by Rose, L. A.
“Of course. I swear.”
“I’m trusting you.”
“I swear,” I say as genuinely as I can.
She pulls me over to a secluded corner, next to an armoire filled with empty beer bottles. “You see…I was Melanie’s cousin.”
“I’m so sorry.” My stomach plummets.
“It’s okay. It’s been a long time.” She laughs softly. “I went to the set a few times, to watch them practice. I was friendly with all three of them. After what happened, I saw my cousin change so fast. It wasn’t what Ben did that killed her, you know. It was the fact that no one believed her.”
My chests twists up as I remember what James said.
“After she died, I was terrified that Ben would do it to someone else. My family’s very wealthy, so I had some resources at my disposal to get him off the streets. I ended up paying someone to plant hard drugs in his home and then have it discovered by the police. It was all over the news—you wouldn’t remember, obviously.”
“Right.” I smile. “We don’t watch a lot of news in the Amish community.”
“I expected him just to get in trouble for possession, but when they drug-tested him, lucky me, there were actual drugs in his system. He must have been using for a long time.”
“Did he go to jail?”
“No. His parents hired a good lawyer, and he’s in rehab now. But it’s the kind of rehab where they don’t let you out for a long, long time. We don’t have to worry about him attacking anyone else, for the time being at least.” She sighs, and I notice lines in her forehead that I’ve never seen before, premature lines that she must be so careful to cover up with makeup every day.
“James and I reconnected at UCSD. At first I was furious with him, but after confronting him, I realized my anger towards him couldn’t even touch his anger toward himself. He said he owed me a favor. And when my first college friend approached me with this idea for the sorority we’d just joined, a friend who made me feel like a normal college girl and not someone with a sordid past, I called in that favor.”
“So that’s why he agreed to take out the winners of the Games.” I nod.
“I suppose part of me felt bad for him. Back when we were freshman, he refused to talk to almost anyone. I thought that if I could make him take a girl out, and be nice to her, he might be able to open his heart. But it didn’t work.” She leans against the armoire and smiles. “Nothing worked until you came and opened his heart with a crowbar.”
“Thanks for telling me this, Brooklyn.” I squeeze her hand. “It means a lot to me.”
I spend the rest of the night sitting with Iris, laughing at a surprisingly drunk Mags. Back in September, I would have joined her, drawing all the attention to myself. Now I’m content just to sit back, sip beer, and think quietly about everything I’ve discovered in the past few days.
How lonely it must have been for James to carry that weight alone, all those years, closing himself off to everyone because he didn’t believe he deserved everyone’s trust. I think about him in his apartment tonight, cooking or reading. He’d asked if he should come with me to this party, but I’d told him he didn’t have to. Parties are more exhausting for him than I’d realized.
I shake myself out of my own head and turn to Iris, who has some sort of bobble dangling from her forehead. “What are you supposed to be, anyway?”
“An anglerfish. Duh.” She raises her eyebrows at me. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”
“Right. Totally obvious.” I nod in an attempt at seriousness. “The most obvious.”
“And you’re a lion?” She tugs at my fake mane. “You do realize that female lions don’t have manes.”
“I know. I just wanted a mane.”
“You’re an idiot,” she says, bumping her head against mine.
“I know.”
We people-watch a little longer until one guy sidles up, a drink in his hand. He’s alabaster-pale and pretty with shaggy dark hair, just Iris’s type. He nods down at her.
“Nice anglerfish costume.”
My eyes widen. Her jaw falls open slightly. “You…knew what it was.”
“Of course.” He frowns. “It’s unmistakable. They use the bioluminescence sac on their foreheads to lull their prey into a false sense of security before eating them. It’s morbidly beautiful.”
Iris is silent for a long moment. Then she shoves her drink into my chest. “Fiona, hold my beer. This guy is going to take me for a dance.”
