by Cyn Balog
I heave a sigh. “All right, all right. What?”
“Maybe you already knew? Kane broke his shoulder on his throwing arm. And spring ball starts Monday.”
I startle. “What? How?”
“He fell on some ice, he said.” She shrugs. “All I know is that when Ethan came to pick him up yesterday morning for school, he had to drive him to the hospital. His shoulder is broken in three places.”
I think back to when I drove out of the driveway like a bat out of hell, even before he’d gotten himself free of the Jeep.
Oh no.
I close my eyes. Holy hell. Had I…
Of course I had. And of course he wouldn’t tell anyone what really happened. He’s so worried about my mental state, and he wouldn’t want Luisa to know he’d been talking to me. Guilt threatens to flood in, but I refuse to let it take a hold. After what he did to me last week, I refuse to care. I quickly change the subject.
“So, prom dresses. What are you looking for?”
I’d made plans with Nina to go prom-dress shopping, even though I knew I wouldn’t be going. For years, prom dresses were a big topic of conversation, so it only seemed right for me to shop with her. The few times we’d shopped together, she’d come to really value my opinion, since I was honest and blunt.
“Oh, you know. Something to make Jav’s tongue wag like a dog’s over what he’s missing,” she says, smiling. “You are really so great for doing this with me, girl. I can’t thank you enough. But you can still come to prom yourself, you know.”
I scrunch my nose. Once upon a time, I’d imagined going to Declan’s senior prom, and him coming back from his freshman year at college to escort me to mine. But the junior prom I’d gone to with Declan, the one where he’d sung me that goofy song, was enough. It had been a long time since I’d had prom dreams beyond that. “It’s okay.”
“But are you okay? I heard about your talk with Luisa.”
I groaned. Yeah, and so had most of the school. “Did you know she was in love with Declan?” I ask.
She guns it through a yellow light that turns red the second we’re through. “Oh. Um. I heard something about that. Yeah. Kind of a cluster, huh?”
“I guess I must have blocked it out. But they were seeing each other,” I remark.
I study her for any reaction, but there is none. So she knew all along. Maybe I was the only one in the whole school who thought Declan was faithful to me. She says, “Do you really think he didn’t kill himself?”
So, Crazy Hailey’s wild conspiracy theories have reached the outside world. I have no doubt who’s responsible for that. I told only one person my theory—Kane. And he told Luisa. And Luisa won’t shut up, especially if it’s damning gossip about me. “I don’t know anymore. I mean, maybe he did. He had a lot of guilt, and I never knew it. He kept it inside. I obviously didn’t know him as well as I thought.”
“You knew him well, Hailey,” she says. “He was a saint in a lot of ways. But even saints are human, you know? They make mistakes.”
“But they atone for them.”
“Who says he didn’t?” she says. “Maybe that’s what he thought he was doing when he got out the gun. Maybe he thought it was the only way to make up for what he’d done.”
19 Days Before
I knew it wasn’t working.
I knew Declan better than anyone. I knew he was a person of high morals, convictions. If he was cheating on me, it’d be eating away at him. He’d know it was wrong. If he had even one tiny bit of love left for me, he wouldn’t be able to look at me without needing to confess. Eventually, he’d have to tell me everything. That was what I’d been counting on from the start.
And yet, he didn’t.
The next two weeks went on, and it was like living in a fun-house mirror—normal, but distorted in so many ways. We spent time together, watching movies, studying together, doing the things we’d done before, but the mood was off. He’d hold my hand but wouldn’t stroke my palm. He’d kiss me, but never with as much passion as before, as if his lips were there but his mind was somewhere else. He’d tell me he was busy, and I’d compare notes with Kane, and he’d say Luisa had bailed on him then too.
It was maddening.
It was a Saturday night, the first night we’d had alone. His parents were on a date night. Kane and Luisa were having dinner with her parents at their country club, so Declan and I were hanging out in his room. We kissed, hot and heavy, almost like before, but I couldn’t stop think of Luisa being in that very spot. When I reached for his jeans and started to tug the button open, he stopped me.
And I lost it.
Because of course, he hadn’t stopped her.
My hand froze in his. At that moment, I realized the folly of my plan. He was punishing me, playing with me, and I loved him so much that I could do nothing but let him twist me this way and that. I scooted away from him, toward the headboard of the bed, and started to sob.
“Hey,” he said to me, almost back to the old, caring Declan I’d missed so much. He leaned back, watching me cry on his pillow. “What’s wrong?”
I swabbed at my eyes. “You love me, right?”
“Of course,” he said, but was there conviction in those words? It didn’t seem so.
My fingers found the necklace, nestled in the hollow of my throat. I touched it whenever I needed the assurance that Declan and I still meant something. I was doing it constantly now. The skin underneath was red and irritated. “And we’re still going to be together. Forever?”
He just nodded and wiped a tear off my cheek. I wanted more reassurance. I needed it. But even if he had sworn up and down, any comfort he gave me wouldn’t be enough. “What’s the problem?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. I’m stressed, I guess. College worries, you know.”
