by L. E. Flynn
I waited for them, trying not to feel annoyed by the fact that it was always me doing the waiting, never them, and that I always seemed slightly separate from them, that they were a tighter unit together. But it was fine, because we were sophomores and we were eating lunch off campus and when the wind lifted my hair off my neck, it felt like freedom somehow.
“Are you going home?” Beau came up behind me, putting a hand on my shoulder. He always seemed to find excuses to do that, to touch me in ways I would barely remember when I was home alone later, when I would wonder if it had actually happened. “I was going to sit on the benches over there and eat lunch, if you wanted to join.”
Beau always brought his lunch to school, which was endearing somehow. His mom packed him and Toby a brown bag every day with the same turkey sandwich, yogurt, apple, and baggie of pretzels. Sometimes she added a date square if she had baked that weekend. I tried not to think about what it meant that I had memorized Beau’s lunch.
“I would,” I said. I considered blowing off Jenny and Alison. Would they really care if I didn’t show up? As we would wait on our taco salad—I always ended up ordering whatever they ordered—we’d have the same conversation we had the week before and the week before that. Alison would talk about some new diet she was trying or some shampoo she was using and Jenny would talk about whatever boy she was in love with. I’d listen and provide advice, because that was my role.
“Great,” he said. “Maybe we can—”
But I never got to hear about what we could maybe do, because Jenny chose that moment to bounce over, Alison trailing behind her, staring at her phone.
“Hey, girl, you ready to go? I can’t miss any of fifth period!” Jenny grabbed my hand and practically pulled me along, as if they had been waiting for me, not the other way around.
I should have told them I changed my mind, that I was staying at school and eating lunch on a bench with Beau. But for some reason I didn’t. I thought Beau might read too much into it, me ditching my friends for him. I knew Jenny and Alison would read too much into it. I hadn’t told them yet how I felt about him, because I had barely admitted it to myself.
“No worries,” Beau said. “Another time.”
But that other time didn’t happen. There was always something else, someone else, some other plan. I still wonder how things would have been different if I had stayed.
14
I WONDER IF they held hands, if behind closed doors Trixie and Jasper acted like a couple. I wonder if he ever got tired of her pretending he didn’t exist in public. If they came back to his house during the lunch hours that Trixie didn’t show up for. If she got excited to see Jasper the way I used to get excited when I knew Beau was going to be at a party or a game.
It’s weird, going into Jasper’s house and walking up the stairs to his room. It’s my first time ever going upstairs with a boy. It feels wrong that I’m going with this boy, Trixie’s boy, like cheating and getting away with it.
Jasper’s bedroom barely looks lived in. A twin bed, dark blue walls, plain black curtains. A desk with nothing on it but a laptop. There’s nowhere to sit but on his bed, so I stand.
“So, this is interesting,” he says, sitting on the edge of his bed. “You don’t think she’s gone. But someone saw her walk into the water. And there was a funeral.”
“With no body,” I say so quickly that my words trip over each other. “I think she wants everyone to believe she’s dead. But she’s not. I know she’s not. And you’re the only person who really knew her besides me, so I need your help.”
He lies back on the bed and folds his hands in his lap. Trixie must have been in that bed at least a dozen times, but it doesn’t look big enough for two people.
“Somebody saw her,” he says, tapping the back of his head lightly against the wall. “That man saw her. You can’t really argue with that. And I’m sure you know that she couldn’t swim.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. In my head, I correct him. Can’t swim, present tense. I do know that. Trixie and I spent so much time at the beach during the summer, but she never once went in the water. I was relieved that she couldn’t swim, because it meant I never had to put on a bathing suit and go in either.
“This might sound crazy,” I say slowly, rolling the words on my tongue. “But don’t you think that his story might have been a little too perfect? Like, he just happened to be there to watch her walk in and didn’t try to stop her? And didn’t try to call the police?”
“He said he did try to call,” Jasper says. “From a pay phone. But it wasn’t working, because the line was cut.”
Obviously, Jasper had memorized all the articles in the newspaper just like I did. “Exactly. Too perfect.”
Jasper stares up at the ceiling. I follow his eyes and notice he has those little plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck there, and they seem out of place.
“That doesn’t seem like enough of a reason,” he says. “I mean, I don’t want her to be gone either. I miss her too. But I saw this coming.” His voice gets lower. “She had scars. She never talked about them. But I saw them, you know?”
I nod. I do know. I wish I would have asked her about those scars when I had the chance. I wish she would have had the chance to finish what she wanted to tell me that day in her backyard before her dad interrupted.
“Plus, we know that the guy on the beach saw her walk in,” Jasper continues. “Because he described her perfectly.”
“Too perfectly,” I say, before I can stop myself. “Right down to the stitching on her backpack.”
“So what?” Jasper says. “He probably had to. You don’t just forget about watching somebody die. It becomes one of the defining moments of your life.”
I’m starting to hate the way he talks, like he’s the human equivalent of a Rubik’s cube. Cryptic and hard to put together.
