by Lexa Hillyer
“And also,” she went on, “what were you really doing at the homecoming dance? And why did you offer me a ride on your bike? And what are you doing here now?”
He stared at her mouth, trying to figure out what was happening, how quickly he was losing ground—if he’d even had any to begin with. “Why do you need to know?”
“Why do you only answer my questions with other questions?”
“Why do you have so many questions?”
“Why don’t you get out of here before I tell my boss I caught you stealing?”
“Why don’t you stop fighting?”
“Stop fighting what?”
“This.”
He kissed her.
Oh, god, he was an idiot. Such an idiot—helplessly swimming, like he’d done that cold spring day in search of his lost fishing pole, pushing through the clouded current, holding his breath. You’re one determined son of a bitch.
Except maybe he wasn’t such an idiot. Her lips parted with a little gasp, and then their tongues met, and she gasped again, holding on to his shoulders, kissing him back, and waves of heat coursed through him, making him want very badly to press her up against the wall and keep doing this, keep diving and surfacing, diving and surfacing. It occurred to him that he had wanted this since the day he first saw her, and more every time he’d talked with her. It was unaccountable. It was like the current had caught him and dragged him and he’d lost his direction, all he could do was go with it, downriver. . . .
Suddenly she pulled back, with a look of shock.
“I—I’m sorry,” he blurted out. In the moment, it seemed like the right, the only thing to say.
She continued to stare at him, and he couldn’t tell if she was murderously angry or something else. She’d kissed him back, though, hadn’t she?
“I have to get back to work,” she said awkwardly. Her voice shook. She had kissed him back . . . but maybe she’d decided she didn’t like it. Maybe she was just testing him out, and now it was clearer than ever before that he stood no chance.
“Right, right, of course,” he stammered, and fled the back room, pushed open the front door to the jingle of bells, and ran out into the cold before she could realize the ring was his again.
Chapter Sixteen
Now
FEBRUARY 10
IT HAD BEEN A COUPLE of days ago, but Tessa couldn’t stop thinking about her interaction with Mel underneath the bleachers as she got home from school on Friday, the haunted look in her eyes, the way she kept saying she was sorry.
The smell of fresh pasta sauce wafted through the house when she came inside—it was, generic as it sounds, the smell she most associated with their mom. Mom was always either at work late, then coming in the door with groceries, hollering for help to unload the car, or in the kitchen with one ear on her phone and her free hand stirring sauce, adding something like basil or sautéed onion to make the jarred pasta sauce her own.
Tessa thought of going into the kitchen to hug her mother, but she could hear her crying through the door, and it was too much. She had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that if she stopped moving, she’d disappear.
She wandered up the stairs in a fog. Maybe she would never experience real grief, only this dizzying numbness. Her hand against the railing looked like Kit’s. Was Kit’s. For a moment, she forgot who she was.
At the end of the hall, she pushed open a door. The familiar scents of mango shampoo and vanilla perfume washed over her. She sat at her desk. She had so much work to do. She was the good girl, the one who never disappointed, the one who aced all her classes and always fell in line, but somehow, she’d lost her rhythm, and couldn’t think.
This was the only bedroom that didn’t face the Taylors’ house. The desk sat beneath a window looking out on the backyard, where a squirrel raced along a branch of the basswood, its tiny feet nudging clumps of snow off the branch in little spurts. Below, the yard was a patchwork of white and brown. Someone had left the sprinkler out, and its rusty frame poked up from the slush.
She could hear the squeals of three girls, now, playing in the yard. Carrot-top Lilly, her diapers sagging out the sides of her bathing suit, carrying a naked doll in both arms. Tessa and Kit, in matching suits, tackling Boyd, who held the sprinkler in his hands as if to attack. Water shooting up into their faces. Everyone laughing, screaming, slipping around in the slick grass. Lilly giggling maniacally as she ran away, only to fall face forward, bursting instantly into tears. Mom coming out with a big beach towel—the one with Goofy on it—and wrapping everyone up in it. Mom lighting the grill, and Kit running in to get hamburger buns while their old mutt, Sun, circled hungrily, nosing the air.
Tessa blinked, and realized she was in Kit’s room. This happened sometimes—only when she was extra anxious or tired. She’d feel as though she was disappearing, or she’d begin to believe she was Kit. She’d even go into Kit’s room instead of her own, like now. She always blamed the chimerism—their shared snippets of DNA—but now, with Kit gone, she wondered if it was something else.
She turned away from the window and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror that hung on the back of the closet door. As she looked at her own reflection—faint rings in the pale skin below her different-colored eyes, her light hair tangled—her mouth seemed to move of its own accord, her eyes sparkling. Please, the reflection said.
“So, you’re in here now,” said a voice behind her.
Lilly had burst through the door, and now she threw herself onto Kit’s bed. “It smells like her in here.” She picked up one of Kit’s fluffy pillows and buried her face in it, light red hair fanning out around her, like an asphyxiating mermaid.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” Tessa asked her.
Lilly rolled over and looked at her. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Tessa shrugged. “I sometimes forget.” Who I am. Where I’m supposed to be. That Kit’s not here anymore.
