Winner Take All

by Laurie Devore

  Here’s the first thing I discover when I’m left at the Reagans’ alone: Taylor’s bedroom window is missing the screen and has a low slope on the porch roof that makes the perfect perch. It’s where I am now with a huge water bottle I’ve filled with red wine. I can’t stand the taste of Mom’s beloved white wine, so red it is.

  It reminds me of what Jackson said to me that day at Raven’s. About being someone else. About pretending.

  But then I guess he was always pretending.

  So I’m on the roof watching the day go by in a lovely haze. Taylor pokes his head out, his eyes widening when they meet mine. “Nell!” he calls, climbing out onto the roof with me. “I didn’t think there was a chance I’d find you here. It’s hotter out than the floor of hell.”

  I shrug, sipping from my bottle. “I didn’t notice.”

  He comes over and sits next to me. “Give me that,” he says, trying to pull the water bottle out of my hand and taking a sip. “Ugh. That is terrible.”

  I pull it back. “I don’t mind it so much.”

  “This is, like, the third day in a row you’ve only left the house for practice. How much longer are you going to do this?” He means sulk, I guess. Or be useless.

  What Taylor knows is this: Jackson and I broke up. I am not handling it well. It’s sort of embarrassing to think that I’d sink to these depths over a simple breakup, but Taylor is practically family, so I’ve let him witness my self-destruction. He’s earned that trust.

  I consider Taylor’s question. I feel nothing but happy right now, calm, not a problem. Last night, I’d gotten a text from Dad and had a minor breakdown. Lia had gone off somewhere with Columbus so Taylor was left to clean me up.

  I saw the accusation in his eyes when I cried.

  “I think I’ll be done soon,” I tell Taylor. “Or never.” I twist my head around to look at him. “Who knows?” I drink again.

  He sighs, but doesn’t try to take the bottle from me this time. “He really did a number on you, huh?”

  “Very astute observation,” I agree.

  “I don’t know exactly what happened,” Taylor says, “but just remember, he’s done this a hundred times before. Don’t let him have the satisfaction of seeing you like this. I know you might need time to process, but you have to go into school focused, like you always do.

  “And I know you, Nell. You’ll come out on top.”

  I nod at him, as if what he’s just said is remotely wise. “I was wrong about him,” I say. “Remember what I told you in the parking lot during baseball season?”

  He nods, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion.

  “I was wrong,” I continue. “I said that if he thought he deserved something, it would come to him. That’s not true.” I shake my head, taking another gulp of warm red wine. “If he wants something, he’ll do whatever it takes to get it. He’s the hardest-working person I know.”

  Taylor looks at me curiously, maybe scared—I’m currently too drunk to determine—and then glances over the edge of the roof. “You’re not going to, like, jump, are you?”

  “I would probably break my leg,” I tell him. “And he’d get way too much pleasure out of that.”

  “Nell,” he says, very seriously. I sit still to show him that I am listening. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  I take another sip. “Thank you. Me, too.”

  * * *

  You know what’s funny about the end of something? You don’t realize how much that something took from you, and how much you gain back when it’s gone.

  The end of Jackson and me leaves me with something I hadn’t considered all summer: time.

  Time, time, time. To put together all Mom’s lies, to track her movements, check her mileage meter when she gets home to see if she could’ve possibly gone where she said she did. Time to think about Jackson, time to reconstruct everything he said or did. Time to wonder why I let myself believe in anything to begin with.

  The biggest irony of all is that I was built specifically for this kind of obsession.

  The clock says one AM and I am wide awake.

  It’s impossible to describe my state of mind, because for the past two weeks, I’ve rarely been able to think at all. My life feels like a series of events that’s happening to me. I had no choice but to hit Pause. I don’t want to run or think about school or volleyball or anything except my parents and Jackson’s parents and Jackson and how I solve this problem. Lia saw me doodling some ideas earlier—publicly out affair (crossed out), have Jackson arrested for credit card fraud???, graduate early—and took the notebook away from me.

