“Not just a notebook. Your notebook. You left it on your desk in first period.”
I thought back to how I’d run out of the room. “How nice of you to return it.”
I grabbed for the notebook, but Mychelle pulled it back, out of my reach. “You should be more careful where you leave your personal things.”
“Personal?” I laughed. “It’s math homework.”
“Oh, is that all?” Mychelle smiled at me, baring shark teeth behind lips that were stretched too wide. She had gossip. Or at least she thought she did. Something I wouldn’t like. But it was just a math notebook.
Then I got it.
I pictured myself, less then twenty-four hours before, sitting on my front porch, writing down my feelings about Enzo. Then Connor showed up, and the notebook got shoved in my backpack. Until I took it out in algebra.
It wasn’t a mistake I normally would have made, leaving those pages in my notebook and bringing it to school. But going over to a guy’s house to confront him about how the picture he painted for you was an insult, having sex for the first time, and spending most of the night walking home could really mess with your head.
“OK,” I said. “What do you want?”
“I want to congratulate you, Hawthorn. Your first kiss with Lizzie Lovett’s boyfriend. I believe you called it passionate. That sort of thing never happens to lonely, pathetic girls like you, does it?”
Shit. I’d written a lot of other embarrassing things.
“Just stop, Mychelle.”
“Stop? But you were so excited about it. Your very first big-girl kiss.”
I shook my head. “God. Why are you such a bitch?”
“Me? What about you? Lizzie Lovett is missing, and you hook up with her boyfriend? I guess taking advantage of someone who’s grieving is the only way you can get a guy to pay attention to you.”
“Give me my notebook back,” I snapped.
“Sure.” Mychelle handed over the notebook. “Your diary entry isn’t in there though.”
I didn’t figure I’d be so lucky. “What did you do with it? Photocopy it and pass it out all over the school?”
“Something like that.” Mychelle’s smile widened. “I told you not to mess with me, Hawthorn.”
“You think a little embarrassment is going to ruin me? You’ll have to try harder than that.” I was bluffing though, and Mychelle probably knew it.
“Don’t worry. I’m not finished yet.”
Then Mychelle sauntered away, her hips swaying, oozing confidence with every step.
• • •
I wished Mychelle’s hair would get tangled in her homecoming queen tiara. I wished a strap on one of her high-heeled sandals would break. I wished she would always weigh two pounds more than she wanted to. I wished her mascara would dry out after she’d only done one eye.
I had stupidly thought that because I hadn’t been thinking of Mychelle for the last few days, she wasn’t thinking of me either. But of course, she was. What else did she have to think about? I was probably the only person in her life who wasn’t doing exactly what she expected, and that made her furious.
It turned out Mychelle hadn’t made photocopies. She’d scanned the notebook page and posted it on her blog. Only a few kids made mocking kissy faces at me, but there was a lot of whispering. People kept looking up from their phones and smirking at me.
Ronna Barnes, whose pregnant belly was starting to swell, came into the bathroom where I was hiding between classes. “Sorry about your diary. Thanks for giving me a break though.”
“I wish I could say I was glad to be of service.” I glanced down at Ronna’s stomach. “How’s the pregnancy thing going?”
Her eyes widened in surprise, and I wondered if I’d said something wrong.
“Was I not supposed to mention it?” I asked.
“You’re just the first person who’s asked how I’m doing.” She rested her hands on her stomach and frowned. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
Instead of mumbling something incoherent and scurrying out of the bathroom like I normally would, I boldly said, “Well, I don’t have, you know, firsthand experience or anything. But if you ever need someone to talk to, let me know.”
Maybe it was just pregnancy hormones, but Ronna looked like she might cry.
My next encounter was far less pleasant. The jock who sits next to Mychelle in math stopped me in the hall and said, “You want some more fireworks and passion? Meet me in the locker room in five minutes.” The guys who were with him, other football players, laughed.
“You wish,” I muttered. Only he didn’t wish that at all, which was part of the joke.
Emily caught me as I was walking into fifth period. “You want to talk?”
She looked nervous, like I might tell her to get lost. Instead, I barely resisted the urge to fling myself at her, sobbing and begging her to be my friend again.
“You’ll be late to class,” I said.
Emily shrugged. “My GPA can handle an occasional tardy.”
We wandered to a hallway that was mostly empty, and I slumped against the wall.
“It’s not that bad,” Emily said.
“Are you sure?”
“It was a kiss. We’re seventeen, not seven.”
“It’s not about the kiss,” I said. “It’s the way I described it that’s mortifying.”
“No one really cares. The only reason anyone’s acting interested is because Mychelle Adler told them to.”
“I guess you’re right.” Emily had always been the voice of reason in my life, something I’d seriously been lacking since we stopped hanging out. It was a relief to have her back, even if only for a few minutes between classes.
“Remember when the hippie caravan showed up? You thought everyone was going to make fun of you for forever. Or when you got drunk at the party. Or freshman year when that thing happened with Amy.”
