Accidental

by Alex Richards

  “That isn’t true,” Leah insists, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “This is hard for us too,” Gabby says. “How do you think we feel? Trying to protect you when you’d rather text your dad all night or save your breakdowns for your precious boyfriend.”

  Milo rolls his eyes. “Cut her some slack, Gabby.”

  “Excuse me?” she snaps, glistening with adrenaline. “Who do you think you are, showing up, looking like James Dean, stealing my best friend away during the most batshit event of her life? I saw the way she cried on your shoulder outside Garner’s class this morning. Oh, Milo! Make it better!”

  A flush washes over me. I used to love it when she got like this. All vigilant and lawyer-y. Now, it only burns. “Do not bring him into this.”

  “I’m her boyfriend,” Milo says. “Not her puppeteer.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure you’re a great kisser and all, but I have been Jo’s best friend since kindergarten, and I know her better than you ever will.”

  “You have no idea what I’m going through!” I spit back. “Shit, I barely know what I’m going through. You’re just mad because I’m not letting you dictate my decisions. It always has to be about you.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” she says. “I’m asking you to be honest about what happened this morning. Your dad is a dick. Leah, back me up here.”

  Leah’s eyes burst wide as her lips clamp shut.

  “I’m sorry you hate my dad,” I say, “but I don’t. And if you want to know the truth, yeah, it really hurt when he left this morning. But I don’t need you rubbing it in. Why can’t you be on my side and see that he’s important to me? After what I did, I’m lucky he wants anything to do with me.”

  “After what you did?” Heat rises in Gabby’s voice. “Do you hear yourself?”

  “Yeah, I hear me having to defend my own flesh and blood to my best friend.”

  “But you’re defending a convicted felon!” she whisper-shouts. “A drug dealer who kept a loaded gun in your house. He didn’t care about you enough to lock it up, and yet you’re acting like he shits gold bricks.”

  “Gabby, keep your voice down,” Leah pleads.

  My heart’s racing, wishing she’d shut the hell up too, but Gabby’s on a roll. Eyes ablaze, head shaking. She means well, she means well, she means well, I tell myself over and over, but that doesn’t make it better. Doesn’t change the fact that heads are starting to turn, gazes landing on us, one by one.

  “Look at you!” she shrieks. “Giving that asshole pass after pass, acting as if you’re to blame. I can’t stand it. When are you going to realize that it was your father’s gun? It is not your fault you found it, and it is not your fault she’s dead!”

  Gabby stops shouting and the room spins, taking my guts with it.

  Gun

  Fault

  Dead

  “Shit,” she whispers. But it’s too late.

  All the oxygen in the room evaporates as everyone turns to stare. Without looking, I can feel the eyes of the volleyball team, choir, mathletes. Kids can sniff out drama like McDonald’s fries, and this is no different. Over by the bulletin board, Annette Martinez has lowered her stapler, abandoning the student government flyers she’s posting in order to see what Gabby is frothing about. I’ve never seen anyone more paralyzed with interest. I pray for silence, but the word gun seems to roll through the room like an ocean wave, growing angrier as it laps against each table.

  “Wait, what did she say?” someone whispers.

  Gabby looks at me, eyes wide with regret. “Jo, I’m so sorry. I’m—”

  “You’re a bitch,” I seethe. “I am never. Ever. Talking to you again.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” she says. “I got carried away.”

  “Oh, I think you meant to,” I yell, tears welling up in my eyes. “I think you’ve been waiting for this. Well, congratulations—you officially don’t have to be friends with a murderer anymore.”

  The collective gasp of fifty students knocks me off balance.

  Milo catches me as I stumble back.

  “Let’s get her out of here,” Leah says to him.

  They each put a hand on my back—not Gabby, though. She stands comatose while they steer me through the room. Maybe Leah thinks this is a rescue mission, but we’re way past that. Our tiny prep school is a petri dish for gossip.

  The door bangs against the wall as Milo flings it open. He ushers me outside, shielding me, but the truth has already detonated. Out on the quad, eyes glom onto me. Hushed voices ask one another if they saw my epic fight with Gabby, if anyone knows what it was about or what my mother’s name was.

