He changed his mind, though, when he saw the horrified expression on her face.
He was already pulling away from the woman when he heard the metal door of the employee exit slam shut. How had Reba made it out there without him hearing? Well…he knew the answer to that. He zipped and buttoned his jeans. “Goddamn it,” he muttered.
“What was that all about?” Chloe or Carly or whatever-her-name-was asked in her fake smoky voice. Everything about her was that way—carefully planned to make desperate men like him find her desirable. There was nothing special about her at all.
“Not your business,” Toby said as she got to her feet. “Go back inside.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked, attitude masking the hurt he could see in her eyes. But he didn’t have it in him to care about Reba and Chloe/Carly both, and he didn’t even know this chick.
“Go,” he said, stepping away from her. He didn’t feel bad about leaving her there in the shadows.
Jules met him in the hallway near the bathrooms, her eyes watery like she might cry. “Toby, you have to get us home,” she said. She grabbed for his arm, and he instinctively snapped it back.
“I don’t have to do anything,” he said.
“It’s Reba. She’s sick. I’ve got to get her home. Please.”
“Where is she?” he asked. Jules pointed to the women’s restroom. Toby threw open the door, and there she was, in her pretty sweater and jeans, kneeling on the toilet paper–strewn floor and gasping for air.
“Reba,” he said, reaching for her. What did he think he was going to do, scoop her up like some goddamned white knight and carry her out of there? She ignored him. “Reba,” he said again, kneeling beside her and touching her elbow. She jerked away from him as though his hand were a hot poker. “Rebecca,” he said finally. “Let me help you.”
“Get away from me,” she sobbed.
“No, I—”
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” Her scream filled the bathroom, and he staggered away from her as she wiped her mouth with a piece of toilet paper and stared at him with a look of pure hatred. Jules was in the room then, grabbing his arm, pulling him away.
“What did you do to her?” she asked, almost yelling herself.
“Nothing. I just wanted to help!”
“Don’t help her,” Jules hissed. “Don’t touch her. Go get the car. I’ll bring her out.”
He stormed away. He wanted to fight, wanted to throw glass bottles against concrete walls, wanted to use his fists to make someone feel what he felt, which was helpless. He’d never felt so helpless in his whole life.
He had the car waiting in front of Southern Saddle when Jules walked Reba out, her arm around Reba’s waist, helping her along. Before he even knew what the hell he was doing, he was out of the car and opening the passenger door of the Firebird so Jules could get Reba into the backseat.
“Reba, what happened?” Jules asked quietly, after several minutes of silence in the car. But she wouldn’t answer. Toby watched her in the rearview mirror, her red-rimmed eyes, head lolling against the window. She looked defeated. Was it alcohol, or was this all because of him? Maybe a mixture of the two, but did he have that kind of power over her? He wouldn’t have thought so.
“You can’t take her home,” Toby said casually. As if it was no real matter to him. As if he didn’t want to pull the car over and make Reba look at him, make her listen as he explained. As if he didn’t want to put his arms around her. “Not like that.”
“No shit,” Jules said. “We’ll take her to Molly’s. She can stay with me until she feels better.”
“She ever gotten sick like this before, from drinking?”
“Never.”
He couldn’t stop staring at Reba as Jules maneuvered her out of the car and into the house, but Reba wouldn’t let him help her, wouldn’t let him touch her at all. She wouldn’t even look him in the eye.
70
Toby. Goddamned Toby, Julie thinks. It was him all along, tearing Reba apart, making her want him…making her love him. It seems impossible that someone like Reba could ever have feelings for someone as vicious, as catastrophically screwed up as Toby. He took advantage of a young girl, took what was lovely and magical about Reba and perverted it.
And Reba loved it. Turns out that even before Toby, even before August, Reba was never as purely good as Julie wanted her to be.
She can’t deny her anger at Reba, can’t deny the betrayal she feels. For so long, Julie has thought of Reba as the star in some doomed love affair, with August as her costar. But in truth, it was Toby all along, Toby dragging Reba into darkness, and Reba begging for it.
