clenched his fists—he was not good with parents.
“Good night, Dr. Winchester!” Elin called before either Rosie or Teddy could say anything. Rosie’s dad and his girlfriend waved as they walked out the door.
Rosie turned up the volume on the TV. “Don’t call him doctor, he’s not a real doctor,” she muttered.
Teddy raised his eyebrows, some of the tension leaving his body. “Tell us how you really feel, Ro,” he said, lips curling up in a smile.
Rosie’s dad’s furniture was crap, but every wall was filled with bookshelves, and his bookshelves were filled with various translations of Proust, Goethe, Anais Nin, Zola, Tolstoy. “It’s like he thinks he can get extra credit for only reading things that didn’t originally come in English,” Rosie had IM’d earlier that day.
Rosie had once told Elin that, when she was younger, she had believed she inherited her love of reading from him—her mother had no interest in fiction, said she got enough reading at work. But her dad didn’t think much of the books Rosie liked to read. Mysteries, fantasy, graphic novels, horror, and definitely anything for kids—according to Professor Winchester, it was all trash.
At this point, it was like Rosie deliberately avoided the books he loved just because he took so much glee in disparaging hers. Of course, that did little to persuade him that he should help Rosie pay for college as long as she intended to pursue a degree in creative writing.
“You should stop coming here,” Teddy was saying.
“They have joint custody,” Rosie said, sliding down further into the couch and pulling her knees up to her chest.
“That’s their problem,” Teddy said, leaning over and resting his arm on the back of the couch, right behind Rosie. Elin felt a twinge of a smile, but Teddy’s arm remained glued to the couch, hovering just a few inches above Rosie’s shoulders.
If she’d thought for one second Rosie could be persuaded to return Teddy’s affections, Elin woul
d have given Rosie every reason she could think of that the two of them were perfect for each other. But Rosie needed someone who would sneak up on her. Elin just hoped Teddy had the patience to wait for Rosie to figure things out.
“No judge is going to make a seventeen-year-old with her own car go see her dad if she doesn’t want to see her dad,” Teddy said. “You’re practically an adult, Ro.”
Elin glanced over at Rosie, trying to see how she was receiving this. Her face was a stone. “My dad wants the child support,” she said flatly. “And my mom hates paying it. If I didn’t come down here anymore, it would just be a matter of time before one of them filed an order to show cause against the other. And I just can’t. I just can’t deal with that anymore.”
Teddy caught Elin’s eye over Rosie’s bent head. His eyebrows were knit together, a flash of uncertainty in his eyes. Teddy got Rosie better than any of them.
It was unnerving when even he didn’t know what to do with her.
Teddy tilted his head, gesturing toward Rosie. The look on his face said, Do something, as clearly as if he’d uttered the words. Elin lifted one shoulder, a half shrug, hoping she looked more nonchalant than she felt. Rosie was good at offering suggestions to their problems, but Elin had never been able to return the favor. It was just one more reason Elin was a subpar friend.
Let her talk, Elin mouthed at Teddy, and he nodded.
Rosie poured out her frustrations, Teddy glowered, and Elin stared out the window, wishing she were better at this. She tugged at a loose thread on her sleeve, wondering what Ben was up to. She would text him, except she dreaded his inevitably understanding reply. She’d canceled on him right before Teddy had picked her up, and he’d been predictably kind. Poor Ro. Tell her hi from me. Shame had squeezed at her throat, making her ears burn scarlet.
But the exquisite relief she felt was stronger.
Elin told her girlfriends everything—part of everything, anyway. She had told them the first time she and Ben kissed, the first time Ben said he loved her, the first time they had sex. She told them it had hurt the first time, but not as much as she’d thought. She told them it had gotten fun by the fourth time they did it.
She was working up the courage to tell them—maybe Ket, since she’d had sex, or Rosie, who was the best listener—that it had stopped being fun. She could barely remember when it was fun.
But she would never tell them that sometimes she wished Ben were a little more like the guys Ket hooked up with. Less thoughtful. Less caring. Less inclined to stare lovingly into her eyes.
That way she wouldn’t have to feel so badly about wanting it over with. That the vomit-y desperation, like she’d crawl out of her skin if it meant getting away from him, would go away for good.
I am a terrible person.
Sometimes, when Elin let herself think about how much luckier she was than most of her friends, she felt sick. It made no sense that she had such a hard time when she had everything she could have asked for. It was Jenna’s mother’s answer to every dilemma, every setback: Count your many blessings. And Elin had blessings to spare.
She was healthy and pretty and her parents would pay for her to go anywhere she wanted for college. Her family was happy. Her boyfriend was perfect. She loved Ben so much it sometimes physically hurt, a vice around her heart.
Nothing bad had ever happened to her. She lived the very definition of a blessed life.
The problem was, those blessings just made her feel guiltier.
Rosie and Teddy had almost no one. And yeah, maybe Rosie could be cold, and Teddy could be angry, but they were both selfless. They would never treat anyone the way Elin wanted to treat Ben.
“And I’m the only one he treats like this,” Rosie said, her face icy and impassive, flipping through channels so quickly that Elin could barely tell what was on before Rosie had moved on. “Remember Amanda? She read tons of romance novels and he never once called her ‘bordering on infantile.’” She made the air quotes with her fingers.
“He’s just jealous because no one read his shitty book,” Teddy said, taking the remote away from Rosie.
