“Go to his house tonight. We’ll come over. Make sure he lets us in.”
“Us?”
“Mik and me.”
“If you two are dating, don’t come within a mile of Zach, Natalie,” Bishop said.
Natalie warmed to hear such protection in his voice. “Ew, no. I’m not going out with Mik.” Mik gave her a Hey, how am I that bad? look, and she rolled her eyes. “We’re going to bring Jaycee even if I have to throw a pillowcase over her head and haul her on my shoulder.”
Natalie hung up and stood, amped.
“Pillowcase?” Mik asked. “That’s how we handle her?”
“Yes, but we throw her over your shoulder. She’s turned into a giant since we were kids.” Oh my God, this could work. Natalie felt so much stronger all of a sudden. “I’m dropping in on her at the coffee shop tonight. You wait outside, and then we’ll just sort of…take her.”
“Settle down, Liam Neeson.” Mik chuckled, but then his expression settled. “Do you still want me to talk to Tyler about what happened?”
Natalie’s shoulders deflated. “No. I mean, no thanks. I think that ship has sailed.”
Chapter 33
Jaycee
For the first time in forever, I had plans. And yet, I’d been shanghaied to the café that reeked of toaster-burned bagels.
“I only have ten minutes before I have to go,” I told my dad, staring at the muddy swirl of coffee in my cup. “And I’m pretty sure this is just water dyed brown. My taste buds will never think this is a good idea.”
“Caffeine will convince them. Until then…” He opened a pack of Sugar in the Raw and dumped it into my cup. “You’ll get there,” he added. “And now we talk futures.”
“Noooo.”
“Yessss.” My dad sat forward. “Jaycee, you have no plans. No goals.”
“I knew this was a trap.” I should have suspected something when my dad picked me up from work, only to drag me across the street and force me to drink brown. “You said you were going to be cool about college. You said you’d let me think about it.”
“Are you thinking about it?”
I’ve always been a terrible liar, so I didn’t even try.
“You’re not looking forward to anything,” he said. “It saddens me and your mother.”
I used the little spoon to excavate a few granules from the bottom and sipped on those, crunching in the aftermath. “Who ‘looks forward’ to things? That’s old-timey. Anyway, it’s not even true.” I’d woken up the other night with a scheme inbound. A road trip down the old Route 66. I’d gotten up and searched out campsites and urban exploring places along the way, but then I’d realized that I didn’t have anyone to go with me. I didn’t even have anyone to tell my idea to.
My dad cradled his cup. “Natalie Cheng looks forward to things. She’s planning for college and graduate school. She even has several career options in mind.”
“You mean her mother has several career options in mind for Natalie.”
“Why don’t you talk to her? She could help you find a school, a major. Lots of things,” he said. “Jaycee, I’m worried about you. So are your mother and Dr. Donaldson.”
I snapped a look at him. “You talked to Donald Duck about me?”
“We had a family meeting.”
“And he’s in the family? Why are you just now telling me this?”
“I’m telling you now because it happened this afternoon. I had to tell them about your behavior. Dr. Donaldson believes”—my dad ran a hand over his forehead—“that maybe you should stay at Stanwood. Maybe just for a few weeks. We should think about it.”
His words sent a thousand volts through me, and I wondered if my skin was smoking.
“Please don’t get upset, Jayce, but you’ve become really…destructive.” He leaned forward. “You can still talk to me, you know. Or you could talk to Natalie. She wants to help.”
“Dad, I’m upset about Natalie!” I put my hands over my face to muffle a cursing stream.
My dad sat back. “Well, I didn’t know that you were upset with her when I…called her this morning.”
“What?”
“You nearly burned down the shed. It was high time I talked to your friends.”
“Dad, she’s not my friend, especially not after what I did to her.”
