I stopped on a corner with a bus stop and a bench and gave him the cross streets.
"On my way," Nick said. "How'd you end up there?"
There had to be a way to spin this that wouldn't sound like I'd been interested in Bradley. "I was practicing pitching with this guy from school."
"And he left you there?"
"Not exactly," I said. But my voice cracked, and with it my resolve to keep everything to myself. I let the whole story pour out, from Bradley calling me that morning, to him shoving me and threatening me.
The static on Nick's end increased, and I heard the choke and hum of his ignition. He'd put me on speaker, so he wouldn't have to get off the phone. Instead, he listened in what I could only imagine was stunned silence, peppered with questions.
"He tried to kiss you?" he said. "Wait, he did what to your legs?"
"I know," I said.
"You should call the police," Nick said. "You should turn him in for assault."
"No," I said. "I'm not really hurt."
"That's not what makes it assault."
I shivered. "I don't want to talk to the police. No one will believe me. He'll deny the whole thing."
"Still. He shouldn't get away with it." His voice had a defensive edge to it. No doubt his older brother impulses were kicking into full gear. "I mean," he went on, "what made him think he could kiss you?"
Oh, no. We were stumbling right into the other story. If I lied, and Nick found out about the party later from someone else . . .
"He thought that because I kissed him before," I said quietly. "I mean, after Haylee, but before today."
Nick was silent, and I knew what he must be thinking of me, kissing a guy who turned out to be so hateful.
"I don't know what I was thinking," I said.
"You kissed him before," he repeated.
"That doesn't mean I deserved what happened."
"No!" Nick said. "No, it doesn't. I didn't think that."
"Then what do you think?" I asked.
"I think—" Nick said. "I think—"
"Well?"
"I think I'm only a couple blocks away. I'll be there in just a minute, okay? Don't move."
"Fine," I said. That stupid word. I was obviously anything but.
Nick pulled up to the corner a few minutes later, and leaned over to open the passenger door for me. As I climbed in, Nick eyed my hands, which were cold and shaking. And also bloody.
"I fell," I said. Then I clamped my legs together, so he wouldn't see the hole in my pants.
"Jeez." He rummaged around between the seats and came up with a pack of wet wipes.
"What are you? A boy scout?"
"Thank my mom for that one." His tone turned serious. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," I said. "I mean, I think I am now."
"Are you sure I can't take you to the police station?"
"No." It'd be my word against Bradley's. No doubt he'd already cooked up a convincing story about what a psycho I was, just like the zingers he'd told me about what a great date he'd had with Haylee.
Nick looked down at my palms as I cleaned them. The abrasions weren't all that bad. The things Bradley had said were much worse.
Nick spoke slowly, like he was choosing his words very carefully. "I'm sorry he did that to you," he said. "No one should treat you that way, but especially not someone you like."
"I don't like him," I said.
Nick swallowed. "Well, yeah. But you did, didn't you?"
"No," I said. "Haylee did. I just got confused." I squeezed my eyes shut. That had to be the final nail in the coffin. Nick would never want anyone so messed up.
"I'm sorry," Nick said.
"You didn't do anything."
"I know. That's the problem." He sounded truly miserable, like he had when Haylee was struggling, and he didn't know how to help.
I was tired of slipping into her place.
"Forget about me," I said. "What about Haylee?"
"Tell me again what he said about her?"
I tried to remember his exact words. "He called her a slut."
Nick wilted. "You think he attacked her, too?"
"I don't know," I said. "There has to be some way to know. Because if he did, he should pay."
"For what he did to Haylee, not what he did to you?"
"Exactly," I said.
"Um," Nick said. "I think you're missing my point."
"I'm serious!" I said. "There has to be some way to trick him into admitting what he did to her."
"I don't know," Nick said. "I think the best thing to do would be for you to focus on what happened to you."
Maybe. But I could handle it, and obviously Haylee couldn't.