  Betrayal is a curious thing. Because it’s so much more than one moment of stabbing pain—it’s like losing your truth, your guiding principle, your self. “You’ll have to work harder than them to get what they’ll get,” Mom told me the first time she’d seen me bent over my shiny new Cedar Woods Prep books, her fingers tugging at the end of my braid.

  I hadn’t known exactly who she’d been talking about. The other students. The rich ones. The boys, the ones who’d gotten off free after Bryce McCabe had died. All I’d said was “I will.”

  But Mr. Hart is the worst of them. So Mom has been a liar all along.

  Mom, Jackson.

  I keep chasing fragments of light. They bend before I can get my hand around them.

  My brain pounds against my skull. I’m considering getting some wine, but Mr. Reagan asked who had been in the wine cabinet at dinner tonight, and Taylor took the fall so I’m thisclose to being busted.

  I get out of bed, sneaking down the hallway. And then, I nudge open the door to Taylor’s room, navigating the maze of clothes on his floor. I pull up the covers and get into bed with him.

  His eyes open ever so slightly at the movement. He doesn’t jump, too sleepy to fully care.

  “Nell?” he mutters.

  I throw my arm over his torso, cross my leg over his, and hold on to him tight.

  He presses his cheek against the top of my head.

  “You were right about what you said on the roof,” I tell him after a moment. “They can’t have me. I have to keep going.”

  “Of course they can’t,” he tells me, sounding more awake. He doesn’t push me away.

  I wake up the next morning and go for a run.

  * * *

  I sneak into Taylor’s room every night for the rest of the week.

  37

  I’m scrolling through people’s pictures on my phone, pretending not to listen to the conversation Lia and Columbus are having. Lia is sitting against a propped-up pillow on her bed with Columbus’s feet next to her. He’s sprawled upside down on the comforter, looking like he owns the place. Lia’s parents are out of town for the next two days, and the look in Lia’s eyes had dared Taylor to say something when Columbus came in the door. Taylor just smiled his pretty Reagan smile and shook Columbus’s hand.

  “I heard Erin Clark has been running around with some CW High boy all summer,” Lia is telling him, staring at a picture on his phone, which he’s holding to her face, and smiling at the screen. “That’s no good at all.”

  Columbus throws his head back, laughing. “How do you even know that?”

  She smirks. “I know things.”

  He uses his bare foot to nudge her ribs and she giggles, pushing him away.

  “What about you, Nell?” Columbus calls across the room to me. “You ready to be back at school?”

  I set my phone down, avoiding answering. It’s the perfect time to leave, as I feel like I’m in their way anyway. “Doesn’t really matter if I’m ready, does it?” I ask, pretending to smile. Lia shoots me a sympathetic look.

  I flex my tennis-shoed foot out in front of me. “You think Taylor would go running with me?” I ask, watching my lime-green shoe.

  “No, Nell, you’re not using my brother as a replacement,” Lia says. I cut my gaze to her, and she returns it, her face dead serious.

  “Lia,” Columbus chides her. He sits up straighter.
“Nell, you probably don’t want to hear this,” he continues, looking over at me, “but he’s currently a disaster in human form.”

  “Jackson?” I ask, though I still hate saying his name out loud, the way it sits on the edge of my tongue like a taunt.

  “Look, whatever went down between you,” he goes on, taking a second to look back at Lia as if for encouragement, “I don’t know what it was exactly, but I know it was messed up. He’s always done some stupid stuff, had a self-destructive streak or whatever, but now he just seems like he doesn’t care about anything.”

  I keep my head down. “He never did.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Columbus responds, a little defensive. “He meant well sometimes. I’d never tell you he was a perfect person, but there was good in there.” He blinks, licking his lip. “I hope there still is.”

  “You don’t owe me any explanations,” I tell him.

  “Someone sure as hell does,” Lia chimes in. She puts her hand against his leg, holding on tight. It’s nice. I only wish it didn’t make me so sick to my stomach.