And just like that, Iris is occupied for the rest of the night. She and Anglerfish Man hole themselves off in a corner. When the party winds down and I meander over to ask if she’s ready to head back, the two of them are locked in such deep conversation about anglerfish that I don’t bother interfering.
I text James to say goodnight, but he doesn’t respond. That’s odd enough, but I’m so exhausted from the new little cyclone of information in my brain that I pay the cab driver, go upstairs, and collapse into bed, passing out without even bothering to put on my pajamas.
The next morning, I’m woken by someone shaking me.
“Fiona. Fiona, get your ass out of bed!”
I shoot upright, eyes gummy with mascara I forgot to remove last night. “What is it? What’s on fire?”
My eyes clear. Iris is sitting beside me, perched on the pink blanket she usually refuses to touch. After meeting her apparent dream man last night, I expected her to waltz in all glowy, but her face is drawn and tight. She looks even paler than usual. She has her computer on her lap, and she pushes it toward me as I sit up. “You need to see this.”
I pull the screen toward me. The headline blares, horror in inky black pixels.
Years-Old All About Us Tragedy Revealed: Melanie Sourret, Co-Lead, Committed Suicide After Assault by Benjamin Garner and Cover-Up by James Reid
“No,” I whisper, but I can’t stop reading.
Startling new information from an anonymous source has been revealed, providing a long-desired explanation for the cancelation of the wildly popular show All About Us, years ago.
Though her family long claimed that Melanie Sourret’s death was an accident, investigation of our source’s information unearthed medical records stating that her death was a suicide, reportedly a result of co-star Benjamin Garner allegedly sexually assaulting her. Garner, now in rehab, was never taken to court—the three were allegedly embroiled in a well-structured cover-up orchestrated by none other than James Reid himself.
The article continues to describe the relationship between the three of them, James and Ben’s close friendship, and the way they all broke apart. I scan to the bottom, but Brooklyn’s involvement isn’t mentioned. I close my eyes. It doesn’t help. The words are seared into the backs of my eyelids.
“Is this all true?” Iris demands.
“No. I mean—James didn’t try to cover anything up, not like the way it makes it sound.” I feel horribly sick. I need to call him as soon as possible.
“I wonder where the hell they dug all this up from.” Iris leans against the wall, covering her eyes. “Jesus Christ. Talk about a ruined childhood.”
“This is a lot bigger than your childhood, Iris.” I reach for my phone and dial James’s cell, but he doesn’t answer. I curse and hang up. Jumping out of bed, I change quickly, yanking on shorts and a tank. “I’m going to his apartment. He’s not answering his phone.”
“Fiona, if all this is true…” Iris looks down at her hands, brows furrowed. “I mean, how well do you really know James—”
“Better than anyone else,” I snarl. “He made one mistake and he’s beaten himself up for it every day since then. Did you forget how he reacted when Damien attacked me?”
“Right.” Iris nods, as if reassuring herself. “Okay, then. I just wanted to make sure.”
I drive to James’s apartment way too fast, but I can’t bring myself to slow down. That headline won’t stop pounding through my skull. Has he seen it yet? Is he alone?
When I get
to his apartment, I find that he’s not alone. There are five reporters ranged around his front door, ineffectively yelling questions.
“Were you in contact with Melanie before she died?”
“Did Ben Garner pay you to lie about what he did?”
Fury billows up in me and I shove through the mass, knocking someone’s camera to the ground. “Get out of my way. None of you know what you’re talking about.”
And then they swarm me.
“What’s your relationship with James Reid? Friend or girlfriend?”
“Would you have any relation to the girl who challenged James to fight another man at a party?”
“How do you feel about the fact that he helped a rapist get away with his crime?”
“Why don’t you get your own lives instead of spending your time dissecting other people’s?” I snarl at them, swatting a microphone away from my face. “What makes you think I’m going to answer a single one of your questions? You don’t know James. You don’t know what a good person he is. He’s too good for this circus of bullshit, so back off!”
