by Lexa Hillyer
Lilly smiled, shaking her head. “For what, taking the Lord’s name in vain again?”
“Anyway, his name is Patrick and Mel wants one of us to date him,” Dar filled in, exchanging a quick look with Lilly. It was the save-me look. “I already told her I’m not into lawbreakers.”
So far their group had been, while not exactly peripheral, not prime-cafeteria-table status-worthy either, and it had become clear sometime during freshman year that the pathway to high school dominance was paved with pairs. So last April, Mel had called a meeting between the three of them and determined that they were going to do things differently from then on—they were all going to get boyfriends.
Lilly had resisted at first, until Mel finally got her to confess that she was still clinging to her childhood crush on Boyd (which Mel kindly termed “borderline idolization”). But Mel had said that the what (getting a boyfriend) outweighed the who. Eventually Lilly had seen the merits of her argument: maybe experience was the important thing, and true love would follow.
And so Lilly had made out with Rohan Reddy at Allison Riley’s May Day party, and Mel hooked up with Wesley Abraham at the Abrahams’ graduation party for Wes’s older brother Connor in June. Neither had stuck, though. And as for Dar, she’d hovered in the background, easy not to notice in the end-of-year swirl of parties and drama and goodbyes.
But then, while Mel’s family went away for the Fourth of July weekend, Dar told Lilly to follow her up into the old tree house in her backyard. Lilly would never forget the moment they both sat down cross-legged, facing each other, the old tree creaking slightly as its branches swayed, and Dar cleared her throat, then blurted out that she thought she was gay. And that she didn’t want Mel to find out. “You know what her family’s like,” she’d said to Lilly, a determined look on her face, the same expression she always wore when about to call gin in a hand of rummy.
It was true. Lilly loved Mel like another sister, but the Knoxes were Jesus lovers, gun owners, and big talkers: not the most promising triumvirate of qualities if you happened to be a newly burgeoning high school lesbian.
And so Lilly had promised.
She savored having a secret in her possession—the trust Dar had bestowed on her. She wasn’t used to being the guardian of secrets, but the exposer of them, and this new responsibility had brought her a kind of sorrowful joy. Joy because in some small way she could help her friend. Sorrow because, well, things were complicated, and it had to suck to feel like hiding was your best option.
Of course, it hadn’t been all that difficult, when keeping Dar’s secret meant more guys for her. Still, she couldn’t help but hope the various covert kisses and clandestine grope sessions she’d had in the past few months were building to something real. Something meaningful.
Boyd’s face flashed in her mind.
Mel rolled her eyes, almost as though she was reading Lilly’s thoughts. “It’s obvious that Lilly is as hung up on BND as ever, so I call Patrick.”
As though that hadn’t been her plan all along.
“But,” Mel added. “Lilly’s going to ask him out for me.”
“I am?” Lilly crumpled the can as the bell rang.
Dar cocked her head. “What is this, eighth grade all over again?”
Mel pushed Dar’s shoulder. Dar suddenly seemed so thin and fragile that even a playful nudge could topple her. “Lilly will do it because that’s what friends do,” Mel said pointedly.
Dar adjusted her huge sweater and stood up. “Whatever you say, Mel.”
Lilly stood too. “Fine, I’ll ask him for you. On the condition that he turns out to be as hot as you say, and depending on the nature of his past crimes. Oh, and also on the condition that you stop referring to you-know-who as BND. He’s going to figure it out!” How many things could it stand for other than Boy Next Door?
“That’s fair,” said Dar, at the same time Mel said, “Picky picky.”
Then Mel smiled—her signature huge grin. She threw her arms around Dar and Lilly. “Thanks, babes. I’m so happy to be with my girls again.”
Dar laughed. “We love you too, but stop suffocating me.”
Lilly fist bumped them both and headed to class, bouncing in her Converse. It was a new year, full of new opportunity. And while at home she might be the baby in a lineup of three sisters vying for Boyd’s attention, at high school, she was just her—a girl with a plan.
Chapter Four
Now
FEBRUARY 7
ICY GRASS CRACKLED UNDERNEATH HER boots as Tessa veered off Woodrow Avenue, then cut through the big parking lot behind the diner, and out onto County Route 28, which wound its way out of town limits. After the gas station ran a stretch of shoulder and, beyond it, the woods. She hopped the rail and made her way to the trailhead.
These woods are lovely, dark and deep—something Kit used to say.
She ran harder, into the mottled shade of the winter trees, trying to burn away all thoughts of Kit. But the mind works a lot like osmosis, it turned out, always seeking equilibrium—the more tears she held in, the more memories flooded out instead:
She and Boyd, lying side by side on their stomachs in Tessa’s bedroom, propped up on their elbows, the AP Bio textbook splayed open between them on the floor. Just last week—Wednesday—when Kit was still alive.
Mrs. Jenkins gave quizzes on Thursday mornings, and Tessa always prepped with Boyd. Bio was their mutually favorite subject. Ever since Tessa had learned about her chimerism, she’d gotten interested in genetics, which had been like a gateway into all sorts of weird scientific fascinations. The latest was marine biology. Most people don’t realize how many weird-ass creatures live beneath the ocean—there are estimated to be about a million species and we only know of a fraction of them. It’s like a wealth of colorful, floating secrets down there.
