I want to escape. I nod.
“It’s fucking brilliant. It’ll be just like old times. Like it’s supposed to be, you know?”
She sits back on my legs and I choke. “I won’t do it. It’s not worth it. I’d rather Claire hate me than for me to hate myself.” My voice is hoarse, ragged. I think back to everything. Ryan dead. Ethan gone. This idea that I could somehow escape seems so ludicrous now. So I laugh, too.
She knees me in the ribs. “Shut up!” she demands.
“I’m not like you!” I shout back, even though I have barely anything left to shout with. “Some things are more important to me than my reputation.”
She stares at me, and I can almost see the cogs turning in her head. And the smile. It creeps back on slowly, innocently. “What about your mom? What about Ryan?”
For all her weight on my lungs, I have never felt true breathlessness before. Now it’s not just that I can’t breathe—oxygen no longer exists.
Adrienne’s face creeps closer to mine, her hair spilling all down on top of me. “You want her to know? You could’ve stopped him.”
“Shut up,” I whisper.
“I didn’t want to do this,” she assures me. “We’re friends, O. We’re friends.” There is desperation in her voice, a total disconnect with reality. “I’ve always tried to protect you.”
“Don’t tell Mom,” I say. What if it’s the thing that irreparably breaks her? What if she finally, permanently can never look me in the eye again? “I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t tell her.”
“Okay.” She punctuates the word with a nod, like we’ve settled a particularly difficult negotiation. The smile has melted off her face, replaced by something else. She rolls off me and reaches down a hand to help me up. Like this is fine. I ignore her hand and pull myself up. I am in extreme pain, holding my ribs. I’ll be bruised when I look myself over tonight, and then I’ll poke the sore spots until they go numb. “I’m sorry it has to be like this,” she says, solemn. “I’m really sorry, O.”
She’s not sorry. I have to do it anyway.
I’ll take the voice mail to the grave with me.
44
TWO AND A HALF MONTHS AGO
“Olivia, open the damn door.” I could tell in Adrienne’s voice that she didn’t mean it. She did that sometimes, using that harsh tone to bring us back to reality. Claire affectionately called it Adrienne’s mom voice. I called it something else.
But I opened the door.
It was the day after. The first day after Ryan, I couldn’t help but think morbidly. Mom had called me frantic at four a.m. on Sunday and we had left everything exactly where it was (including Adrienne’s latest conquest) and driven back to Buckley in the gray light before dawn. Nothing and everything had happened that day, the way it does when people die. I remember lying on the couch after a sleepless night, still sure that Mom was the most horrible person alive when I finally looked at my phone again.
Ryan’s friends had started messaging me the day before, the questions and consolations lighting up my inbox. I scanned through them, feeling a righteous anger at everyone’s nerve at intruding upon my personal pain, until I saw it.
Missed Call. Ryan. One voice mail.
It’s likely I stopped breathing, but I don’t remember. Suddenly, it was six the next night, and Adrienne was standing in my bedroom.
I fell back down onto my bed where I’d been all day, holding my pillow between my arms. My room was tiny, nothing like the sprawl of Adrienne’s, so she sat down on the old chair at my desk and leaned her forearms against her knees, staring at me.
“What are you doing, O?”
I wasn’t sure I could speak and, worse, I wasn’t sure if I knew what I was doing at all.
“It’s going to be all right, you know,” she told me. “I’m not sure how, but I know it will. You’re the toughest person I know.” She held out her hand to me, and I laced my fingers through hers and she squeezed. “I love you,” she said then, and a tear fell as she blinked. “I do.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Why don’t you get up?” she asked. “I think your mom would like to see you.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t look at her.”
She was going to do the unthinkable. Take my mom’s side. She began, “Olivia, she didn’t mean—”
“I could’ve stopped him.”
Adrienne’s hand fell out of mine. “What?”
