Last Girl Lied To

by L. E. Flynn

  “Do you believe that it’s possible for two people to have no secrets from each other?” he says quietly. “Like, to know all the dark parts of another person and still feel the same way about them?”

  I prop myself up on my elbows and think about my dark parts. What I did the night Trixie disappeared. How I kissed Beau at the wall. I try to imagine Jasper forgiving me for that. I’d turn into somebody else in his eyes, the kind of selfish, backstabbing bitch he wouldn’t want to know. All of my ugly that he can’t see now would bubble to the surface and blot out the good like a stain.

  “You can tell me anything,” he says, and I almost want to. But I know that he’ll never look at me the same way if I do, no matter how much he thinks he will. I’d look different with my secrets in the open, like my skin is inside out.

  “You know everything already.” I wrap my arms around his shoulders. “I’m a pretty boring person. There’s not much to say.”

  “I somehow doubt that,” he says into my neck.

  “What about you? What secrets are you keeping from me?”

  He pulls away and brushes a piece of hair off my cheek. “Just one.” He starts kissing my hairline, my forehead, my nose, then my lips, and I wait for him to tell me what he’s hiding from me, but he doesn’t say another word.

  I must fall asleep after, because when I wake up, Jasper is hovering over my desk, his back to me. His spine juts out and his body is quaking, and I can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying.

  83

  “YOU’LL NEVER GUESS what happened,” you said, right before the senior semiformal, a few weeks before graduation. “Jasper asked me to the dance.” Then you laughed, like it was the most hilarious thing in the world that the boy you were sleeping with wanted to go out with you.

  I wasn’t sure what my reaction was supposed to be, but I was jealous. And pissed off. I used to love school dances. I’d always go as part of a group, with Jenny and Alison and Beau and Brad Colton and some of the other cheerleaders and football players. But going with a date—with Beau—was something I wanted. I had this vision of us going to the junior or senior semiformal together, slow dancing in the gym, my cheek on his shoulder.

  “I take it you’re not going?” I said. Trixie laughed harder.

  “It’s not even that he asked. It’s the way he asked. With a bunch of flowers on my doorstep. Thank god I found them before my dad did. Can you imagine having to explain that?”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “He doesn’t get it. Do I look like a school-dance person? And even if I did, I would never go with him.”

  “At least he got you flowers. That’s pretty nice.”

  Trixie shook her head. “I hate flowers. And the weird thing about these is that they were half dead already.”

  Maybe at that point, she was too.

  84

  A WEEK LATER, Beau keeps his promise. At least, part of it.

  I get a text message on April third. It has to be today, when it ends. If you don’t believe me, come and see it for yourself after school.

  So I go and see it. I watch the annual spring scrimmage from the top of the bleachers, as Beau stands in the middle of the field and gets pummeled by one of the giant linebackers from Trenton. I watch as he stays on the ground and doesn’t get up, as he grabs his knee. My heart is a hard stone as Jenny sprints onto the field and drops down beside him. Then the medics are coming in with a stretcher and it’s all over, the game and Beau’s football career as a Robson Renegade.

  I realize, after it happens, why it had to be April third. I have that date memorized, from the Dead Students Wall. Toby’s birthday. The day Beau stopped living Toby’s life and started living his. I know why he thought he had to do it, but it’s tragic, somehow, that the only way out was through physical pain. Just like Toby’s way out was by diving into the waves.

  Almost immediately after, rumors start flying from wall to wall, down hallways, from the floor to the ceiling like a bouncy rubber ball. You can’t walk anywhere at Robson without being hit by one.

  “He was drunk on the field,” I hear someone say. “He could have done something. He just let that guy take him down. I swear, he put up his arms like he wanted it.”

  “The guy blew it,” Brad Colton says to a cluster of freshman girls. “He had a free ride to UCLA. Now he’s probably gonna spend the next four years flipping burgers.”