Anyway. An empty Fritos bag lay strewn on the carpet along with the flashcards she’d made—their studying had already devolved into a random debate about photosynthesis. She couldn’t even remember what side of the argument she’d been on or what point she’d been trying to make.
The point had only been this: let’s keep doing this. Let’s not ever end this.
Let’s stay here, in this moment, forever, talking about the magic of plants and phytoplankton sopping up the sun and turning it into the essence of green; of fresh starts, always there, waiting in our cells for a little light.
Kit had just come home from babysitting for the Nestors, and she popped her head into Tessa’s room to say she was using the shower. She hadn’t made eye contact with Boyd, but Tessa didn’t wonder too much about it in the moment. She’d been far too distracted by the static electricity in the air, as though Boyd was a big balloon she’d rubbed her head against—it felt like every tiny hair on her arms was standing on end, for some reason. Things had been like that lately around Boyd, which made no sense since nothing had outwardly changed—they still had all the same inside jokes and banter and bizarre obsessions with biological anomalies and board games.
“I have a non-bio-related question,” Boyd said after Kit left the room.
They could hear the sound of the shower turning on in the bathroom across the hall, its quiet scream through the old pipes. The Malloys’ house was built in the 1940s, one of the few that survived the fire of ’82, making it one of the oldest homes on their road. And thus, by the transitive property, also one of the most run-down. But Tessa was used to its creaks and moans—sometimes they provided just the right soundtrack to whatever mood she was in—and the sound of hot water rattling and hissing seemed inseparable, in that particular moment, from the rattling of her pulse and the steam building at the back of her neck.
“Shoot,” she said, turning toward Boyd.
He was so big—Tessa was hardly two-thirds his size, her head barely coming up to his chin when they were standing, but right now, he was propped on his side, reclining, and still, his eyes came several inches higher than hers. He looked down and cleared his throat
like a lecturer about to make a speech. It made her feel suddenly formal, like she should sit up and take notes.
She wondered if he was going to bring up the homecoming dance. It had been a few months ago, but they hadn’t really talked about it since.
What he said surprised her. “Remember when I went out with Olivia Khan?”
She squinted at him. “Yeah?”
He’d dated Olivia for all of two weeks, in eighth grade. Olivia Khan was one of the prettiest girls in the middle school and high school combined. That hadn’t changed over the last two years, either, though now she was dating Jay Kolbry, who none of them knew that well. Jay had a reputation for dealing. He was one of the popular jocks, always smiling, a natural fit for Olivia, probably.
She thought Boyd might elaborate, but he just lay there, his face hovering less than ten inches away from hers, his lips slightly apart. She could feel herself blushing, but she honestly couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed for herself or for Boyd.
He licked his lips and swallowed. She’d known him since they were kids, and yet watching him do that sent a shiver down her spine. She felt like she needed to move her legs but forced herself to stay still, waiting for him to finish his thought.
And then, he was leaning toward her, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. His face looked bigger up close, his own hair flopping to the side. He hesitated, leaving his hand behind her neck, and Tessa drew in a sharp breath before doing a crazy thing:
She leaned up toward him.
And then, they were kissing.
Tessa rolled onto her back on the carpet—her arms suddenly too shaky to hold her up. He hovered over her, then leaned down and kissed her again. His lips were wet and soft.
Heat raced through her body. Her brain felt numb. She and Boyd . . . they were kissing. Full-on, lying-on-the-floor kissing. It made no sense.
For whole moments, she was just Tessa—no trace of Kit or chimerism or the nothingness she feared hovered just outside of who you were, waiting to prove you were just like it: that you were nothing, too.
Lips, breath, fingers trailing along collarbone. Something like a caught-back laugh, half hilarious, half delirious.
And then, they heard the sound of the shower turning off across the hall . . . and Boyd was sitting, then standing, closing the AP Bio book and tucking it under his arm. “I gotta go,” he said, and left before Tessa could respond. He didn’t explain why he’d brought up Olivia. He didn’t explain why he’d kissed her. He was just . . . gone.
Tessa had flopped back onto her carpeted floor, staring at the speckled ceiling. Her whole body tingled—every spot where Boyd’s body had touched hers. Her lips felt swollen. Her head felt stuffed with cotton. Her stomach tightened like it did when she was at the very top of a roller coaster—a tangle of excitement and dread. For some reason, she started giggling uncontrollably, rolling onto her side, until her eyes were full of tears.
“What’s so funny?” Lilly asked, opening her door.
Tessa grinned into the carpet, catching her breath. “Nothing.”
“Oh.” Lilly paused for a second, clearly suspecting a secret. “Well, Mom says it’s dinner.”
She hovered in the doorway, waiting.
Tessa nodded, at a loss for words. Everything was changing too fast, the earth was spinning off orbit, and it felt like her whole life would never be the same again.
She hadn’t known then that her life really wouldn’t be the same after that night.
That early Sunday morning, only three days later, Kit’s body would be found, bruised and frozen, in the back of Boyd’s truck.