He smiled. “Been there.” He kissed my forehead, then ran a finger over the worry lines there. It felt nice, the kind of touch I’d craved and been starved of lately. “Do you want some Excedrin? Something to drink?”
I nodded, lapping up the concern like an abandoned puppy that was offered a treat. “Thanks.”
He started to get up, then stopped, opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again. Then he said, “Hey. I had something I wanted to talk to you about.”
I looked at him, hopeful. “Yes?”
He said, “Hailey. I…” He paused as if he wasn’t sure how to phrase it. Then he said, quickly, “I wanted to know if you would go to prom with me.”
The smile broke out on my face immediately, huge and almost painful. I hadn’t used those muscles much in the past month. “Yes. Yes!” I dove for him, hugging him hard. I kissed him, unable to wipe that stupid grin off my face.
“Cool.” He sprang off the bed. “Back in a minute.”
I sat up, adjusting my bra and closing the clasp. As happy as I was, it only took another minute before I felt dirty, gross, sitting in the same spot where I’d seen him with Luisa. He’d invited me to prom, but suddenly I felt like a consolation prize. He’d had time to confess, but one thing was clear…he didn’t want to. Not only that, he and Luisa had been MIA yesterday. He was still seeing her.
My eyes trailed to his phone, sitting on the night table. I grabbed it, opened it, and found his texts. Sure enough, he’d been texting with Luisa. It said “L”, but it didn’t take a genius to crack that code. The last message was from a few hours ago. I opened it and read the screen:
January 27, 9:58 PM
Meet you there at 10:30
Can’t wait :)
January 28, 4:50 PM
Have fun with your girl ;)
Rather be with you
The whole time I was reading, I’d been pulling on a lock of my hair and didn’t realize until I’d torn it from my scalp. It had taken a little chunk of skin too. I stared at the strands, then held them over carpet and let them
fall to floor.
Rather be with you.
He was going to prom with me, and yet he’d rather be with her.
I heard him coming up the stairs. I’d wanted to read more, but I quickly placed the phone on the night table, and grabbed the closest book, which happened to be his Bible.
He was surprised to see me reading it, since I’d shied away from it before. He set two Cokes on the dresser and handed me a couple of green pills. “What are you doing?”
I scanned the page. He’d outlined some of the words in yellow, but I didn’t see those. Somehow, the first words I read were these:
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.
“Nothing,” I said, feeling dizzy, drained. Rather be with you. Those two pills were like putting a bandage on cancer.
I took them anyway. When he leaned over to give them to me, he touched my forehead and brought back blood on the pad of his finger. “What the…”
I grabbed a tissue, blotting the sore, which didn’t even hurt compared to everything else that was wrong with me. I replied lifelessly, “Nothing.”
“Wow,” he said, sitting down on the antique rocking chair in the corner of the room, far away from me. “You are stressed out.”
Stress. Right. If that was all it was, I’d have been happy. But I hadn’t even had a chance to think about college. I couldn’t, not with my social life going to pot. My mother had strategically placed brochures for Penn State in places around the house where I’d find them, but all I could think was that as much as he promised we were forever, Declan had started moving away from me. In another year, he’d be in Philadelphia, and I’d be at home. Everything I’d done to draw him toward me had only succeeded in pushing him further away.
We didn’t kiss again after that. Didn’t even touch. I felt like a diversion, like someone he was passing time with when he really wanted to be with someone else. He only talked about UPenn and how acceptances should be coming in another month or so. Where before I’d imagined walking the tree-lined campus with him, hand in hand, now I imagined him walking with Luisa. The more he talked, the sicker I felt, as though I was no longer a part of his future. As if my future, once so set in stone, had become a big, terrifying question mark.
If I couldn’t trust Declan to be honest with me, who could I trust?
When he excused himself to use the bathroom, I found a purple highlighter in my backpack and marked those sentences, thickly and angrily. Then I stuck the red ribbon bookmark in the page and laid the Bible on his pillow, so that he wouldn’t be able to escape those damning words, no matter how hard he tried.
Tuesday, March 5
I haven’t slept in days. Not since I discovered what a cheating liar I was. I can’t help thinking that Luisa was right: I am responsible for Declan’s death.
Juliet watches me silently as I sit in the blue chair in her office. I take a bottle of Poland Spring, drink, and say, “I don’t have very much to say today.”
“You don’t? You missed last week.”
It’s not that I don’t have things to say. I don’t have the energy to say them. “Everything’s fine. Good. I mean, I even went shopping this weekend. For prom dresses.”
She stares at me with narrowed eyes as if she doesn’t believe me. “That’s great. You’re going to the prom?”
“Oh. No. I’m… You know. Moving on. Like I should be. Right?”
I thought that was the correct answer, but from the way she’s looking at me, it’s not.
“Yes. But what brought this about?” She flips through pages on her clipboard. “Last time we met, you were having some concerns about Declan’s death.”
I nod. “I don’t have them anymore. He killed himself.”