“What did you do?” My dad looked horrified, like maybe I’d tied Natalie up in the shed with the rest of Jake’s stupid, old toys and sprinkled her with gasoline as well. The truth was worse. The murdered look on Zach’s face when he read that note was going to stay with me forever, trumped only by Natalie begging him to listen, crying that she didn’t even know if she’d slept with Tyler. “What did you do, Jayce?” my dad repeated.
“I told her boyfriend that she cheated on him with his brother.”
My dad blinked. Then he blinked again. “Was that a lie?”
“No. I don’t lie. Natalie is the liar.”
“Okay.” My dad’s words came slow and careful. “Natalie didn’t seem angry when I spoke with her. She seemed genuinely concerned, and you know, deep down, we’re all liars, Jaycee, but we don’t all have the courage to admit it.”
At the table beside ours, a dread-headed guy reading Nietzsche looked up at my dad. “Truth, dude. Lying is part of the human experience.” He nodded at me. “You should try it some time. It’s good for the soul. A little fiction to balance out all the facts.”
“People lie when something they love is at stake,” my dad threw in. “Believe it or not, that’s good.”
“That’s not what I hear,” I said. “Wait, what do you lie about?” I was asking my dad, but our second-party friend answered first.
“I tell my fat cat that she’s not so fat. It makes her meow all happy-like.”
“I lie on my taxes.” My dad smiled.
“No, you don’t.” I paused. “Oh, so you just lied to me about lying on your taxes. Classy.”
“I’m not asking you to spread falsehoods, Jaycee. I just want you to imagine life beyond Athens—beyond Jake—even if it feels like a lie.”
The hippie opened his mouth again, and I stopped him with a glare. He got up and left.
I held on to the table and repeated my question. “What do you lie to me about?”
“Sometimes I say that I understand what you and your mother are going through.” He stared through the window. “But I don’t understand. I want to be happy again. I don’t want to forget Jake, but I want to keep living. I can’t understand why you don’t.”
I was quiet for a moment, but then my answer poured out of me, surprising us both. “You sometimes go a whole week without mentioning Jake. Did you know that? And you’re rewriting history. The other day, you said something about him being ‘a pretty good student.’ No, he wasn’t. He barely graduated. You’re losing him, trading him in for this happiness that seems more important than remembering your son.”
I was afraid to look up and find tears, but he didn’t respond, and eventually I had to check his expression. He didn’t look sad; he looked confused.
“What are you doing, Jaycee?” He set his coffee down. “If I’m rewriting Jake’s history, what are you doing when you burn and break his things?”
I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was angry with Jake, and I couldn’t blast open his bedroom door and pelt him with a peach pit like before. And I couldn’t even say why I was angry. Because he was dead? That was stupid. Who gets mad at dead people? Or maybe because he left me behind in this mess? Too pathetic. I pictured the space I’d made by throwing all Jake’s clothes in the basement and putting the ones I liked in the bureau. I’d even filled one of his drawers with my bras. Take that, Jake. “I’m making room,” I finally said.
“For what?”
Again, I had nothing. I tried to sip my coffee, but I couldn’t.
“Thanks for the warning.”
He left, and I found out about half a minute later why he’d run away. Natalie sat down in his seat.
“Are you going to drink that?” She sipped my coffee. “Eh! Too much sugar, Jayce.”
“Wow, so my dad brought in the big guns,” I said.
“We need to talk. I have a feeling that Zach is really messed up. We all need to help him.”
“I know.”
“You know because you’ve been talking to him?”
“Because I was there.” I crossed my arms. I couldn’t tell her the truth—that I had plans for Zach. Plans that had taken me a week to nail down and that were already in motion. Maybe I should have shared that with my dad. Something like, “Well, I might not be signing up for classes, but I am getting to the bottom of this Tyler Ferris bullshit tonight.”
I glanced at my watch-free arm. “Look at the time. I’ve got a date!” Natalie made an epically disbelieving face. “Is it so impossible to think that I have date?” I pointed to my clothes. I’d dressed up in my best tank top and my jeans that were actually designed to be worn by girls.