“So, if he really was up on the sand, how could he possibly see the stitching on her backpack? He’s close enough to see that, but not to call out to her or grab her?”
Jasper narrows his eyes. “I don’t know, Fiona. What are you saying? That he made it all up and secretly kidnapped her or something? Sold her into human trafficking?”
“No. I’m saying that he knew exactly what to say.”
Jasper crosses his arms and exhales deeply. “You lost me.”
I clear my throat before I can chicken out, before I can take it back.
“He knew exactly what to say. Almost like somebody put the words in his mouth.”
15
JASPER WAS NEVER going to be your boyfriend. But you liked having sex with him.
“It’s a friends with benefits thing,” Trixie told me one day at lunch while we shared a greasy pizza in my car. “You get all the good parts and none of the bullshit.”
I was confused. This was the same person who was the reason why we met—why she jumped in my car that day. He was the one she had wanted to get away from. Now she was texting him, making plans to meet him.
“Relax,” she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “It’s no big deal. Haven’t you had a casual hookup before?”
I thought about the party after the last football game of sophomore year. A cup of beer sweating in my hand and my shirt sticking to my back. Beau’s arm on my shoulder while he leaned in. His fingers trailing up my waist, before we got interrupted by the stupid sprinkler turning on. The one minute of my life where everything was perfect and everything had possibility. Back when Beau still had a brother and Jenny and I were like sisters and junior year was going to be the best thing ever.
“No,” I said, picking up another piece of pizza and shoveling it into my mouth. The cheese was starting to congeal and the smell of the pepperoni made me queasy, but I ate it anyway. It was better having my mouth full. It was better for Trixie to do the talking.
“Come on,” she said. “You’re telling me you’ve never messed around with a guy? You’re gorgeous. I bet guys look into those big green eyes and fall madly in love.
”
I swallowed a giant lump of crust and the pointy part scratched my throat going down. I didn’t want to tell her about Beau. Look what happened after I told Jenny about him, after I used the word love. Everything fell apart.
“You can tell me,” Trixie said, sucking Coke through a chewed-up straw.
And just like that, I did tell her. I stared at the grease spots on my napkin and told her about Beau, even though the words didn’t want to come out. They were stuck like the pizza cheese on the roof of my mouth.
When I was finished, I ate another piece of pizza. Because it was there, and because nobody was keeping score. Jenny wasn’t obsessively pinching the skin on her stomach and Alison wasn’t entering the calories into that stupid app on her phone that told her what to eat and what to avoid. Mom wasn’t hovering over me. It was just Trixie, and I knew she wasn’t going to judge me.
I waited for her to say something. A good for you or attagirl or way to go. But she just sat there, chewing her straw, completely unfazed by my outpouring of feelings.
Finally, she said something that I didn’t expect. “Why do you like him? Why him?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. The reasons sounded stupid in my head, but they bubbled onto my lips and I somehow started talking. “Because when he smiles at me, it’s like the smile says something nobody else can hear. He has the perfect words for everything and there’s this whole other dialogue underneath all that. Like our own language. Like he’s trying to tell me so much more.” My face flamed. “Haven’t you ever felt like that?”
“No.”
I stared at my lap, embarrassed beyond belief. Everything I had just told her, all those tissue-thin layers, came apart with that one syllable.
“He’s a loser.” Her voice was aluminum, flat and steely. “We’ll just have to find you someone better.”
I wanted to defend him. To tell her that she was wrong. Beau wasn’t a loser. Sure, there were rumors about how messed up he was now. Rumors about his drinking. Every time I tried to make eye contact, he looked away. But Toby had only been gone for two months, and what did everyone expect?
Later, it was like the whole conversation never happened. When Trixie met me after school, her words were froth and sweetness, not metallic and hard.
“Let’s make a promise,” she said as we drove away. “Let’s never ditch each other for a guy, okay?”
I nodded. She couldn’t have possibly known how badly I needed to hear that promise.
Maybe, at the time, she even planned to keep it.
16
ON THE DRIVE home, I brace myself for a lecture. Dr. Rosenthal probably called mom’s cell, and Mom picked up the phone and had to hear about how I missed the special appointment she booked for me. When I check my cell phone, I see one missed call from Mom and one voice mail. I don’t want to listen to it, because I know it will either be mad Mom or worried Mom, and I don’t know which is worse.
But Mom’s car isn’t in the driveway, and nobody is in the house. I see a flashing light on the answering machine and push the button.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Fontaine. This is Gloria from Dr. Rosenthal’s office. Fiona seems to have missed her three thirty appointment today, and we’re just making sure everything is okay. Call us back if you want to—”
I hit the ERASE button before she’s even done talking, feeling a rush of gratitude that Dr. Rosenthal decided to use our landline number instead of Mom’s cell. It’s that easy, that simple, to get rid of the evidence. Then I listen to the message on my cell phone, and it’s just Mom telling me that there’s some kind of crisis at the office and she won’t be home for dinner.
“There’s salad in the fridge,” she says. “Love you.”
