The After Girls

by Konen, Leah

  “Don’t you even want to know how I found out?” She’d expected Audie to tell her she was crazy, not to just accept this impossible news at face value. She’d expected Audie to undo it, to prove her wrong.

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  The words seemed to pour out of her. “It was Astrid’s cousin, Jake. He told Ella, and she is, like, one hundred percent convinced, but she’s also convinced that Astrid’s living with us in ghost form, and she’s also practically in love with this guy, so I don’t know what to think. And I don’t know why you’re not telling me I’m wrong,” she said, her voice shaking now, getting louder. Tell me I’m wrong, she thought. Please. Tell me I’m wrong.

  Audie didn’t answer right away. When she did, her face was scrunched up. Tight. “It’s not easy. Trust me, I didn’t think it was possible either. I really didn’t. All these years I never really thought.”

  “But you’re saying you considered? Why would you even think anything like that?”

  Audie sighed. “I feel awful burdening you with this,” she said. “When you’ve already gone through so much.”

  “Just tell me,” Sydney said. “I need to know.”

  “Alright, alright,” she said. “You’re practically an adult yourself now.” She took a deep breath. “There was talk,” she said. “Ever since it happened. Falling Rock isn’t that big, and you know how things get around.”

  Sydney nodded. “Okay.”

  “Some people thought it was weird, the whole string of events. He just disappeared, really — they had the funeral out of town, all that — and then I guess, I don’t know, someone said something at one of the pubs off the trail that he used to go to. That he heard from him or something. He was a bad drunk, though — I didn’t believe him. It was all hearsay. I mean, it was always easier to believe that than the fact that Grace would actually concoct a story so …”

  “Awful.”

  Audie nodded.

  “Jake said he was at the funeral,” Sydney said. “And you didn’t see him?”

  “It’s been almost a decade,” she said. “And why would I be looking?”

  Why indeed. For all Audie knew he was dead and gone. Why would she be searching for a dead person? And for a millisecond, the thought crossed her mind — Grace had orchestrated it for her husband — what was to stop her from faking the death of her daughter as well? What if everything that Ella had seen, everything she thought …

  But then she remembered the wake, Astrid’s cakey foundation and her lifeless face, and she knew it couldn’t be. Astrid was gone. Astrid wasn’t coming back.

  Sydney looked at her aunt. “What should I do?”

  Audie sighed. “What can you do?”

  “Tell someone,” she stammered. “Tell everyone.”

  “For what?”Audie asked. “To hurt Grace, to get back at her? She just lost her daughter. And no matter what she called it, she lost Robert, too. What good would it do?”

  “The truth would be out there. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “The truth is different for different people,” Audie said, and it was so like Audie to say something understanding like that, she almost wanted to scream.

  “But shouldn’t everyone know?”

  “The people who need to know, know,” Audie said, discreetly brushing away a tear as she did. When she spoke again she sounded almost offended. “If Robert had wanted to stay, to be part of this world, he would have. Now he’ll just be remembered as the good guy who died and not the man who left his wife and daughter.”

  But Sydney knew it wasn’t that simple. Maybe he didn’t care, maybe it made it easier for Grace. Maybe it eased the embarrassment, the shame. But she knew without a doubt that it wasn’t better for Astrid. How could anyone come through that unbroken?

  Sydney took a deep breath. “I just don’t get it. I thought you said they were in love. And then he just left her. Like that.”

  Audie shook her head. “Don’t let anyone tell you love is easy, Syddie. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that. Because it’s not.”

  And she thought of Astrid, of Ella, of Carter — even Max. And she knew more than anything that her aunt was right — that it wasn’t.

  But she couldn’t help it — she wanted it to be, so bad. She wanted love to mean something. She wanted it to make sense.

  Because if it had to be like this — if everyone you ever loved would break you, undo you, leave you, whether to another state or to another world — she couldn’t take it.

  She’d rather be alone forever than have to live with that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Ella called in sick to work the next morning.

