It had started thirty-eight days ago, the dreamy fog I’d been swimming through. Since Joey’s death, life had been swirling by in swatches of color, waves of sound, thunderous moments of truth. And it was all out of my control. I knew it was up to me to regain some kind of order. But I wasn’t sure how. So I kept treading, ever so lightly, through each moment and into the next.
But then the marshmallow fell. Slid right off the end of that stupid stick. And everything that I’d been trying to hold together leaped right after it, directly into those writhing flames.
“Maggie!” Shannon squealed from a few feet away. “I just told you we’re almost out of marshmallows.”
I watched the marshmallow bubble and fizz from its place in the ashes, a blue flame melting it into a goopy mess.
“Here.” Shannon stepped around the fire and plopped down beside me, holding out the near-empty bag of marshmallows. “One more chance.”
People were all around, sitting on lawn chairs circling the fire, waiting for the fireworks to start as they roasted their own marshmallows to perfection. A shout came from a cluster of people bunched around the game of beer pong set up on Shannon’s back porch. Everyone was at ease with Shannon’s parents out of town, savoring the music, the fire, and the summer night.
Everyone except for me. I batted Shannon’s hand away, nearly toppling the fresh marshmallow to the ground. “I’m good.”
Tanna whipped her head around, her hair flicking me in the face. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Whaddo you mean?” I asked, trying to tear my eyes away from the flames.
“You live for s’mores, Maggie. Don’t try and tell me nothing’s wrong.”
“You really need to ask?” I flashed her a warning just-leave-me-alone look. She might have taken the hint. If it wasn’t for Shannon.
“Yeah. Something’s definitely up. I thought it was just me. But then I watched you totally blow Pete off earlier tonight.”
“I didn’t blow Pete off,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, my eyes away from her face, because I knew very well that I had. I’d been so surprised to see Adam round the corner of Shannon’s house, I’d turned away from Pete and practically run. I hadn’t seen Adam since the creek, more than a week ago, and I had no idea what I was supposed to say to him. Or anyone else, for that matter.
Pete stopped playing and turned to us, his lips parted like he wanted to say something, but he kept quiet.
“Pete was in the middle of a sentence and you just walked away.” Shannon gave me a little snort. I wanted to claw at her perfect little throat. But that image made me think of Joey’s lips, his warm breath, his tongue, all tracing their way up to her pretty pink lips. My whole body started to shake with a fresh rush of anger.
“You have been acting a little off lately,” Tanna said, tipping her head to the side and gazing at me like she was thinking that if she stared long enough maybe the real me would come through.
I rolled my eyes. “You think?” I asked. “Not like there’s a reason for me acting differently or anything.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Shannon looking at me with the same intensity. She leaned forward, her hair falling over her shoulder. “Oh. My. God. You remembered, didn’t you?”
I looked at her then, the way her eyes had lit up, glinting in the flickering light of the fire.
“You remembered what happened at the top of the cliff.” Shannon’s eyes locked on mine. “Tell me the truth, Maggie.”
Her words made me laugh. It was a sick sound that burst from me before I could contain it. And it brought Adam over from the shadows of the trees, his face creased with concern.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
I stood and swiveled around, facing him. “Shannon thinks I remembered something from the cliff top.”
Then Shannon stood, shoulders pulled back, chin up, her face a tight mask of anger. “I’m telling you, I’ve felt it all along. Something happened up there.”
“What happened between me and Joey at the top of that cliff is none of your business, Shannon.”
“The hell it isn’t.” Shannon looked right at me, her eyes harder than I had ever seen them. Meaner and more accusing than when she called Nick Hadley out for stealing Pete’s guitar back in eighth grade. “Why didn’t you jump, too?” Shannon asked. “How come it was only him?”
“I don’t remember,” I said, my words shaking with a fresh wave of anger. How could she stand there and accuse me after everything she’d done?
“He was all twisted up, Maggie. Bent backward,” Shannon said, her voice dropping. “Like he didn’t get the right start. Which makes no sense, because he’s jumped that cliff about a thousand times since eighth grade.”
“It was an accident.” Pete shook his head. “He was crazy-stupid sometimes. We all know that. And no matter how much we talk through this, I don’t think we’re going to get the answers we’re after.”
“We might.” Shannon shrugged, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and tipping her head my way. “If only she would remember something.”
“Shannon, that’s enough!” Tanna stood and placed a hand on my shoulder. “We’re all freaking out here. You can’t blame Maggie any more than the rest of us. We were drinking. And Joey? He was the kind of guy who would take a walk in the park and find a way to make it reckless. This whole thing is a terrible tragedy, Shan. But the only person to blame is Joey.”
“Guys,” Pete said, “Joey would not like what’s happening right now.”
“But why aren’t we asking more questions?” Shannon asked. “Why haven’t we—”
“What, exactly, are you accusing me of?” I asked, my entire body tingling. I felt disconnected from everything. The scene unfolding in front of me wasn’t reality. It couldn’t be.