Just then, the door opens and James is standing there. He surveys the scene coldly. “Get inside,” he says to me.
The sight of him drives the reporters into such a frenzy that they all press forward at once, jostling me. I stumble, but James’s hand finds me before I can fall and pulls me inside.
He slams the door shut. The noise ricochets throughout the whole house.
I try to catch my breath, leaning forward with my hands on my knees. “James, I’m so sorry, I have no idea how—”
“Save it,” he says.
I look up, stunned. His voice carries the same icy, clean emptiness that it did when he confronted Sigrid, but his eyes tell the truth. They sear with hurt.
“I should have known.” He gives a short, harsh laugh. “I should have known.”
The noises of the reporters outside the door fade into the distance. “Should have known what, exactly?”
“You’ve always been about the attention, haven’t you? You just love being the center of it all.” He spits the words with cool fury. “After the first two articles about you, I should have known. You’re their source. You’ve been feeding them information on me all along.”
For a moment, I’m too shocked to speak. Then I draw myself up, my lungs sizzling with everything I have to say. “Are you fucking kidding me? You honestly think I’m capable of that?”
“You’re capable of anything, aren’t you?” His tone hasn’t changed, but his eyes have shifted to sadness. “I thought you were different.”
“James, you know me.” The fact that he can look at me like this, that we’ve been through so much together and he can still think me capable of that, nearly drives me insane. “How can you think I’d do something like that?”
He simply shakes his head. “You need to leave.”
“You won’t even give me a chance?” I’m breathless with anger.
He looks me dead in the eye. “I’d give you a chance if you deserved one.”
And he opens the door.
The reporters try to crowd in again, but I shove past them, running to my car and slamming the door so I can’t hear them, blasting the radio so loud that I’m hearing nothing and everything at the same time.
~21~
James doesn’t show up in Philosophy class the next day.
Or the day after that.
Or the day after that.
The school is divided on their opinion of James. Some—girls who used to swap stories about how he’d walked past them in the hallway—whisper behind their hands about how they always knew something was off about him, how they always guessed the show’s cancellation had sordid details behind it. Some are convinced that Melanie was lying, that Ben Garner could never have done something so awful. The worst ones think it shouldn’t be a big deal at all.
“What does it matter what he did to her just one time?” I overhear a girl telling another on the way to class. “They shouldn’t have canceled the whole show over it. It was just one time.”
James hasn’t messaged me. Or called. And I haven’t called him either. I try as best I can to hold on to my original anger, the disbelief that he could fail to understand me so completely, but it faded after the initial fight. All that’s left is sadness. And an ache in my chest that won’t seem to go away.
After a few days of me moping alone in my room, Iris intervenes.
“The last party before Christmas break is tonight and you’re coming,” she informs me, tearing my blankets off me with unwonted aggression. “Mags’s new boyfriend is coming. My new boyfriend is coming. And so are you.”
I don’t bother beating around the bush. “What if James is there?”
“He hasn’t shown up to a single party since that article came out.” Iris sighs deeply. “Look, you know how I feel about romance and advice-giving and all that, but you need to call him. This is getting ridiculous. It’s just a misunderstanding.”
“He thinks I did something horrible.”
“Of course he does! You were the only person he told and a day later it’s all over the internet. It’s completely reasonable. I’d suspect you, for Christ’s sake.”
“I know, but…” I yelled at him. I stormed off. I want nothing more than to talk to him again, but my stupid pride—the pride I’d thought I’d gotten rid of—won’t let me.
She tugs on my hand. “Just come to the party. Please.”
Finally, I let her drag me out of bed, slap some eyeliner and a dress on me, and stick me in her car. I have no real interest in going to the party. I have no real interest in anything. But Iris can be obnoxiously determined when she wants to be.
When I get there, I suddenly understand why the dress Iris put on me was green, and why she made me wear my red earrings. The party is Christmas-themed. Colorful lights are strung everywhere, someone stuck a blow-up Wal-Mart tree in the living room, and there’s an inordinate number of sexy elves.
