by Lola Rooney
“I’m okay, Dad,” I said, giving him a hug. Lucas’s arms were magic, but nothing could compare to a hug from my dad. “I got away.”
“Of course you did, my smart girl,” he said, holding me at arm’s length. His eyes were watery, but I was impressed to see he was holding back the tears. “We Archers are tough. We know how to fight.” This was amusing, given the fact that I didn’t think my bookish father had ever been in a fight in his life.
“Come let me see,” my mother commanded in her no-nonsense voice. I sat down in the chair next to hers and let her peel off the bandages and assess the wounds.
She didn’t speak for several moments and she didn’t try to hold me, but I could see her concern in the way she sighed and bit her lip and re-taped the gauze so carefully. Her dark eyes explored every inch of my face as though trying to reassure herself that there were no other wounds I was hiding. I wasn’t looking forward to breaking the news that my worst wounds weren’t on my face.
“You should take the bandages off completely when it’s scabbed over,” she said with the confidence of a mother. “Daddy can take you to see his plastic surgeon friend in the city in a few weeks about the scarring.”
I nodded to show I understood, but I wasn’t so sure about it. Sometimes scars were a good reminder of what you’d been through and what you would never do again.
They wanted to know all the details of Brandon’s attack and my escape and his arrest and I filled them in as best I could, much as it pained me. My father kept saying the words, “But he’s locked up now,” as if to reassure me—or himself—that the danger had passed, that I’d survived. Again. My mother listened very closely to my every word and I could see her lawyer’s brain going through the next steps, envisioning the upcoming court dates. I left it to her. Personally, I didn’t want to think about it, not until I had to.
Though I could see Emily trying not to cry when I described the moment when Brandon pulled out his knife, otherwise she didn’t react at all.
I’d almost forgotten Lucas was there when my mother suddenly said, “And who’s this young man who wandered outside with you? Did you hire yourself a bodyguard?”
“Not a bad idea,” I heard my father mutter. He didn’t seem to be kidding.
Lucas was leaning against the railing next to my sister, looking like he felt incredibly out of place. I shot out of my chair and took his arm, shooting him an apologetic look.
“Mom, Dad, this is Lucas,” I said, “my…boyfriend.” As Lucas shook their hands, calling them Mr. and Mrs. Archer, which really seemed to impress my father, I glanced at Emily, trying to gauge her reaction. But she was staring steadily out at the covered pool.
“Well, Lucas Matthews,” my mother began, emphasizing the last name she’d pried out of me weeks before on the phone, “where on earth were you when all this was happening?” She gestured at my face.
“Mom!” I cried. Five seconds. After meeting someone for the first time, my mother always gave them at least five full seconds before pouncing. She was considerate that way. “What are you talking about? That doesn’t even make sense.”
Lucas went very still as I looked to my father for help. Not that he was ever any help when my mother was concerned. He shrugged and pointed at her, as if to say, What can I do?
“She has every right to ask,” Lucas said to me. “I was taking an exam when Katie was attacked. I’ll never forgive myself for not being there.”
“This isn’t your fault. Not even a little. Not in any way,” I protested. “It’s not your responsibility to keep me safe.”
“Yes it is!” Lucas said loudly enough to make us all stare. “That’s what it means to love someone. You keep them safe. You take care of them. Always.”
I could see my mother’s raised eyebrows at his use of the word “love,” and then I saw her gaze moving over to me.
“Well, I won’t have it,” I said. “I’m not going to let Brandon Tomko hurt anyone else that I care about. I’m not going to let him take anyone else away from me.”
“Who’s he taken from you, darling?” my mother asked.
“Tommy,” my father answered.
“Yeah, Tommy,” I said, “and, in a way, he took me, too.” Their puzzled looks said it all. The time had come to fill in the blanks. I was ready to put my days of lying behind me. I was ready to tell. “There’s something I need to tell you guys, something I should have told you a long time ago. It’s big.”
“How big?” Emily said.
So big I don’t know how to start. So big I’m afraid it will change everything. So big I can’t hold it in anymore.
“Six years big,” I answered.
Lucas and I sat down at the table with Mom, and then Dad and Emily joined us. It was nice to see all the people I loved in one place like that. Too bad it had to happen now, right before I gave them the news that would tear us apart.
I was glad to have told the same story to Lucas just a few days before, to have those words to guide me, because without them I would have been lost. I started again with Ricky and Tommy and the babysitting job I wished I’d never had, then went on from there. I was proudest of the fact that I didn’t cry when I came to the moment when I found Tommy’s mangled body—probably because I’d cried so much the night before—though the looks on my parents’ faces almost pushed me over the edge. Then came the trial and my many, many lies, and the fallout that took me through high school. My mother kept flinching as I described my terrible depression. My father held his head in his hands.
I watched their horror grow when I began to describe Brandon’s harassment during the lead-up to his release. Only when I explained it did I realize I’d never found out from him who had made that first post and sent all those texts. I decided then and there to let that mystery die. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, searching for Brandon’s accomplices.
Once I reached the events of the night before, my father was weeping. Even Lucas had closed his eyes. Only my mother was still staring at me, following every word. But there were no more words. I’d said it all.
