I kick my shoes into the dirt as I walk toward the bleachers now, my mind and body reliving that day six months ago. It was always such a rush watching Chace play. He was so much faster than everyone else; he was more wind than human when he took to the field. I loved the way his muscles flexed as he moved, how his tanned skin glistened under the sun. I loved the fierce concentration on his face as he commandeered the ball, and more than anything I loved the deafening roar when he scored goal after goal. Sometimes he would even look at me after each of those victories, and my whole body swelled with pride.
But on that April day, he made a mistake. He actually looked at her after scoring a goal. Her cheeks blushed bright pink, and I felt my stomach turn to ice.
It couldn’t have been on purpose. That’s what I told myself. He meant to look at me, and she was sitting so close. Except, he didn’t glance my way for the rest of the game.
After Oyster Bay’s win, we rushed the field, as we always do. I threw my arms around Chace, and though he hugged me back, there was no kiss. I pretended everything was fine, of course. While he made his rounds, fist-bumping his teammates and thanking everyone lining up to congratulate him, I talked and joked loudly with Kara and Stephanie like nothing was wrong—because of course nothing was, I was only being paranoid. Still, I ignored Nicole, pretending she wasn’t there. And then one minute I looked up, and she wasn’t.
Neither was Chace.
They were off to the side, engrossed in a conversation about who-knows-what, Chace looking down at her with a smile that made my heart plummet. Seeing the happiness on both of their faces was like standing beneath the sun, lifting my face to its rays, and yet cut off from feeling any of its warmth. I must have known it then. The two of them, my boyfriend and my roommate, were making the unthinkable choice of cutting me off from the light.
Ryan Wyatt had sidled up to me while I watched them, and he followed my gaze.
“They sure look happy, don’t they?” he remarked with a patronizing smile.
I turned to shoot him a furious glare. How dare he talk like that about my boyfriend and my roommate, as if the two of them were even a “they” in the first place? I may have been neutral on Ryan before, but in that moment, my feelings turned to hate.
“You wanted to see me?”
I turn around, jolted from my memory by the sound of Ryan’s present-day voice. His hair is an uncombed mess, his eyes rimmed with dark circles.
“You look terrible,” I remark.
“Thanks,” he says drily. “So what’s this about? I’m not usually your choice of people to hang out with.”
I take a deep breath. I have no choice but to dive in.
“The party,” I answer. “I remember us talking that night. I was upset. Do you know why?”
I sink into a seat on the bleachers, wrapping my arms around my knees. Ryan sits beside me.
“Is this a trick question?” he asks.
“No, I just—I need to know what we said.”
“I was drunk that night, too, I don’t—” Ryan starts to rebuff me, when suddenly a light flashes in his eyes. “Wait. I think I know what you’re talking about.”
He sounds amazed, as though recalling our conversation is some kind of accomplishment.
“You’re the reason it’s been so impossible to remember that night,” I snap at him. “You and your screwed-up drinks.”
He ignores me, squinting at a point far in the distance.
“You were griping to me about Chace. You guys had just had a fight. I asked you about the blood on your wrist, and you said it was an accident. But then…” He clears his throat, his voice sharpening. “You told me it wouldn’t surprise you if Chace was responsible for Nicole’s scar.”
I stare at Ryan.
“I didn’t mean it.”
“We were all drunk,” Ryan replies. “I didn’t read into anything you said.”
“Why haven’t you told the cops?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. “If he and I got into that kind of a fight—”
I stop mid-sentence as another image floods my mind.
Chace and I are in the woods. He stands a few feet away from me, shaking his head as I yell at him, angry, hot tears rolling down my cheeks. He opens his mouth and words come out that sting and burn, so much that I grab the nearest rock I can find and fling it at him. It hits him square in the forehead. Blood trickles down.
“Oh God!” I yelp. I’ll be in real trouble now, when all I wanted was for him to feel a fraction of the hurt he caused me. I run to Chace and press the sleeve of my sweater to his forehead, trying to stanch the bleeding, but he pushes me away.
“Just get out of here, Lana. Leave me alone.”
“He was alive and talking to me when I left,” I blurt out.
“I know. That’s why there was no point in me telling the cops about the fight. That, and the fact that I need to keep a low profile. Already, the cops are all up in my business just because Chace and I were such good friends. If they knew I’m the one who made the drinks—” He stops short, panic in his eyes as he looks at me. “You’re not going to tell, are you?”
But I’m barely listening. I’m relishing my relief, the tension seeping out of my body like air from a pricked balloon. Until a thought occurs to me.
Just because he was alive when I left the woods—doesn’t mean that it’s not my fault he’s dead.
“Lana.” Ryan elbows me. “What do you say? Are we going to look out for each other in this?”
The thought of aligning myself with Ryan makes me cringe, but I have no choice. I can’t afford to make an enemy of him, not when he knows about the fight.
“Fine. But this doesn’t make us buddies.”