You aren’t who I thought you were, she told Reba once, in anger. Except now, Julie knows it was the truth.
• • •
Though she’d forgotten it until now, Julie has Toby to thank for finding out about Reba and August in the first place.
She’d just gotten home from a date. Cold weather was finally on its way, and she felt uneasy for some reason, like the chill in the air was carrying something else with it. Something grim.
“Call me,” she’d told her date, with a smile on her face. But she hoped he wouldn’t.
She didn’t tiptoe, wasn’t unusually quiet when she closed the front door. She knew Molly wasn’t home, and only God himself knew where Toby was and what he was up to. They hadn’t spoken much since the thing with Reba at Southern Saddle. He’d asked her the next day if Reba was all right—like he gave a damn. It was lucky he’d been there, though, to get them home so quickly. It was strange what had happened. Reba didn’t usually drink enough to get sick. Stomach bug, maybe, she’d said.
Julie figured Toby would be out, but no, his music was blasting, shaking the walls of her bedroom. Toby liked metal and heavy alternative, songs that gave him an excuse to sing along, to roar. This time, the music was loud, but the song was slower. Nine Inch Nails, that one slow song. Still, she’d never get to sleep if he kept it up. She walked down the hall and banged her fist against his bedroom door for a full minute before turning the knob.
Toby sat cross-legged on the floor facing the wall, a bottle of whiskey beside him and a joint in an ashtray on the floor. His paints and brushes were laid out in a line in front of him.
“You could have it all… My empire of dirt…” he sang along, unaware of her. He was painting the girl again, had made it up to her shoulders, her smallish breasts. She was lovely.
“Turn the music down,” Julie said, raising her voice and, when he still didn’t turn around, turning the stereo volume down herself. Low.
“Jesus, Jules,” Toby said, finishing a pull from the joint he’d picked up. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and looked at her as though he’d never seen her before. “Didn’t I tell you to knock? You scared the shit out of me.”
He didn’t look scared, though. “I did knock,” she said.
“Turn the music back up.”
“It’s too loud. You’re not the only one who lives here.”
He balanced the joint on the lip of the astray and stood up, shakily. “I’ll listen to whatever I want, whenever I want.”
She looked at him and glared. His eyes were red, and his speech was slurred. He wore a white tank with paint smeared all over it, like he’d been wiping his hands on it instead of on the rag lying on the floor.
“Are you ever going to grow up?” she asked quietly, calmly, trying for all the world not to lose her temper with him again.
He shrugged. “You don’t know a thing about me. Don’t know much about anything that goes on around here, actually. Right under your nose. I could tell you some stories, little girl.”
“You’re drunk, I know that much.”
“Hey, at least I’m not whoring myself out all over Lawrence Mill. What, did you just get in?” His eyes moved, a compass, taking her in. She was still wearing
her going-out clothes, boots and all. “’Cause those don’t look like your pajamas.”
She sighed, offended and exasperated.
“Oh, come here,” he said, reaching to the floor for the whiskey bottle and flopping down on his bed. “Sit down, share with me.” He offered her the bottle. She didn’t know what was up with the sudden change of attitude, but she took the bottle and sat beside him on the bed. The whiskey was a hot fire in her stomach.
“Hey, I don’t hold it against you,” Toby said, shrugging again. “We all have our vices, right? Right? Maybe I’ll say fuck it, and tell you all about mine. Bet she’d love that.”
“Pretty sure I’m aware of your vices already,” Julie said, eyeing the whiskey bottle, the joint.
“Those aren’t vices. Those are hobbies.” He chuckled, shook his head. “Her, though. She’s my vice, my fucking downfall. Women.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“That’s for damn sure.” He laughed, bitterly. “She’s out there with him now, I bet. Doing things to him, letting him do things to her. She loves him, I guess. Whatever that means.”
