Aaron jolted to his feet. "Let us handle it," he said. I opened my mouth to ask him what was wrong, but he stepped into the house and closed the door on me. Hard.
I sat there, staring at the door, feeling like I'd been slapped.
I looked up at Haylee's window, partially obscured by the tree, her blinds pulled closed.
And I began to formulate a plan.
One Year Before
On New Year's Day, I lay sprawled on Haylee's bed.
"Nick texted me last night," I told Haylee, turning my phone so she could see.
"Happy New Year," she read. "Yeah, he sent that one to all the cousins."
Oh. Of course. He hadn't been thinking specifically of me. "I guess it's nice to be included," I said.
"Well, yeah," Haylee said. "You're obviously part of the family."
And when Haylee wasn't looking, I deleted the text from my phone.
Chapter Fourteen
I could feel Mom watching me as I moved around the house on New Year's Eve. She paced behind the couch as I watched a movie. She hovered whenever I left my room for a snack. Christmas was the holiday I spent at home; I always spent New Year's with Haylee.
Mom might as well have said it. She was waiting for me to show signs of struggling—to reveal the inevitable cracks in the dam, and then she was planning to pounce in, wedge the crack open, and let it all pour out.
I didn't think it was that simple. I couldn't let go—wouldn't ever be able to—until I had Haylee's journal.
Obviously she hadn't told me everything. I could see that now, as much as it stung. Was Bradley the first guy she slept with? Or was he right about what happened when Haylee went out partying?
I had to have answers, and there was only one place left to look. I needed to hold in my hands the evidence of what happened to her.
Around eight, I sent Nick a text message: What are you doing tonight?
He replied: Babysitting the siblings. Sorry.
If Haylee had been here, I might have been invited. I need to talk to you, I wrote.
I'll see you at school. We can talk then.
I closed my eyes. He'd been so eager to talk to me when I'd texted him after the park. Was he jealous of Bradley?
No. He probably just thought I was a moron. I took the hint and only sent him one more message, at midnight.
Happy New Year! I wrote.
But he didn't text me back.
On the first day back at school, everything felt out of sync. Classes were the same. My locker was still in the same place, and the kids in my classes hadn't changed—except for the new haircuts, new clothes, and the occasional hair-bleaching. Even so, everything felt surreal, like a part of a past life. I floated to class in a state of déjà vu.
Several people stared at me and whispered as I walked by them to class. At least the gossip about Haylee hadn't died down. The only thing worse than the whispers would be if everyone forgot about her with the rest of the old news.
I didn't hear much of Mr. Craig's lecture. When he gave us class time to start the homework, I opened my book and stared at the problems. I pulled a piece of paper out and wrote my name on it. At least that much I knew.
Spencer climbed over Haylee's empty seat and sat in it, though I hadn't heard Mr. Craig announce group work. When I didn't look up at him, he tapped me on the arm. When I didn't respond he hissed in my ear. "Psst! Kira!"
"I don't know the answers," I said. "Sorry." Then I wrote the date under my name. That was two pieces of information down. Go me.
Spencer leaned over, setting an elbow on my desk. "Hey, it's a new year, you know?"
I'd dated my paper for January of last year. So much for that.
"There," I said, erasing the year. "Happy?"
Spencer shrugged. "Thought you might want to know."
I turned back to the book, copying down the first problem.
"So," Spencer said.
Already I wanted to sock him. He'd no doubt come to harass me with more horrible theories. He'd had all of Christmas break to cook them up. Maybe I should just grab the bathroom pass now and save us both the trouble.
Then Spencer continued: "Is it true about Bradley?"
My pencil froze on my paper, and my heart started to hammer. "What, that he's a loser?"
My eyes stayed on my paper, but I could see Spencer grinning at the edge of my vision. My cheeks burned.
"It is true," he said. "Man, I totally thought he was lying."
I finished making up numbers for the first problem and copied down the second, hoping Spencer would get bored and wander away to torment someone else.