The train stops at Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, and this time I get out alongside Chace. He reaches for my hand as we step off the platform, and although my mind protests that we should wait until we’ve talked to Lana, I lose my resolve at his touch. His fingers interlace with mine as if they’ve done so countless times before, and my breath catches in my throat. This can’t be anything illicit or wrong, not when it feels so natural—like everything is in the right place.
“I haven’t told anyone this before. Only my parents know,” Chace begins, lowering his voice as we cross the street. I can tell he’s nervous, and I give his hand a gentle squeeze.
“A year ago, I found out something about my dad. My parents had been fighting a lot, and when I asked questions, they always just blamed it on the stress of keeping his seat in Congress. I was pissed at him for creating such a crappy environment at home—like, was any job really worth it? And then one day I had an idea. Back in elementary school, he would pick me up and take me to Wiseguy Pizza once a week for father-son time. That was our thing, before he got elected.” Chace smiles sadly. “So I thought, hey, why not surprise him at the office with a pie from Wiseguy, remind him of old times, and maybe cheer him out of his funk?”
“That’s really sweet of you,” I tell him, though I have a feeling this story doesn’t end well.
“So I did.” Chace grits his teeth. “And when I walked in, I found him making out with one of his staffers, Lucy Jensen. The two of them were half dressed. Lucy, who had been over to our house with her husband and kids plenty of times, and who always pretended to be my mom’s friend. I lost it when I saw them together.”
I shudder.
“I can’t even imagine. That must have been horrible.”
We pass the massive Barclays Center arena and turn the corner to a residential street, lined with handsome brownstone homes.
“I wanted to get back at my dad, and while he and Lucy were sucking face, I grabbed his spare car keys off a shelf in his office, where I knew he kept them. When they finally noticed me in the room, they both freaked out, and I took off while they started throwing clothes back on. I went down to the office parking garage. This was sophomore year, so I didn’t even have a driver’s license yet, but I was so mad, I didn’t care. I took my dad’s Audi.�
� Chace stares down at the gray sidewalk. “I drove it to the Jensen house downtown. I don’t know what I was thinking, maybe that I’d go tell Mr. Jensen what my dad and his wife were up to? Who knows—clearly I wasn’t thinking. I was in this blind rage, until I felt my car hit something.”
Chace stops in his tracks, and I follow his gaze. We’re staring up at a brownstone, identical to all the rest except in this one there’s a boy in the window, leaning on a cane as he hobbles toward the kitchen table.
“I should have called 911, but I called my dad first. And he told me to go.” Chace’s voice is barely above a whisper. “He said he would come take care of it, that everything would be okay as long as I drove straight home and never said a word about this to anyone.”
I shake my head, my stomach in knots.
“And that’s what you did?”
“Yes.” Chace’s voice breaks. “Dad sent his right-hand assistant to the scene, and that’s how we found out that the thing I hit was a person. Ten-year-old Brady Jensen, the same age as my little brother, Teddy.”
I cover my mouth with my hand.
“Is he…?”
“Alive? Yes, thank God.” Chace lets out a long exhale. “Dad paid for every surgery, but he also paid for something else. See, Lucy Jensen knew it was me. She saw me walk in on them, and she was with my dad right after, when they came looking for me and discovered the car was gone. And I was desperate to tell the truth—it was eating away at me, the need to say I was sorry. But my parents sat me down and said it wasn’t just me I’d be sacrificing if I told the truth. My dad’s bid for reelection would never survive his son confessing to a hit-and-run.”
“So what happened?”
“I don’t know how much money he threw at them, but it must have been a lot. And I’m guessing the Jensens had no desire for the truth to get out, either, since that would expose Lucy’s dirty secret. So the next thing I knew, their older son, Brady’s brother, Justin, came forward and told the police it was him. He had a whole story prepared about how he’d been practicing for his license test, when he lost control of the car and panicked once he realized what he’d done.” Chace swallows hard. “I never saw Justin again.”
“What? He went to jail?” I ask in horror.
“No, but he did go to juvie. I don’t think anyone expected anything to happen to him, since it was supposedly a family matter, but the state doesn’t treat hit-and-runs lightly, no matter who’s involved. Especially when they did a drug test and found weed in Justin’s system. I guess they thought they could make an example of him.” Chace rakes his hand through his hair, and for the first time I notice the sadness behind his blue-gray eyes. It was always there—I just never put my finger on it until now.
“I don’t understand why Justin would take the fall,” I say, shaking my head. “I mean, I can sort of understand adults being influenced by money, but a kid our age?”
Chace takes a deep breath.
“Justin caused his parents more than a few headaches over the years, and I know he felt bad about it as he got older. He was a good guy, but he was constantly blowing off school and getting high. My dad once told me Lucy had to take off work practically every other week for parent-teacher meetings. My guess is, Justin’s parents convinced him that by taking the fall and earning them my dad’s bribe money…he’d be making it up to them in some way.”
I stare at Chace, finding it impossible to believe that the golden boy standing in front of me, whose every interaction with me pulls at my heart, is only here because another boy took his place in a cell. I take a gulp of air.