“I think you have a secret—something you don’t want anyone to know—about what happened up there on the cliff.” Shannon’s words exploded into the dark night.
“Oh, now here we go. Let’s dig in, shall we?” I clapped my hands together and stepped closer to Shannon. “I find it ironic that you’re accusing me of having a secret. You have one of your own, don’t you, Shan?”
The anger in Shannon’s eyes flared and then flashed into something that looked like fear. “What are you talking about?”
I swiveled, walked around the fire’s edge, and yanked Shannon’s purse from under her lawn chair. I was pissed at myself for leaving the photo album at home. I’d thought about bringing it but was worried that having it close would make me want to attack Shannon. And earlier, I hadn’t been ready to face her. Because facing her meant everything I’d had with Joey would be all the way over. And everything we’d all had together, that would be over, too.
When I turned, Adam was there. “You don’t want to do this, Maggie,” he said, his voice a shaky whisper.
“Yes,” I said, “I do.”
“Here?” Adam swept a hand in the air, indicating all the people standing around, clutching beers and staring. “With all these people watching?”
“Why the hell not? They’re gonna find out anyway, the way rumors fly in this town. Some of ’em probably already know.” I shrugged, turned, and pressed my way back to the fire before I lost my nerve. Shannon’s mouth dropped open as I yanked at the zipper of her purse and turned the bag upside down, toppling nearly the entire contents on the grass before my fingers wrapped around her phone. Adam came up from behind and stood at my side. It felt good to have him there, almost normal, but I worried that he’d try to stop me before I was through.
“I was just wondering,” I fumbled around, pressing buttons to find the messages, ducking away from Shannon as she leaped toward me, grabbing for her phone.
“Wait,” she said. “You have no right—”
“I have no right?” I laughed, tipping my head back toward the heat of the flames. “Now that’s funny. Almost as funny as you asking me to tell you the truth.”
Pete rushed up from behind me and
grabbed my arm. “Guys. Enough, okay?”
“No. I don’t think so.” I stared at Shannon, not even trying to wiggle loose from Pete’s firm grip.
Tanna moved closer, trying to get between Shannon and me. “What the hell is going on here?”
Shannon’s eyes flickered between me and Tanna and Pete and Adam.
“What’s the matter, Shan? Wondering how much I know? Trying to figure out which parts to reveal?” I stepped toward her. Held the phone in the air between us, the string of text messages a wall that would divide us for the rest of time. “It’s over, Shannon. I know everything.”
Shannon swiped the phone from my hand and looked at the lines of text. “Fine,” she said. “It was me.”
“What was you?” Tanna asked. “Somebody tell me what’s going on.”
“I’d love a clue, too,” Pete said, his hand dropping from my arm.
“The night of Dutton’s party, when Joey didn’t go home, that’s because he spent the night with Shannon.” I crossed my arms over my chest, looking right at Shannon. I wondered if she’d admit everything. The sick truth is that I almost wanted her to deny it, so I could still hold on to a tiny slice of hope that my Joey was the real Joey.
“What?” Tanna asked.
“Whoa,” Pete looked from Shannon to me and back again. “Why didn’t you just tell us?”
“Because, Pete,” I said, “there was a lot more to it than that.”
“Wait.” Tanna threw a hand up in the air. “I’m sorry? What the hell?”
“Right. I know!” I giggled, this crazy sound that sparked in the supercharged air. “That’s exactly what I was thinking when I found the pictures.”
Shannon’s entire body stiffened. Then she pulled her shoulders back and looked me right in the eyes. “You saw pictures?”
“Someone left them on my front porch. There were, like, twenty shots perfectly arranged in this cheesy little album. And the pictures, they told the story of a sweet little romance. One that had been going on for a year, if I had to guess.”
“Almost.” Shannon stared at me, a flicker of nervous excitement in her eyes. “It was almost one year.”
I stepped forward, my hand screaming to smack her pretty little face. It made me sick, looking at her, thinking of how many years I’d considered her one of my best friends. “You wanted me to find out, didn’t you?”
“I left so many clues, you’d have to be blind or stupid not to have—wait a minute….” Shannon looked into the fire, her face glowing in the orange-tinted light, her brain stuttering over some new thought that I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hear. “You already knew … before Memorial Day weekend, didn’t you? That’s what happened up there?”
“Shannon, let it go,” Adam said.
Shannon looked to the ground, her fingers twisting, twisting, twisting a ring on her left hand. Then she looked up at me again. “Joey and I might have had secrets. But yours, it’s way worse, isn’t it?”
“You were supposed to be one of my best friends,” I said, “and this is what I get after finding out you and Joey had been together, hiding some twisted romance for a year?”
Shannon shrugged. “Afraid to be out of the spotlight, Mags? Afraid of what’ll happen now that people know he loved me, too?”
“Are you serious? You think that I’m angry because of—”
“I kept it a secret, Maggie, after he was gone. For you. I stood there in your shadow and let everyone console you like you were the only one who mattered. So don’t try to act like I didn’t think about your feelings.”
“I’m supposed to feel sorry for you now?”