I took a few deep breaths, staring through the glass tabletop at my feet, before meeting their eyes. Under the table, Lucas put his hand on my leg and squeezed.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Dad said, his eyes bloodshot. In his tone I heard a combination of despair and outrage, as though he wanted to scream at me but didn’t have the heart. “Didn’t you trust me? I could’ve… I would’ve…” He trailed off, his thoughts caught up in all the things he could have and would have done, if he’d known.
“I was afraid,” I said. A tear rolled down my cheek. “I couldn’t face it. I was only thirteen. I thought I was to blame because I’d said all those terrible things about Ricky. Even if Brandon killed the wrong boy, it still felt as though it was my fault. And then once I’d told all those lies—”
“But it wasn’t your fault,” my mother said forcefully, cutting me off. “No, you were just a girl. I was the mother. I should have seen the truth…”
“No, Mom, don’t—” I implored, but there was no stopping her now.
“I knew,” she said, nodding her head. “I knew something was the matter. You changed so suddenly and you had this look in your eyes all the time. A mother knows.” She was wringing her hands. “I didn’t want to see it. I wanted you to be stronger than it, to beat it. But you were just a girl and I should have been there for you. To think of what you went through while I was off in court, fighting for other people’s daughters. I should have been fighting for you!” My father was talking to her in low tones, trying to reason with her, but she was beyond reason now. “No, you told me,” she said to my father. “You saw it, too. But Dr. Lepore…he was nothing. We should have taken her to the best therapist in the city. We should have tried harder. I should have made her tell me!”
She began to weep. My steadfast, indomitable mother who never cried, ever. I’d broken her.
“I’m sorry, darling,” sh
e sobbed. “I’m sorry!”
Her face was buried in my father’s shoulder, but she reached blindly for my hand and I caught it, too shocked to do anything else. I looked at Lucas, my mouth hanging open. I’d imagined this conversation a thousand times in my head. I’d expected screams, accusations, even contempt. I’d expected her to be outraged at my perjury on the stand. Never once had I imagined this.
“You’re sorry?” Emily cried, jumping to her feet so quickly her chair fell over behind her. Her eyes were rimmed with red, her cheeks pink with emotion.
Oh no, Em, I thought. Not you. You’re the one who’s always on my side. You’re the one who loves me no matter what.
Her lips quivered as she stared down at me. “You’ve been lying to me about this for six years? What happened to ‘twins tell each other everything?’ How could you keep this from me?”
I looked at her beseechingly. “I-I wanted to tell you, but—”
“Brandon was your boyfriend? Brandon’s been stalking you? Brandon killed Tommy because you told him to? Who are you? You are not my sister. That is not my sister’s life!” She smacked her hand down on the table so hard the umbrella shook above us.
“Emmy,” Dad said, a warning tone in his voice, “you have to think of what she went through. Think of it from her point of view.”
“I am her point of view!” Emily shrieked. I don’t think anyone at the table understood what she meant, but I did. We were sisters, twins. She’d followed me to Queen’s without a second thought. I texted her every day. Her friends became my friends. We defended each other, pulled for each other. When we were little we believed we had the same thoughts. She was mine and I was hers, but I’d betrayed that. It was an epic breach of trust.
I could say nothing in my own defense.
“It tore her apart to lie to you about it,” Lucas said, “you more than anyone else.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” Em said, holding up her hand as if to block him out entirely. “You’ve been in her life for, what? The past five seconds? I’ve been hers since birth!”
“But I saw it right away when she told me,” Lucas persisted. “You were the one—”
“You told him before me?” Em said, and this time I had to meet her eyes, to see the tears coursing down her cheeks. She was slipping out of my grasp. I couldn’t take the coward’s way out and shut my eyes as I lost my only sister. “I will never forgive you for this,” she said. Then she turned and ran into the house. We could all hear her crying loudly through the open door as she made her way up to her room.
“You know how she is,” my mother said as she wiped at her smeared mascara. “She’ll cry it out and then she’ll come around.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Dad said. “It’ll be fine.”
But I wasn’t so sure. Neither of them knew Em the way I did. I’d seen her hold a grudge for years over a suspected stolen hairbrush. It had seemed funny then; we’d laughed about it together, back when we were always on the same side.
My parents wanted me to stay the night in my old room. They offered to make up the guest room for Lucas. But I couldn’t stand the thought of spending the night listening to my sister bawling in the next room, or to be separated from Lucas by an entire hallway. When I told them Lucas would be getting a motel room and I’d be going with him, my father cleared his throat and wandered off into the dining room. Shockingly, it was my mother who seemed to understand that I needed Lucas that night. Maybe it was the way Dad had held her as she’d cried that made her see that sometimes closeness is something you need more than anything else.
“You go, darling,” she said, pressing a wad of bills into my hands. “Go with him, as long as you promise to come back.”
“I’ll always come back, Mom,” I said. “Thank you…for surprising me.”
“Thank you for giving me the chance,” she said.
We left them with promises to talk more, share more, tell more. I knew telling the story was just the beginning, that their anger toward me might still be waiting in the wings. The road to the truth would be a long one, but we were on it now. I’d put us on it.
