“So what if I was a little distant. It’s to be expected given what I’ve been through.” I knew for a fact nobody would think twice about me being quiet, more reserved than the Maddy they knew. In fact, the one time Mom had brought it up to my doctors they told her it was normal, that anger and refusal to talk were normal stages of the grieving process.
“There is a difference between being quiet and completely freezing someone out, Maddy. When was the last time you and Alex slept together?”
I was genuinely confused. I didn’t know the answer to that, couldn’t hazard a guess. He’d tried that night in my room, but I’d pushed him away, not wanting to go there.
“You can’t even remember, can you?” she continued when I didn’t answer. “When was the last time you were on a date with him or let him kiss you? Not coddle you, but actually kiss you.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“He’s not forty, Maddy. And you sure as hell aren’t married. He’s eighteen. He has absolutely no reason to stick by you.” She eased forward over the sink and adjusted her hair in the mirror. “And there are plenty of others more than willing to take your place.”
“And by others, you mean you.”
Jenna turned around and grinned. “I didn’t say that.” She didn’t exactly not say it either. “But I have come to a decision about something else.”
“And that is?”
“I want to be the Snow Ball queen. You had your turn last year. Now it’s mine.”
I couldn’t care less about the Snow Ball or that ninety-nine-cent crown Jenna was after. As far as I was concerned, Jenna could have every one of the plastic crowns hanging from Maddy’s mirror. I’d box them up and give them to her tonight if that’s what she wanted.
“Last I checked, voting ends tomorrow. Maybe you should step up your game,” I said. I might not have been interested in her popularity contest, but there was no way I was going to let her know that.
“Nope. You’re going to find a way to back out. I don’t care what you say or what lie you come up with, just do it.”
“And if I don’t?”
She leaned in as if afraid somebody in this completely empty bathroom would hear us. “You think Alex loves you enough to go to jail for you? He’s got a full scholarship to Syracuse to play soccer. You think he’s going to risk that to defend you?”
“Alex didn’t do anything!” I yelled. Or at least I thought he hadn’t.
“He knew what you were planning to do and covered it up for you afterward. Always protecting his precious Maddy. The way I see it, that makes him as guilty as you. So yeah, you’ll do as I say, because if you don’t, I’ll bury you, then him.”
35
The thin newspaper clipping in my back pocket was like a dead weight that slowed me down and consumed my thoughts. I’d done nothing but think about what it meant. I wondered how I was going to figure it out without Josh, and I was curious as to whether Jenna’s threat had anything to do with it.
I walked into the cafeteria. Everyone was sitting in their usual spots—Alex on top of the table, Jenna to his left vying for attention. Molly was at the end, three empty seats between her and the rest of Maddy’s friends. She had her Physics book out, a pencil in her hand and a notebook open next to it, seeming completely uninterested in the conversations going on around her.
Alex saw me and hopped down, waving me over. I should’ve walked over to him, sat down in my assigned seat, and pretended to be interested in whatever he and Jenna were talking about. But Molly looked so distant, so removed from everyone around her.
“Hey, why are you sitting by yourself?” I’d always wondered why she never tried to make new friends, why nobody, including Josh and me, never once thought to include her.
She looked up from her book, her eyes drifting to Alex before settling back on me. “It’s easier. I tried to make other friends, but eventually they had questions that I didn’t want to answer. Besides, I don’t mind sitting by myself so much anymore.”
I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. She reminded me of myself those first few days of school after Maddy had made her friends and I was still fumbling my way around. And right now, I could use a little dose of me.
“You know they are both staring at you,” Molly whispered to me.
“Who?” I asked, pretty sure I could guess.
“Alex and Josh. They’ve been watching you ever since you sat down here with me.”
I was almost positive Josh had been watching me for longer than that. I’d caught him looking at me when I walked in. He’d held my gaze for a second before shaking his head in disgust and turning back to Kim. Alex, well … he didn’t want me talking to Molly.
I leaned in, hoping Alex wouldn’t hear my hushed words. “Alex is a bit overprotective these days,” I explained. “And Josh, well, he was close to Ella, so he blames me for a whole bunch of things.”
“I’d like to say that things get easier, that after a while people will stop treating you like damaged goods. But as you can see,” she said, gesturing toward herself, “that’s not the case.”
She giggled at her last words, and I joined in, happy to hear the brutal honesty that everyone else was afraid to give me. “Yeah, well, I don’t mind being ignored. Kind of a nice change of pace.”
“Ignored, huh? I guess that’s one way to put it.” She went back to her homework, her attention shifting every so often to me. I guess she thought I was going to leave, that I’d get up and take my normal seat by Alex. Little did she know, I liked it next to her. I was comfortable there.
She flipped the page and gnawed on the top of her mechanical pencil as she mouthed the words to the next problem. I watched as she worked it out, erasing and rewriting the equation three times.
“You’re doing it wrong,” I said, and reached for her notebook. I copied the problem on a clean line, then solved it, making sure to show my calculations so she could see how I’d done it.