Now, her boots skidded across the shore of Devil’s Lake and onto its surface—frozen over since last week. She slipped, landing hard on her knee and wrists. She panted, out of breath, exhausted and yet eerily not. She could hardly feel her body. How far had she just run?
Out here, all thoughts of Boyd—his lips and his hands in her hair—flew away into the cold. All thoughts of what Lilly had said when she’d pointed the finger at Boyd: that he and Kit had apparently been seeing each other in secret, right under all their noses, for months. That he’d been kissing Kit that night, had threatened her too. That they’d been fighting out on the side of the road, late, just hours before her body was found.
Not far from this very spot.
Tessa looked around. In the summer, this place was lush and green, but now the skeletal trees surrounding the lake pricked at the sky, a giant crown of thorns. Veinlike reeds laced the ice, which was murky and marbled with frost—and, in some places, beginning to thaw. She wondered, briefly, what it would be like if the lake simply cracked and gave beneath her, sucked her under. Her chest hurt. The back of her throat burned.
When she looked down again, her own freakish, discolored eyes—one green, one blue—stared back up at her between her bare palms, her face and body distorted just slightly: a shorter, more petite version of Kit.
She gasped.
Or was it Kit gazing back at her through the ice?
Now Tessa’s pale hair grew longer in reflection, more golden, one blue eye cooling into green. She could feel herself disappearing as she looked into her sister’s face. She could sense Kit’s presence, thought maybe Kit really was lying there, just beneath a thin layer of ice, waiting for it to melt and free her.
He hurt me, Kit said with her mind, inside Tessa’s mind.
Or maybe it was the part of Kit that lived on in Tessa, that remaining DNA trapped in her own cells, haunting her from within her own head.
Or maybe she’d simply snapped from the shock and chaos of what had happened, her final tethers to reality fraying, and she’d drifted off into pure hallucination.
Real or not real, a chill raced through her, causing her arms to shake.
He hurt me, ice-Kit said again.
And then, He lied.
Tessa felt sick, dizzy. She stumbled back to her feet. Her phone buzzed. A text from Lilly.
Where’d you go? We need you.
She went to turn her phone off but another text followed.
Please don’t hate me. It’s not my fault. I’m so sorry.
She sighed, shaking her head. Leave it to Lilly to make any of this about her.
She was about to type a response when a sound rang out, the blast of a rifle from far off. Her phone leaped out of her hand, crashing to the forest floor, its pale white-blue light ricocheting off branches and roots, illuminating a glint of silver in the dirt.
Another rifle shot, and a burst of wood thrushes taking to the sky.
She hated hunters. Lilly’s best friend Mel’s family, the Knoxes, were big into game hunting. Her dad had something like a thirty-gun collection.
Tessa bent to pick up her phone. Saw again the gleaming sliver of metal in the dirt, and bent down to pick it up, not caring as icy mud got under her fingernails.
It was a ring.
A mix of dread and curiosity moved through her as she stared at it.
Not silver, probably. Something more expensive, like white gold or platinum. In the setting gleamed a teardrop-shaped sapphire surrounded by tiny diamonds.
Tessa knew instantly what it was: an engagement ring.
VERIZON SERVICE RECORD
FEBRUARY 7, 2:34 PM
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: [gasp] I—Boyd?
County Jail: Are you there? I didn’t think anyone would answer.
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: [pause] Yeah, it’s me. I’m here.
County Jail: [muffled sound, possibly a cough or sob] Sorry, I just. For a second I wasn’t sure who answered. I’ve been trying all morning and they only give you so many calls here.
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: It was today. The funeral.
County Jail: [silence] Jesus. I’m sorry. I should have realized.
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: [muffled sound]
County Jail: Are you still there?
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: Yeah. I just . . . I don’t know what to say. This is . . . hard.
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: [voice cracking] Yeah.
[pause] You know, the funny thing is, I keep thinking, Kit would know what to do now. Right? Like, she would know the right thing to say. But I’m just useless here. I’m just so numb. I can’t even think, Boyd. I can’t do anything.
County Jail: [pause] Yes, you can. [pause] You can help me.
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: [swallows] How?
County Jail: I shouldn’t be in here. It’s terrible here. Just gray walls and this feeling of guilt and suspicion and—I could really go crazy in here. The kinds of questions I’ve been asked. The kinds of things they think I’ve done . . . [voice cracks again]
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: [breathing]
County Jail: Are you still there?
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: Yeah. I’m just . . . I’m trying to think.
County Jail: This whole thing is just so wild, what they’re saying. Like, manslaughter. Voluntary, involuntary—all these terms I didn’t even know about before. You have to help me. I don’t know how it got to this. Everyone’s just assuming this horrible stuff about me, and no one even cares what I have to say.
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: What do you have to say?
County Jail: I mean, that I didn’t do it, obviously! That this is nuts! [sound like something hitting a wall, possibly the palm of a hand]
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: [silence]
County Jail: [pause] You know I didn’t do it, right? You believe me, right? You know this is all just insane and unfair and . . . [pause] [whispered] You know me.
Tessa Malloy’s iPhone: [silence]