"Kira?" he asked. He sounded so tired.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have dumped all this on you. I'm as bad as Haylee."
"Don't say that," he said.
"I didn't mean it like—"
"I know," he said. "I know. But I still hate that I wasn't there to protect you."
The older brother routine. I dug my elbow into the arm rest. "Thanks," I said. Though I wasn't any more thankful than I was fine.
Look on the bright side, I told myself. If Nick insisted on thinking of me as a little sister, at least I hadn't lost anything by telling him the truth.
Three Months Before
It happened during cross-country season. I'd run over to see Haylee after practice, still in my sweats.
As I reached her house, Aaron pulled up in his car, just home from work. He stopped me in the yard—I hadn't talked to him since he came to my last cross-country meet, a couple of weeks before. The sun set as we stood on the porch, catching up. I don't remember exactly what we talked about.
What I do remember is Haylee, waiting at the top of the stairs when we walked in the front door, like she'd been hovering there, listening.
"Hey!" I said to Haylee. "You mind if I shower before we hang out?"
That wasn't an unusual request. I showered at Haylee's place a couple times a week, trying to make time for her after practice, and I had extra clothes stashed in a bag in Haylee's bathroom just for that purpose. But Haylee just shook her head at me, like I was being too unreasonable for words.
"I've got some bills to pay," Aaron said, heading toward his home office. "But I'll be at your meet on Saturday, okay?"
"Okay," I said. I noticed that he hadn't even said hello to Haylee. The look on her face told me she'd noticed, too.
"I'm going to take that shower, okay?" I said. "I'll be in your room in a minute."
Haylee didn't say anything to stop me. She didn't say anything at all.
When I got out of the shower, I changed into clean clothes, and headed across the hall to Haylee's room. I found her sitting on her bed, writing in her journal.
"Hi," I said.
She didn't respond—just kept scribbling. I borrowed her brush and ran it through my wet hair. She flipped a page. I parted my hair into two braids and secured them with bands from her dresser. Still she scribbled.
Finally she snapped the journal closed and put it away under the carpet in her closet.
"What were you writing about?" I asked, though I already had an idea. Haylee's shrink said she was supposed to write things down when they bothered her, like if she wrote everything down, it wouldn't live in her head and drive her crazy.
"You and my dad," she said.
My stomach turned. "What?"
"Oh, don't give me that," Haylee said. "You keep encouraging him."
I put the brush down on her dresser. Haylee was watching me carefully, waiting for me to respond.
"That's not true," I said.
"No? Why do you think he's always hanging around you? Do you think he actually wants to help? Please. Men never do anything for free."
I took a step toward the door. I could insist that she was wrong, but it would only add fuel to the fire.
"I'll see you tomorrow," I said.
"Why? You just got here."
> "Because you're not being fair."
"I just write what I see. Does that bother you?"
That was a trick question. If it bothered me, she'd insist I was admitting guilt. But it did bother me, and we both knew it, so if I said no, she'd accuse me of lying. "It bothers me when you write things about me that aren't true," I said finally.
"It is true," she said. "I mean, why wouldn't he want you, right? You're so much better at everything than me."
I turned around and walked out. I didn't slam her bedroom door, and I didn't slam the front door, either. But when I hit the street, I ran home so fast I probably would have qualified for varsity track.
At least I wouldn't need Aaron to coach me in that.
Chapter Thirteen
I went over to Haylee's house to see Aaron on Friday, even though my glove was still in the back of Bradley's car. As I walked over, I wondered what I was going to find. Would he smoke his way through pitching practice? Would he have to set down his cigarette to return the ball?
It didn't matter if we didn't practice at all. I had to talk to Aaron about the journal. He and Hazel must have found it in the crawlspace. They must already know what it said. And at least Aaron would be able to tell the truth from the lies, if Hazel couldn't; he knew he'd never touched me.
But now I had a more important question: what did the journal say about Bradley?