  “Amanda,” offers this senior, Elise Maxon—a girl from church, which is the only place Gran has ever uttered my mother’s name.

  Armed with that detail, phones come out, Google spoon-feeding them the information it took me over a decade to build up to. Looks boomerang off me—horror to sympathy and back again. My chest heaves, lockers spinning in my periphery. I can’t breathe or see through the tears. I might be dying, I think.

  “Come on,” Milo says. He squeezes my hand, tugging my arm till it strains in the socket. Over his shoulder, he says to Leah, “I’m going to take her to my house, okay?”

  “Yeah, of course,” she says, then pauses. “Wait, what about her bag and stuff?”

  Milo nods and sprints off toward my locker while Leah takes over the burden of keeping me upright. Cell phones ping and vibrate all around us, information spreading like lice. Leah’s motherly instincts take hold, and she wraps her arms around me, whispering that it’s going to be okay, that everything’s going to be okay. I bury my face in her curls, plugging my ears to drown out the coyote wail of my classmates.

  A minute later, Milo’s back. It’s like a World War II movie, the way Leah hugs me goodbye, weeping as my boyfriend whisks me away, guiding me toward his pickup truck in the parking lot.

  The news has already broken out here too.

  “Wait, what?!” Tim Ellison squawks, pushing himself off the hood of his Lexus. His blue eyes land on me for a split second, and even though he doesn’t know yet—doesn’t have any of the facts—I can tell his two-dimensional mind is made up as he huddles in with the other lacrosse players.

  Milo plants my listless body into his pickup, and the engine roars to life. Even though running away is a Band-Aid, barely even that. We peel out of the parking lot, past all the kids who know, past the ones who don’t, past everyone who’s about to find out. By the end of the day, every student will have heard my story. Every administrator, teacher, janitor.

  By the end of the day, the truth will be everywhere.

  18

  Milo’s house doesn’t smell of paint fumes anymore. And his bedroom isn’t covered in sports memorabilia and cologne bottles or whatever stereotypical crap boys’ bedrooms are supposed to be littered with. No, Milo’s room is this vibrant dusk-blue color with the Las Vegas skyline hand-painted in thin, white strokes along one wall. Palm trees, fountains, rows of buildings. I’ve seen him sketching it in notebook margins at school.

  “Thanks for letting me come over,” I say. “And for ditching with me.”

  “Sure.” He dumps his backpack on the floor and then pulls his black sweatshirt up over his head. I catch a glimpse of his abs, too distraught to be embarrassed as he starts fiddling with the Bluetooth speaker on his dresser. “But if I get detention, you’re going down.”

  “Such a gentleman.”

  “Right?” He smirks. “Hey, I would have broken through that shitty gate with my superhuman strength if the security guard hadn’t been on a coffee break.”

  “You have superhuman strength?” I gasp. “How did I not know that?”

  He flexes.

  We lay on his bed for a while, listening to Lou Reed. Clothes on, shoes off. Fingers laced together between us. I listen to Milo breathe and try to emulate the same gentle movements, even though my brain is exploding-throbbing-dying. Worrying about who knows and what t
hey must think of me. Picturing my life as one of Magic’s mangy tennis balls, bouncing to a slow roll and then dropping off a cliff.

  “She shot and killed her mother,” I can hear them all whispering.

  And then more and more gasps. “Are you serious?”

  “She was only a toddler!”

  “Who would do something like that?”

  “And her dad went to prison for it?”

  “How does she live with herself?”

  “Her poor mother.”

  “Her poor grandparents, having to look at her every single day.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and then open them with a sharp inhale, noticing a gun-shaped crack above the closet door. Even Milo’s ceiling knows what I’ve done.

  He rolls onto his side and puts his hand on my stomach, swirling tiny, gentle circles on top of my shirt. “Did you tell your dad what happened? I saw you texting him in the car.”

  “Yeah.” I exhale, focusing on the feel of his touch, the throb of Lou Reed’s “Vicious.” “He said he was sorry and sent a GIF of some giant marshmallow hugging a scrawny guy.”

