A Million Times Goodnight

by Kristina McBride

  Copyright © 2016 by Kristina McBride Purnhagen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

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  www.kristinamcbride.com

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: McBride, Kristina, author.

  Title: A million times goodnight / Kristina McBride.

  Description: New York : Sky Pony Press, [2016] | Summary: Told in alternating storylines, a teen must decide whether to confront her boyfriend or go on a cross-country road trip after he posts a compromising picture of her online.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015025639| ISBN 9781510704015 (hardback) |

  ISBN 9781510704039 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Dating (social customs)—Fiction. | Online identities—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Dating & Sex. | JUVENILE FICTION / Love & Romance. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M1223 Mi 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015025639

  Jacket photo © James Anderson/iStock

  Printed in the United States of America

  To all my sister friends,

  A million times I love you.

  1

  OAK GROVE, OHIO – 9:07 PM

  “ARE YOU sure we should be doing this?” Mia asked from the backseat as I eased my boyfriend’s BMW off Main Street and up a steep hill on Old Henderson Road. A dense canopy of trees closed in above us. I could hear them overhead, the branches swaying, the waxy spring leaves hushing and shushing.

  “This is kinda creepy, Hadley.” Brooklyn stared at me from the passenger seat. “I mean, we’ve all been back to visit where she died, but to drive up here at night?”

  “Don’t focus on that,” I said. “Tonight’s about honoring her memory. Her death is all anyone seems to remember anymore. She was so much more than that.”

  “If we’re not supposed to be thinking about how she died, why are we going back to the place where we lost her?” Brooklyn asked.

  “It’s the anniversary.” My hands gripped the wheel tightly. “Isn’t that what you do?”

  “It’s also the first Saturday of spring break,” Mia said. “The party’s just getting started. If you ask me, the best way to honor Penny is to head back and have a drink or two, dance like no one’s watching, and kiss a few random guys just for fun.”

  I started to wonder if I had it wrong. If maybe I was the one who’d forgotten how to remember Penny Rawlins: the girl who’d stand in the middle of a mass of writhing people, face tipped to a star-filled sky, twirling to the beat of a crazy-fast song. The girl with a triumphant smile spreading across her freckled cheeks as someone called out her name, announcing her reigning champion over the senior football players in a beer pong tournament; the girl who could just as easily lose herself in a moment of quiet, pouring her soul onto the pages of the sketch pad she carried with her everywhere.

  But those thoughts didn’t stop me—didn’t turn me around. Instead, they kept me rolling up the wooded back road that twisted itself away from everything until it reached the Witches’ Tower, a structure that looked like an old lighthouse missing its glass-topped chamber. It was the scene of the worst accident in Oak Grove’s history—the accident that took our Penny from us.

  “The party can wait,” I said. “I want to drive through the trees, top down, music blaring, my two best friends along for the ride. We agreed we would do this. Together.”

  “That was back when it was just an idea.” Brooklyn’s words surfed the air streaming through the open convertible top. “You know, a throw-it-out-there-and-see-if-it-sticks kind of thing.”

  “Well, I threw it out there. It stuck. That’s why we left to go to Circle K. It’s why I grabbed the—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Brooklyn interrupted. “I’m just not sure anymore. This feels wrong.”

  “It’s not wrong.” I followed a curve in the road, wondering what it would feel like to drive off the pavement and crash into the thick band of swaying trees beyond. “It’s the only right thing. Trust me.”

  “Fine,” Mia said, a shiver tightening the word. “We’ll do this. For her. Even if it is creepy.”

  “It’s only as creepy as you make it.” I looked in the rearview mirror, catching Mia’s eye, trying to forget about the curve in the road where Penny took her last breath.

  Brooklyn laughed then, tipping her head back against her seat. “You sound like her, you know.”

  “That’s exactly why we’re out here.” Strands of hair whipped my face. “To remember her as she was.”

  “Loud. Wild. And totally free.” Brooklyn stretched her legs across the passenger floorboard, her loosely curled hair turning from a silvery glow to dark shadow and back again as we drove in and out of the moonbeams streaming through the trees.

  I pressed my foot on the gas, suddenly needing to go faster. To get to the tower. To be in the last place Penny had been. “We’re all in? For Penny?”

  “For Penny!” they both shouted, just as the trees thinned and the starry sky seemed to break open above us.

  I reached for the volume on the stereo, cranking it up before either Brooklyn or Mia could say another word. A remix of some pop song burst into the night, rolling down the steep ravine that dropped off to the left, bringing a blast of life to everything that had been shadowed since Penny’s death.

  I felt good—so incredibly good—to be alive, to be driving that car with my best friends by my side. With the music and fresh air and moonlight washing over us. It was one of those forever moments that I knew I’d never forget.

  I pictured Penny along for the ride, the wind tossing her caramel-colored hair, eyes closed, with her arms raised through the open convertible top, hands pumping in time with the beat of the bass. I felt her with us, her lightness and wonder, the way she’d be laughing at Mia for freaking out, at Brooklyn for feeling the same way and trying to hide it, all the while cheering me on for leaving the party in the first place.