“Yeah…anyways,” Julie said, drinking more from the whiskey bottle and feeling the heat shoot through her again. She didn’t want to have anything in common with Toby, least of all a shared inability to understand things like love. She passed the bottle back to him. She needed to get out of there. Toby was clearly wasted, or very high, or something, and he was making no sense at all.
“What’s with you dirty girls, anyway? Those sweet, innocent faces, nothing but lies underneath.” He looked her up and down again. “I mean, I expect it from you. But I didn’t know you’d rub off on Reba the way you did.” His hand rested on her shoulder, and it felt like an electric shock. He swayed back and forth on the bed.
“What?”
“Reba McLeod,” he slurred in a singsong voice, so her first and last name ran together. “Who would have guessed? I mean you, you look the part at least, sex kitten and all that. Not her, though. So sweet. So fucking sweet.”
“What are you talking about?” Julie felt suddenly nauseous. “Is this about the pot? She told me about that.”
He laughed. “Lies, lies.” Then he shook his head and looked up at her like he was just realizing she was there. “Never mind. Go to bed, Jules.” He turned away from her, as though she’d already left.
“What are you talking about?” she asked again.
“Nothing.” He took a long drink from the bottle, then began to mumble to himself. Only it was just loud enough for her to hear. “Little Julie can’t see…doesn’t know the things her friend does at night…”
“You’re lying. She’s not like that.”
“It’s all lies, baby. All lies.”
“What do you know?” she asked, her voice rising, uncertain, borderline hysterical. He’s drunk, she told herself. He didn’t know what he was talking about, couldn’t even complete a coherent sentence. She couldn’t explain why she was listening at all, when everything in her said to disregard him completely.
“Little Julie, little Rebecca,” he taunted. “Secrets, secrets, secrets.”
“Tell me,” she said. He was silent, drinking from the bottle again. “Tell me!” she shouted, grabbing the bottle from his mouth. It flew from her hands and fell on the carpet at the end of the bed.
“Goddamn it, Jules!” His arm flew back as if to hit her, but instead, he let it fall limply at his side. He stood and picked up the bottle, salvaging what little was left. Most of it had already seeped into the carpet, filling the room with the stale smell of bars and drunken kisses. “You want to know? Look out your window once in a while. Sneaking out, sex, lies. I bet she’s with him right now.”
“It’s not true,” Julie whispered. She stood, reached for anything, found the little square mirror on the dresser, the one she’d seen him use for coke. She threw it furiously across the room, and it shattered against the wall, pieces flying, a slash of a scar left behind, right across the chest of the painted girl on the wall.
Toby jumped back as though the shards had sliced him open, even though he was nowhere near them. His eyes were even redder, and watered suddenly. “No, it’s not,” he said. “It’s not true. Jesus Christ, I didn’t mean it.”
His sobs followed her as she ran from his bedroom. “I didn’t mean it, Jules. Wait! I didn’t mean it.”
But when she looked outside, she could see Reba’s open window, white curtains swaying back and forth in the December wind. She ran from the house, slamming the front door behind her hard enough that it hit the doorjamb and flew open again. She didn’t stop until she reached the street, and then she turned around, went back into the house to grab a flashlight from the junk drawer in the kitchen, and rushed out into the night.
71
The grasses in the fields were flattened, brownish if she could see them in the darkness, but Julie didn’t risk turning on the flashlight yet. They didn’t whip against her legs but threatened, instead, to tangle her feet as she ran. Not true not true not true, she repeated to herself as she hurried into the night. She didn’t know where Reba would go in secret; there was as good a chance as any that whomever she was seeing had picked her up in a car and they’d gone God-knows-where. She couldn’t explain why she ran straight for the river, for the little bridge, how she knew to find Reba there.