I sat up then, something about the depth of self-loathing propelling me forward. I played the message for her on speakerphone because that hurt a little worse. Her eyes didn’t leave the phone as it played.
“Delete it,” she said when it ended.
“No.”
“Delete it, O,” she was telling me then. Commanding from on high. “I’m not going to let you keep that around so you can hate yourself.”
I guess that’s when it really started to unravel. The thought that she could let me do anything. Of her trying to control my emotions after my brother died, trying to tell me how she wanted me to react.
And the sad thing was, I think she might have been trying to help.
“I should’ve answered,” I said.
“Give me that,” she replied, going for my phone. I pulled it out of her reach, shoving her away in the process. She lunged on top of me, and I rolled over as she tried to reach around me. “O! Stop!”
But she was the one who had to stop because I wasn’t moving. When she finally backed off, I stared up at her, feeling disgust. “It’s mine,” I said. “You can’t have it.”
“Fine,” she said, standing up to look down at me. “But do not tell your mother. She will hate you forever if she ever hears that.”
I watched her, quiet. Looked down at my phone and pressed the save button to make sure nothing would happen to the voice mail.
“I need to call Ethan,” I said at last. “He’s been trying to get to me all day.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Right. Ethan.” She got up and went back to the door. She turned the knob, then looked back at me one last time. “Don’t tell your mom, O.”
45
It’s an hour later, and I’m still sitting on the bleachers, Adrienne long gone. I turn it over and over in my mind, and then I do something I haven’t done in almost three months. It’s morbid to keep the message, but I can’t let it go.
It’s all that’s left of him.
I dial into my phone, my fingers twitching anxiously. “You have one saved voice message,” the robotic female voice says in my ear. “To listen, press three.”
Three.
The line is quiet for a moment, the wind or an air-conditioner singing in the background. Then his voice crackles in. He’s been crying. “Olivia. I’m sorry,” he breathes into the other end of the receiver, still alive in every moment, every inhalation and exhalation. “For everything. Everything now and everything then. It’s all so fucked up.
“Olivia, where are you? Why aren’t you answering?” His voice fades in and out. It still hurts too much to cry as I listen. His voice is a knife in the heart, cutting it into pieces, leaving me broken. Listening, it hits me over and over again that this moment was real. The words are real, still. “I love you, and I miss you.” I squeeze my eyes together furiously. Stop, I plead. Take it back.
“End of saved messages,” the woman on the other side says. I keep the phone pressed to my ear until she starts giving me instructions again, wondering what’s wrong with me. Everything, I want to tell her. If only I’d answered—if anyone had known—
I will never tell Mom. I can’t. If she found out … if my brother drove off the road on purpose.… If she knew I could’ve stopped him.
I don’t know if I’m protecting her or myself.
Or both of us.
46
It’s cold in the sitting area outside of Dr. Rickards’s office. I figure I should be numb to anything at this point, but the goose bumps all ov
er my skin disagree.
Dr. Rickards comes out of his office. “Olivia. Please.”
I stand up, at once feeling nothing and feeling too much. I shake my hands out, flexing my fingers, tight then loose. Tight, then loose, then follow Dr. Rickards into his office.
Mr. Doolittle is there and so is the school nurse, Mrs. Ansley, which I don’t even begin to understand. They sit on either side of an empty chair like guards, armored with compassion and kindness and bullshit. I take the seat between them. Dr. Rickards takes his, and everything is a funeral procession with Mrs. Baker in the coffin.
I’m going to explode.
“I expect you know why we’ve asked to speak to you, Miss Clayton,” Dr. Rickards says, all regal and sad.
“Is it a cheerleading scholarship?” I can’t help but spit out. Mr. Doolittle looks at me like that was some cold shit.
“Olivia, is this the time to be making people more uncomfortable?” Mrs. Ansley asks.
“She’s hurt. It’s her defense mechanism,” Mr. Doolittle explains. He should wear a sign that says WORST GUIDANCE COUNSELOR EVER.