  “Baymax and Hiro,” Milo says sagely. “I cried my eyes out at Big Hero 6.”

  “Softy.”

  “What else did your dad say? Is he coming back?”

  I try not to let the hurt show as I shake my head. “He’s got all that work stuff. But he feels awful. He wishes my grandparents hadn’t let it get this far. Me too, Dad. Me frigging too.”

  Milo sighs.

  I sigh.

  “Want to know what I heard?” he asks after a while.

  I crack one eye open. “Not especially.”

  “It’s good. I swear. This girl came up to me when I was at your locker. She told me how incredibly brave she thinks you are.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m serious!” His forehead gets the cutest, most defiant wrinkle. “It was Millie Redbone, I think.”

  “Nobody’s name is Millie Redbone. That’s, like, a children’s book character or a brand of butter.”

  “It is not!” He laughs. “I was standing at your locker, and this Millie chick came up to me and said to tell you how sorry she is. She couldn’t imagine what you must be going through, and she’s got your back.”

  “Mm-hmm. And you got all this by my locker? While I was comatose on the quad? How’d you even know my locker combination?”

  “Oh, I smashed it. With a fire extinguisher.” He nods. “Yeah. You need a new lock. But, the point is, she’s right. Millie Redbone is right.”

  I laugh. “Okay, you’ve got to stop referring to this fictitious ‘Millie Redbone.’ ”

  I prop myself up on my elbow and press my lips into his, relaxing as his mouth opens. We kiss to “Perfect Day” and some of the humiliation fades away. The reality of three hundred gawking faces becomes a little more diaphanous in my mind. Milo slides his hand along my back, nuzzling my neck. Kissing helps, but it can’t take away the rotting pulse in my gut, the slow burn of this forever kind of shame.

  The song ends and Milo pulls away, lips rubbing together. “And there was definitely a lot of talk about how beautiful you are.”

  “Millie Redbone again, huh?”

  He laughs. “Not Millie. This one guy—I think he’s a transfer. He could not stop staring at you. I bet he was undressing you with his eyes.”

  “The new guy?” I say, giggling and shivering and exploding all at once. “He’s pretty hot. And you think he was undressing me with his eyes?”

  Milo’s face reddens as he smiles faintly.

  I kiss him again. Deeper this time, lips on fire, desperate to give him everything. When he pulls away, we’re both breathless. His eyes search mine and tell me he loves me—even if neither of us has said it out loud yet. Things are moving at warp speed, but it’s also the only thing keeping me grounded. I need this to be my silver lining. With an exhale, I lean back, slow and deliberate as I undo each button on my leopard-print shirt, my eyes steadily on his.

  Milo gulps. His mouth opens as if to say, Are you sure? or some other generic bullshit guys think they’re supposed to say to virgins. But I bug my eyes out, pursing my lips as I give him a death glare.

  He takes the hint with a laugh.

  “The new guy is going to be really jealous,” he murmurs and pulls his T-shirt over his head.

  19

  When I get home, Gran is expertly mashing the potato crust of her shepherd’s pie with the tines of a dinner fork. Which seems like an anticlimactic meal after losing my virginity. Not to mention, I’ve stopped eating meat. But did I forgot to tell her that? Probably. She looks up as she’s putting the dish in the oven to brown. We exchange pleasantly guarded smiles, and I don’t wonder if I look different. I already studied myself in the mirror when I was getting dressed at Milo’s, and I look exactly the frigging same. Just with messier hair. Which I have since brushed.

  Silverware’s already in heaps on the granite counter, so I grab it, along with our everyday plates, and head into the dining room. Fork, plate, knife, spoon. I lay them out like solitaire, slow and distracted. Leah is going to freak when she finds out I spent the afternoon naked, tangled up in Milo’s warm flannel sheets.

  Fork, plate, knife, spoon.

  Shit, though. A pang of sadness dips through me when I realize I thought “Leah,” and not “Gabby and Leah.” Gabby was the first of the three of us to lose it. Sex on a summer exchange program in Belize. I remember her describing how good it felt, but also how sand got all up in her business from doing it on the beach. Which honestly still makes me laugh.

  Fork, plate, knife, spoon.