“I know,” Lilly said.
“Mom’s downstairs crying into the tomatoes.”
“I know,” she said again.
“This is hard on her,” Tessa replied slowly, even though she was stating the obvious. “With Kit gone . . .”
Blunt head trauma.
No foreign substances found in bloodstream.
Lilly’s face looked mottled and teary. “You have to understand . . . this whole week you’ve been gone, too. It’s like you’ve been somewhere else.”
It was true; Tessa had barely spoken to her mom since the night it happened. She’d only been floating through the house, disconnected from everything and everyone. She just had so much on her mind, so much to keep track of. While Mom was in mourning, she was trying to puzzle things out. On her own.
For Boyd.
Or maybe just for herself.
“Hey,” Lilly was saying. She’d sat up and had a funny look in her eyes. “Come here, I want to show you something.”
Tessa followed Lilly into her room, which looked just like Lilly herself—cluttered yet cool. Chaotic but artful. Precious and detailed even as it was also loud and messy, as though she’d perfectly planned out which of her outfits to drape across the back of her chair or hang off the bedpost, which scarf to curl into a ball on the floor, which pile of books to leave at just the right angle by the door, stacked up to form a makeshift nightstand.
Lilly turned over her shoulder as Tessa stood in the doorway. “Shhh,” she whispered, then stuffed something into her purse. “Come on, we have to go outside.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now.”
“Why?” She followed her back through the living room and out the back porch, to the Adirondack chairs partly hidden under the old pine in the far corner.
Night had started to fall, and the shadowed area beneath the tree was frigidly cold. They had to shove some old caked snow off the seats, and then Lilly rummaged through her purse.
“Dude, do you have pot or something?” Tessa asked, half laughing.
>
Lilly looked up with a smile.
“Oh my god, you do have pot.”
“The weeds.” It was what Lilly had called it when she was eleven and had first heard of it.
“Mom’s going to find out,” Tessa warned.
“Where else are we going to go?”
“Fine, but here, let’s move farther back.” She ushered Lilly deeper into the branches.
“Shit, I dropped it!” Lilly squealed.
“Shhh!”
She bent down into the slushy yard. “Got it.” Squatting, she faced the fence that separated their backyard from the Orensons’ behind them and tried to light the joint.
“Here, I’ll do it.” Tessa sat down on one of the chairs and easily lit the joint behind her hand.
Lilly swiveled around and sat next to her.
Tessa took a slow drag and shook her head. “Never thought I’d be smoking with you.”
“I’m not a child,” Lilly responded, taking the joint back and coughing a little after her inhale.
“Where did you get it?”
The burning tip arced and dipped through the darkness between them as they passed it back and forth, leaving a thin trail of smoke.
Lilly shook her head. “I’m not supposed to tell.”
Tessa said nothing.
“Okay, fine, I got it from Dar, actually.”
“What’s Dar doing with weed?”
“We’re not all squares and losers, Tess.”
“Sure, whatever.”
“Remember when Mel lost her virginity?” Lilly blurted out.
Tessa turned to her. “Yeah, I remember,” she said slowly, half amused, half something else. “With that guy Dustin, right?”
Lilly nodded. “But now she broke up with him again. I just don’t get it.”
“Don’t get what?”
Lilly’s face was turned slightly toward the house, and Tessa looked at her in profile. “How I could get so left behind,” she whispered.
Tessa nodded but said nothing, just took the joint and felt its tiny weight on her lips. “I haven’t done it either. You’re not the only virgin left in the world.”
Lilly sighed and didn’t look at her. “I heard Jay Kolbry’s having a Valentine’s Day party,” she said out of nowhere.
Tessa just nodded again. “You thinking of going?”
“What? No. It’s way too soon. I could barely make it through school this week. Plus, we don’t hang in that crowd,” Lilly said, but her voice didn’t sound convinced. Obviously, they were both thinking the same thing: Kit did.
“I might,” Tessa said.
“Why? How can you even think of partying, when . . .”
“I just . . . it’s hard to explain. I feel like I have to know what it’s like at one of those parties. Because she went, in the fall. And . . . and maybe someone saw something. I don’t know.”
Lilly sighed. “I think it’s a terrible idea. I think you should stay here with me and Mom. We need you.”
But Tessa knew she was just saying it—they didn’t need her. No one needed Tessa. People only ever needed Kit. Kit solved problems. Kit kept her head level. Tessa only made messes and pissed people off.
They were quiet for a while. Tessa wondered what time it was; she kept missing meals, couldn’t keep her hours and days straight. Only a week ago, everything had been normal. Less than a week ago, her sister’s body had been found, half naked, and so, so cold.
Tessa let smoke slip through her teeth and squinted through the low tree branches, to her right, diagonally across the yard, at Boyd’s darkened window next door. She still hadn’t told Lilly about their kiss. What would be the point?
She pictured him moving about in his room right now, maybe trying but failing to study. Maybe lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
But no. She knew he wasn’t home. He’d been in the local jail all week. The only light on in the house was the den light, where Boyd’s dad, Innis, was probably deep into a bottle of something.