Rosie crossed her arms and said nothing. Elin glanced over at her. Rosie’s shoulders were slumped, like a marionette with cut strings. “It’s not shitty,” she said sadly.
“You read it?” Teddy said, surprised.
“Yeah. I didn’t tell him, he’d be too smug. I was hoping it would suck, but it didn’t.”
Elin and Teddy exchanged a glance—Rosie usually didn’t express emotions like a normal person. They knew when she was upset because they’d known her forever, not because she ever seemed upset.
Now she seemed upset.
“He knows what he’s talking about,” Rosie said, eyes shining with unshed tears. “His book is so much better than anything I’ve ever written. Better than anything I’ve ever thought about writing. The words he chose, the way he put them together—it would never even occur to me.”
“You’re still in high school!” Elin protested, but her voice came out whispery-faint. It felt like her lungs could only half fill with air.
Elin was used to Rosie taking care of her, not the other way around.
“You’re being too hard on yourself, your writing is awesome,” Teddy said, his forehead crinkling, the anger melting out of his voice.
Rosie gave Teddy a scornful look. “You’re my best friend,” she said flatly. “Your opinion is not to be trusted.”
Elin’s heart pounded in her chest. Things were getting way too intense, and Elin didn’t do well with intense. That was another Angstrom family trait: they preferred to look at the sunny side of life. She jumped to her feet. “There’s too much sadness in here,” she said. “I am declaring myself the Unofficial Ket of the Night, and as such, I think we need an immediate change of activity.”
“Sorry I’m not being very fun,” Rosie said glumly.
“Nonsense!” Elin said, grabbing Rosie’s hands and dragging her into the kitchen. “Happiness is a choice. You’re going to be fun any minute now, I can sense it. Teddy, did the good professor leave his booze unattended?”
Teddy glanced over his shoulder. “He sure did.”
“And did this whole sorry affair begin when your dad tossed Looking for Alaska in the trash?”
“And poured a Coke on it,” Rosie said bitterly.
Elin nodded. “Well, I think the only thing we can do is make an homage to Alaska Young and the Colonel themselves and get drunk, climb in the hot tub, and watch the fireworks.”
Teddy uncorked the Patron. “‘An homage,’ huh?”
Elin grinned, feeling her cheeks ache from the effort. “Well, you know. Minus the tragic ending.”
“Spoiler alert,” protested Rosie.
“Oh, you weren’t done?” Elin asked, reaching for the lime and knife that Rosie’s dad had left on the counter.
“Not me!” Rosie said. “Teddy. I was re-reading, but he hasn’t started it yet.”
“To be fair, it’s been out for a million years,” Elin pointed out. “And it’s John Green, so, you know.”
“Stop!” Rosie said, pressing her hands against Teddy’s ears. He squirmed away from her, but judging from his flushed cheeks, he had liked it.
“I don’t mind spoilers,” Teddy said again as he searched for salt and clean shot glasses. “I like knowing how things end.”
Rosie rolled her eyes. “Don’t I know it,” she said, sounding slightly cheerier. “Okay, let me go find some towels and suits. Elin, you can borrow one of mine. Teddy, I hope you don’t mind, but my dad has started wearing embarrassingly small European swim trunks.”
“I’ll stick with my boxers, thanks,” Teddy said, pouring three careful shots of Patron.
Rosie turned down the hall, nodding at Elin. “Come with me, let’s find a suit for you,” she said.
“Don’t start drinking without us,” Elin instructed Teddy as she followed Rosie to her room.
Rosie’s room at her dad’s looked nothing like
her room at her mom’s. It was all white walls, plain furniture, a pink-and-yellow patterned comforter leftover from elementary school. Nothing indicated she even lived in it other than a pair of jeans tossed haphazardly on the floor and her beat-up laptop charging on the desk.
“So you finished Looking for Alaska?” Rosie asked, rifling through her drawers for swimming suits.
“Last summer.”
“So what did you think of you-know-what?” she whispered, even though Teddy was on the other side of the house. “Do you think it was an accident, or …?”
“Accident,” Elin said firmly, snatching Rosie’s only bikini. “Only weak people try to kill themselves.”
14
Rosie Winchester
April 18, 6:50 PM
Three books in, I was loving the Song of Ice and Fire series but reading it did have one drawback (aside from the murder and boob fixation): the extensive description of food. My stomach was practically eating itself.
I glanced over at the kitchen, where people were snacking on guacamole and chips, leaning over so salsa wouldn’t drip on their dresses and ties. I bit my lip, considering. Fisher had told us to help ourselves. (“So there’s Café Rio in the kitchen, sodas in the fridge, vodka in the freezer, and beer in the cooler. And there’s Jell-O shots, but they’re a little watery.”) She had shrugged and tossed her hair, a golden curtain of perfect waves. Even when she was self-deprecating, girls like Fisher gave girls like me eating disorders without even trying.
But there was no way that Fisher intended for randoms like me to eat the food she’d bought. I wasn’t actually friends with her. It was weird, the idea of eating the food Fisher had ordered for people she knew. People she liked. People who had RSVP’d.
I was not really a guest at this party. I was practically a lamp.
So when Fisher’s date sat down beside me on the couch, I kept staring resolutely at my tablet. He was probably waiting for someone else anyway.
He cleared his throat. I glanced up, one eyebrow arched. (Ket and I perfected eyebrow arching after watching The Little Mermaid on repeat as first graders.) “What’s up?” I said, my voice level.
When the Truth Unravels Page 6