Julie’s long hair tossed and twisted around her back and shoulders as she moved, the cool wind blowing strands across her cheeks and eyes until she wasn’t sure if she could see at all. Her boot heels sank into the ground with every hurried step. That night, the path seemed to be miles long. In the naked fields, before she entered the forest that guarded the riverbank, she ripped the boots off, first one and then the other, her socks next. She threw them all to the ground, abandoned, and moved forward, barefoot. She’d come back for them the next day. Rocks and cold dirt and gnarled tree roots scraped against the unprotected bottoms of her feet, but she could hardly feel them.
It was a lie. It had to be. Toby was wrong, and she was crazy for believing him, for thinking any of this. Probably if she turned around right now and went back to Reba’s bedroom window, she would see Reba in there, sleeping peacefully. And then everything would be okay. She hadn’t even thought to look in the window before starting this wild search. Maybe Reba had just wanted the window open while she slept. Maybe it was all so simple, and Reba wasn’t hiding anything at all. Except…even if it wasn’t too cold for open windows by then, it all made a perverse kind of sense, and Julie did believe Toby, even if she didn’t know why.
Go back, she kept thinking. Her feet were cold and starting to sting from the rocks, and her heart was a tin drum beating fast and hollow in her chest. And she didn’t want to know anymore, wanted to return to her room, to her life, which was sinful and meaningless, while Reba remained exalted.
Julie finally had to stop and catch her breath. She tried to prepare herself. For what, she didn’t know. It wasn’t going to happen. There was no one out there but her. When she could hear the river babbling ahead, she turned right, heading toward the old footbridge.
She heard them first, before she saw them. Her bare feet crunching the fallen leaves with each step must not have been as loud as she thought, because they obviously didn’t know she was there. She heard Reba’s voice, unmistakable, so soft that Julie wouldn’t have caught it, had she not been listening so hard for that very thing. “Don’t let me go.” The small words swirled and burned in Julie’s ears, in her throat, in her stomach. She could feel the heat of them all over her body, and it was so much worse than Toby’s whiskey.
“I won’t, I promise,” a voice said. A deep, masculine voice. Julie heard a rustling of clothes (being removed or struggled back into, she couldn’t tell), the wet animal sound of kisses.
“Let’s leave here. Let’s go away, away from everyone. Can we?”
“What? What would your dad think?
Julie held her fist to her mouth to keep from screaming. She was hidden, stock-still against a tree but so close to them. She shouldn’t be listening, but this shouldn’t be happening. Her Reba. She felt betrayed, she felt forsaken, she felt everything shameful she’d ever done in a way she hadn’t before. Clearer, like before then she’d seen her own life through a stained-glass window with roses on it, or orchids, or something religious. And now it was only a window, and everything was transparent and hard and ugly.
“I don’t care. Let’s run away, August. Together, you and me.”
“I wish we could. I wish it so much.”
“I’m serious. Let’s do it. Why can’t we?”
There was silence for a moment. “Reba, you know we can’t. I wish things were different, I do. But I can’t leave my family, and you can’t leave yours, and graduation is right around the corner. We don’t have any money, and it’d be crazy to leave now. Besides, when we graduate and you’re in New York with Jules and I’m in Virginia, we can do whatever we want. It’s not that far away.”
“But…he’ll kill you.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’ll kill you.”
“Reba, I don’t understand. Who’ll kill me? Your dad? Does he know?”
Reba started to sob, leaves rustling around her. Julie thought of moving, of getting out of there, but her feet wouldn’t budge.
“Tell me, please,” he said, his voice cracking, rising. In anger or frustration, Julie couldn’t tell.
Reba mumbled something, too soft, this time, for Julie to hear. For even the boy to hear, apparently.
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Julie gasped. The flashlight slipped from her grasp and tumbled to the forest floor. It snapped with the impact, illuminating Reba, frozen in the act of pulling the boy close. His dark hands on her shoulders.
“Jules,” Reba whispered. Julie thought Reba might stand, but she sank, instead, to the ground. Her long, black skirt was tucked around her legs like sinister petals. In the harsh glow, with her head buried in her palms, she looked like some wild, wilted flower.
Secrets of Southern Girls Page 21