“Yes, it is impossible.”
“Let my dad know that I had to go.” I got up. “Peace out, homeslice.” I had no idea why I’d said that except that I was unnerved by this whole Dad and Natalie tag team.
I headed for the door, and Natalie called out, “Do us all a favor and say hi!”
“What?” I yelled.
“Don’t act like he doesn’t exist. It really bothers him.” She went back to downing my coffee. I shelved my curiosity and hauled butt out the door—and right into a pacing Mik. It was a car crash on the sidewalk. He bumped into a table, and I stepped on his foot, and then we did that terrible thing that you do when you try to walk around someone and they go the same way.
My face burned, and I grabbed his arms and steered him right while I went left.
Natalie’s words hit me like a brick to the face. Say hi.
“Hi,” I said—and kept walking.
Chapter 34
Zach
Zach was in his basement lair. The little pixilated mushroom guy on the screen jumped from cloud to cloud, and Zach’s eyes fuzzed. He was going insane. Natalie always said you could go insane from not sleeping, and it’d been five days. It was happening now.
He could even hear a tapping sound. “Nevermore,” he muttered. Then he laughed because that was a lame joke. But the tap continued, and he paused his game.
Was Natalie at his window? He couldn’t bring himself to turn around and look.
The tapping got louder.
“Hey,” a voice called out—a not-Natalie voice. “Unlock it or I’ll break it in.”
Zach crossed the room and unlatched the small, squat window. Jaycee pushed the curtain out of her way and came in legs first. She would have done all right if Zach hadn’t moved the desk from beneath the window—the one Natalie always used to climb down onto. Without it, Jaycee was left dangling. He grabbed her by the waist and helped her the rest of the way.
When he didn’t let go of her hips, Jaycee took the sides of his face in two firm hands. “Get a single romantic thought about me, and I’ll be forced to kick you in the dick.”
Zach jumped back. “What the…”
“I find it’s best to get stuff like that out in the open.” Jaycee looked like a girl for once, not dressed in tomboy clothes. She held up a grocery bag. Whatever was inside had the right size and shape to be a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. “I come bearing reparations.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I just so happen to be hungry.” Zach grabbed the bag and dropped onto the couch. He popped open the ice cream and dug his fingers in. After a few shoveled bites, he looked up at her. “Don’t judge. I’m not walking upstairs for a spoon.”
She held her hands up. “No judgment. I’d do the same.”
Zach took a few more bites before getting to the crap talk. “Come to stomp on my heart again?” Jaycee looked through the graphic novels on his bedside table. Was she shame-blushing? She was. Good. “You don’t just spring horrible things on people. You’ve got to have…tact.”
“Who gave you that word?”
“My little sister,” he admitted. Jaycee nodded. “And if you’re here to tell me to take Natalie back, I’ll have to refer you to Alianna. And she will punch you in the tit.”
“Sounds like a good girl, but why would I want you to get back together with the devil?”
Zach was so tired. Maybe Jaycee wasn’t even there. Maybe he was imagining this whole conversation. “Is Natalie really evil? None of this makes any sense. She hates Tyler.”
Jaycee sat forward. “I don’t necessarily think she’s evil, but she’s mismanaging her life, which is very un-Natalie. I think the key to what’s wrong is your louse of a brother.”
“Louse?”
“Scoundrel. Not Han Solo scoundrel either. Real scoundrel. Think Goebbels.”
Zach stretched, stiff from not sleeping. “So what is it that you want to do about my gerbil of a brother?”
“Mess with him. Find out the truth about what happened that night.”
“I’m in.”
“But you don’t even know what I want to do to him,” Jaycee said with a small smile.
“Don’t care. What do I have to do?”
“Be up at The Ridges tonight at eleven. Can you find that window where I led you guys in at the beginning of the summer?”
“I think so. Can I bring Bishop? He sent me an email and said he’s coming over tonight.”