I jogged up to the front door and rang the doorbell, which still chimed Jingle Bells even though Christmas was over. No one answered the door. I bounced up and down on my toes, looking for movement in the windows.
If Aaron read those parts of the journal, maybe he didn't want to be seen with me.
I was about to ring the doorbell again, when the lock clicked and the door cracked open. Aaron's face peeked out, and I got a whiff of smoke, but at least he'd shaved.
Aaron looked a little surprised to see me, so I quickly said, "Hey, I came over to practice like you said. If you've changed your mind, that's okay, but I need to talk to you about something."
Aaron shook his head, as if to clear it. "No, it's fine. Let me grab my glove."
"I forgot mine," I said.
"I'll grab an extra."
Aaron met me in the side yard, which had the longest piece of grass on the Ricks' property. If I stood close to the street, and Aaron put his back to the backyard gate, we could be as far from each other as I'd be from the catcher on the softball field.
Aaron handed me a glove.
"Maybe we could talk first?" I asked.
"Talk while you warm up," he said.
That was Aaron. All business. I should have known talking to him wouldn't be easy. I tucked my hand into the glove and flexed it. Mine had molded to my hand over the years. This one slid around. It'd been broken in by a hand much larger than mine.
Aaron walked down by the fence and turned to face me, tossing me the ball overhand. I took a step back and the ball hit my glove with a firm smack. I lowered my glove and wound up for the pitch as Aaron sank down on one knee, glove up and ready.
A bird hopped across the side of the porch, where Haylee used to sit and watch us. Until I looked, I could almost pretend she was there, cheering me on. She never cared much about softball, but she cared about me enough to make up for it. I swung my arm back, then forward, and released the ball. Aaron had to stretch his arm to catch it—way outside.
"That's all right," Aaron said. "It's just a warm up." He stood and tossed me the ball again. I caught it, and set for the pitch again.
This time I didn't look for Haylee. She wasn't there, and for a moment I could pretend that she'd gone in to bring us bottles of water, or glasses of lemonade, or to answer the phone. Soon she'd be back, watching for her dad's approval so she could cheer me for throwing strikes.
But Nick was right. Forgetting and then remembering again was worse than not forgetting at all. I just wanted to do what I'd come for and get it over with. But Aaron stood so far away, and I wasn't going to shout about the journal, or about what Bradley might have done. So instead of talking, we settled into a rhythm. Set, pitch, catch, throw, catch, set. I kept my eyes on the ball, as it cycled around—underhand toward Aaron, into his glove, overhand toward me, into my glove. His throws to me arced high over our heads, and my pitches to him—the good ones—floated straight to his glove, as if zipping along a flat surface.
With every pitch, it seemed like the grayness of Aaron's face got a little pinker. Would that fade when I told him what might have happened to his daughter?
My next pitch flew so wild that it soared past Aaron's outstretched glove.
"Focus," he said. "You had it there for a little while. Find the rhythm. To my glove."
To his glove. Just us and the ball.
I wasn't sure how long we practiced. I should have stopped, put down my glove, and insisted he talk to me. But the rhythm felt so familiar, I didn't want it to stop.
Finally, Aaron stood up from a catch, put a hand on his back, and said, "That's enough for today. Don't want to wear your arm out when you're just getting back into it."
"Okay," I said. "Thanks."
"No problem." Before, he would have added anytime. But maybe that wasn't the case anymore.
He turned and walked toward the house, and I drew a sharp breath. "Hey, Aaron?" I said.
He turned around. "Yeah?"
"Remember I needed to talk to you about something?"
He gave me a long look, and for a second I thought he was going to say no, but then he motioned for me to sit next to him on the porch steps. I sat, waiting for Haylee's ghost to lean over my shoulder, but I didn't feel her.
"What did you want to talk about?" Aaron asked. He set his glove on his knee and looked down at the sidewalk.
"Haylee's journal," I said. "Did you read it?"
