by Stacey Jay
I knew this song was about me. Everyone knew. Isaac knew.
I froze just outside the back door, scanning the ground near the keg where I’d last seen Isaac but finding only men in white and black uniforms rolling up the Persian rugs, dragging them under the tent covering the band, dancing area, and food. The sky had grown considerably darker in the few minutes I’d been inside. It was going to rain any second, the sky burst open and cry like it had about this time two weeks ago, when I’d fallen to my knees in the mud, screaming in pain as the locket worked its magic for the first time.
Maybe the locket would work for me again and turn back the past few minutes, back to before Mitch started singing so I could pull him off the stage and—
I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. No! I didn’t want the locket to take me anywhere. Not now, not ever. No matter how horrible this was, the locket’s magic was worse. I had to make this better. Me, on my own.
“Kaley, you don’t know what you do to me, when you touch me, I can’t breathe,” Mitch sang, his voice making the simple lyrics sound like so much more. They were a confession, a prayer.
A prayer I couldn’t answer, and a confession that was going to ruin everything again if I didn’t find a way to fix this. I jogged down the deck stairs toward the tent, too panicked to know what I’d do when I got there. I only knew I had to find Isaac. Or stop Mitch. Or find Isaac and stop Mitch.
“Kaley! Ka-ka-ka-kaley.”
God, Mitch, why? Why here? Why now? Like this?
“Oh, Kaley, will you always be my best friend’s girl?”
The crowd at the edge of the tent parted to let me through, guys staring, girls whispering, and Rachel Pruitt smiling like the cat who’d pooped in the dog’s food and watched him eat it. For a split second, I regretted saving her life, wishing I’d left her where she’d fallen, head cracked open and blood spilling out to cover the stage.
“Come on, Isaac, where are you?” I whispered under my breath, eyes scanning back and forth, looking for the signature orange shirt.
Finally, I spied Isaac at the edge of the dance floor, where a few dozen clueless people still thrashed to the rhythm, oblivious to the major drama ripping the party to shreds all around them. He was staring at the stage, at Mitch, so still he looked frozen. I followed his eyes, finding Mitch and his guitar bathed in blue and red light only twenty or so feet away.
“Kaley, will you ever tell me it’s time? Will you ever tell me you’re mine?” Mitch sang, his eyes meeting mine above the dancers. In that second, the tension in the tent shot to unbearable levels, the air so thick with what-the-hell-is-going-to-happen that it was impossible to move, to breathe, to think.
Mitch stared at me, into me as the drum cut off and the last note of the song hung in the air. His voice drifted out alone, even more naked without the accompaniment underneath. “Kaley, tell him you’re through. Kaley, I love you.”
He loved me. Mitch loved me and he’d written a song about it and sung it in front of the entire world as we knew it. For a second, the weight of that wrapped around my shoulders and shoved me into the ground, rendering my legs useless. All I could do was stare at the stage, at Mitch, my skin prickling as applause stung through the air.
“Did you know about this?”
Isaac. I turned, numb and ultra-sensitized at the same time, and shook my head. I couldn’t seem to get my lips to move, couldn’t think of what to say. One of the boys I loved was staring down at me from the stage, expectation hanging all over him like strangling vines. The other was glaring at me from a few inches away, an all-too-familiar anger growing in his bright blue eyes.
It hadn’t happened yet, but I could see revulsion beginning to twist Isaac’s features, to transform him into the boy who didn’t love me anymore, the boy who had left me on the side of the road and ended three years together in a squeal of tires. No matter what, I couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t let everything we’d planned be ruined by a song.
So I did the only thing I could think of, the only thing that would make it clear who “Kaley” loved. I hurled myself at Isaac, arms around his neck, pulling his lips down to mine, pressing myself against him.