“I am so not up for all this holiday cheer,” I growl. “How can you even have a Christmas-themed party in California? It doesn’t snow! Santa would need a yacht pulled by aqua-reindeer, not a sled.”
“Maybe the California Santa does have a yacht. It would suit him, since Christmas is a holiday driven by corporate greed and capitalism. Now come on, they have spiked eggnog.”
The idea of drinking spiked eggnog when it’s seventy degrees outside seems fundamentally wrong to me, but the idea of not drinking when I’m this depressed is even worse. It turns out that spiked eggnog is a close approximation to what I always imagined the devil’s jizz would taste like, but I drink it anyway. At least five people have asked me about James since I walked into the room and if I’m sober the next time someone does it, I run the risk of attempting to decapitate everyone in the room.
The next person to do it is Ellie. She’s wearing fake pointed ears and very little else. “Hey, Farrah—”
“Fiona,” I correct.
“Right.” She beams at me. “Have you heard from James? Nobody’s seen him much since that article came out, and I know you two were a mega item—”
“Why do you care?” I interrupt. “Why are you talking to me like we’re buddies? You’re one of Sigrid’s best friends, aren’t you? Haven’t you been programmed by your evil robot overlord to hate me?”
“Resistant to programming,” she says brightly, tapping her skull. “I don’t hang out much with Sigrid and Amber anymore, actually. They’re a bit intense. And I’ve never seen anything as funny as that time you threw juice all over her.”
She laughs loudly, snorting a little. I’m beginning to understand why she was friends with Sigrid—she’s crazy.
“I’ll be sure to call you next time I’m planning on dousing her with a beverage,” I say, edging away.
“Oh, please do!”
I look for Iris, but she’s off with her creepy new beau. I end up finding myself a seat in the dining room, pretending to be interested in
a game of beer pong. No matter what theme the party has, there’s always a game of beer pong.
A few weeks ago, the party scene was everything to me. It was the whole point of life—being young, having fun, taking risks. Looking around now, it all seems so shallow. People drinking to feel closer to each other. People drinking to forget that test tomorrow, to forget what they did to someone who trusted them. To pretend their lives are under control by spiraling out of it.
I’m heading to the kitchen to grab one last drink before leaving when I’m ambushed. Sigrid steps out in front of me, so suddenly that I’m not prepared and nearly fall on my face.
“Fiona—” she starts.
I wave my hands, trying to banish fear. “What are you doing here? This is a Phi Delta Chi-only party.”
“Brooklyn gave me permission to come to this one, as a sort of goodbye. And because I wanted the chance to apologize to you.” She folds her hands in a gesture that could be interpreted as contriteness, but only by idiots.
“Oh yeah?” I cross my arms. “Go right ahead.”
“I shouldn’t have bothered you. I realize now that James has the right to date anyone he wants.” Hesitancy mars her words. Is she being sincere? The usual overtones of knives and blood are gone from her voice. “Getting kicked out of Phi Delta Chi kind of opened my eyes to how stupid I was being.”
“Stupid is a good word for it,” I say cautiously.
She lays a hand on my shoulder. “I wish you and James the best. I hope you can forgive me for the way I treated you.”
I rub my eyes and squint, but she’s still there. This isn’t a drunken mirage, then. It’s entirely possible that she only appears genuine through the haze of alcohol, but it’s pretty convincing either way. “Okay?”
“Amber’s here too. She also wanted to apologize.” Sigrid glances over her shoulder and frowns. “She was just here a second ago, anyway.”
“That’s okay, I’m—”
“Would you mind coming upstairs with me for a minute? She was there earlier and I think she said she forgot her purse there. She probably ran up to get it. And I’m sure she’d like to apologize to you in private anyway.” Sigrid cups her hands around her mouth and says in a stage whisper, “She’s shy.”