  She’d tried to call her friend countless times, hands shaking, pulse racing, but nothing. The phone was dead. Dead as it ever had been.

  She knew she wasn’t sick. She wasn’t even hung over — she hadn’t been at the party long enough for that. But she was exhausted. Emotionally. Physically. Mentally.

  More than that, she was scared.

  Everything about last night was too much. Ben had apologized profusely over text. Maybe he was too embarrassed to pick up the phone. Maybe he’d known deep down that it would all go over better without actual communication. She’d texted back, said it was okay, more to get him to stop than anything else, because it wasn’t, it totally wasn’t — he knew it as well as she did — and he’d said that he wanted to talk. She hadn’t yet responded to that. She knew that once they did she’d have a pretty sad case; she’d gone to the show without telling him, she’d invited Jake to the cabin instead of him, and even now, even though she hated how he’d said those things to Ben, even though she had a million other things on her mind, she couldn’t help biting her lip as she thought of Jake, to keep from smiling. She hadn’t had those bite-your-lip feelings since she first started dating Ben.

  She shouldn’t have those bite-your-lip feelings about anyone else besides Ben.

  She hadn’t talked to Jake, and she didn’t want to — she had more important things to worry about. Something was definitely going on, there was no denying it now, and she knew that A’s journal was in her bag, waiting for her. She knew that there was still so much more to find out. She couldn’t waste any time.

  The sun shone through her window, and Ella knew that on another day in another summer, she and Sydney and Astrid would have all been outside. They’d have walked to town to buy magazines and gum or practiced climbing Sydney’s stupid tree.

  Ella didn’t get dressed yet — she didn’t feel like it — the more she tried to understand Astrid, the less she did. The more she found out, the less she seemed to have known about her friend. But she had to keep trying. So she picked up the journal and turned to where she’d left off.

  At first it was more of the same — detailed accounts of their days, the time Sydney had gotten lost on the way to Walmart and taken them on an ultimately fun scenic trip, the day that Ella and Ben had had their one-year anniversary, how the girls had helped her find the perfect outfit to wear to The Cheesecake Factory in the next town over. As she flipped through, she realized how strange it was that Astrid wrote so much about them, but so little about herself.

  But as Ella kept reading, getting into their senior year, the journal started to change. It started to sound less like the Astrid she’d known. More like an Astrid who could be capable of something so horrible, so unthinkable. Of an Astrid who would eventually take her own life.

  Some days there were just a few words. Doing good today. Some days just one. Angry. Some days there were drawings instead, not art-class drawings, with the sketchy pencil marks and the subtle shading. These drawings were hard and rough, so much so that sometimes they broke through the paper. They were big shapes. Long faces. Ella didn’t know what to think except that they looked like what it felt to be scared.

  And they definitely scared her.

  And the stories, when they were there, they stopped being about school so much, about friends and crushes and lists
of boys that Astrid had thought were kissable; they turned vague, cryptic. All pronouns and emotions. About her moods. Her looks. Her clothes. Whether she was happy or sad — she wouldn’t get out of bed all day — pretty or slumming around — she put her pearls back on, she hasn’t done that since he left — really there or in some other world — she screamed at me when I left the house, she tried to pull me back inside —

  The she had to be Grace, but it was like reading about a whole other woman. One that Ella had never known. One that Astrid could hardly predict.

  One that she seemed almost obsessed with.

  Jake’s words rung in her head. “Astrid’s dad is alive … Grace was probably the least surprised of anyone.” It still didn’t all make sense. What exactly had happened?

  And then Ella found a page with just a couple of sentences.

  Went to Ella’s today. I couldn’t help it. I probably shouldn’t have done that. She won’t like it.

  Ella stared at the page. It was dated a couple of months before Astrid died. April. Rainy April. Sad April. And in moments, she remembered. It came to her as if in a flash. Why had she not thought of it before?

  On that day in April, Astrid had walked over, unannounced, the rain making her red hair deeper, darker, curled into wet ringlets. Astrid never wore much makeup, so her face just looked wet, like a child who’d been crying.