He didn't. "Did you do it because of Haylee?"
This time I turned in my chair to face him, glaring at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
He shrugged. "I just heard that sometimes people do crazy things after someone dies."
A couple rows away, someone was tittering. As I glanced over, Stephanie looked pointedly away.
"What did Bradley tell you?" I asked.
Spencer smirked. "Well, Bradley didn't exactly tell me anything."
Great. "Who then?"
"Stephanie."
Obviously. I wondered if Stephanie had heard the story from Bradley, or if the gossip had been traveling around for days. Luckily, they'd all been vacation days, which ought to have slowed the velocity a little.
"What exactly did you hear?" I asked.
For the first time, it was Spencer who looked down at his paper, not me. He stared at the first problem. He hadn't gotten around to copying it down yet. "That you two . . . you know . . . "
And from the way he said it, I did.
No, I thought. No, no. Would random juniors slut-cough at me in the halls, now?
A series of foul names ran through my mind. I'd hurt Bradley's pride, and now he was going to hurt mine. That's what he meant when he said I'd wish I'd never met him.
Spencer was watching me, waiting for a reaction, though I was sure it was written all over my face.
"It's not true," I said, but my voice sounded strange. My whole body went cold. My eyes started to burn. After all this time, I was going to start bawling in the middle of geometry. "It's not."
Spencer looked at me, and he must have seen the beginnings of the tears welling up in my eyes. He opened his mouth and muttered something unintelligible. If I hadn't been so upset, I might have reveled in the fact that for once in his life, Spencer was speechless.
"Spencer," Mr. Craig said. "Go back to your seat." Spencer's head snapped up to look at Mr. Craig. He looked caught.
As Spencer grabbed his book and papers and scrambled back to his seat, Mr. Craig squeezed between the front desks and sat down where Spencer had been.
"Are you okay?" Mr. Craig asked. "Do you need to go to the office?"
"He's a liar," I said. And then I realized that didn't answer either of Mr. Craig's questions.
"I'll talk to him," Mr. Craig said. It took me a moment to realize he thought I'd meant Spencer. "I'll give you a pass. If you don't want to come back, go to the counselor's office, okay?"
I nodded. The burning in my eyes receded. I dried the little pools from my eyes with the backs of my hands. My best friend had been dead for almost four weeks, and that was all I could muster—and over Bradley. Pathetic.
Mr. Craig patted me on the shoulder as he got up, and then walked over to his desk to write me a pass. No toilet seat this time, since I might not come back to return it.
I stuffed my book into my backpack and stood up, not looking at anyone, even though half the class was staring at me. This would probably be all over the school before the final bell rang: Kira slept with Bradley, and then she had a fit in class because he told everybody about it.
Mr. Craig handed me the pass and said, "Hang in there."
As I turned to go, Mr. Craig called Spencer over to his desk. Part of me wanted to turn around and watch, but I kept walking. Behind me, I heard Mr. Craig say, "Spencer, why are you such an idiot?"
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And then Spencer said, "I come by it naturally."
No kidding. Must be self-awareness day.
I marched out of class, burning from my ears to my chin. How could Bradley say those things about me? If it wasn't true, why did I feel so dirty? I charged into the bathroom, hitting the swinging door with both my palms. And as I did, I heard a giggle fall to a hush.
Two hall passes sat on the metal shelf below the mirror—a yard stick and a stuffed penguin with the word "Wick" written across it in all capital letters. There was a whirring sound, like a quickly-pulled zipper. And two sets of breaths heaving—besides mine.
I bent down and looked under the stalls. In one, a pair of pointy-toed heels rested between a pair of wide, black Vans that looked exactly like Bradley's.
I stepped toward the door of the stall and gave it a swift kick, like I wanted to give to Bradley's groin. The door crashed into the couple, who let out a shout and a shriek. The girl turned away, so I only knew who it was by the frizzy volume of her hair.