  Some people are nicer. I hear Clarissa Egan, a wannabe cheerleader who auditions every year but never makes the squad, defending him by the water fountain. “Can you blame him, really? After what happened to his brother?”

  Her friend doesn’t agree. “That was almost two years ago. He needs to move on.”

  “He’ll come back from this,” someone else says. “It’s just a minor setback.”

  “It’s a torn ACL,” says Jeremy Garner, one of the running backs. “He fucking ruptured it. Might as well be the end of the world.”

  Jasper and I wade through it, holding hands, even though I’m aching to be wherever Beau is. He doesn’t come to school for days after it happens and he doesn’t text me, and I wonder where he is, what’s happening to him, if he’s even coming back. Jasper doesn’t seem to hear the chatter in the hallways at all. It ricochets right off him. Either he really doesn’t hear it or does a good job of pretending not to.

  A full week after the game, Beau hobbles down the halls with crutches and a knee brace, baseball cap pushed down over his head. I will him to look up and feel me there. But he doesn’t look up for anyone.

  “Where’s his girlfriend?” the girl whose locker is beside mine says, watching him pass. “They used to be, like, connected at the hip.”

  She’s talking to her friend, who just shrugs. “I heard he cheated on her.”

  I slam my locker shut and walk away.

  When I walk into the girls’ bathroom at lunch, I hear crying in one of the stalls. I turn to leave, but then I see the shoes under the stall door—studded silver ballet flats—and realize it’s Jenny. I helped her pick out those shoes. Dialogue from the party runs through my head like music that’s cranked too loud.

  I thought you were her friend.

  I was, past tense. Not anymore.

  It was so easy that night to forget Jenny existed, to erase the role she played in my life. It was scarily easy to hate her for everything she had done. But here, in the girls’ bathroom, everything comes flooding back. The good memories, the ones I had almost convinced myself never happened. Jenny’s smile when she invited me to sit with her at lunch the first week of ninth grade. Her big, blobby tears when she got a terrible haircut the summer before sophomore year. The surprise party the two of us planned for Alison’s birthday, the hours we spent making purple construction-paper hearts. The time we borrowed her mom’s car and scraped the side in an underground parking lot and covered it up with nail polish.

  I buried all of those memories, stored them inside me somewhere the sun would never reach. But maybe it’s impossible to keep them buried forever. A sob rises in my throat when I think about Jenny’s tearstained face at the party, and I choke it down. I walk over to the door with the studded silver ballet flats and knock gently.

  “Jenny? Are you okay?”

  Total stillness, like she thinks if she doesn’t answer, I might go away.

  “Jenny, I know you’re in there. Can I help?”

  “No,” she finally says. “Forget about it.”

  I can’t, I want to say. I wish I could.

  I linger with my wrist pressed against the cold stall door, then turn to leave. When I spin on my heels, I hear her clear her throat.

  “I never should have said yes,” she says, so quietly that I have to strain my ears. “When he asked me out. I should have known this was going to happen.”

  I listen to her cry and blow her nose and can’t think of a single thing to say. Maybe I’m expecting an apology, something like I’m sorry I took the guy you loved. But an apology never comes. Just more sniffling an
d the sound of toilet paper unspooling.

  I walk over to the sink to wash my hands, and Jenny flushes the toilet and opens the stall door. I meet her red-rimmed eyes in the mirror and feel sorry for her. Mascara pools under her eyelashes and her cheeks are blotchy and her hair sticks to her forehead. She moves over to the sink beside me and sticks her shaking hands under the tap.

  “I gave up everything for him, you know,” she mutters. “You have no idea what I did for him. What I put up with.”

  I pull paper towels down and hand her one. On my way out the door, I turn and give her a weak smile. Jenny used to know exactly what I was thinking, almost like she could read my mind. I used to be grateful for it, for having somebody who knew me that well. But today, I’m glad she’s not looking hard enough to see my truth.

  You have no idea what I did for him.

  Neither do you, I want to scream.