  “All I know is I’ve never seen him like this,” Columbus says, shaking his head. “Every. Night. He’s out of control. Always wasted or with some girl—” He stops himself, glancing over at me.

  I get up abruptly. I can’t hear this. “I have to go,” I say.

  Lia looks up, surprised. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said, about Taylor.”

  “I know,” I answer, pushing my hair behind my ear.

  “I’m sorry, too, Nell,” Columbus says quickly. “I shouldn’t have said any of that. I just meant, it’s not worth it, you know?”

  I push open the door with my toe, taking some pleasure in the scuff mark it leaves on the white paint. “Trust me, I’ve learned that lesson enough for a thousand lifetimes.”

  38

  It’s amazing how something you feel like you’ve been preparing for your whole life can just happen. You wake up one day and you’re seventeen with the end of this godforsaken high school journey in sight. You’re left wondering how something so arbitrary used to feel so important, wishing it was easier to care less.

  That’s how it feels walking into Cedar Woods Prep on the first day of senior year. Like I don’t know the girl who walked out at the end of last year. I put on that crisp Oxford, slide on the plaid skirt, stare at that same girl in the mirror. I slept at home last night and woke up to my uniform laid out, ironed. Mom’s work.

  Some days I see her now, and I feel my whole body shudder, as if rejecting an essential organ.

  As I walk through the doors of Cedar Woods Preparatory Academy, I find myself clenching and unclenching my hands, dreading the moment when the whole thing goes up in smoke.

  We received class schedules last week, but every first day at Prep begins the same way, with a school assembly. And, as everything at Prep is an overblown production, there’s no way out of it. Like being forced to attend your own funeral.

  I catch up with Lia, Michonne, and the other volleyball seniors and we walk to the auditorium together. The ones of us who didn’t play ball together during the summer are all oh my gosh, tell me everything you did this summer, and I do my best to stay on the fringes of the conversation, nodding along with Lia like we were absolutely on the same page the past three months.

  When I finally sit down in the auditorium, my hands are shaking. I’m not ready for this.

  Lia reaches over, putting her hand on mine. “Are you okay?”

  I nod my head, even though I’m not sure. She clings to my fingers tightly, and I think I love her so much.

  Mr. Rochester—dean of students—takes the stage to welcome us back to another wonderfully exciting and challenging year at Cedar Woods Prep. Usually, I hang on to every word of these ceremonies, but today, all I can think is that everyone will know. Everyone will see my vulnerabilities, written into my skin like a scar.

  “And without further ado, please welcome Cedar Woods Preparatory Academy’s head of school, Mrs. Mary Becker.”

  Mom comes out then in one of her perfectly tailored pantsuits. I can’t help but watch; she looks the same as ever—beautiful, smart, ready for battle as needed. I still seek her out like a homing beacon, waiting to be called home. To myself.

  I have to turn it off. That’s not who she is. She’s a fraud.

  I’m a fraud.

  “Welcome to another year,” Mom says. “I want to especially welcome our incoming freshmen and rising seniors. You’re going to see some highly accomplished individuals on this stage today, and it’s important to remember they were all in your place at one time. Our seniors will go through a lot this year—a hard-fought battle for the top of the class, acceptances into college, the last moments of high school. Saying good-bye. We can only hope that we here at Cedar Woods have prepared them as they take the next step in their lives. I’m very excited to welcome some of our top senior classmen to the stage to take part in the traditional pinning ceremony. Mr. Rochester, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Of course he wouldn’t mind. He’s already standing by the table of pins, looking so damn pleasant. Mom starts with number ten in the class, listing off accomplishments as she goes.

  Lia leaves when they call for Number Nine, and I watch as Doug makes his way up for Number Six, down to only a boot on his leg. And so the countdown goes.

