What does Bella know? What has Jolene told her?
I want to hear about it, but Hudson is waiting. And I’m not going to let Jolene keep me from seeing him, even in gossip form.
“What did she say?” I’m cleaning up my tray as I ask, putting my napkins on top of my plate, gathering my books and my bag.
“Plenty,” Kris says, dropping her elbows on the table between us. “But it doesn’t look like you care.” She tips her head toward my tray, like it’s evidence.
“I want to know,” I say, “but I forgot to switch my books before lunch, and you know Riles will flip if I show up to calc without my text.”
“Mmmhhhmmm.” Kris doesn’t move; she doesn’t start to clean up. She just watches me stand and balance my tray in one hand. “Well, don’t hurt yourself or anything. It’s only calc.”
“I’ll try my best.” I turn around with my tray. “See you at the car.”
“Until then.” Kris raises her can to me, then chugs her Coke.
I bus my tray, push through the cafeteria doors, and when I’m sure no one can see me, I break into a light run down the empty hall.
CHAPTER 13
I SLOW DOWN when I get to the north end of the building. I can’t catch my breath, and I’ve started to sweat. Perfect. I swipe my fingers across my forehead, wave the bottom of my shirt a few times, and keep walking. My breath evens out as I turn the last corner, into the stairwell that leads to the north exit and the bike racks. I check my phone one more time (nothing from Jolene), then flatten my palm against the cool metal, push open the door, and blink into the bright, white sky.
The rain has stopped. The clouds are thick. Wind whips loose leaves around the parking lot and sways the trees in the field. A group of senior boys push past me, unlit cigarettes pinched between their lips. They flip their lighters in their fingers as they head across the street to the armory, where they can smoke in peace.
I wrap my arms tight across my chest, tuck my chin, and start walking in the opposite direction. My hair, free from its usual ponytail, flicks across my face, sticks to my lips. I pull it back quickly with my finger, but a new gust slaps it across my mouth again, so I decide to leave it.
By the time I get to the bike racks, where Hudson’s sitting—headphones up, eyes down—my cheeks feel flushed and my eyes are tearing.
I stand in front of him, my face turned into the wind. He’s not wearing a jacket, but he doesn’t look cold.
“You came,” he says, looking up at me. He brings a thumb to my cheek and wipes away a tear. His touch feels strange on my face. Not because he hasn’t touched me in softer places, but because we’re outside, in the light, in front of all the filthy classroom windows, where anyone can see.
I slide his headphones down to his neck. “I said I would.”
He runs his hands through his hair. His eyes are dark blue today, deep as night.
“Saying it doesn’t make it true,” he says.
Hudson may think I’m hard-core, but he still doesn’t trust me. Not completely. And even though his doubt sears a hot streak behind my ribs, I don’t flinch.
“Good point,” I tell him, eyes steady, voice clear, so he can see: this time is different. I’m different. “But I’m here, right?”
“You are indeed.”
He slips his middle fingers through my belt loops and pulls me to him. I close my eyes when we kiss. His lips are soft and warm. He moves his mouth along mine, leaving parts of my skin wet with him. When the wind picks up again, the wet parts go cold.
I shiver. Then I hear something snap in the distance. A twig. Or was it a squeak? The sound of a window opening?
Windows rattled in their frames.
My eyes fly open.
Want to play a game?
Jolene?
But no one’s there.
I squeeze my eyes shut and kiss Hudson. I press my mouth so hard against his lips, I can almost feel his teeth. He yanks my belt loops so fast I swear they’ll rip. There’s no space between us anymore. No room for the wind to get in. When the next gust comes—lifting strips of my hair, lashing them against my cheeks and his—I hear the rattling sound again. But I don’t open my eyes.
Jolene isn’t here.
She hasn’t sent me a single text since I laid her in her bed.
I run my hand from Hudson’s neck, down his arm, to where his fingers grip my hips. When he feels my hand on top of his, he grabs it. I sigh. He swallows the sound and my breath, holds my hand so tight my fingers must be white.
I press my palm into his—the place where she cut me, where she got in.