  85

  A FEW WEEKS later, my phone starts vibrating when I’m sprawled on my bed, trying to study for an American history test but making absolutely no progress. There are too many images, awful pictures I wish I could blot out. Trixie hopping on a plane, a train, a boat. Disappearing into thin air. Grabbing Beau’s hand, leading him up the stairs to her bedroom. Kissing Jasper. Leaving huge marks everywhere she went and wiping them clean like they were never there. I try to ignore the phone, but it keeps buzzing and finally I pick it up.

  Meet me, the first message says. On the field. He’s out again tonight, the Hunter.

  The next message is just as cryptic. It’s me, I promise, the real me.

  I pull on a sweatshirt and grab my car keys and drive to Robson with shaky hands, afraid of what I’ll find. Afraid of what he’s talking about. The Hunter. What Hunter? What real me?

  I don’t even see him at first. It’s almost pitch-black out and the lights that illuminate the football field during games are shut off, leaving nothing but darkness. I park in my usual spot and walk over, practically tiptoeing, hoping he hasn’t done something stupid.

  I walk onto the field. The grass is wet and cold and licks my ankles. That’s when I see him, sprawled on the twenty-yard line, arms and legs outstretched like a starfish, crutches strewn beside him. I start running because I think he must have hurt himself.

  But when I get to him, he just smiles and reaches out his hand. “Hi. Come here.”

  I sink to the ground slowly and wrap my knees into my sweatshirt. “What are you doing out here?”

  “This is the best place to see him,” he says, stretching an arm behind his head. “You know when I told you my brother was the best hider? Well, sometimes I think that’s where he went.” He points his other arm straight up to the sky. “And if he’s all the way up there, no wonder he doesn’t want to come back down.”

  I suck in a sharp breath and hold it there, along with everything else I’m holding in that I wish I could say. I don’t think he’s up there. I think he was here. I think maybe he still is.

  “Why the name Preacher?” I ask him instead. “You’re not even religious. I figured the Preacher would be some ranting Bible-thumper.”

  He half smiles. “Exactly. Nobody would think a preacher has any demons to hide.” He tilts his head back. “Do you see them? They’re out again tonight and you’re not even looking.”

  I let go of my knees and lean back. “What, your demons?”

  He shakes his head. “No, the stars. Can you see Orion? The hunter? He was out the first night I ever met you.” He reaches out for my hand, even though he’s not looking at me. “Orion. He was a messed-up guy. And his problems started happening when he got wasted.”

  I take his hand and squeeze it. I stare at the sky and try to see what he’s seeing, but I still don’t see the constellation, just a random smattering of stars.

  “You remember the night we met,” I say. “If you felt that strongly about me the whole time, if you felt it too, why didn’t you ever ask me out? Why did you ask Jenny out instead of me?”

  He drops my hand and tilts his face to mine. “You scared me. I never knew what to say, and I felt like there were never words good enough. And after Toby, you weren’t there, and Jenny was. Maybe I asked her because I was mad at you. Because you weren’t there. Then all of a sudden she was drawing pink hearts beside my name and showing up all the time, and it’s not like anyone else was fighting for me. I thought maybe it was in my head. You and me.”

  “It wasn’t,” I say. “And you always had the right words. I loved that about you.”

  It’s the closest I’ve come to saying I love you.

  “The rose,” I say slowly. “You left it for me that day. Why did you do that?”

  He pinches the skin between his eyebrows and closes his eyes. “Because I remembered. Drinking makes me forget. That’s why I started, because Toby made it sound like the magic cure for too many thoughts in my head. But I didn’t forget anything about that night, and maybe there’s a reason.”

  We’re both quiet and I touch his hand again, tentatively, daring myself to believe that everything will be okay, saying a silent prayer to whoever is listening that this is all I want.

  “What happened to Orion?” I say, putting my other hand on my stomach. “Did he get the girl?”

  Beau purses his lips and shakes his head. “He went blind. Then he got destroyed by the goddess who loved him and placed into the sky.”