  “Eleanor Mary Becker,” Mom reads off a piece of paper, looking up with a smile. “With a 4.876 GPA, captain of last year’s lower-state runner-up Cedar Woods Lady Knights volleyball team, South Carolina All-State Volleyball player and Region Seven MVP, an active member of the Cedar Woods Guild and Beta Club, cochair of Cedar Woods Students for the Betterment of Mankind, Cedar Woods yearbook coeditor, National Merit Semifinalist, Honor Society, and National English Honor Society.” I’m already up to the stairs by the time Mom gets done reading off my list of accomplishments. So many of them sound hollow in my own ears, meaningless padding. But that’s Summer Nell talking. Each and every victory means something. It has to.

  Dr. Rochester pushes the pin into the collar of my Oxford and I fake a smile as people applaud politely. I go to shake Mom’s hand, too, which I do without ever meeting her eye, and then move to stand next to Number Three, Ellen Ng.

  “And the current valedictorian for the rising senior class.” Mom says like it doesn’t pain her at all. “Nathaniel Jackson Hart the Second, with a GPA of 4.877, National Merit Semifinalist, and a member of the state champion Cedar Woods Knights baseball team.” His list is short, pathetic in comparison to mine. But the applause doubles because who doesn’t want a seemingly slacking guy to beat a girl who works her ass off for everything she gets?

  I see him loping slowly up the aisle and I look down at the floor as if it’s the most fascinating thing on the planet. It betrays weakness, but I don’t feel ready to look him in the eye, not until I’ve secured my place on top again. Not until I have my edge back.

  Besides, he doesn’t deserve to meet my eyes.

  He gets his pin and goes behind the rest of us to shake Mom’s hand. She won’t break because she’s a damn pro. She can look him straight in the eye and not blink.

  I want that.

  I glance up and our eyes meet for the briefest of seconds before he comes to stand beside me. My hands are shaking again, but this time it is rage and not fear driving them. We’re too close together, molecules displaced in the universe.

  I stay there, frozen in hell as Mom finishes up and forces everyone to applaud us. When she lets us go, I take off from the stage so fast, I almost knock him over, and I don’t stop. I keep going straight out the door and into the hallway. I turn one corner and then two to make sure no one can see me and then I command myself to breathe. To stay above water. To stay.

  My mind is racing. It has been for the past two days, and I can’t deny it any longer.

  Nell. Breathe. Nell. Stay. Nell. Hang in there.

  “Don’t give anyone anything,” I tell myself out loud, pressing
my hands into my abdomen.

  “Sounds about right,” says a voice from the other end of the hallway. And he’s right there. How is that a thing he can be? “We need to talk.”

  I can’t believe the way he looks in his untucked Oxford and rumpled khakis, his tie knotted crooked. Carefree. Making a mockery of an honor.

  For Jackson Hart, nothing is ever real.

  “No one can see us.”

  He steps around me, giving a violent shake to the handle of a door on the other side of the hall, and it gives. He pushes it open with the toe of his scuffed shoe and waits for me to go in. I do it, head held high, and he follows me and closes the door behind us.

  It’s a janitor’s closet. I hit the light switch and a dim bare bulb blinks to life overhead, lighting the contours of his face only enough for the familiarity of it to feel like a punch in the gut. The closet is small, way too small for us to be in together. There’s hardly room for the few inches between our chests and I hate it. I hate that still after everything, I can feel the effect of his gaze all over.

  “What do you want?” I ask, trying to remain as still as possible so that not one part of my skin chances to touch his.

  “We can’t be like this,” he tells me. I catch something then, in the space between us. The smell of alcohol on his breath.

  “Are you drunk?” I demand.

  “No matter how much we both hate it, we have to live with each other for the rest of the year. All year,” he says as if it pains him as much as it does me.

  “Aren’t I so damn blessed?” I bite back.

  “I don’t want this any more than you do,” he tells me.

  “Pretend I don’t exist and I’ll do the same.” I reach for the door handle and he grabs my arm, but releases it as quickly when I set my eyes on him.

  “You know how it is here, Nell,” he says, and I dare him to let my name cross his lips again. “It’s not going to work like that.”