  After we’d rounded a few more bends, we reached the six-story building, and I eased the car onto the shoulder. My eyes tripped across the grass that stretched from the road to the base of the building. The tower stopped me—held me in place—the stone glinting in the headlights as my eyes followed the walls from the door, which had been stuck three-quarters open for as long as I could remember, all the way up to the parapets that gave its top a crowned look. I breathed a sigh of relief. What we were doing felt right. More than right. It felt necessary.

  “Ready?” I asked as I turned the radio down.

  “I don’t know,” Brooklyn said with a grimace. “I hate to say it, but this place radiates bad mojo, Hadley.”

  “That’s just because you have a negative emotional attachment to it.” I tried to shrug off t
he bad memories, but it wasn’t so easy.

  “A ‘negative emotional attachment’? You think?” Mia asked.

  “We’re here for a reason.” I put the car in park and turned to Mia. Her face was so drained of color, she had a slight glow-in-the-dark vibe going. “We weren’t here for her a year ago. Shouldn’t we be here now?”

  Mia sighed. “I kind of hate you for being right about this.”

  Brooklyn opened the passenger door, slipped out, and tugged her seat forward so Mia could climb through.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket for the fifth or sixth time since I’d turned onto Old Henderson Road. My nerves vibrated right along with it. But it wasn’t time to deal with anything beyond the scope of Penny. I opened the driver’s-side door and walked to the front of the car where Brooklyn and Mia stood waiting, all of us caught in the glare of the headlights. I’d left them on. The last thing we needed was to face this place and all of its history in total darkness.

  “I still can’t believe she came up here that night.” Mia stared at the shadow that pooled behind the tower and disappeared into the line of trees just beyond. It was impossibly dark in there, a black-hole gloom, swallowing all traces of light and seeping into the labyrinth of trails that extended, fracturelike, from this point.

  “I know,” Brooklyn said. “I hate thinking of her walking those trails by herself. Thinking that she was up here all alone when—”

  “She wasn’t afraid,” I said. Penny wasn’t afraid of anything. “She loved the woods at night.”

  “Yeah,” Mia said, “but—”

  “But nothing.” I tipped my head toward the boulderlike monument that had been installed between the tower and the road. It was rough-hewn, chiseled around the edges, giving it an ornamental flare that Penny’s artistic eye would have appreciated. “We’re here for her.”

  We walked together, the plastic bag from the convenience store swinging from Mia’s arm and hitting my thigh with each step.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Brooklyn said when we stopped, all of us linking arms as our eyes locked on the name etched in the center of the stone—PENELOPE RAWLINS—and the starburst pattern beneath. It was the same design Penny had painted on her headboard when we were in ninth grade, the one she said represented a dream taking shape. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “I know.” I swayed, dizzy with the thought that we would never see her again. “I’m not sure it’ll ever feel real.”

  I grabbed the bag from Mia’s arm and pulled out the item that had inspired our trip to the tower—a pint of gin. I’d found it back at the party, deep in the bar, stashed behind the stack of red plastic Solo cups I’d been sent to search for. The bottle reminded me of Penny. Her drink of choice had always been gin and tonic. When I saw it, I knew we had to drive out here. That it was some kind of sign.

  “Remember how much everyone loved her?” Brooklyn took the bottle from my hand and cracked open the seal. “God, I used to hate her for that. Made me so jealous.”

  “Yeah,” Mia agreed. And then she laughed. “Everyone did love her. All the time. Which was kind of amazing because she could be such a bitch when she felt like it.”

  We all laughed, because it was so true. A pissed-off Penny was never good. She’d get eerily quiet and brood until it was time for her to lash out. Brooklyn took a long swig from the bottle and passed it to Mia.

  “I miss her so much it hurts.” Mia tipped the bottle to her mouth and cringed, squeezing her eyes shut as she swallowed and passed the bottle to me. “Oh my God, how did she stand this stuff?”

  “I have no idea.” I held the bottle in the air in a salutatory toast before taking my own drink. “Remember her laugh? That snorty hiccup thing she did when she really got going? I can still hear it. If I try really hard.”

  “I remember everything.” Mia took the bottle from my hand, pouring a looping stream of gin across the grass at our feet. “The way she hopped up and down a little when she gave hugs. Her warp-speed texting. And the insanely fierce loyalty she showed all of her friends.”

  “Especially us,” Brooklyn added. “She was especially loyal to us.”

  “Do you think she’d be alive if we’d stopped her from leaving the party that night?” I asked. And then I wished I hadn’t. The obvious answer was yes.

  “We didn’t know,” Brooklyn said, her voice cracking. “There was no way to know what was about to happen.”

  “One of us should have gone with her.” My eyes pricked with tears.

  “Stop,” Mia said. “Just stop. We agreed—after the funeral—we swore we wouldn’t do this again.”

