This Is How It Happened

by Paula Stokes

  “All right,” she says. “But you should at least try to eat something. I’ll make you some chicken soup. How does that sound?”

  My mom used to make me chicken soup when I was little—when I was sick, when I was cold, when I was sad. And somehow it made everything better. I don’t even know if it was the soup or the loving way she prepared it, humming to herself as she sliced and diced bits of chicken and carrots, holding me up so I could watch the golden liquid bubble and boil. All I know is that growing up sucks because chicken soup might taste good, but it won’t fix everything anymore.

  “That would be cool,” I say finally. “Thanks.”

  Rachael heads off to the kitchen and in a little while I join her. The soup is from a can, not fresh like my mom’s, but it still makes me miss being a little kid again.

  After dinner, Rachael invites me to watch a movie with her. I sit through the first half of it to be polite and then tell her I’m going to crash. I crawl into bed and try to fall asleep, but after an hour of tossing and turning I flick my light back on and decide to read instead.

  I’m eight chapters into the latest James Patterson thriller when my phone vibrates on my desk. I ignore it, but a few minutes later it vibrates again. I get up long enough to see the texts are from Elliott. I still can’t bring myself to read them, let alone respond. Whatever there was between Elliott and me is going to be gone as soon as he finds out the truth.

  My stomach twists into knots when I imagine his dark eyes filling with disgust. I remember the day I met him, how upset he was about the park volunteer who didn’t show up. How is he going to feel about a girl who wrecked her boyfriend’s car, killed him, and then let someone else take the blame?

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Elliott?” Confused, I whirl around. My room is empty but I swear I heard his voice.

  “Out here.” There’s a gentle tapping sound and I realize Elliott is standing outside my window. He gestures at the screen. “Can I come in?”

  I glance toward my closed bedroom door and then toward the clock. It’s after ten-thirty. If Rachael hears me talking, she’s going to know I’m not on the phone.

  I hold one finger to my lips and then quickly loosen the screws holding the screen on my window. Elliott vaults through the opening with catlike agility and lands on my floor without making a sound.

  “What are you doing here?” I hiss.

  “You weren’t at work today. I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He walks the perimeter of my bedroom, stopping to consider each of the photos of my dad and me on the wall. Then he sits on the edge of my bed and looks meaningfully at the spot next to him.

  The image of the burning restaurant flickers at the edges of my mind. “I’m fine,” I say tersely, ignoring his unspoken suggestion to sit. “I was feeling sick.”

  “Too sick to answer my texts?” With one finger, he traces the outside of a wild mustang on my quilt.

  He’s got me there. Ignoring the texts of someone who is worried about you is a bitch thing to do. “I slept most of the day,” I mumble.

  “Oh, good, then you’re probably not tired right now.”

  “Not really,” I say. “But if Rachael catches you in here, we’re both going to be in trouble.”

  Elliott grins. “Rachael loves me. She’d believe it when I explained how I only sneaked in to check on you.”

  A rush of warmth courses through me at the thought. While I was ignoring his texts and hiding from the world, Elliott was thinking about me. Worrying about me. Part of me wants to go to him and wrap my arms around him. That feeling of comfort—of being connected to someone—is calling and I want it more than anything. I think about the way Elliott kissed me on the roof of the gym. It felt so freeing until guilt caught up with me, but only because kissing him was like an out-of-body experience. I would really like to be someone else right now, but it’s not fair to use Elliott to escape the things I’ve done.

  “Okay, and now you’ve checked, so . . .”

  He slouches forward slightly. “You want me to leave?”

  “I, no . . . I don’t know.” Pain knifes through my chest. Of course I don’t want him to leave, but I know he’s going to leave eventually, so better now than later.

  “I have a question,” he says.

  “Okay,” I say slowly.

  “Am I just, like, total friend-zone material to you?”

  “Uh . . . what?”