"No," Aaron said. "We never found it."
I tried not to look as surprised as I was. How could that be? They must have found it. Nick and I had dug through the insulation—even seen the outline of the place where I'd shoved it. But I couldn't say that without admitting that I was the one who hid it there in the first place.
"Oh," I said. "Because I was hoping Haylee wrote down what happened with her and Bradley Johansen."
Aaron's eyes narrowed. "What about it?"
"I think . . ." I said, "I think he may have, I mean, I don't know for sure, but—"
Aaron drew a sharp breath. "He had sex with her."
I was glad I was sitting, or I would have fallen over. He had sex with her? Haylee had sex, and she didn't tell me about it? "How do you know?" I asked.
"He admitted it to the police when they questioned him," Aaron said.
This time, my mouth dropped open. Why did no one tell me anything? "And they didn't do anything about it?"
Aaron reached into his pocket, pulling out a cigarette. He ran his hands over his other pockets, too, but didn't come up with a lighter. "What were they going to do? Teenage sex isn't a crime."
Maybe not, but if he pushed himself on her, that was. Haylee might have agreed to it; she was pretty much in love with the creep. But if Bradley mauled her like he did me, there was no telling how she'd reacted.
Unless she wrote it down.
"There's more," I said. "I hung out with Bradley a couple times in the last few weeks."
Aaron stared at his hands, twirling the cigarette between his fingers. "Did he say something to you about her?"
Ugh. How did I describe this? The story had spilled out too easily yesterday, but today I couldn't find the words. "He tried to make me do things I didn't want to."
Aaron's head snapped toward me, and I could see his jaw setting.
What happened to me was evidence of what happened to her, or at least, what Bradley was capable of.
"What exactly happened?" Aaron asked.
"Well, we kissed and stuff. I know that was messed up. I don't know why I let him do that. Anyway, we kissed a little, and then he wanted to kiss me more . . . I don't know. In ways I
didn't want to, I guess." I hugged my knees to my chest.
"All he did was kiss you?" Aaron asked.
I froze up inside. Why was he asking? Was he jealous? I couldn't ever tell what was normal, coming from Aaron. The things Haylee said had warped my perception of everything.
"Yeah," I said. "When you say it like that it doesn't sound like such a big deal."
"No," Aaron said. "It is a big deal. You should stay away from him if he doesn't respect you."
When he said that, his voice rose a little, and I thought he might cry after all, but when I looked up at him his eyes were dry.
"I'm not going to see him anymore," I said.
He nodded sharply. "Good."
"But what about Haylee? There's really nothing the police can do?"
Aaron's face tightened. "You let us take care of it, okay?"
I shook my head. "But if Bradley did do something to Haylee, he shouldn't get away with it."
"He shouldn't," Aaron said, and he rubbed his temples so hard I thought he might wear off the skin.
I picked at the edge of the concrete step with my fingernail. "Hazel has to have found the journal by now," I said. "She was looking for it. And Haylee never hid it that well—"
"Do you know where it is?" Aaron asked.
"No," I said. And for the first time, that was the truth. "But it had to be in Haylee's room, which means Hazel should have found it, right?"
Aaron squeezed the butt of the cigarette between his fingers. "If she found it," he said, "she didn't tell me about it."
I stared at him. Would Hazel herself hide it? Because if it wasn't me, or Nick, or Aaron, she was the only one left with access to that room, at least that I knew of. But why would she do that? She wouldn't be trying to hide the contents.
Unless there were also untrue things written in there about her.
"You could ask her about it," I said.
"Maybe when she gets back," he said. "She went to stay with friends for a few days."
She got away from Haylee's ghost. I looked at Aaron. A deep purple haze hung under his eyes. He should get away, too. Somewhere Haylee wouldn't follow him.
If such a place existed.
I sighed. "Could you call her? I just think we should gather some evidence against Bradley. I mean, if he raped her—"
Everything's Fine Page 12