She seems surprised by my progress. She taps her pen on her pad. “And what brought you to that conclusion?”
Do I have to go into it? I’m not sure I can. Instead, I say, “I went through the box.”
“The box of things his mother gave you? So you found it therapeutic?”
I nod. She seems pleased, as though her suggestion has me on the path to recovery, and if she wants to think that, fine. I’m happy to increase her self-worth the way she thinks she’s increasing mine. “I found mementos from things he did with my best friend. My ex-best friend. And it made me remember things about him. He was cheating on me.”
“With”—she flips back some pages—“Luisa?”
“Yes. He had this whole secret life I knew nothing about, and so I guess I didn’t know him well. I spoke to his priest, and he told me that Declan had stopped going to church, and that he was one to harbor guilt and not let it out. Maybe he was suicidal. I can’t know what was going through his head, because I didn’t know him.” I swallow, pushing away memories that will only have me sobbing again.
“And?”
“And what? It hurts. But part of me feels like a weight has been lifted off me. I’d built him up in my head, thought he was so perfect. I was worried I wasn’t good enough for him. Now? I don’t know. It helps to know he was human.”
She smiles. “Well, that’s encouraging.”
“So, yes,” I say. “I’m not the person who knew him best. I didn’t know that he had a vengeful side. That he could sleep with someone to get even, then lie straight to my face about it.”
“You think that’s what he did?”
I nod. “I know it. He couldn’t have cared about Luisa. Please. She told me she thought it’s my fault he died.”
“You spoke to her?”
I nodded again. Wow, it turns out, a lot has happened since I last spoke to Juliet. “Yes. I guess she meant he was so full of guilt over hurting me. And I…” I blush sheepishly. “I didn’t make it easy for him. I highlighted quotes in his Bible.”
“You did?” She gives me a reproachful look. “But that alone wouldn’t make Declan…”
“No, but maybe there were a thousand little things I didn’t know about that all contributed. Luisa would know. She was spending more time with him. And if she’s blaming me, something tells me she’s probably covering for herself. Maybe she pressured him to end things with me.”
“You think?”
“I know the way she pushed Kane. She was relentless. He could only take her in small doses.”
“So you think Declan’s relationship with Luisa was his undoing?”
“She has this subtle way about her. She comes across as all rainbows and sunshine, but she can be lethal.”
Juliet purses her lips. “And where is Luisa now?”
“Terrorizing Kane, once again. She’s got a magnet for him. They made up. They’re together.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
I shrug. “I don’t have any feelings about that. Luisa never lets anything touch her. She comes out of every crisis prettier and shinier than she was going in.”
“You sound bitter.”
“Well, considering I’m still here, a year later…talking to you. I wish I had her resiliency.”
Juliet checks her notes and says, “It concerns me that you don’t have a best friend to lean on anymore. I suppose you still have Kane, and—”
I shake my head. I hadn’t seen him since Friday, but everyone was talking about his broken shoulder. Word on the street was that he was pissed. Baseball is his life, and he’d been waiting all winter for it to start up again. And who knows if it’ll affect his chance at getting into college? He probably wants to kill me.
“No. That’s kind of… No. You see, we… He and I…”
She’s staring at me, and I can’t say it. Talk about going around in circles, banging my head against the wall. “Seems like you have
a lot to say to me today,” Juliet comments.
I sigh. “It was a mistake. In the end, Kane chose Luisa over me. And that’s all. Like I said, prettier and shinier. I don’t want to talk about that. I’m okay. Really.”
I push the corners of my lips into a smile to prove it.
“All right,” she says, closing her notebook. “You’re moving on, and that’s important. Are you finding something to hitch your wagon to that isn’t part of the past?”
“Like…?”
“College, trade school…” she suggests. “Your life. You’re graduating in three months, which isn’t long.”
I hadn’t thought of college at all, honestly, until this weekend. My parents were simply happy with me graduating from high school in some capacity. Taking baby steps. But Nina’s acceptances were starting to come in, and she was trying to decide between Moravian and Cedar Crest. And, for the first time, my mind had started to trail to my future. My after.
Because there would be an after. Before, I’d thought that with Declan gone, my life might as well end. But it hasn’t. I’m still here. And I will be here, whether I make sense of his death or not.
Declan’s death had permanently shattered the six, but soon its pieces would be scattered all over the country. I can write my own story from here on out, not as Declan’s girlfriend, but as whomever I wanted to be.
“I am thinking of it,” I announce. “I might enroll in community college.”
Juliet smiles, and I can tell I’ve pleased her. “Good for you, Hailey. Good for you.”
12 Days Before
I had just enough time.
Declan had a crap locker assignment. His was all the way down in no-man’s-land, in the band wing, away from all of his classes. He didn’t even take band, so he’d always make it to class with seconds to spare. Since he had too many books to lug them all around all day, I’d rarely see him between classes unless he was sprinting somewhere.
I asked for a nurse’s pass during the last five minutes of geometry so I could make sure no one would see me. When I got past the nurse’s office, I booked it double time into the music wing just as the bell rang.