Dr. Rickards clears his throat because he has a PhD and apparently a little bit of sense. “Olivia, you know we have some questions about Mrs. Baker. And the”—he coughs—“nature of her relationship with a friend of yours.”
“Whit,” I reply, stone-faced.
“Yes,” Dr. Rickards agrees. “But this conversation is not to leave this room. If any of these allegations are true, he is considered a victim in all this.”
“Of course,” I answer. I can hear the horrible staccato beat of my heart. They have to be able to hear it, too.
“Now.” Dr. Rickards leans over his desk to be closer to me. “Is there anything you can tell us about Mrs. Baker and Mr. DuRant? Anything that struck you as strange or you felt was off? We’ve brought Mrs. Ansley in if you’d feel more comfortable talking to a female about this.”
I shake my head. “No. It’s okay.” I look into my lap, hoping they’ll see the cracks in my façade. I’m lying I’m lying I’m lying. I pick at my cuticles.
“I know it’s natural not to want to get anyone in trouble,” Mr. Doolittle nudges me on. “But this is a matter of utmost importance.”
It’s all clear for a moment now. I have this idea of who I want to be. This independent, driven person. Someone who takes control of her life, irons out the moral flaws, and doesn’t feel quite so much hatred for herself all the damn time. And it’s right there, at the tip of my fingers. It’s studying after school in the library with Whit and telling Claire everything I did and telling her I would never do it again and deciding right in that moment between heartbeats to let it all go, this façade of control. To stop trying to maintain the narrative of Olivia Clayton.
But I blink and I see Ryan and Mom and Adrienne and I can’t let that go. The words build up behind my lips with an unbearable pressure, words I know I can’t say because I know I won’t be able to take them back, but I have to—“IsawWhitwithher.” Exhale.
They all stare at me in this stunned silence like none of it was true until this minute, and my hand flies over my mouth, trapping my gasp. I can’t believe I did this. This was the wrong thing to do.
I have to take it back.
I can’t take it back.
“What do you mean?” Mrs. Ansley asks carefully.
In elementary school, before I moved here to Buckley, I almost drowned once. Ryan always said I overreacted, but I’d jumped into the deep end because Leanna Reigart dared me, and she always had the best parties and everyone else could swim in the deep end. I could do anything if I wanted; I knew that. So I jumped, but then for a split second under the water I knew I’d overestimated myself. There was nowhere to go, no breath to breathe, and the light was reflecting from every direction, and I was drowning. The more energy I exerted, the less chance I could survive. Only then, somehow, I wasn’t drowning anymore. I made it up for air. I saved myself.
That’s when I learned you can never rely on anyone else to save you.
“Nothing explicit,” I manage through the constriction in my lungs. “But it wasn’t right.”
The room is deadly silent. I’m swimming but I don’t know if I’m headed up or down yet. I put my hand up to my cheek, but I can’t feel it there. It was so astoundingly easy to slip back into this person, but I can’t help but feel like I’m watching this girl I know so well, in her chair, talking to Dr. Rickards. I’m watching her from far away and I know every trick she knows and I know every secret she does, but I’m not her. I can’t be her.
She was supposed to be dead.
Just once, I was supposed to be the right kind of person.
But it’s so hard.
“It was—” She looks up, this girl who is someone I want to forget, making eye contact with each of them, but quickly because she’s scared she’s doing it wrong. She knows this is the part where most people would fuck it up. Go for broke. Say Whit and Mrs. Baker were banging on her desk. I was horrified; didn’t know who to tell. I love him so much and it hurts so bad and tears all over. Tears everywhere.
She knows better.
“Intimate.” Stare at the hand touching her cheek. “She was touching his face, and they were looking at each other, and I felt wrong. I felt wrong that I’d seen it.”
Right then, I feel myself crash into the cement at the bottom of the pool. “Is that it?” I ask them, wiping everything clean. Waiting for O to fade away again. “Can I go?”