“No,” she said, tipping her head to the side. “And you don’t have to feel sorry for Joey, either.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Remember that night at your house? Before the funeral, when you told Tanna and me how guilty you felt that he was still a virgin? Well …,” Shannon said, her lips curling up in a little smile.
That’s all it took.
One simple string of words.
Our friendship, the one we’d taken a lifetime to form, it vanished into nothing during the exhalation of a single breath.
“Shannon!” Adam stepped into our circle, placing his hands on my shoulders and squeezing tight. “That is enough!”
“Adam, get the hell off me,” I said, trying to pull free as he twisted me toward him. I jerked sideways, but it did nothing. His grip was solid, and I wasn’t getting away.
“Maggie, it’s time to leave.” Adam’s voice was firm, forceful. But there was something else there, too. An undercurrent of fear that swelled into every syllable. Fear that, at first, didn’t seem to make any sense at all. Until I realized the one thing that had been missing since I first confronted Shannon. Surprise.
It clicked into place when I looked into his eyes, the echo of his voice tumbling through my mind, crashing through the different levels of my awareness until I understood without question. “Oh, my God,” I said. “You and Joey were fighting about this, weren’t you? You knew everything this whole time?”
“Maggie, you have to let me explain.”
I shook my head. “You’ve had plenty of time to do that, Adam.”
“I couldn’t just—”
“Adam, I don’t want to listen to one thing that you have to say.”
And that’s when they started. With a triple bang, the first of the fireworks splashed into the sky, painting all of us a sparkling red, white, and blue.
All the energy that had been driving me suddenly drained away. I felt deflated, like someone had sucked the life out of me. And I had to sit down.
Right.
Then.
Right.
There.
I tucked my face into my hands and scrunched my eyes so tight I thought I might blink away the entire world.
But when I opened them, the world was still there.
I knew because of the feet circled around us.
The fireworks’ erratic drumbeat in my chest, Adam’s hand rubbing my back, his voice whispering in my ear, “Please, just talk to me Maggie. Please listen to what I have to say.”
The lip gloss and purple pen and key chain that I’d dumped from Shannon’s purse.
And the bracelet. Perched on a little tuft of grass.
The band was a thin leather strap.
I knew without thinking that it had once been tied around Joey’s wrist.
Moved with him, sliding up and down with the swing of his arm.
And the three turquoise-colored glass beads strung right in the center.
The sun had once played with those beads, like the flash from the fireworks did now, glistening off their smooth sides, spilling out to tint the world a bright shade of blue.
“Oh, Shannon.” I pressed one hand into the cool grass, the earth spinning beneath me, and reached out with the other. “You didn’t.”
Then I had it. That string of leather, laced between my fingers. Those cool beads flashing in the sparking light. Sending waves of memories through my already tormented mind.
Dash. Crash. Splash.
18
Then Suddenly I Stopped
“We’re gonna go on three,” Joey said. “You ready?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“You trust me?”
I looked at him then, took in his freckled nose, the wisps of damp hair clinging to his forehead, the way his smile always tilted to the left.
I nodded. “I trust you.”
He squeezed my hand again. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”
I ran my thumb up the inside of his wrist, feeling his blood, his life, pulsing through his body.
“One.”
The cool shock of those glass beads zapped my skin like I’d been electrocuted.
“Two.”
What was it about those beads?
“Three!”
Running.
We were running.
Almost there.
And I knew.
Those beads, they were Shannon’s.
A vision flashed into my mind—the dream catcher her grandmother had given her when she was little, broken, on the floor of her room, Tanna kneeling down, apologizing, while Rihanna’s voice filled the air around us. Shannon plucking the beads from the spiraled web, stringing them on a necklace that she would wear only for special occasions.
And another flash—school-enforced, ninth-grade cotillion, when Joey chose Shannon for the final song, a waltz, and I’d been so jealous I thought I might burst. Until Adam stepped up to me, his eyes intense, hand extended, and asked if he could have the honor of one single dance. I’d accepted, trailing through the room with his arms tight around me, but I’d kept track of Joey and Shannon. It was easy, the way those beads caught the light from the chandelier and threw shimmering bubbles all through the room.
Those beads, she thought they were protective. Sacred.
No one was supposed to touch those beads but Shannon.
Ever.
Yet there they were, threaded on the leather strap that was tied around my boyfriend’s wrist.
My momentum slowed, my arm tugging Joey’s back.
His hand held tight. Pulled me on.
We were only a few feet from the edge of the cliff.
And then, in a quick succession of broken images, I remembered. Her barrette in his console, lying there like it had been flung aside in a rushed moment. His shirt balled up on her bedroom floor, and the flimsy excuse she’d given for it being there. The mix CD she burned for him for Christmas that I wasn’t supposed to see. The times I’d smelled a hint of her perfume when she was nowhere near us. How their hands always lingered when they passed a bottle we were sharing. How, when we were all together and I was watching Joey, he was usually watching her. And how she was always watching me, a strange flicker of anger in her eyes.
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