  All the bajillion times we’ve confided in one another. So many sleepovers, so much marshmallow taffy. I mean, am I never going to tell Gabby the way sex with Milo made me feel? I guess it’s too hard to explain, anyway. The root of its importance. The way Milo doesn’t judge me or withhold information or smother me in sympathy. That’s what I get from everyone else—a seven-layer dip of history. Milo only knows me as the person I am now. Someone half-broken and unsure of herself. Both younger and older than my years on Earth. With Milo, I get to be myself. Moaning included.

  “You feelin’ feverish?” Gran asks, cradling her shepherd’s pie between two potholders.

  Holy Lord. I am thinking about orgasming. In front of my grandmother. “Oh, uh, nothing,” I stammer. “Is dinner ready?”

  Grandpa makes his way into the dining room, and I flush even harder.

  We take our seats, take hands, take a moment to pray. Afterward, Gran grabs the serving spoon and plops this giant, steaming heap of ground beef, peas, and mashed potato onto my plate. It smells delicious, with a hint of Worcestershire sauce mixed in, but I force myself to stare at it, limp-lipped.

  “Something wrong?”

  I wince. “Gran, I’m a vegetarian now.”

  Grandpa laughs heartily. “Since when, JoJo?”

  “Since recently,” I say, sitting up straighter. “Since I found out Mom was a vegetarian too.”

  The two of them exchange a look over the table, petrifying in their seats.

  “Robert told me,” I add, as if that wasn’t obvious.

  “I thought we told you not to see him anymore,” Gran says.

  “You did, and I haven’t,” I say, which isn’t a total lie. “But before he left, he told me a lot of things about her. Best conversation I’ve probably ever had in my life.”

  Gran stares at me for a beat, misery-eyed. Her voice catches as she says, “Yes. Amanda was a vegetarian. She was many things. I can see why you took comfort in Robert’s stories. But I honestly think you ought to see the larger picture. You were happy before you knew. We’ve kept you safe. The less you know, the better—the less anyone knows,” she adds under her breath.

  I blink back at her.

  Because, it’s almost funny, right? That she would pick today, of all days, to suggest that I—and basically the world—don’t already know everything? The fact that she still thinks she c
an hide it is just so tremendously, incorrigibly obtuse. Borderline sweet and naïve, but I don’t have it in me to sympathize anymore. Not after today.

  I rest my napkin beside my untouched plate and gently push my chair back from the table. As I rise, I am met with zero argument. “You know what,” I say, enunciating each word the way they taught me. “Keeping it a secret has worked out perfectly. You’re right. The less everyone knows, the better.”

  Gran opens her mouth to say something, but when she sees me walk out of the room, she doesn’t bother.

  • • •

  In my bedroom, I feel the need to pace for a while. It’s barely eight feet across, but enough to get a good stomp-stomp-swivel going. Really, I should be doing homework, but then I remember that I didn’t get all my assignments because I left school in a flurry of disgrace at lunchtime. It becomes painfully obvious that Gran and Grandpa aren’t going to barge in after me, so I flop on my bed, glaring at the dull, wooden ceiling. I’m almost afraid to look at my phone, but when I do, there are about sixty texts from Gabby. All apologies, acknowledging her short temper and protective streak. I archive them without responding and notice an unfamiliar number sandwiched between a plea from Leah to remember self-care, and a cornucopia of heart emojis from Milo.

  The text bubble pops open. Hey, it’s Jenny Ireland.

  Pause. Our school is not that big, but I can’t actually picture her. She must be a freshman. Blond, maybe?

  I hope this isn’t weird, but I got your number from Leah. I heard about what happened today. I think I can help. I mean, I think my mom can help.

  I pull the comforter up to my neck, wriggling down till only my nose is above the covers. Her mom wants to help me? Does her mom sell time machines? I turn on my bedside lamp and keep reading.

  My mom’s a therapist and she deals with stuff like this. Traumatic stuff.

  I roll my eyes.

  I hope I’m not totally freaking you out right now!? I just wanted to put it out there. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. I heard that you only recently found out, so I’m really sorry you have to be dealing with it so publicly.