  “I know you said you weren’t ready, and I respect that. But I also know how you don’t like to hurt people’s feelings, so I’ve been wondering if maybe you just said that to be nice.”

  “Elliott. It’s—”

  “Not me, it’s you?” he asks, a twinge of bitterness creeping into his playful tone.

  “No.” I sit next to him and punch him gently in the arm. “Well, it’s definitely me, but it isn’t that you’re friend-zone material. I mean, you know you’re hot, right?”

  “Well, my dads are always saying I’m the handsome one in the family, but it’s always nice to hear a girl say it, too. Especially if she’s under fifty.”

  “You’re hot,” I assure him. “And more importantly, you’ve been incredible to me. Supportive. Kind. You’ve shown me so many things since I got here. And all I ever did was help you carry some lumber. So I guess whatever this is between us, I don’t feel like I deserve it.” My voice cracks. “It doesn’t feel real to me.”

  Elliott reaches for my hand. “The way I feel is real.” My fingers fall into the gaps between his. This small simple contact is an anchor, a tether to the real world, a way to keep my brain from spinning off into cyberspace where the hashtags are waiting for me.

  “Don’t let go,” I whisper.

  “I’m not letting go.” Maintaining his grip on my hand, he reclines back on my bed, pulling me with him. He curls onto his side. Gently, he adjusts my body until our chests are touching, our legs intertwined. “But why doesn’t this feel real to you?”

  I consider his closeness, the constellation of freckles under his left eye, the way he smells, the angle of his jawline. Each of these tiny things is beautiful—its own kind of magic.

  And I don’t deserve any of it.

  The hashtags blink on in my head: #HeartlessBitch, #Coward, #Liar, #Killer. Finally I can’t take it anymore. “It doesn’t feel real because you don’t know anything about me,” I blurt out. “I’ve been lying to everyone all summer. You don’t even know my real name.” I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t bear to see the look on his face.

  Elliott drags one fingertip down the scar on my cheekbone. “You’re wrong. I hope you’re not mad, but I know who you are, Genevieve. I know what you’ve been going through.”

  My stomach lurches as my eyes flick open and I sit up. “What?” Elliott is the last person I expected to be following the Dallas Kade story. But he knows my name, so clearly he knows something. “How?”

  “I overheard Rachael talking on the phone when you were in the hospital and they didn’t think you were going to live. She didn’t mention the accident to anyone, even when we could all tell something was wrong, so please don’t be mad at her,” Elliott says. “I was worried. So I eavesdropped. I heard her mention Dallas Kade and a car accident. I heard her telling your dad she loved him, and not to give up hope. Then I heard her breaking down into tears after she hung up.”

  Hearing about the way Rachael supported my dad makes me feel like even more of a bitch for the way I treated both of them. But that’s not what hurts the most. Everything with Elliott makes sense now. “So I’m just a wounded bird to you or something? An innocent little animal who needs fixing?”

  “What? No,” Elliott says. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “So you weren’t attracted to me just because I needed . . . help?” It’s a struggle to force out the last word.

  “Maybe initially. Is that so terrible? That I saw someone hurting and wanted to help? But since then, no. I like all of you, Genevieve. At least all the pieces you’ve been willi
ng to share with me.”

  My chest aches at the sound of my name—my real name—coming from his lips. My heart rises into my throat. “Are you still following the story?”

  “No,” Elliott says. “I never had any interest in following the story. I was just curious to know more about you after we worked together at the park. I tend not to believe anything on the internet, so once I knew the basic facts I dropped it. It explained why you were so sad.”

  “No, it didn’t,” I choke out. “You don’t know half of it.”

  There’s a noise outside my door and I freeze. I lie back down on the bed and Elliott scoots close to me. I pull the quilt up until it covers all of us. It’s just Elliott, me, and a handful of horses hiding away in a cave made of fabric.

  “So tell me,” he says.