For one horrible second, he stayed stiff and cold, but then I felt his arm around my waist, pulling me closer, his hand fisting in my hair, deepening our kiss, his mouth moving on mine in a way it had only ever done in the privacy of my room. All around us, people hooted and cheered, but somehow I still heard the sound of footsteps running off the stage.
I still knew the instant that Mitch was gone.
Chapter Eighteen
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 11:42 P.M.
Come on, no one’s going to come in.” Isaac’s fingers fumbled with the button on my jeans, but he was too drunk to get it through the hole.
We were back in the blue bedroom where I’d hidden only a few hours ago, when I’d assumed life couldn’t get any worse. Before I’d lost my best friend and my boyfriend drank enough beer to float an oil tanker and decided he didn’t want to wait for a ride to my house to be together for the first time in two weeks, a month in “my” time.
“Wait, Isaac,” I said, covering Isaac’s hand with my own. “Everyone saw us come up here and I—”
“So what? They’re all too drunk to care.” He pushed my hand away. He was probably right—Ally’s parents actually seemed to be encouraging everyone to get smashed—but this still felt wrong.
I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be at the Home Depot, buying something serious enough to cut through the hateful chain still looped around my neck. Besides, Isaac was so drunk he hadn’t even noticed the two huge scars on my chest when he’d taken off my shirt. Did I really want to be with him when his mind was in a state like that?
“I’m not too drunk to care.” I moved my hand back to his, squeezing his fingers until he rolled onto his back with a sigh. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“Like it ‘didn’t feel right’ to leave without seeing Mitch Wednesday night?” he asked, a nasty edge to his tone that made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
“No, it didn’t feel right,” I said. “I didn’t want to be rude.”
“Oh. Right.” He laughed and pushed himself up to sit at the edge of the bed. “You wouldn’t want to be rude to Mitch. Since he’s your best friend and all.”
“He is my best friend . . . or was my best friend.”
“Is that why you invited him on all our dates lately? Because you’re such good friends?”
“We are all good friends.” I sat up and reached for my shirt, suddenly wanting to be fully clothed. “We’ve been friends forever. You know that. I just wanted us to be close again, the way we used to be.”
“Back when you had two little boys with crushes on you instead of one?”
“What?” I pulled my shirt over my head and tugged it down, crossing my arms over my cramping stomach. “No way, that’s not it at all. I just wanted—”
“Mitch has always had a thing for you. You knew that. I know you knew that.”
“That’s not true,” I said, even though Isaac was right. I had known, deep down, but I hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. “I’ve always thought of Mitch as a friend.” I reached for Isaac, running my hands in soothing circles on his back.
“A friend who, all of a sudden, you want to spend every waking second with?” He stood up, moving away from me, pacing around the small room. “A friend you built a fucking tree house for?”
“He was really upset about—”
“A friend who’s so important to you that you let me go home alone Wednesday so you could spend more time with him instead of me?”
“You ditched me and Mitch. You’re the one who wanted to go home!”
“With you! Not alone.” Isaac whipped around, glaring down at where I sat on the edge of the bed. “So what, Katie? One boyfriend wasn’t enough for you? You had to have two?”
The only light came from the Chinese lanterns glowing outside in the rain, creeping through t
he window blinds, but I could see the anger and doubt on Isaac’s face. He was lashing out because he was scared. No matter how cool he’d played it in the hours following Mitch’s song, he didn’t completely believe that he was the one. He still wondered if a part of me hadn’t wanted to run up onstage and kiss someone else.
“You are the person I love. You’re the one I kissed tonight,” I said, voice low and even. “I made it clear to Mitch that you’re the one that I want.”
“Well, you didn’t make it clear to me.”
“Why? Because I don’t want to do it in some strange house while everyone we know is downstairs?” I asked, starting to get angry.
“No, because you don’t want to do it at all.”
My breath rushed out between my lips. “Yes, I do. I love you, I—”
“You’ve hardly wanted to touch me the past few weeks. And then, every time I turn around, you’re hugging Mitch, leaning on Mitch, any excuse to hang all over him.”