“It’s easy,” I said as I nudged the notebook back in her direction. “You gotta follow the same steps every time.”
She looked at my answer, then flipped to the back of the book to make sure it was correct. “How did you do that? I mean, you’re failing Physics.”
“Was,” I corrected. As far as I was concerned, Maddy was never failing another class again. “And besides, I’m not as dumb as everyone thinks.”
“Nobody thinks you’re dumb,” Alex said as he reached around me and yanked the notebook from Molly’s hands.
“The answer is right,” Molly said. “I already checked it.”
Alex glanced at the problem, then at me as if trying to figure out how I’d done it. Muttering something under his breath, he tossed the notebook onto the table. I swear I caught a glint of suspicion in his eyes, one that had me simultaneously filled with hope and fear—hope that he’d realize who I was and let me out of the confines of my lie, and fear of the rain of crap that was going to pour down on me if he did.
“Ella was helping me,” I quickly said, praying that he’d buy my excuse. “If I fail Physics, I’ll get kicked off the field hockey team, so she was tutoring me at home, teaching me how to do it.”
“You could’ve asked me,” Alex said. “I would’ve helped you.”
I’d forgotten he was a decent student and could pull a B in the regular college prep course without too much effort. He could’ve helped Maddy, and I found it odd that she hadn’t ever asked him to. Instead, she always came to me to bail her out.
“I could’ve done a lot of things differently,” I said.
36
Dad was sitting at the kitchen table when I got home, his entire focus on the small cup of coffee he had in front of him. He looked up when he heard me come in and tried for a smile, but it was small and filled with exhaustion. Wherever he was last night, it was obvious he hadn’t slept.
“Hey,” I said. “When did you get home?”
“Couple of hours ago,” he replied. “I had some
things to catch up on at work, then I went to your grandmother’s for dinner.”
I’d assumed he’d gone there … was hoping he’d gone there, but the confirmation was still nice.
“Your grandmother sends her love,” Dad said as he pushed the spoon around his coffee. “I wanted to bring you with me. I thought maybe some time away from school and this house would do you good.”
We had spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s growing up. She used to let us eat our dessert before dinner and never worried about the amount of dirt we tracked into the house. Even as a teenager I loved going there, loved the way she doted on me and made my favorite foods.
She used to draw like me, except she was better. She could paint, too. I never seemed to be able to master that—the whole color thing. I still preferred my charcoal pencils to acrylics and oils. It was my grandmother who gave Maddy and me our first sketchbooks. They were actually old ones of hers that she’d tossed aside. Didn’t matter. To us, they were massive sheets of clean paper that we wouldn’t get in trouble for writing on.
“I texted you a few times, but you didn’t respond,” Dad said.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my texts. There were three from Dad. I remembered my phone chiming in Spanish class. The teacher gave me a stern glare, and I’d turned it off without checking to see who the text was from. I had no idea it was Dad or I would’ve responded.
“Sorry,” I said, and shoved my phone back into my pocket. “I talked to Josh like you suggested.”
“You find the answers you were looking for?”
“No,” I said. “Just a lot more questions.”
“Any of those questions I can help answer?”
I took a seat across from him and grabbed an orange from the fruit bowl in the center of the table. I wasn’t hungry, but I peeled it anyway. “No.”
“Well, I’m here if you’re looking for someone to talk to.”
“Thanks.”
We sat there in silence—Dad hyperfocused on his coffee, and me on the lack of activity in the house. It was quiet, too quiet. Even Bailey was penned up in his crate, his nose pressed against the door.
“Can I let him out?” I asked, wondering what he’d done to earn time in jail.
Dad shrugged. “Sure, but he’s only going to pace a circle in Ella’s room and whine. It gets irritating after a while.”
I unclicked the latch and tapped my hand against the side of my leg. Bailey edged his way out, his eyes on Dad as if he was waiting to be scolded or locked back up. When Dad stayed silent, Bailey came to me and lay down on my feet.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked. She was the one I was used to seeing when I came home from school.
“Upstairs reading.”
I didn’t ask what she was reading. I didn’t need to. The way his voice dropped off to nothing more than a pained whisper was answer enough. She was reading our journals, the ones I saw in her room the other day, the ones Maddy and I kept as kids.
“She seems different now, sadder than before. It’s been nearly a month since…” I trailed off, unwilling to say the actual words. “Why does she seem more upset now?”
“Because you returned to school.”
Confused as to why that mattered, I said, “But I’ve always gone to school. Me going back—that was always the plan.”
“The entire time you were in the hospital, she was there, talking to the doctors and keeping you company. Then when you were home, she had you to take care of. Doctor’s appointments, prescriptions, watching you, making sure you were comfortable. Now that you’re back at school, she has nothing but her own thoughts to occupy her mind. And right now, well, those thoughts aren’t good.”
I was only home for a little over a week, but Mom spent every one of them hovering over me, asking me what I wanted to eat, kicking Alex out so I could rest, and talking to the teachers about the work I’d missed. It had bothered me back then. I figured her constant prodding was to keep me from losing it, from slipping into the darkness of my own mind. Little did I know, she was doing it to keep herself sane.