They’re, like, completely stunned. Finally, Mr. Doolittle speaks. “That’s it? You didn’t hear them saying anything? Just saw”—he kind of glances at his hand then stops himself—“her touching him.”
“Whit won’t talk to me about it.” I give them half a shrug, voice flat. “I really thought he was different,” I say, and Mr. Doolittle just about cries. It’s too easy. I don’t have to actually say I saw anything at all, and they believe me.
“We can talk about this tomorrow,” he tells me, face all heartbroken like he’s the one who let me down.
“You can go, Miss Clayton,” Dr. Rickards tells me. “Nothing leaves this room. Understood?” I nod, picking up my bag. I’m watching myself and I am myself and I’m dead and I’m alive. I turn, slowly walking out, waiting for the door to close behind me before dumping my bag on the floor and sprinting out of the office, down the hall, outside into the fresh air. I bend over, hand on my knees, and retch. Past the steps, I vomit onto the grass.
Who am I?
If I were Ryan, I would have a drink.
47
There are not that many feet between my car and Whit’s house. I know that. I also know that each one will feel like a mile.
Logically I know that. And logically, I know, the longer I sit out here, the stranger I look. So I take each step—every excruciating one—to his front door, and my reflection stares back at me, some pretty, broken girl who thinks that’s an excuse to—
I don’t know. To live, I guess.
I ring the doorbell. I don’t have to anymore, but it seems like I should. That I would be invited in, trusted just to come in the front door and kick my shoes off, feels like a foreign idea.
I’ll always be as dangerous as everyone thought I was.
It takes a minute for him to open it. When he does, he’s rumpled, all ankle socks and old T-shirt, squinting across the threshold at me. He runs his hand through his hair, surveying. He holds the door open, finally, after a minute, like it only just occurred to him. “Hey.”
I go in. There had been a choice, I’m thinking, trying to rationalize: Adrienne could tell him what I’d already done and he’d never speak to me; or I could do something worse and he’d be totally fucked but at least he’d be fucked with me.
He closes the door behind me, like he always does, and he’s there like he always is, calm and steady. Except he’s not—there’s an urgency in his eyes, a stiffness in his lips. “Can we study?” I ask.
He shakes his head, like he�
��d forgotten I was there, like he had to remember. “Yeah. Okay.” Then, without waiting for me, he turns around and takes off into his room, using strides so long, I jog to stay close to him.
I don’t know why. I can’t help it.
He falls into his desk chair. “What did you say to them?” he asks without looking at me.
I stop in the doorframe. He can’t see my face. He won’t know I’m a liar. I mean, he knows I’m a liar, but not to him. We’re on the same side, or at least, we’re supposed to be.
“I told them it’s bullshit. What do you think?”
“I—I don’t know what this means, Liv. I don’t know what they’ll do.”
Something isn’t right. About his voice. About him. “We can’t study.”
He shakes his head, then buries his face in his hands.
I try to stop myself, but it’s too late. I’ve crossed the room, and my arms are wrapped around his chest from behind and my face is buried in his hair, and there are two separate Olivias; I feel it again. I’m here in the room with him, and the other one is somewhere else, far away. Some part of me stabilizes then, slides back into place. There is more to me than my lies. I can be someone else—I am with him. As long as I remember that he trusts me to be the right kind of person, I can keep going. And this Olivia—not the one who was in Dr. Rickards’s office—he doesn’t push her away. He lets her touch him and breathe him in and he doesn’t hate her.
He doesn’t hate me and I won’t let him.
“Do you ever think,” I say into his hair, “that there’s just something wrong with some people? That they’re fundamentally fucked up?”
He tenses. “Not really.”
My hand grips his shirt. “I’m so sorry,” I mutter into his hair.
“Just don’t leave,” he says. So I don’t.
48
How to Break a Boy Page 18