  I swallow back a sob. “I want to tell you—God, it would feel so good to finally let it out—but if I do, you’ll leave. Like my dad left, like Dallas left. Only this time it’ll be worse because I’ll deserve it.”

  Elliott squeezes the fingers of the hand that is still twined through his. “I promise you, I won’t leave.”

  “How can you make that kind of promise?” I whisper.

  “Because I’m not perfect. I don’t expect my friends to be perfect either.”

  “But what if I did something terrible?”

  He pets my hair. “Maybe you did do something terrible, but that doesn’t make you terrible, okay? I’ve done bad things, but I don’t think I’m a bad person.”

  It’s hard to wrap my head around Perfect Park Guide Elliott doing anything wrong. “Like what?” I murmur into his T-shirt.

  He shakes his head. “You first. It’s clear whatever you’ve been hiding is eating away at you. You need to just let it all out, because otherwise you are going to destroy yourself.”

  I blink rapidly. Is he right? I’ve been so obsessed with the consequences of telling the truth, I never stopped to think about the consequences of hiding it.

  “I always thought of myself as a good person,” I say. “But now I know the truth.” My voice cracks. “I’m a liar, and a coward, and a killer.” And then, from the safe darkness beneath Grandma Larsen’s quilt, the whole story pours out of me in a flash flood of tears and shame.

  CHAPTER 31

  Elliott waits until I finish. Then he says, “So even if Freeman’s BAC was over the legal limit, he’s not guilty of manslaughter, because his driving didn’t cause the accident. Yours did.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out,” I say tightly.

  “I’m just trying to understand why you’re hurting so badly.”

  “Because I killed Dallas.” A new wave of tears starts to fall. “I took him away from millions of fans. I cut short what would have undoubtedly been this epic life. And then when I realized what I had done, I let someone else take the blame. Everything that has happened—Freeman being threatened, innocent people being harassed, a freaking building set on fire—is my fault.”

  Elliott wraps his free arm around me and pulls me in close. I bury my face in his chest, sobbing into the soft fabric of his T-shirt. He doesn’t tell me it’s okay. He doesn’t tell me to stop crying. All he says is “I’m right here. I’m not leaving.”

  After I calm down, I tell him how my mom explained what happened in the hospital, but I didn’t remember much about that night so I couldn’t give the police any specific information. “It’s not like I purposely implicated him.” I wipe at my eyes. “But then I got online and started reading about the accident. And Shannon—that’s my best friend—has been texting me stuff. That day by the Visitor Center restrooms was right after I finally pieced together what happened.”

  “So why didn’t you tell the police then?”

  “I don’t know,” I say miserably. “No, that’s another lie. I didn’t tell them because I was scared. I had read the things people were saying online about Brad Freeman and I didn’t want that to be me. Do you know what it’s like to see people reducing someone to a series of hashtags? Horrible ones like #Murderer and #HumanWaste?”

  “Well, I doubt they would have been that cruel with you,” Elliott says.

  “Why? Because I’m a girl?”

  “Because you weren’t drinking and driving.”

  “Come on,” I scoff. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the internet, it’s that people can always find a reason to judge someone. They were calling Freeman a murderer long before the toxicology reports went public.” I shake my head bitterly. “I read the news articles published the day after the accident and the whole world had already made up its mind. No one gave a shit about the truth. They just wanted someone to blame.” My voice wavers. “I didn’t want to be that someone.”

  Elliott nods. “So does falling asleep driving make you legally responsible?”

  “Not criminally,” I say. “Not in Missouri, anyway. There are a couple of states where drowsy driving is a crime, but I think even those stipulate that the person behind the wheel has to have gone without sleep for twenty-four hours or something.”

  “So then it was just an accident, right?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like an accident. Accidents are things that are unpreventable. It feels like my fault. I should have known better. I should have known not to drive if I was tired. Especially not someone else’s car. Especially not when it was dark and rainy.” I sigh deeply. “If I wasn’t so jealous and insecure, we never would have been on the road in the first place. The fact that falling asleep isn’t an official crime in Missouri is just a technicality. It doesn’t make me any less guilty.”