“Is he…out?”
“My parents told me it was a short sentence, so I think he’s out now. Although, who knows if they were just trying to calm me down when they said that. They considered me a ticking time bomb, I was so racked with guilt and anxious to tell the truth. So they sent me away to Oyster Bay Prep.” Chace meets my eyes for the first time. “I guess that’s the only thing I can’t be mad at them for—that they brought me here.”
My thoughts are running all over the place, and I struggle to focus them.
“What about Brady? Is he okay?”
Chace gazes up at the brownstone in front of us.
“I’ve been following his recovery every day since the accident. I found out that he was moved to New York to be treated by the best physical therapist on the East Coast, and that he was living at his aunt and uncle’s place in Brooklyn. I had to see him, to know for myself that he really was getting better. So I became a volunteer at Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, and I offered to help Brady with his exercises on the weekends.”
“That’s him,” I say, realization dawning as I stare at the shadow of the boy in the window.
“Yeah. He’s doing so well.” Chace smiles slightly. “He’ll finally be rid of the cane soon. And we’ve become buddies, Brady and I.”
“But what does his family say about you being the volunteer? I mean, they obviously know the truth.”
“His aunt and uncle don’t know me, Lucy never told them the real story, and I use a different name when I’m here,” Chace admits. “But you don’t know how much I want to tell the truth. The fact that Brady’s getting better doesn’t alleviate any responsibility I feel. And it’s not fair that I get to have the whole world ahead of me while Justin is who-knows-where, with a record to his name.”
“I need to sit down,” I blurt out.
Chace nods, leading the way to a coffee shop at the end of the block. I sink into a seat at a corner table, my mind still digesting everything as Chace orders for us.
“I’m sorry,” he says, returning with two steaming mugs of coffee. “This was your big day. I feel like I put a major damper on it with my story.”
“No. I’m glad you told me.”
He tries to smile, but his expression is filled with sorrow.
“Now do you see why I thought you might feel differently about me after hearing this?”
“Yes. But the funny thing is…I don’t.”
I tentatively reach across the table and place my hand over his. The electric charge is still there, sending my stomach swooping, but now there’s something deeper beneath it.
“I see someone who made a mistake, but is doing everything he can to make it right, even when it means going against his parents. I see someone brave enough to be honest.”
His eyes fill with gratitude as he gazes at me.
“And when I do tell the truth…”
“You’ll have me by your side,” I tell him. “I promise.”
We sit beside each other on the train back to Oyster Bay, both quiet as we watch the nighttime scenery fly past. Everything we’ve shared and spoken over the past few hours seems to have turned us shy as the train hurtles back to Long Island. Will he regret confiding in me? I wonder. Will we both regret what we’re about to confess to Lana?
The train speeds past a sharp turn, and my body slams against Chace’s.
“Sorry!” I exclaim, my face reddening.
He wraps a gentle arm around me.
“You okay?”
I glance up at him. Our faces are so close. I can feel his warm breath against my cheek. My heartbeat quickens.
“Yes.”
Our eyes remain locked. I know we both ache for the same thing—his lips on mine. But our first kiss can’t happen behind Lana’s back. I lower my head away from his, resting it on his shoulder.
From the back row of the train car comes the sound of an acoustic guitar. I turn around in my seat. A twentysomething, scruffy-bearded man is playing, a change cup beside him.
“It’s a busker,” I tell Chace. He begins to sing.
“Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again…”
“Doesn’t Adele sing this?” I hum along.
“It’s originally by the Cure,” Chace replies.
“You know an awful lot about music for an athlete,” I say, looking up at him teasingly. “Where d
id all that knowledge come from?”
“I guess the fact that I can’t sing on key or play an instrument to save my life makes me appreciate those who do,” he says with a grin. “I’ve always been a giant music fan, but mostly for older stuff.”
“I like that about you,” I tell him.
“And I like everything about you,” he murmurs into my hair.
My heart jumps, and I try to control my smile. We fall silent again, Chace’s arm still around my shoulder as we listen to the acoustic guitarist at the back of the train.
“However far away,
I will always love you…”
There’s a trail that leads from the school woodlands straight up a hill, forming a shortcut into the residential streets of Oyster Bay, where Tyler Hemming’s family estate sits on a plush pocket of land. I follow the trail now, retracing my steps from the night of the party. The day is turning to dusk, and I quicken my footsteps, anxious to get through my task before night falls.
My iPhone buzzes with a text. It’s from Kara.
Where R U? Just saw on the news that there’s a lead on Nicole. Something they found on her computer.
I drop my phone back in my purse. I could just turn around and head back to my dorm right now; anyone else would. Who cares what I do or don’t remember, when the girl I’ve hated for months is the obvious suspect and not me? I should just let the police, my mom, and whoever else is pushing the Nicole narrative along sew this case up. But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more, something I need to remember if I’m ever going to recover from this. The problem is, retracing my steps will mean returning to the place I can’t stand to see: the woods where we last argued. The place where his body was found.
The Girl in the Picture Page 14