  “Oh my God,” Ella had said as she opened the front door. “Are you okay?”

  Astrid shook her head and walked inside. Ella got a towel, and they walked up the stairs to her room. Astrid sat on the edge of the bed and shook. At first Ella thought it was from being wet, but it wasn’t.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Astrid spoke in bursts. “I just … all of a sudden …” she gasped. “She just screamed at me … she wouldn’t stop.”

  Ella hugged her friend, her t-shirt getting wet. She didn’t know if it was from the rain or Astrid’s tears.

  “Who screamed at you?” Ella asked. “What happened?”

  But Astrid shook her head. “I wanted to talk about something, and she wouldn’t let me. I wanted to tell you something, but I can’t.”

  “Who did this?” Ella asked, pushing the wet hair off of Astrid’s forehead. “You can tell me anything,” she said.

  “Not this,” Astrid said. “Not this.” More sobs rocked her.

  “Shhh,” Ella said, taking her friend in her arms. “I don’t want to pressure you, but I’m always here when you want to talk, A. I’m always here to listen.”

  Astrid looked up at Ella, almost as if she were a different species, as if they were so different that Ella could never, ever understand. But then she nodded, as if trying to convince herself that what Ella said could be true.

  “It’ll be okay,” Ella repeated, wrapping her arms around Astrid tighter, trying to calm her shaking body. “I’m here.”

  “I’m just afraid,” Astrid said with a gasp, but she cut herself off.

  Ella pulled back, rubbed her hand along Astrid’s shoulder.

  “Afraid of what?” Ella asked, but her friend just shook her head, the sobs shaking her again, the tears coming down in a rush.

  And she never told Ella what it was that she was afraid of. She never told her what it was that she wanted so badly to say.

  And worse than that, Ella hadn’t pressed her. Ella hadn’t asked. She hadn’t even known it was Grace. The guilt hit her in the stomach like a punch. Why had she just let it go?

  Ella felt her face grow hot, and a tear trickled down her cheek, but she just wiped it away. She was too tired for a breakdown. Instead she took a deep breath, and she kept flipping the pages, and it was just more drawings, more words here and there, and then there it was, that last page. So insufficient. Such a non-goodbye. Ella turned the page wishing that there were more. She ran her hands over it, but there was no more writing, just the back of the last page. Blank. Lined.

  Empty.

  But as Ella pulled her hand back she felt a sharp pain and then … blood. There was blood on her finger. She’d gotten a paper cut. And she looked closer, and she couldn’t believe that she and Sydney hadn’t seen it before.

  Tiny slivers, right along the spine.

  There had been pages. Astrid’s pages.

  They’d been cut out of the journal.

  Her friend’s final words had been literally cut off.

  Ella put her finger in her mouth, sucking on the salty drop of blood, as her heart quickened and her brain began to race.

  Ella knew what she had to do. There was no time to waste.

  • • •

  Ella was out of breath by the time she got to Sydney’s house. She’d run the whole way. Sydney’s mom opened the door and looked at her with narrowed eyes.

  “Hello, Mrs. Collette,” she tried to say politely, between gasps for air.

  “Hey dear,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  Ella nodded quickly. “Is Sydney here?”

  She stepped back, making way. “She’s in her room, but if she’s not up yet, you’re going to have to deal with her crankiness. Not me.”

  “Thanks,” Ella said, running up the stairs.

  She knocked on Sydney’s door — two quick raps — before whipping it open.

  Sydney groaned from the bed and flipped over.

  “Hey,” Ella said, walking over to her. “Hey. It’s Ella.” She shook her shoulder, maybe not so gently.

  Sydney flipped back over and her eyes fluttered open. “Whoa,” she said, sitting up quickly. “Whoa.”

  “It’s okay,” Ella said. “It’s just me.”

  “What are you doing here?” Sydney asked. “Ugh. Can you pull that shade down?”