  “You couldn’t have predicted what was going to happen.” Elliott squeezes my hand.

  “When the charges were dropped, I was relieved, you know? I figured people would leave Freeman alone finally. That they’d begin to make peace with the idea that Dallas was gone.” I shake my head. “I was so wrong.”

  “Know what else you were wrong about?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m still here,” Elliott says.

  “But why?” I bury my face in my pillow. “I’m the worst kind of liar, one who does something wrong and lets someone else take the blame.”

  “No. That might be what you did, but it’s not who you are. You were in a horrible accident, and then you were scared and everyone starting jumping to conclusions and issuing judgments and threatening people. I understand why you didn’t want to tell the truth. Just like I can see how badly you want to come clean now.” He pulls the pillow away from my face. “So do it. And I promise I’ll still be here.”

  “I do want to tell the truth. I’ve wanted to since that day we hiked Angels Landing. I felt moved up there; I felt guided.” I bite my lip. “But it’s harder to feel God in my bedroom when I’m reading endless hate on the internet, so then I got scared again.” I suck in a deep breath. “Yesterday I finally reached my breaking point. I decided to tell my dad, but he’s in Salt Lake City for work until tomorrow.”

  “Are you going to tell him when he gets home?”

  “Yeah.” I pause. “If you’ve known who I was this whole time, why didn’t you say something?”

  “Well, considering that you put a fake name on your name tag and didn’t mention anything, it seemed clear that you didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable around me. I could see you were struggling, so I kept trying to give you an opening to confide in me.”

  I think back to the way he called me Jennifer on the Angels Landing trail, to the way he asked about my scar and joked that meeting Garrett meant I knew someone famous now. He’d been trying to get me to talk to him this whole time.

  I tighten my grip on Elliott’s hand. “I’m scared I won’t be able to handle it when everyone knows the truth. What if the whole world hates me?”

  “First of all, you’re stronger than you think,” Elliott says. “When you start to doubt yourself, remember the gym. You did better than you expected. Everyone is capable of more
than they know. Second, the whole world is not going to hate you. Some people will understand why you remained quiet. Those people will respect you for coming forward.”

  “But other people are going to say horrible things about me for the rest of my life. I’ll never escape this. What happens when I apply to med school, when I go to get a job? Hospitals will Google me and find out I’m the worst kind of liar. It’s always going to be out there.”

  “If you’re that scared, you could always tell people that you just got your memory back,” Elliott suggests.

  I mull the idea over in my head. It’s tempting, but it would just be me earning all those hashtags that have been chasing me for the past couple of weeks. #Liar. #Coward. #Hypocrite. “No. I don’t want to fix a lie with another lie.”

  “Well, I think people like deans and doctors will appreciate the fact you found the courage to do the right thing. Sure, maybe some of Dallas’s rabid fans will hate you, but you don’t have to give those people any bandwidth. Just block them.”

  “I canceled all my social media accounts, but it’s impossible to insulate yourself from everything. Maybe some night I’ll be feeling ashamed and go looking for what people are saying about me because I think I need a little extra punishment.”

  “You don’t need more punishment,” Elliott says. He strokes the scar on my cheek again. “You almost died. You ran away from your friends. You tormented yourself with guilt. Enough is enough.” He turns my body around so that his chest is pressed against my back and his top arm is curled protectively over my waist. For a moment, I worry that he does feel differently after hearing my confession, that he’s moved me so he doesn’t have to look into my eyes. But then he lifts up just long enough to kiss me on the cheek. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m not leaving.”

  “Thank you for not leaving.” I relax back into the warmth of his body. It feels so comforting. But even that feels wrong. “Maybe you should leave,” I whisper. “I don’t deserve this.”