“I could stay home tonight if you want.”
Dad shook his head and stood up, poured his full cup of coffee into the sink. “No. Go and be with your friends. Go out with Alex. Don’t worry, I’ll be here. I’ll get her through this.”
I didn’t want to go, not when I was the one who had put her here, in a hell she couldn’t seem to escape. A dark pit of my own making.
“Do you think we will be okay?”
Dad tensed, his hands braced on the edges of the sink. I heard every tick of the clock on the wall, felt every beat of my heart hammering in my head as I waited for him to turn around and answer. When he finally did, I could see the worry etched on his face, the confident, it-will-all-be-okay attitude I’d come to depend on stripped away, replaced with an uncertainty that had me terrified.
“I will make sure you are okay, Maddy. I promise you that.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I watched as he weighed his next words, his mouth opening on a sigh before he finally spoke. “I don’t know, Maddy. She’s hurting, and there is nothing I can do to fix it. Nothing any of us can do.”
I got up to leave the kitchen, his last words thundering around my mind. Mom was in so much pain—pain I had caused and couldn’t fix. And seeing Dad sitting there, worrying about everyone and everything, made things worse, made the guilt I was carrying around that much heavier.
“Maddy?” Dad whispered after me. I stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I meant what I said the other day. I never once imagined what it would be like if your sister had lived instead of you. I loved … love you both more than my own life. Your mother does, too.”
37
Alex had soccer practice. I wasn’t sure what time it ended or what field he was playing on, so I parked next to his car in the lot and waited. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do. I was pretty sure Dad wanted time alone to talk with Mom, and Josh didn’t want anything to do with me. It was either sit here and wait for Alex or drive around aimlessly for hours.
I flipped the light on in my car and pulled the newspaper clipping from my back pocket. The words hadn’t changed since I’d read it last. No new clues hidden between the lines, no explanations waiting to be discovered. Same smudged ink hiding a secret.
The sound of voices broke into my thoughts. I looked up and saw the entire soccer team walking toward the lot. Some still had their practice uniforms on, but most had changed, their cleats dangling from their hands.
It took me a few minutes to spot Alex. He was near the center of the group, arguing with the kid walking next to him. Alex shifted his weight as if hoisting something farther up his back. It wasn’t until he spun around that I realized what—no, who he was carrying. Jenna.
He dropped her the second he saw me. She stumbled to her feet cursing but kept her arms around his neck. Her head tilted as she whispered something in his ear. It wasn’t until Alex pointed out my car that she backed away from him, that flirty grin of hers transforming to a pout. She didn’t bother to say hello to me as she passed my car, rather gave me a thanks-a-lot glare.
Alex opened my car door and slid into the passenger seat, tossing his gear bag into the back. “Everything okay? What are you doing here?”
I waved my hand in Jenna’s direction. “What is she doing here?”
“Field hockey practice, Maddy. The semifinals are tomorrow. You know that. You were supposed to be there.”
I looked out the windshield. Maddy’s teammates were there, hanging on one soccer player or another, but that didn’t make me feel better about Jenna plastering herself to Alex.
“The coach will give you a free pass this week. I had Jenna talk to him, tell him you were meeting with teachers each day after school to try to catch up. But next week, when they’re practicing for the division championship, you need to be there,” Alex said.
I held up my left arm as if that was explanation enough
. Plus, it was the last two games of the season, the two most important games, and I had absolutely no clue how to even play, never mind offer useful advice as I watched from the bench.
“Not being able to play doesn’t mean you’re not part of the team, Maddy. You need to be there. You’re going to lose your co-captain spot if you’re not careful. There’s only so much I can do to keep that from happening, and you need that on your college applications if you want to play at that level.”
It was the “only so much” that had me worried.
“Jenna wants to be Snow Ball queen. She’s after you as well,” I said, and Alex shrugged as if that was old news. “Are you sleeping with her?”
“No.” His answer was curt and quick, and at least he had the presence of mind to look offended. “We’ve been through this how many times, Maddy? Why do you keep asking?”
Because I’d overheard her talking in the hall. Because she’d clearly said that she was after Alex. Because I hadn’t trusted her since the first day she came to my house freshman year, all makeup and fake smiles.
“She’s made no secret about the fact that she wants you,” I said.
“Yeah, but she’s not the one I love.”
He reached out to stroke my cheek, and I pulled away. “I don’t believe you anymore.”
“Believe what, Maddy? That I am not sleeping with Jenna or that I love you?”
I had no doubt that Alex loved my sister. And I knew for a fact she loved him. But I couldn’t shake what Jenna had said in the bathroom—that sympathy points were absolutely working in her favor when it came to Alex.
“You seem pretty friendly with her, more so lately.” I didn’t know if that was true. For all I knew, Jenna was always fawning over Alex, but right now, for this conversation, I didn’t think it mattered. “And I know she’s been talking to you a lot about what’s going on at home, looking to you to make things better for her.”
The Secrets We Keep Page 17