“That’s not true,” I said, but there was a part of me, a tiny little voice that wondered if Isaac might be right.
My mind flashed on the way it had felt to dance with Mitch, the minutes in the apple tree when we’d stood so close, the way his forehead against mine had made me ache to kiss him that night at the cast party.
And the way he’d made me feel that night—his lips on my stomach, his hand up my shirt, the longing in his voice as he said my name. He’d made me burn in a way as beautiful as the locket’s burn was awful. In a way Isaac had never made me burn, never made me ache and yearn and need to be close to him more than anything else in the world.
Isaac was my first love, and being with him had been sweet and good. It had been a big decision for both of us—good Catholic girls and good Baptist boys were strongly encouraged to choose abstinence—but I’d rationalized a little rule breaking because Isaac and I had every intention of getting married. But now . . . a part of me wondered if Isaac and I were meant to be. A part of me wondered if love—and sex—couldn’t be something deeper, something more, with someone else . . . someone like Mitch.
“It is true,” Isaac said, his voice breaking. He was going to cry. I’d never seen Isaac cry. Never. Not even when he’d broken his arm in three places doing stunt jumps on his bike in sixth grade.
I stood up, reaching for him, but he held up a hand and backed away. “You’re only with me because you’ve always been with me.”
“But I love you,” I said, tears in my eyes.
“Well . . . I’m not sure I love you,” he said.
The words cut straight into me, puncturing the place deep inside where I’d stored away my own jealousy and suspicion. “Is that why you messed around with Rachel? Because you don’t love me?”
“What?” His brow wrinkled, his confusion so sincere I couldn’t doubt that his next words were true. “I never touched Rachel.”
My mouth opened and closed, my shock so complete I couldn’t think what to say. I’d been wrong. How could I have been so wrong? “But I thought . . . and Sarah said—”
“Sarah said she wouldn’t tell is what Sarah said. But I guess she changed her mind.” Isaac shook his head, apparently disgusted with my best friend. “Whatever she told you, it’s not true. Rachel and I were never together and with Sarah it was just that one time. One kiss at a stupid party, nothing else.”
“Sarah . . .” I shook my head, my mind refusing to process this new information. “You and Sarah?”
“Just one time. One kiss. We were both really drunk.”
Oh my God. My boyfriend had kissed my best girlfriend and they’d both lied to me about it for weeks. I felt sick and sad and broken inside, like there was no one in the world I could trust and I’d been a fool to trust anyone in the first place. Something soft and sweet at my core soured, turning rotten and bitter.
Still, even as anger and hurt made my cheeks heat and my palms sweat, the irony of the complete turning of the tables wasn’t lost on me. I couldn’t help but wonder if the locket hadn’t had some hand in making things work out like this, in making sure I learned firsthand what it felt like to be betrayed.
“I’m glad you know,” Isaac said, a hint of shame in his voice. “Not like it matters now, but still . . .”
“Not like it matters now?” I repeated dumbly.
“It’s over, Katie. You know it is.” His words made a desperate, horrible mix of excitement and fear rip through my chest, tearing up my heart. We were breaking up. I knew we were and it terrified me. Losing Isaac was the worst feeling in the world, but it was also . . . almost . . . a relief.
No more trying to fit in with his friends, no more worrying that I wasn’t as important to him as basketball, no more fear that he was going to decide he was too cool for me and dump me for someone prettier, better. No more searching for ways to connect with Isaac other than talking about Isaac.
And no blue eyes smiling just for me, no more Isaac hugs, no more Xbox marathons on rainy days, no more movie nights, no more kisses that feel so safe. No more first love.
Panic rushed in, banishing any shred of relief. “Isaac, wait. Let’s just talk about this some more.”
“I don’t want to talk.” He turned to the door and opened it wide. The light from the hall made me squint and cover my eyes. “You can put my stuff on my porch. I want my homecoming shirt from last year back for sure.”