“What do you think Kit would say if she saw us right now?” Lilly mused. “She’d probably freak out.”
“Hmm, yeah.” Tessa’s thoughts felt smoky and light. “Or maybe she would’ve been into it. Maybe she would’ve joined us.”
Lilly snorted. “Right.”
“You never know.”
“Ha ha. Pass me that back.”
“I’m serious,” Tessa said, her voice going cold in her throat.
Lilly turned to her, obviously annoyed. “You are talking about the girl who told Uncle Leo when he returned from war without working fucking legs that he couldn’t smoke cigarettes in our house.”
“Yup.”
“And who spent two New Year’s Eves volunteering in a cancer ward.”
“That doesn’t make her a saint. Did you know she got a tattoo right before . . . before that night? On her hip. Like, right here,” Tessa said, pointing to the left of her belly button.
“How do you know?” Lilly’s voice was suddenly small.
“I just know. I saw it. In the reports.”
The words hurt Lilly. Tessa could feel that. Lilly hated being the last to know something.
Lilly sniffled and put out the joint.
“Hey, that wasn’t done,” Tessa protested.
“Whatever.”
“Don’t get all upset,” Tessa said, trying to soften her voice. “I’m just saying, she had secrets, is all.”
But for some reason, this was the wrong thing to say, because Lilly exploded. “Secrets? Secrets! You don’t think I realize that? All of you! All of you with your secrets! This is the year of everyone hiding things and falling away from me like fucking dominoes, and—”
“That’s not how dominoes work,” Tessa pointed out.
Lilly stood up. “You know what? Fuck you, Tessa. I don’t need this.” Then, without another word, she marched back into the house, letting the back door slam behind her.
Tessa sat out there alone in the darkness for a while, letting the cold air move through her hair, hopefully taking some of the pungent weed smell with it. Her fingers were going numb, and she shoved them into her coat pockets, noticing a bunched-up piece of paper in the right pocket.
She pulled it out, saw it was covered in scrawled words. She didn’t recognize the handwriting.
This is your last warning. You’re making a mistake.
Tessa stared and stared at the note, her body growing colder and colder. It wasn’t just the tone of the words, the warning that echoed the one she’d received anonymously in a text. It was the fact that it had ended up inside her coat. How? Had the killer gotten that close to her, and she hadn’t even known it? Had someone stuffed the note into her pocket earlier today, at the school library? Or sometime before that?
Now she was shivering, hard. But it wasn’t all with fear. There was a rush of adrenaline moving through her too, because no matter how afraid she was, she knew what this note meant: that she was closer to the truth than she thought. It was spelled out somewhere right before her eyes, like the mess of mud and weeds in the yard, but hidden in a veil of snow.
The truth was right there—she just couldn’t see it yet.
She stayed outside for who knew how long, wondering if she was missing dinner, if she was missing everything. She felt like if she moved, she might break the spell—this feeling that she was so close to understanding the truth.
She felt frozen in waiting. For something. For what? She didn’t know.
Gradually, she began to imagine again that she was Kit and that she was sitting out here waiting for someone to come, some secret person who would emerge from the shadows of the pine trees and take her in his arms.
But she wasn’t Kit.
And she didn’t know Kit’s secrets.
A LIGHT IN THE DARK
BY KATHERINE MALLOY
We’re kissing in the closet of night, and oh,
it comes to me in pieces, as my eyes get used
to the dark:
; your hair, your hands.
The doorknob glows,
moonish and bright, like the spark I first confused
for a satellite, up there in the Milky Way.
Your thumb moves over my palm, like in some dream
where your hands are shaping me from formless clay.
I lick your lips. You taste like fresh whipped cream.
My sisters and I always fought for the cherry,
so we could try to tie its stem in a knot
using only our tongues.
I barely utter, but my body
says you are the one I’m lit for, and not
to stop.
When we touch it’s as though we are just learning how.
We are breath, we are heat, we are now—now—now.
Chapter Seventeen
Before
11/1
Dear Diary,
Did I like it?
OF COURSE I LIKED IT!!??!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!
But seriously, Diary, what is WRONG with me?
WHY did I freak out and get so awkward?
Ugh. I’m sitting here in geometry and he’s sitting RIGHT. BEHIND. ME. And I just can’t stop replaying the shocked look on his face, there in the staff room at Lupine. He left without another word. Fled, basically.
And I don’t blame him.
And I still haven’t really processed what Boyd told me after the party, either. That he likes Kit. I point-blank asked him, and he said yes. And you know what? I’m weirdly okay with it. Like, maybe I’m not as obsessed with Boyd as I thought. I mean, I thought I wanted him to be my boyfriend.
And now one single kiss—and all I can think about is . . .
Ugh.
Diary, I am sorry for the indents, but I keep slamming my forehead into you, hoping that I will eventually knock some sanity back into my brain again.
Like, I cannot concentrate on school at ALL. All day, I’ve just been trying to sail through the noisy, hormone-filled sea of navy-blue peacoats and bright fleece jackets in the DLHS halls (did I mention it’s freezing out? Winter has officially arrived in Devil’s Lake). All day, I’ve just been trying to make it to geometry.