This is just for us, Hudson said.
Maybe he’s right.
Maybe it’s over.
The first time I walked away from Jolene, it was raining. Gusts of wind smacked her bedroom windows, rattling them in their frames. I jumped at every splash and slap. Jolene looked up from the floor where we sat and narrowed her eyes at the wet, blurry world outside, like she was challenging it to crash straight through the glass and smash us.
Nothing had broken us yet.
It was September, sophomore year. The four of us had survived being freshmen. While other girls had turned rabid, ripping each other to shreds, we held sleepovers and séances, swore confidences, snagged a corner table in the cafeteria, and got invited to senior parties. We were becoming captains and chiefs and queens. Kris had journalism. Bella had a set of blue-and-white pom-poms.
I had Jolene, and she had me.
The window trembled again, glass clattering against wood. Jolene threw her Vogue on the floor between us. It landed with a thwack.
“Want to play a game?” She scooted closer to me, pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms tight around them, and wound her lips into a wicked grin.
The last game we’d played, I’d nearly suffocated.
“What kind of game?” I asked, flipping the page of my Cosmo too fast—“Ten of Our Favorite Questions”—and tearing the thin print halfway off in my hand. I lined up the ripped pieces and pretended to keep reading. Unfortunately, my cheeks gave me away. I felt them flush. And even though I hung my hair over my face, it wasn’t thick and dark like Jolene’s. It didn’t cover anything.
“Why?” Jolene asked, smirking. “You scared?”
“No,” I lied.
“Good.” A smile spread across her face. “Because I can’t do it without you.” Jolene grabbed my hand and hauled me off the floor, and I didn’t fight her. Not when she led me to her parents’ bedroom (they were at work—they were always at work), or dragged her dad’s nylon climbing bag from the closet. Not when she coaxed a thick coil of rope from the bag and placed it in my hand, or when she tugged me back to her room and set the ropes out on the floor, doubled them, and formed them into figure eights. I didn’t resist because she couldn’t do it without me. We were the two little girls.
Jolene’s fingers moved quickly, threading the rope through, pulling it taut, testing the complex knots. Her dad had given her a lesson one weekend before he went climbing. The last time she’d shown me, she’d been clumsy.
When the ropes were four small circles, Jolene stood up and smiled, impressed with herself.
“What are we playing?” I asked.
Jolene looked at her watch. Her eyes walked over the ropes, across my hands and feet, toward the duct tape (had it been there before?), then off into the distance.
She didn’t answer me.
“Time to get ready.” I’d barely registered her hand in the air before I felt the slap and saw black. I brought my hand to my cheek, felt for blood, but there was none. It just stung. I blinked back tears. It felt like her hand was still on my cheek. Like it always would be.
“Your turn,” she said. “Hit me.”
I stared at her. I didn’t feel like me. It was like my center got knocked to the side with my cheek, and the rain on the windows had washed out the street, the sky, everything. Like we were off the map and inside one of Jolene’s stories.
“Come on.” Jolene stepped closer, her eyes locked on mine. “Do it.”
So I did. Because she told me to. My hand flew through the air and hit her skin with a crack. Her head swung to the side. A spot of blood beaded on her bottom lip. She licked it and smiled.
“I knew you could do it,” she said, then left the room, her long ponytail swinging behind her.
I was still staring at my hand when I heard the loud scratch from downstairs. The grunt of something heavy being forced out of position. A series of pops and clicks. The squeal of metal on metal. A loud whoosh of wind and the quick pelt of water against wood. The clear clap of a door knocker. Jolene’s feet up the stairs.
When Jolene appeared again, her hair and hands were wet. The rain had come for us after all. No smashed glass required.
With dripping fingers she slid the ropes over my ankles and wrists, then cinched them. And still I didn’t resist. Since the night I’d gasped for breath, I’d held my own hand over my mouth, trying to get back to that hazy place without oxygen where I could sink and spin and grow gills, where anything was possible. But it hadn’t worked.