  Ella walked over to the window and snapped it down. Sydney was still in her clothes from the night before. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “It’s almost one.”

  Sydney let out another groan. “I had a rough morning, okay?”

  “I take it you guys kept drinking after I left?” Ella asked.

  “It’s not just that,” Sydney said, and Ella knew there was a story there but she didn’t have time for it right now. “Listen,” she said, pulling the journal out of her purse, her hands already beginning to quiver in anticipation.

  But Sydney interrupted her, holding up her hand. “Wait, what happened with you? Have you talked to Ben yet? Or Jake?”

  Ella shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

  “I’m sure that Ben was just drunk, and he’s really such a good guy and — ”

  “I said, I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

  “I know, but — ”

  “Sydney,” Ella snapped. “Listen to me. There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Oh God,” Sydney said — and she really did look upset. “What now? What else can there be?”

  “Look at this,” she said, pushing the journal in front of Sydney.

  Sydney immediately shook her head vigorously. “No more storytime for me, thanks. Once was enough.”

  “Just look,” Ella said, flipping the back cover open. “Feel that.”

  “Feel what?”

  “Right here.” Ella took Sydney’s finger and ran it along the inside of the spine.

  “Whoa,” she said. “It’s sharp.”

  “Exactly,” Ella said. “The pages have been cut out.”

  Sydney looked up at her, and for a moment it looked like she was considering something, like she was weighing a choice. Like even she was interested — even she wanted to know — even she was shocked.

  But the look left and her face went flat. She shrugged. “This doesn’t mean anything,” she said.

  Ella couldn’t help it. She snapped. “How does a mother slicing pages out of her daughter’s diary not mean anything?”

  Sydney just shrugged. She looked defeated. “How is that any worse than pretending your husband’s dead?”

  “Don’t you think that’s why I want to see them?
” Ella asked. “They could explain what really happened.”

  Sydney just shook her head. “What are you even telling me this for? I’m presuming you want me to help you do some crazy thing.”

  “We need to get them back.”

  “We don’t need to do anything,” Sydney said.

  “What do you want me to do? Just pretend I didn’t see them? Just pretend they didn’t exist?”

  “Yes,” Sydney yelled. “Yes! That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

  Ella shook her head. She’d come too far now. She’d been through too much. She wasn’t going to stop now. She was so close. “No,” she said. “No. I can’t.”

  Sydney sighed. “How would you even go about getting them?”

  “I’ll ask Jake. I’ll look for them.”

  “You’re going to tear up a house you were kicked out of for snooping to find a few sheets of paper?”

  “What else am I going to do?”

  “Give up!” Sydney said. “They could be anywhere. She could have burned them for all we know.”

  “No,” Ella said. “You didn’t see her room. Not a thing was touched. Not a single thing except the journal. She hid them. She didn’t burn them. She wouldn’t destroy anything of Astrid’s. I know it. She wouldn’t.”

  But Sydney just shook her head. Her eyes looked sad. Almost like she was going to cry. “And what then?” she asked. “When will it be enough? What else are we going to find? That she had a secret grandmother? That Astrid wasn’t her real name? That she didn’t speak a word of truth to us the entire time we knew her? It won’t bring her back,” Sydney yelled. “It’ll just make us feel even more like shit.”

  “But we might know — ”

  “We might know what?” Sydney practically screamed. “What? Tell me what could we possibly know that would make anything any better? Tell me how anything we’ve learned so far has made it anything but worse.”

  “Sydney,” Ella said, but her friend ignored her.

  “No,” and she did scream that time. “Don’t you get it? I’m hurting, too. I may not be seeing ghosts and dreaming about Astrid every night, but I need you. I need you to be here with me. Do you know that it’s a month tomorrow? A month. A month you’ve been playing this stupid game, and for nothing. I, for one, feel just as shitty as ever. It’s selfish. You’re doing this for you, don’t you get it? Not for me. Not for Jake. Not for Grace. And sure as hell not for her.”