But the thought of salad makes me feel sick. I used to eat it for lunch every single day. I choked it down because I was supposed to, because Jenny and Alison ate nothing but salad and I wanted to fit in with them just as badly as I wanted to fit into my cheerleading uniform. They claimed they loved salad, but it left me feeling hungrier than when I started.
By the time I climb the stairs to my room, I’m so exhausted that I just want to collapse in bed and forget today ever happened. Forget about my strange afternoon with Jasper and the fact that he thinks I’m insane. Forget about school, about what Jenny and Alison said about me in the bathroom and the announcements that came on during class. Forget about a thousand eyes on me, on the girl who lost her only friend. I flop back onto my pillow and my head spins. Then my phone vibrates and I crack open an eye and tap the screen.
I bolt upright when I see who the text’s from.
A second message comes through before I’m even done reading the first one.
My head throbs. All the details come rushing back, the ones I shouldn’t even remember. The cold tile and clammy hands and tequila rising up the back of my throat. All the smells, sweat and pot and spilled beer, rising into an unmistakable party potpourri.
I hesitate before texting back. There’s a part of me that likes the power. I have no control over Trixie or my body or my former friends, but I do have control over this one thing. I could flip a switch, blow someone’s life apart.
But the brief feeling of power gets outweighed by the soggy mass of reality. It sucks the truth in, like a stain absorbed in a wet paper towel. The truth is in the words I write back.
17
THE FIRST THING I did after they said you were missing: I called your cell phone. I waited for you to pick up and sound annoyed with me for interrupting your post-drinking sleep, but you never did.
My fingers felt too big as I hit the screen of my phone, and my fingertips left sweaty marks. The screen was cracked and I wondered if that had happened at the party. I guess a lot of things cracked that night.
It rang and rang and rang. Trixie never had voice mail set up because she figured if someone wanted to reach her that badly, they’d call back. I guess she was right, because I called back. I called back seventeen times that day, and it rang and rang and rang.
Then I had another idea. I remembered how she was glued to her phone, and since she didn’t have Facebook or Instagram or any social media anymore, she must still have something. So I texted her and emailed.
She never replied. I had stared at that phone every five seconds, and when it finally made a noise, I jumped a mile when I realized it wasn’t her, but someone else. Someone who was counting on me.
I typed back. Just no. I didn’t answer the rest because I couldn’t. “How are you holding up” sounds like something you say after someone dies.
The next message made me feel excited and sick and happy and sad and angry, a whole kaleidoscope of colors.
I hesitated before writing back. I typed Do you think that would be such a bad thing? Then I erased it, because I’d never be ready to hear the answer.
I wrote back instead. One word, two letters.
And they never will.
18
I WATCH THE cheerleading tryouts from the safety of my car. Jenny and Alison are there, of course, along with a whole throng of would-be cheerleaders. Every girl wants to wear Robson red and be thrown in the air. Every girl wants to be a flyer, because the flyers suck up all the light.
Mom keeps telling me I should try to reconnect with Jenny, that she was a good friend. Mom doesn’t understand why we stopped being friends. I never tried to explain it to her because I knew what she’d say. Boys aren’t worth fighting over. Don’t let a boy come between you. And she’s wrong, all wrong. Jenny and Alison and I used to make fun of those girls who let boys ruin friendships. Back then, we never thought a boy would be important enough to change anything.
I squirm in my seat when I see the new bases. They’re solid, compact. I try to recall myself in that same position a year ago and my legs hurt just thinking about it. There was a time when I thought I was indispensable, the one holding everything up, the one with her feet firmly on the ground. But that was stupid. There are ten other girls on that field just lik
e me, better than me.
A knock on my window makes me whip my head around. I look up to see Jasper standing outside, cocking his head quizzically. I hesitate before rolling down my window.
“Are you following me this time?” I say, my voice coming out unnaturally high-pitched.
“I changed my mind,” he says. “I think you’re right. And I want to help you find her.”
* * *
We blow off the memorial service the school has the next day. It’s not like it matters anyway. They had one for Toby Hunter last year and all anyone did during it was cry. All that crying, in the same stuffy gym I’d stood in for a thousand cheerleading practices. It’s supposed to be therapeutic or something. I’m sure that’s what Principal Shepherd wants us to think. And after the memorial, they’ll put a picture of her on the Dead Students Wall. Next to Toby and some other people from before my time.
It’s awkward, being alone with Jasper, even more unnatural out in the open than it was the other day in his room. Trixie was always the intermediary, the wall between us. I never had a reason to talk to him, and he never had one to talk to me.
“I think we should go see him,” I say as we walk through the parking lot. “The guy from the beach. Maybe he’ll tell us something he didn’t tell the police.”
The guy from the beach. He has a name—Byron St. James, a name that hints at a trust fund and a big mansion in the suburbs. Instead, he looked filthy and disheveled in every interview and was described as a “longtime Morrison Beach resident,” which I took as a euphemism for actually living on the beach.
“That’s a bad idea,” he says. “I was thinking more along the lines of going to the library and doing some research.”
“Research on what? That doesn’t seem very proactive to me. This isn’t a school project.”