  “But it’s so hard.” My voice caught in my throat. “When I think back to that night. God, guys, we seriously let her down. She would have done anything for us—”

  “She would have.” Brooklyn swiped at her eyes. “And because of that, we need to do the most important thing for her. We need to live.”

  “You’re right.” I reached into the plastic bag and pulled out the other item we’d brought to honor Penny’s memory: an oversize package of Skittles that had been hanging on a peg back at Circle K. “We need to live for Penny.”

  The bag crinkled in my hands as I tore a corner open, a tangy sugar-laced scent invading my senses as I spilled a handful of candy into my open palm. I held them out, an offering Brooklyn and Mia both accepted.

  “I’m addicted to these things,” Mia said, choosing red and dropping it into her mouth. “It’s totally her fault.”

  “Ditto,” Brooklyn said, taking a yellow. “Skittles are delish.”

  I chose a purple and popped it into my mouth, my eyes watering with the flavor and an overload of emotion, and then tossed the remaining candies out into the night. Penny wasn’t there—her body was buried at the cemetery on the outskirts of town—but I felt closer to her here. Maybe because here, she had been alive.

  “Look!” Mia said, bending down and plucking something from the grass near one of the green Skittles, holding it in the air between us. It was a small, wooden bobblehead turtle with a yellow shell and an orange flower painted on its back.

  “You think it’s one of hers?” Brooklyn asked.

  “Probably.” I thought of Penny’s turtle collection. She had at least thirty more displayed on a shelf in her bedroom, each intricately decorated. “Maybe her parents stopped by earlier? Or Tyler? It doesn’t look like it’s been out here very long—the paint is perfect.”

  “She would love that this little guy is here,” Mia said, placing the turtle on the top edge of the memorial stone, its tiny head bobbing. “So, this is it?”

  “The point is that we’re thinking about her, right?” Brooklyn asked. “What we just did, it would make her smile. And then she’d give us shit for missing the party.”

  “Okay, then, not to be insensitive, but can we go?” One glance at Mia’s heart-shaped face—her pinched eyes and scrunched nose—and it couldn’t have been more obvious. Mia had to pee. Mia Hughes always had to pee.

  “If you have to go that bad, why don’t you just—”

  “Don’t even say it, Hadley.” Mia scowled. “You cannot expect me to go here.”

  “It’s not like I’m suggesting you pee on the memorial.”

  “If Penny were here,” Brooklyn said, “she’d dare you to go in the woods.”

  My phone vibrated again. I took a deep breath, knowing I was out of time.

  “I don’t even think I can go here.” Mia looked at the tower and beyond, to the woods stretching into total darkness. “Too freaking creepy.”

  “You”—I tipped my head, trying not to laugh—“can pee anywhere.”

  “She’s got a point,” Brooklyn said, pulling out her phone and using it as a flashlight. “Come on. I’ll go with you.”

  As they walked away, I tucked the bag of Skittles into my fleece jacket and slipped my phone from my pocket, heading back to the car. I slid into the driver’s seat and took a deep breath. By now, Ben had to have realized his precious
car was missing. He’d be pissed, but he’d finally stop ignoring me and listen to what I had to say.

  Staring at the screen, my eyes squinting as they adjusted to its light, I realized that my phone hadn’t been vibrating to alert me to calls. I had twelve new notifications on Facebook. I didn’t care much about party updates—who was wearing what, who was making out with whom—but since I was waiting alone in the car, I pressed my finger to the app.

  After a few seconds, a picture popped up on the screen. A picture of a very naked teenaged girl. A picture that looked oddly familiar, but I wasn’t sure why. Then I saw my name and a sense of dread settled in my chest, spreading out in waves that echoed the frantic beating of my heart.

  2

  THE WITCHES’ TOWER – 9:24 PM

  MY HANDS shook as I stared at the little screen. I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the string of comments posted by my classmates.

  It wasn’t me, no way it was me, it couldn’t be me.

  First of all, I was not a fan of the cheerleaders at Oak Grove High—only one of the reasons I would never, ever strip naked in front of a camera and pose like a varsity squader mid-cheer with one leg kicked high in the air, spirit hands the only covering for a pair of very natural pom-poms. Whoever the mystery girl was had to feel lucky that she’d angled her body so that nothing major was visible.

  And then something caught my eye. The girl in the picture wasn’t completely naked. She was wearing a ring. When I zoomed in, my heart almost stopped. She was wearing my ring. My favorite silver and turquoise ring. The one I never took off my right hand.

  I thought of someone from the admissions board at Ohio State seeing this post, and my stomach twisted. I wondered if they could revoke my acceptance—my scholarship—because of one stupid picture. And then I thought of my parents, how OSU probably didn’t matter anymore because, if they saw this, they would never let me out of their sight again.

  But somehow, none of that seemed to matter as much as everyone else who would see this. Everyone else mattered right now. Everyone else was five minutes away, back at the party, and there was no way to avoid facing them. I wondered how many news feeds currently featured that picture, how many of my classmates had seen me totally exposed.