“Please, Isaac . . .” But he was gone, stomping down the hall in time with some angsty song from the Lithium XM radio channel. Ally’s dad had hooked up the XM to the speakers after the band bailed, and the party had continued like nothing much had happened. Like three people hadn’t had their hearts broken and their entire world turned upside down.
The temptation to beg for the locket’s help came again, tiptoeing into the quiet room, teasing me with the idea that all this pain could go away if the locket would turn back the clock. But I knew better. The locket didn’t make the pain go away. Here I was, two weeks from the day I’d traveled through time to change and everything that mattered was still the same.
Isaac and I were over. Mitch and I were wrecked. And my birthday was going to end in a walk through the rain because there was no way I was going to ask Isaac or any of the people at the party for a ride.
The tears came, hot and fast. I was sobbing by the time I made it down the stairs and out the front door, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care who saw me, I didn’t care what Rachel and her friends would say about me when I was gone or the fact that I’d probably be one of the “out crowd” again by Monday, once everyone learned that Isaac had dumped me. I didn’t care about anything except getting home, back to the one thing in my life that was still standing.
My dad didn’t have gardening shears that I knew of, but we had the table saw, the one I’d used to build Mitch’s tree house. Getting my face that close to a blade that could slice through a two-by-four in a few seconds was probably one of my stupider ideas, but I didn’t care about that either.
The locket was coming off. Tonight.
Chapter Nineteen
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 12:32 A.M.
I was soaked through by the time I reached the end of my driveway, so wet and cold I could barely feel my hands, but I didn’t go inside to get warm. I couldn’t wait. I had to get the locket off, I had to know this ended tonight.
Shivering, rain dripping off the end of my nose, I ran around to the side of the garage and shoved the sticky side door until it flew inward, banging against the wall. Inside, tools and boxes and bicycles and antiques my dad meant to refinish but rarely got around to touching fought for space in the dust. Dad and Mom and I parked our cars outside in the driveway. We always had, but in this new reality it was even more necessary. The clutter was insane.
I flicked on the light, a single bulb that cast our family trash in sickly orange and yellow, and hurried over to my dad’s work-bench, hunting for the table saw.
But the saw wasn’t there.
“No. No!” I yelled, not caring
if my mom and dad could hear me over the thunder shaking the world outside. How could the saw be gone? How? I’d used it a week ago to build Mitch’s tree house.
Rachel. The falling light. I hadn’t used the saw since the second time I’d used the locket. Now my family didn’t have a saw anymore.
On some level I believed the vanishing act was just another little shift in reality, but on a more powerful, gut-based level I suspected the locket had made the saw disappear on purpose. It had known I’d resort to extreme measures and hadn’t wanted to make it easy for me to escape, to free myself from whatever hold it had on me.
“I don’t want you anymore. I don’t want to change anything, ever again.” I sobbed as I stumbled around the room, searching for something, anything, to use to cut the chain around my neck and finding . . . nothing. Nothing.
“Get off of me. Get off!” I tugged at the locket, pulling it up and over my chin. I was talking to an inanimate object and probably half out of my mind, but I didn’t care. I suddenly felt like I would die if I didn’t get it off, if I didn’t—
The locket slipped another centimeter, until it was pressed against the tip of my nose, balanced between the world of here and there.
“Oh,” I whispered, afraid to move for fear I’d make the locket fall back down around my neck. I’d never gotten it this far over my head before.
But then, I’d never been this cold and wet. Maybe the cold and the rain . . .
Moving slowly, making sure not to release my tension on the locket, I walked to the door and out into the backyard, until I was once again alone with the storm. Freezing cold droplets stung at me through my soaked shirt, but I refused to flinch. Instead, I pulled harder on the chain, tilting my face back to catch the full force of the rain, letting the water swim into my eyes and out again, blurring the twisting tree branches above my head until I felt like I was going blind.