Catherine.
Bradley bolted out of the stall, his eyes widening in shock when he saw me.
I stood in the bathroom with my arms crossed, glaring him down. "Hi," I said.
Bradley's neck was raw and red behind his left ear. Catherine's lipstick was smeared across half his face.
I hoped it was waterproof. Try to get that off.
Bradley glared at me, and I balled my fists to keep them from shaking.
Haylee was dead because of him.
It was Catherine who spoke first. "What do you want?" she asked. And I could tell from the venom in her voice that Bradley had already been feeding her lies. I wondered what story he could have told her that made it okay for him to maul her in a bathroom stall when he'd supposedly been having sex with me the week before.
Bradley stood practically on my toes. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Oh, sorry," I said. I let the full weight of my sarcasm drip from my voice, partly to cover my fear. "I thought I heard someone choking in there. Guess that was you."
"I thought I made it clear," Bradley said. "You don't own me."
"I don't want to rent you, either," I said. My voice was shaking, so I spoke faster, trying to cover it. I pointed at Catherine. "Neither should you. Or don't you think he'll spread the same lies about you?"
Catherine put a hand possessively on Bradley's arm, and Bradley's mouth twitched into the shadow of a smile.
I wanted to flatten Bradley's nose, then and there, but he was stronger than me. So instead I stared him in the eye. "I heard they found Haylee's journal."
The smile disappeared from Bradley's face. "Her what?" he said.
Watching him squirm gave me confidence. I kept going. "Her journal. Where she wrote down the details of everything that happened. You knew she was a writer, didn't you?"
Bradley's eye twitched.
I mustered a smile. "I can't wait to find out what Haylee wrote about you."
Bradley's lips parted, ever so slightly, as he understood my full meaning. And I was certain that was the closest to satisfaction I was going to get.
Now I managed a full smile. I couldn't help but be proud of that feat. "See you." And I turned my back on them.
"Hey," Bradley sputtered behind me. "Wait. What?"
But his words cut off when the door swung shut behind me.
I turned and walked down the corridor toward class, but stopped when I saw Fiona marching toward me, her pointy-toed boots clicking angrily on the tile.
I remembered now. Bradley and Fiona both had algebra with Mr. Wick this period. He must have been lax with his bathroom policy, because I'd seen them necking against the portable more than one morning on my way to class late.
As she approached me, Fiona gave a withering glare. I sighed, and did the only thing I could think of to do. I pointed toward the girl's bathroom.
"He's in there," I said.
Fiona's boots clicked louder as she marched past me, giving no further acknowledgment to my presence.
But I heard the bathroom door open behind me, and I ran back in the direction of geometry.
As much as I wanted to watch the fireworks, I didn't want to get burned, and I didn't want to be in the office when the lot of them got hauled in after the show.
Sixteen Months Before
It was about a hundred degrees outside the day Haylee and I walked to 7-11 in our flip-flops. Her mother warned us that she was about to leave the house for a few hours, but when we walked up to the front door, Haylee groped her own pockets.
"Nuh uh," she said.
I swallowed a mouthful of cherry Slurpee. "You didn't."
"I did. I forgot my key."
We walked around to the back door, and found it also locked.
"Call your mom?" I said.
"No way," Haylee said. "She'll be pissed. She told me to take it, but I still forgot."
The heat from the wooden deck soaked through my flip-flops and toasted my feet. "It's a million degrees out here. We'll melt before she comes back. Does a neighbor have the key?"
"Nick's mom has one." She gave me a sideways look. "You didn't steal my key just to see him, did you?"
I held up my palms. "I didn't even know they had a spare. I swear it."
Haylee smiled. When she called Nick instead of her aunt, I knew that was at least partly for me.
We were slurping the bottoms of our cups by the time Nick arrived. He unlocked the door, and then brushed my lips with his fingertip as he let us inside.
"Nice dye job," he said.