“That’s fine. I’ll meet you guys there.” Jaycee glanced at the window and then walked upstairs. Zach watched her butt all the way. It was a good butt. Natalie’s was better.
He dragged himself into the bathroom and opened the back of the toilet. Inside, he removed a fifth of whiskey from a plastic bag. If he was going up to The Ridges with Jaycee Fucking Strangelove, he was going to need some liquid gold.
Hours later, the whiskey was down about six inches between him and Bishop, but the booze did nothing about the tension. They climbed the hill to The Ridges slowly.
“Wish you’d tell me what’s going on.”
“Jaycee said we were going to rough up Tyler.” Zach squinted at the moon.
“That’s interesting. Natalie and Mik had plans to kidnap Jaycee tonight. To make us all meet up in the basement. Guess Jaycee has her own mission.”
“You were going to trick me into hanging out with Natalie tonight? That’s why you emailed?” Zach couldn’t hide his hurt. He sat down hard in the grass beneath one of the redbrick towers. “What the fuck, man?”
Bishop sat down beside him. “Look, I know I haven’t been around lately, but I—”
“Oh, I get it. You wanted me to know what it felt like when Marrakesh left and you were all alone. You wanted me to know how shitty that feels.” Zach touched his nose and pointed at Bishop. “Bingo. Got it. Point made.”
“That’s not what I wanted, Zach.”
“Well, who cares. When do you leave for Michigan anyway?”
“Next weekend.”
Zach started to laugh and sipped his whiskey, but really he wanted to cry. Bishop was here because Natalie had sent him. “Do you know what Alianna says? She says that guys are bad at being friends. That I’m expecting you to be, like, my best bud as if we were still boys, but we’re both eighteen now, and all we care about is women.” He glanced at Bishop’s shadowy face. “You believe that?”
“Yeah. Unfortunately, I do.”
“Hmph. Women.” Zach wasn’t really mad. He was dumbfounded. “I never thought Natalie would be capable of
hooking up with Tyler. Or almost hooking up with him, but you know what? Sex or no sex, she voluntarily made out with him. Went to his room.” Zach handed the bottle to Bishop and caught sight of two people walking up the hill toward them. “Holy shit. Look at that.”
Tyler’s arm was around Jaycee’s waist, and her hair was down and long and beautiful, and she was laughing sweetly.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Bishop said.
“Yeah. Call for backup. We need the trench coat.”
“I don’t have Mik’s number. Text Natalie.”
“I don’t have her number anymore.” Zach wrestled his new phone out and sent a spastic text to his sister. “Well, if they really do drop by my house, Alianna will send them up here, right after she takes out Natalie’s kneecaps.”
They stood up as Jaycee and Tyler approached.
Tyler glared at Zach through the dark. “What is the crybaby doing here?”
Jaycee hauled the bars off the brick and yanked up the window. “I told them they could come.” She crawled through the opening, and Zach found himself chest-to-chest with his big brother.
“Do anything to screw this up,” Tyler said as he pinched Zach’s cheek super hard, “and I’ll piss on your bed. Make no mistake. I’m going to fuck her.” Tyler ducked through the window, leaving Zach to look at Bishop.
“I no longer have a bad feeling about this,” Bishop said. “He deserves whatever he gets.”
Zach grabbed Bishop’s shoulder in agreement, and they entered The Ridges. Zach would be lying if he didn’t admit that his heart was beating hard, that he was hoping that Natalie really did stop at his house and end up here. That he was longing to look her in the eyes and ask, “What happened to us?” The question had kept him awake for five days now, and if he didn’t find the answer soon, he was going to lose it.
On the creaky, old stairwell, Tyler caught sight of Zach’s whiskey and stole it. He drank quite a bit and handed it to Jaycee. She eyed the bottle and then took a long, deep swig—the kind of swig that only a person who’d never drunk before would take. She gasped, and Tyler smacked her butt. Jaycee wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and gave Bishop the bottle.
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