Jolene grabbed the duct tape off her desk and unrolled a section. The sticky strip snapped when she tore it apart with her teeth. She pressed it against my lips and smoothed the edges over my cheeks.
Sweat burst from every inch of my skin. My pulse pounded in my temples. I sucked deep breaths through my nose, trying to make up for the air my mouth couldn’t reach, which didn’t do anything except make me dizzy. I shut my eyes and tried to center myself. When I opened them again, Jolene was slipping the other set of ropes over her own wrists and ankles. She sat down behind me and went silent.
The rain still hadn’t let up. It kept throwing itself against the bedroom windows.
Were we just going to sit here like this? I tested my wrists. Twisting them burned. Struggling was worse. I quit moving my arms and leaned back against Jolene in question.
What are we playing?
I heard the distinctive tooth rip of tape and then an engine’s roar over the downpour. My stomach pitched.
“Oh,” she said, “by the way. We’re expecting someone.”
The slow fade of roar into rain. The click of bootheels on wood. The suck of the shut door.
“Mattie? Jolene? Are you guys here?” Bella called. A question. Then, after she had time to take in the scene, fear. “Mattie?!” Panic. “Jolene!”
Jolene and I sat, bound, back to back, in the bedroom. Bella called our names again and again as she searched the first floor.
MattieJoleneMattieJoleneMattieJolene.
My skin expanded and contracted in time with my heart. Adrenaline radiated from the center of my body to the tips of my fingers. My chest caved and burst with each breath.
What kind of game was this? Not two little girls but three. That’s not how it was supposed to be.
Bella’s boots stomped up the steps. She froze in the doorway when she saw us, face pale beneath her bronzer. Mouth open. Eyes wide with fright.
I tried to call Bella’s name, to tell her it was fake, but the tape. I tried to move, but the ropes. I shook my head, twisted my neck, but Jolene bucked and screamed behind me. And I must have looked just as crazy, because Bella didn’t budge. She just stood there, body rigid, fists clenched. That’s when I felt the crack of a skull—precise and solid and loud—on the back of my head. My chin hit my chest, and my eyes squeezed together. It could have been an accident, but I knew it wasn’t. I knew in my gut. It was Jolene, and she was pissed that I wasn’t playing.
I took the hit, absorbed the pain, felt the knock echo through my brain, then tried to get Bella’s attention again. But no matter what I did, everything kept happening.
My whole body pulsed. My scalp tightened. My lips tired behind the tape. My shoulders ached. And Jolene kept thrashing behind me, her flattened cries rising higher and higher like they were measuring the pressure in my head.
I shut my eyes and let a scream rise from my gut to my sealed-shut lips.
Then someone laughed.
Bella. Her mouth still open. Not in the shape of shock, but the wide circle of a smile.
“Gotcha!” she sang as she reached up and ripped the sticky strip from my mouth. Which hurt like hell.
“Ow!”
“You totally believed me, right?” Bella knelt in front of me, balled up the tape, and threw it in the garbage. “Jolene told me I was the only one who could convince you it was real since I’m the best actor in the school.”
An act. Bella had been acting. And for that I drove my shoulder into her. She landed flat on her ass and laughed.
“You’re a star.” Jolene tossed the words to Bella, who smiled, closed-lipped, at the compliment; but her eyes were on me. Her ropes lay loose on the floor. Her tape was crumpled and clutched in her fist.
We hadn’t been messing with Bella. They’d been messing with me. It had all been for me. The rope burns on my wrists spread up my arms, to my neck and cheeks.
“Screw you,” I said, straining against the rope, rubbing the red skin raw.
“Come on Mattie,” Jolene said, her voice slow, patient. “It was just a joke. Of all people, you should get it”—she raised her eyebrows and looked me dead in the eye—“since it was your idea.”
My throat went dry. The walls crept in. My voice came out hoarse. “It was your idea.”
It was, wasn’t it?
My memory shifted, twisted, bent like my arms did behind me.
“I don’t think so,” she said, kneeling down in front of me. Her voice was as pleasant as can be, but her face was strange. Downturned mouth. Crease between the eyes. It took a minute for me to process. But by the time she loosened the loops around my ankles and wrists, I’d figured it out. Jolene looked . . . hurt.