I pressed my own fingers where his had been, and checked myself in Haylee's kitchen mirror. My lips were stained bright pink from the Slurpee, but no more so than Haylee's.
And he hadn't said a thing about hers.
Chapter Fifteen
All morning I dug at my cuticles, waiting for an office aide to come and pull me out of class. But the note never came, and it wasn't until lunch that I heard Stephanie announce to a crowd that Fiona and Bradley had been sent home for fighting.
"She clawed him right in the eye?" Stephanie said. "You should have been there to see it?"
I should have been there. But if they were home and I was still here, the sacrifice had been worth it.
At lunch I avoided the quad and the cafeteria, in hopes of also dodging Catherine.
I found Nick sitting by himself on a planter by the portable classrooms. He had on a Superman shirt, but the "S" was backward. The cafeteria and quad were at the other end of campus, so while this area wasn't actually off-limits, the only group who bothered to eat here was a circle of guys kicking a hacky-sack.
As I walked up to Nick, he pulled an apple out of his backpack. That's when I realized I'd forgotten to pack lunch.
"Hey," I said as I walked up. "Your shirt's on inside out."
Nick smiled. "It's supposed to be that way. It's a Bizarro Superman shirt."
Sure enough, the seams weren't showing. I wasn't sure what was Bizarro about it, but I didn't ask. "Can I talk to you?"
Nick moved over, even though there was plenty of room for me to sit. "Did you bring lunch?"
"I forgot."
"You can have half my sandwich. If Haylee were here, she'd have eaten it anyway."
I sat down, and he handed me a diagonal half of his peanut butter and jelly.
"Thanks," I said.
"No problem." There was an edge to his voice.
I hesitated. "I told you the truth about what happened with Bradley, you know," I said. "There was nothing else to it."
He nodded, but he looked relieved, which meant he already knew about the rumor. "You heard?"
I nodded. "It must be all over school."
"I wanted to punch the guy who told me."
I felt like I'd been gut-punched, myself. "It's fine," I said, although it was obviously anything but. "But I need your help."
"Yeah?" He asked.
"Yeah. I need to get the journal."
Nick looked co
nfused. "I thought they already found it."
"I don't know," I said. "Aaron said they still didn't know where it was, which means if Hazel did find it, she lied to him about it."
Nick's eyebrows rose. "Why would she do that?"
Maybe the things Haylee wrote about her were as bad as the ones that she wrote about me. "That's what I want to know," I said. "That's why I want to get into her office while she's out of town. To see if she stashed it in there."
Nick sighed. "What exactly did you have in mind?"
I took a deep breath. "We need to get Aaron out of the house. Then we can break in and search."
Nick eyed my torn fingernails. "Must be some secret you're trying to keep."
It was an invitation to tell him, but I didn't accept. "Does your mom still have their spare key?"
"Ah," Nick said, studying his sandwich. "That's why you need my help."
"That's part of it," I said. "But it's not like I want to go alone. Plus, I'll need a co-conspirator to help me distract Aaron."
"No need," Nick said. "I heard my parents talking last night. Aaron's been going out drinking at night since Hazel left town. They're worried about him."
I cringed. "So I'm stealing from a drunk, now. That's lots better."
Nick looked me in the eye for the first time since I'd joined him. "I'll make you a deal," he said. "I'll help you get the journal if you tell me what's in it."
I was asking too much. I had to meet him halfway. "I'll let you read it," I said. "After we get it out of the house."
"And you'll talk to me about it. You promise?"
Deep breaths, Kira. Deep breaths. "I promise. We'll go tonight after it's dark?"
"Late," Nick said. "To make sure he's gone. I can meet you at eleven."
"Okay," I said. "Where?"
"I'll pick you up at your house. I'll tell Mom I'm sleeping over at a friend's so we can work on a school project."
I smiled. Cover for the whole night, plus a responsible excuse. "Better meet me on the corner instead of out front," I said. "I'm going to have to sneak out."
Everything's Fine Page 13