As the cab pulled away from my parents’ house, I saw Emily peering out at me from her bedroom window. She didn’t wave.
I was right. Telling the truth was exactly like setting off a bomb. We’d all survived, all except Em, who would struggle through the night on life support as we all waited, as I waited, to see if she would come back to me.
24
We checked into the most expensive hotel I could think of. In her emotional state, I think my mother had pressed a few more bills than she intended into my hand, but I had no qualms about spending them. I was spent. I wanted to sleep the night in two-hundred-dollar sheets and order way overpriced room service and bathe in a tub so big I could swim in it. I wanted to indulge my every whim. So that’s what we did.
Lucas kept talking about the size of my parents’ house. I hadn’t really told him how wealthy they were, mainly due to my mother’s practice. He acted impressed, but I think he really just wanted to take my mind off of Emily.
“How many bathrooms are there, again?” he asked as we dug into our room service meal. He’d ordered a fancy burger and I’d ordered filet mignon, which came with a baked potato that was carved in the shape of a rose and carrot slivers woven into a basket.
“Four,” I replied, “one for each of us. And of course they each have their own attendant. Mine is named Pierre.”
Lucas swallowed and wiped his mouth. “Don’t ever tell your parents I share a bathroom with twenty other guys, okay?” he said.
“I was kidding about the attendants,” I said, though I was pretty sure he already knew it. “My parents aren’t snobs. Em and I used to say…”
I stared down at my food, my appetite disappearing. This has happened several times already. Just the thought of Emily brought the conversation to a screeching halt.
Lucas set the metal cover on top of my plate. “Let’s watch some TV,” he said gently, taking me by the hand and leading me over to the gigantic bed.
We snuggled up together, leaning back against the pillows and switched on the flat screen, which took up the better part of the wall. Lucas began swiftly clicking through the channels, but, naturally, every station was showing the same thing. Of course, I should have known. I was the one who’d been through all of this before. The country had been waiting six years for a new story about the Kindergarten Killer. My life would be the top story for months to come.
“I’ll turn it off,” Lucas said, but I stilled his hand.
“No, leave it,” I said. I’d been hiding from the news for so long, averting my eyes from the headlines, depriving myself of music to avoid hearing the top story update at the end of the hour on the radio. It was a stupid way to live, and I’d resolved to stop letting Brandon’s actions make me do stupid things. “It’s about me, isn’t it? We might as well hear what they’re saying.”
There she was, Leslie Wong, looking exactly the same as she had when I was thirteen, her shoulder-length hair perfectly coiffed, the teeth perfectly straight. To me, the sound of her voice was like nails being dragged down a chalkboard, but I tried to remind myself that it wasn’t Leslie’s fault that she’d joined the news team the year my life went to hell. As the camera zoomed out I realized Leslie was standing on University Avenue, the fluttering yellow police tape behind her cordoning off the pathway between Ontario and Grant Halls.
“Isn’t that your apartment building?” Lucas said. We both leaned toward the TV as Leslie’s voice-over played against footage of my building.
“This apartment complex is where victim Katie Archer had been living a quiet life at school until the Kindergarten Killer, now known as Brandon Tomko, came back into her life and tried to take it a second time. Though Katie and her family have been following their ‘no comment’ rule established six years ago, her friends were quick to comment about the character of the girl we all knew as ‘the babysitter.’”
>
The face of Pompous Guy from my art class filled the screen and I quickly reached forward and muted the TV before we could hear whatever nonsense he was telling the world about me. I’d never had a conversation with him in my life.
Lucas was still gaping at the television like he couldn’t believe his eyes. I remembered that feeling. As a seasoned victim of the media, I shot right into action. Grabbing my phone—which I now saw had thirty-seven recorded voicemails—I left a quick message on Mariella’s machine apologizing for disappearing without filling her in and telling her I was fine and not to talk to any reporters. I sent similar texts to Em’s friends, though I was pretty sure they’d all gone home by now. It was lucky the semester was over. The journalists would be hard-pressed to find someone to give them a sound bite about me, which explained how they’d landed on Pompous Guy.
“You should call any friends who you know are still on campus,” I said to Lucas as I scanned through my insanely long list of missed calls. Where exactly had the journalists gotten my number? “If they’re talking to random people from our class, they know we’re together. I hope you’re ready for the spotlight.”
“Don’t think that,” Lucas said, pulling the phone out of my hand and tossing it across the bed.
“Hey!” I cried. “What? Think what?”
He turned off the TV and then tugged me onto his lap. I hooked my legs around his waist and laid my head against his chest, marveling at how perfectly we fit together in this position. Though my head was full of racing thoughts, I wasn’t too preoccupied to notice that certain very sensitive parts of our bodies were touching, causing a little flame to ignite in my center, its heat rolling through my body.
“You’re thinking that I’m probably having second thoughts about you now that our relationship is going to be broadcast to the world,” he said into my ear. That was pretty much what I had been thinking, though now my thoughts had wandered to other things. “But don’t think that. I don’t care about any of it. I just want to be with you. Okay?”