Then the crease disappeared. Her skin was smooth again.
I tore my hands away from her and scrambled to my feet, but my legs were stiff from sitting for so long. I stumbled.
A slap of rain rattled the window in its frame. A voice came from behind me: “Hey, don’t leave. You’re supposed to sleep over.” Closer now. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” The colors and shapes of the room collided and burst apart again. I blinked my eyes a few times and swept my sleeve across my wet cheeks. Then I grabbed my coat and jammed my books into my bag.
“Stay.” Jolene’s voice, the one she used under the covers. “Please. My parents are away.”
I threw off her hand, shouldered my bag, and shoved past her.
“Leave me alone,” I hissed.
Which is exactly what she did.
CHAPTER 14
I’M STANDING UNDER a bare-branched tree crunching leaves with my sneakers when Kris finally hurries across the street, car keys in one hand, a soft pack of Camel lights in the other. She starts talking before she reaches me.
“It’s T-minus”—she looks at her watch—“fifteen minutes till I’m due home, so buckle up. I’m not going to stop the story for anything but smokes.” And as if to prove her point, she smacks her soft pack on the heel of her hand and grabs a cigarette with her lips. Then she unlocks the car and we both climb in.
“You’re still grounded?”
“All week,” she says, pushing in the car lighter and throwing her bag into the backseat, “except for journalism.”
The lighter pops with a hard click. Kris leans forward to light her cig, exhales a sigh of smoke, and pulls out into the street. Then she tells me what happened.
“So, there she is, Bella of all people, resting her foundationed forehead on my knees, doing that mix of high-pitched singing and screaming. And even though it’s her party we’re ditching, I get her to her room and make sure the door is locked, that nobody comes in. After a few minutes she’s running her middle fingers along her lower lashes to fix her mascara and reapplying her lipstick. At that point I’m already past curfew, so I know what’s waiting for me when I get home—the parental flip-out, followed by severe
punishment—so I figure, well, fuck it. I’m already screwed, right? Might as well be the amazingly supportive person I am and pay the price that good people always do. So I hand her a tube of liquid eyeliner and ask what happened.” Kris takes a long drag, lifts her chin, blows the smoke out of a crack in her window, then looks at the clock in her car.
“Thirteen minutes,” I say.
“But only ten with you.” Kris lives on Tudor Oval, which didn’t exist in 1921, at least not as anything other than a blank stretch of blue on Block 507, Division 17, three minutes southeast of Cherokee Court.
Kris grips the wheel with both hands.
“So here are the highlights: Jolene’s wasted—like, falling-into-the-flip-cup-table wasted—god, I’m so sorry I missed that—and you know how Bella wants everyone to have the best time always and forever?” Kris gives me an eerily close version of Bella’s best-party-ever smile before collapsing into rolled eyes and sloped shoulders. “So Bella’s steering Jolene toward the stairs and throwing out these joke-slash-apologies to everyone, which she’s probably totally used to doing with her mom—you remember how her mom used to get when we were over?” I nod. Bella’s mom had a glass of clear liquid with two ice cubes attached to her hand, and whenever we were over, Bella had to lead her out of the room or else she’d never leave. “But also because, you know, everything’s a show with Bella. But that’s her mistake, right? Because since when does Jolene give up center stage? So Jolene throws Bella’s hands off her shoulders and plows through the living room. But since Bella’s not going to be upstaged at her own party, she shouts ‘Drunk bitch coming through!’ And Jolene”—Kris hits the gas, leans into a curve—“Wait, I want to get this exactly right.” Kris slows down on a straighter stretch of road. She flicks her cigarette. The long end of ash falls into the tray. “Okay, so after Bella calls her a drunk in front of the entire party, Jolene spins on her heel and shouts, ‘Just like Mommy! No wonder you like it when I tell you what to do. Should I give you a good-night kiss, too?’” And then Jolene kisses her. Not good-night style. Like, tongue and everything.”
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