  I make one last effort, one last plea. “We could find him, you know. If we work together. We can figure out where he is and bring him back.”

  Beau pulls on the ends of his hair. “No, we can’t. I can’t. If I don’t start moving on, I’m going to be stuck here forever.”

  We’re both quiet, and Beau lifts his head up to stare at the stars again. I do the same and I squint as hard as I can, hoping the sky will give me some kind of answer. But there’s nothing up there. Beau might see the hunter and maybe he sees himself, scarring the dark, but all I see are burning balls of gas.

  86

  EVERY TIME MY eyes fluttered shut, I felt like I was going to spin off the face of the earth. I thought about everything you had taught me about drinking. Have water every so often, so that you don’t feel hungover in the morning. Take a Tylenol before you go to bed. Don’t mix liquors.

  It was too late for all of that.

  Besides, I didn’t want to stop drinking. Beau was on another bottle, an expensive-looking one he found hidden below the pots and pans in one of Alison’s kitchen cabinets.

  “They’re probably saving that for a special occasion,” I said.

  He pulled the top off and took a long drink, and when he passed me the bottle, he was smiling.

  “This is a special occasion,” he said.

  “What’s the occasion?” I stared at him.

  “Us,” he said slowly, and I wanted that word to last forever.

  87

  THE NEXT MORNING, I knock softly on Mom’s office door. Music is coming from inside, some sort of opera. Mom always listens to opera when she’s stressed out, because she says it relaxes her. “I can’t understand a single thing they’re saying,” she once told me. “And there’s something peaceful about not having the chance to interpret anything.” Now I get what she meant.

  “Come in,” she says. When I open the door, she’s not even looking at me. She’s sorting through a thick stack of papers on her desk, her hair in a messy knot on top of her head.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something,” I say. I want to collapse in a pile on her office floor and spill out everything I have ever kept from her. I want to see if she would still love me, even after all the lies I told.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” She pushes her glasses up like a headband.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I lie. “I just have this huge decision to make and I don’t know what to do.”

  Mom gestures to the loveseat in the corner and I perch on a cushion, feeling out of place. I used to come in here when I was younger and stare at the framed world map on the wall, closi
ng my eyes and circling my finger over the glass and deciding I’d visit wherever it landed. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad way to make choices.

  “Talk to me,” she says.

  I take a deep breath. “It’s between NYU and UCLA. They’re my top choices, and I’m so torn. What do you think?”

  Mom folds her hands over her papers and beams. That’s the only word for it. She looks proud, so proud that I’m going to university somewhere. And I know that should make me feel good, but it just makes me feel rotten inside.

  “It’s not up to me. This is a huge accomplishment, Fiona. You’ve earned the right to make this decision for yourself.” She leans back in her chair. “You know, when I was your age, I would have been so happy to go to school anywhere. It was so hard for me, watching my friends go off and come back on Christmas break with stories about the classes they were taking and the boys they were dating. You have your whole life in front of you. My only advice is to make the choice for you, not for anyone else.”

  “I feel like I’m being pulled in two different directions.” It’s the complete truth. What I don’t say is that it’s worse than that, like I’m being split in half, that if I don’t pick a side, I’m going to be ripped apart and never be whole again.

  “That’s normal.” She stands up and comes over to sit on the loveseat beside me. “What you’re feeling, it’s normal. You’re seventeen, and where you go to school is one of the biggest decisions you’ll have to make. Just remember that there’s no right and wrong, not really. There are two different paths, and they’ll both throw up rights and wrongs along the way.”

  I lean into her shoulder. “I just feel like one wrong move will screw everything up.”

  “It won’t. You’re so much smarter than I ever was,” Mom says. “Smarter and better, so sensible and good. If only I had been more like you.” She pauses. “You know, I was worried about you last year. Not because you and Trixie got close. I know you think I didn’t like her, but that’s not true. I guess I was worried that you’d change yourself to become what someone else wanted from you and lose who you were in the process. And who you are is pretty great.”