“Are you trying to remind me of all my worst moments?”
“No. Sorry. It’s just that nothing is as big of a deal as it seems at the time.”
I took a deep breath. She was right. Why should I be ashamed of a kiss? Why should I be ashamed that I wrote about it?
“We should get to class,” Emily said.
I nodded.
“And about you and Enzo…well, congratulations, I guess.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
We smiled at each other and went to class. It wasn’t like the old days when we spent hours dissecting a situation, looking at it from every angle. But our brief talk in the hall was definitely better than drunkenly screaming at each other in public. It was progress.
• • •
I was pretty sure I’d never been so happy to have a day end. Until I remembered that I either needed to walk home or take the school bus. Which meant I was walking.
I sighed, shifted the weight of my backpack, then started heading in the direction of home.
“Hawthorn!”
I looked up to find Enzo hurrying toward me. Enzo. At my school. For a second, I thought that I was seeing things, that I’d fallen asleep in my last period class and was having some sort of very realistic dream.
Before I could ask what he was doing here, Enzo’s hands were on my shoulders, holding me too tight. “Is everything OK?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” I twisted away from his grip.
“Why wouldn’t it be? Are you serious? I go outside, and your car is sitting in front of my apartment, and you aren’t with it.”
Oh. That.
“It wouldn’t start last night,” I explained.
“Do you think you could have let me know?”
“I thought you’d figure it out.”
The worry on Enzo’s face had morphed into relief but was starting to beco
me anger. “Well, when your last girlfriend disappears, it’s not really comforting to see your new girlfriend’s car abandoned in a parking lot.”
For a second, the entire world tilted. I tried to care about how annoyed Enzo was, but I could only concentrate on that one word. Girlfriend.
I swallowed hard and did my best to speak levelly, to not let on how much a stupid word had affected me. “So I’m your girlfriend now?”
“I don’t know what you are. That’s not the point.”
It was for me. He’d said it so casually, as if the title didn’t mean anything at all. As if it was a simple transition to make. One second, someone is your friend; the next, they’re your girlfriend.
“Sorry I freaked you out.”
“Just think before you do something like that again.” Enzo reached into his pocket and pulled out his tobacco, so it seemed OK to move the conversation in a different direction.
“I need to get my car towed. I was gonna call from home and have one of my parents drive me over to unlock the car and stuff. But I could just go there with you now.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Enzo said. He put his cigarette between his lips and flicked his lighter to life.
“OK then.”
“I rode the bus here,” he said with his cigarette dangling from his mouth.
“I figured.”
So we turned in the opposite direction and walked toward the bus stop together, which was pretty lame but not nearly as lame as the school bus would have been. At least I wasn’t alone.
We didn’t talk much on the way to Enzo’s apartment. But in my mind, I was asking him if he really thought of me as his girlfriend. And then I asked myself if that was something I wanted.
• • •
The guy who answered the phone at the towing company said it would be at least an hour before he arrived. So I settled myself on Enzo’s bed, prepared for the long wait.
“How will you get home?”
I shrugged. “One of my parents. Or I can get a lift to the mechanic’s from the tow truck guy. The auto shop’s not far from my house.”
“I can’t believe you walked home last night.”
“It was pretty stupid,” I admitted, my mom’s list of worst-case scenarios still fresh in my mind.
“It was.”
I lay back on the bed and crossed my arms behind my head. The night before, I’d had sex right there. The sheets were back on, so I guess Enzo had washed them.
He hesitated, then lay down next to me, mirroring my position but still distant. He made sure not to get close enough that we would touch. There was no risk of one of us breathing too deeply and our skin briefly coming into contact.
“Should we talk about things?” Enzo asked.
“Which things?”
“Us. Last night. All of it.”
“No,” I said. I rolled onto my side, facing Enzo. He looked over at me. “There’s nothing to say. Let’s just, I don’t know, be.”
“Yeah, OK. We can do that.”
And then we were good. Enzo rolled onto his side too, and we stayed like that, talking for a long time about stuff that didn’t matter, like the cartoons we loved the most when we were kids and the best flavor of ice cream and if there was any chance of astrology being real.
I relaxed. It made me think of when we went to the abandoned house in the woods and how, for a little while, we were just hanging out, making up a story, and nothing else mattered. Maybe that’s what it would be like if Enzo and I actually dated. Not all of the angst or unhappiness. Just us enjoying each other’s company, being friends.
“Tell me something fascinating,” I said when there was a lull in conversation.
“About what?”
“Anything.”
I watched Enzo think. He had that faraway look in his eyes that he got when he was concentrating. He hadn’t cut his hair since I’d met him. I wanted to reach over and run my fingers through it. When he spoke, I let my eyes drift to his mouth, watched his lips form the words.
“There was this psychologist in the sixties who thought he could cure people with delusions by making them confront paradoxes. So he found these three guys who all believed they were Jesus Christ and had them meet, thinking it would snap them out of it.”
“What happened?” I wasn’t thinking of Enzo’s lips anymore. When he told one of his stories, it was impossible to think of anything else.
“They each came up with complex explanations for how the other guys couldn’t be the real Jesus. The psychologist wrote a book about it, documenting the whole experiment. But in the end, none of the men had been cured. They held on to their beliefs.”
“Good for them,” I said. “Tell me another one.”
Enzo laughed. “I’m not an encyclopedia, you know.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Enzo’s phone rang. He groaned.
“Let it ring,” I said. “No, never mind. Get it. It might be the towing place.”
Enzo got out of bed and crossed to the kitchen. I immediately wanted him to come back. The bed was cold without him in it.
I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes, listening to Enzo in the background saying hello and yes, it was Lorenzo Calvetti. It wasn’t anyone calling about my car. They would have asked for me. I couldn’t really hear the rest of what he was saying, but it was weird. In all the time I’d spent at Enzo’s apartment, he hadn’t gotten any other calls.
Faintly, I heard him put his phone back on the counter, his feet on the floor as he made his way back to me. I opened my eyes.
Enzo stood at the edge of the bed. Something was wrong. His face was an unnatural shade of whitish green that made him look like wax. His eyes seemed too small and too dark. His mouth was open, as if it had come unhinged and he’d forgotten how to close it.
I sat up. “What’s wrong?”
For a second, he didn’t speak. “It’s Lizzie. They found her.”
Chapter 31
The Lost Girl
Lizzie Lovett did not go into the woods to turn into a werewolf. She went into the woods to die.
There was no shape-shifting involved. Hers was a much simpler story than that. Afterward, everyone nodded and said of course, of course, as if they’d known what happened all along. But they didn’t. How could they have known? Their guesses were as good as mine. Girls like Lizzie are not supposed to die.
I couldn’t make the news more real, no matter how many times I repeated it to myself. Lizzie Lovett was dead. Lizzie Lovett was dead. Lizzie was dead, dead, dead.
She was not a werewolf. She wasn’t hunting or stalking or pouncing. She wasn’t developing a taste for blood or raw flesh. She wasn’t using her powerful wolf jaw to crack bones. Lizzie wasn’t howling at the full moon. She wasn’t searching for a pack. She wasn’t lost or scared or trying to come to terms with her new identity. Lizzie was dead. That’s it. The end. Move along, nothing to see here. Certainly no werewolves. Just another dead girl.
When Enzo first told me what happened, I didn’t understand. I kept asking what he was talking about until he grabbed my shoulders and shook me and shouted, “She’s dead. Don’t you get it?”
I still didn’t. Death wasn’t familiar to me. It wasn’t part of my life. People don’t just die, especially when they’re young and beautiful and have a boyfriend who paints pictures of them.
I asked Enzo how. I asked him why. But he didn’t answer. He sat on the edge of the bed and didn’t move. He didn’t even roll a cigarette.
Everything was wrong, and nothing made sense. Lizzie Lovett was dead. Five minutes ago, Enzo and I had been talking about her in present tense. One phone call, and she became past tense. One phone call changed everything.
That’s when all the details started to blend together. The tow truck showed up, and Enzo had to go down to the police station, and at some point, I
must have called my dad, but I didn’t remember it. The afternoon was a whirl of motion and lights, and I kept wondering if I had been the one who’d died, because nothing seemed real anymore.
The next thing I remember, I was at home, lying in bed, and people kept trying to talk to me. I saw their faces, but none of them mattered. My mom said I should eat something, that I had to eat, but I didn’t want food, not even when she brought me fast food, hamburgers and fries and a soda, which weren’t usually allowed in the house. My dad tried to talk to me as if everything were normal. He’d picked up my car from the shop. It was fixed. I could pay him later—or not. He didn’t get that someone was dead. My car didn’t matter.
Even Sundog came to see me at some point. He’d never been inside our house before. My family was all making exceptions for me, breaking all the rules, but Lizzie was the one who was dead. Why weren’t they thinking of her?
When I started crying, I didn’t know if it was for me or Lizzie or just tears that had to come out. My eyes burned. Snot leaked from my nose. I thought, Lizzie will never cry again, and that made me cry harder.
Days passed. I only got up to go to the bathroom. That’s something they don’t tell you about grief and depression. In movies and books, the depressed person doesn’t ever leave bed. In real life, you have to get up to pee. You have to eat some of the food your mom brings you. You have to accept the box of tissues your brother sets on the bed.
“Rush, wait,” I said before he could leave.
He came back and sat down on the edge of my bed. My brother had never seemed so willing to listen to me before. What was happening to the world?
“Where did they find her?”
He hesitated and glanced at my open bedroom door. “Maybe I should get Mom.”
“I want you to tell me.”
“She was in a ravine,” he said, sighing. “I guess the woods are pretty thick around there.”
“How far from the campsite?”
“A few hours.”
I sat up. “A few hours? How did the search parties miss her?”
“They couldn’t check every inch of the forest, Hawthorn.”
But they should have. They should have uprooted trees if they had to.
The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett Page 24
