The Secrets of Lily Graves

by Strohmeyer, Sarah

  I sat back. “I hate this.”

  Matt yanked up the parking brake to stop our forward roll. “No, you don’t. You want to hate this. Soon you will love shifting and yearn to go zero to sixty in under five.”

  “Never. I give up. Anyway, what we’re doing is illegal. Technically, I’m supposed to be accompanied by a licensed driver who’s at least twenty-one. You’re seventeen.”

  “Eighteen,” Matt corrected, adding with a twist of his lips, “and don’t worry. You’re with me. Membership in the Matt Club has its privileges.”

  “Oh, please. Because you’re the Potsdam Panthers’ football hero?”

  “Don’t get pissy. Now, seriously, let’s give it another go. Once you get the hang of shifting, you’ll never forget it. Like learning how to ride a bike.”

  Another miserable childhood experience. “Maybe you should drive,” I said. “I’ve lost interest.”

  “Not so fast. I have another idea.”

  Unsnapping his seat belt, he got out and jogged around to my side, opening the door and sliding in. I scooted over, glad to once again be a passenger. Then he raised the steering column, pushed back the seat and patted his shorts. “Hop on.”

  I gawked at his bare knees and snorted. “You have got to be kidding.”

  “It’s the only way you’ll learn. I did it with my dad. I was seven, but, you know, better late than never.”

  “You honestly want me to sit on your lap?”

  “And put your feet over mine. That way you’ll get the feel of how and when to release the clutch.”

  I’d get a feel for a lot more than that, I thought, flustered by the images racing through my mind. “It won’t work.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Wait. If you think this is my lame attempt to make a move . . .”

  “No. Geez. Matt. No.” Though that was exactly what I’d been thinking.

  “. . . because if I wanted to make a move, Graves, I just would. I don’t need a trick.”

  “I never said you were trying to trick me. That was the furthest thing from my mind.”

  He grinned. “Then why are you blushing?”

  I slapped my cheeks in horror. “I’m not blushing. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s ninety degrees in this truck.”

  “Okay, well, I’m not moving until you give this a shot.” He shrugged. “You can sit there being weird or you can relax and give it a try.”

  “Fine. We’ll do it your way.” Anything to wipe off that smirk. Wiggling over, I squeezed my hips under the steering wheel and perched myself on his knees. “There. Satisfied?”

  “Almost.” With both hands around my waist, he slowly pulled me into him and positioned me so my back was solidly against his chest. I was acutely aware that my flimsy cotton sundress was the only material separating my legs from his lightly hairy, rock-hard thighs. When he reached around to grab the steering wheel, my heart dropped five stories.

  “All righty then. Left foot over left foot. Right over right. You put your hand on the shift.” I put my hand on the shift. “Follow my lead.”

  He closed his hand over mine. My stomach clenched as I registered the warmth of his body.

  The truck started and Matt murmured into my ear, “You okay?”

  I swallowed. “Yup.”

  “Clutch is on the left. Gas on the right.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you? From the way you just stalled, I wasn’t sure.”

  I elbowed him in the chest.

  “Hey, hey, hey. No need for violence. Now, pay attention.”

  He lifted his left foot and simultaneously depressed the right. The truck took off gradually and I noticed that Matt had leaned more on the gas than I had. So that’s what I’d been doing wrong. I’d been too hesitant to give it juice.

  We revved the engine and then I said, “Shift!” remembering to pull the stick into second after he stepped on the clutch. Heading down the service road, out of the empty business park, I moved into third without his reminder.

  “Excellent!” he said, pushing my hair out of his face, his fingers trailing along the back of my neck.

  He’s got a girlfriend, I reminded myself.

  “The engine’s straining. Got to get it up to fourth,” he said. “There are monkeys on YouTube better at this than you are, Graves.”

  That did it. My nervousness and the image of YouTube monkeys sent me into an uncontrollable spasm of hysterics. I lifted my feet and in doing so accidentally kicked Matt’s off the pedals, causing the truck to jerk with a shudder and stall. My head nearly went through the windshield.

  Matt shifted into neutral and slammed the brake. “What’s wrong with you? You were doing fine.”

  I fell off his lap onto the passenger seat and kept on laughing. I couldn’t help it.

  “Have you no dignity?” He placed a hand on his hip and feigned shock at my exposed, bare, tanned legs, which he was openly admiring.

  “Rude!” I said, blushing again as I smoothed down the skirt of my dress and sat up.

  “Those are not half bad. If you didn’t always keep them hidden in that funeral garb of yours, you’d probably get more action.”

  “Shut up. I get plenty of action,” I lied.

  “With who? Eric Pienkowski?”

  Low blow. Eric was one of those cocky nerds who went on and on about the advantages of PCs over Macs, as if anyone cared. He’d also been my lab partner in Chem, which Matt kept trying turn into something more.

  I slapped my hand over his mouth. “Drop the Eric Pienkowski stuff.”

  Matt licked my palm until I yanked off my hand and wiped it on the seat. “Ew!”

  “That’s what you get for trying to shut me up.” He turned the ignition and took a left toward downtown and the library.

  My damp hand was coated with small white hairs. “This truck is so gross. Don’t you ever clean it?”

  “Relax, Martha Stewart. Erin’s dog, Sparkle, was riding shotgun yesterday. Guess she’s shedding.”

  It so figured that Erin had a dog named Sparkle, no doubt a yippy shih tzu with a rhinestone collar. “What kind is it, a little fluff ball?”

  “A little fluff ball that can take your head off. It’s an Akita, nastiest canine on the planet. Fortunately, she likes me.”

  We drove through depressed downtown Potsdam, past the Dollar General and Salabsky’s Beverages with its neon Yuengling sign, past Twice Is Nice, a store selling used furniture, and Victoria’s Attic, the secondhand/antique store where I’d found the Persephone necklace.

  Matt glanced out his side window and groaned. “You get one place to grow up, and this is the card we drew.” He flicked his fingers toward the old Woolworth, its windows soaped and boarded. “Lucky us.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Not that I didn’t have my own criticisms about Potsdam; I was just curious to hear his take.

  “The air smells like stale beer, for starters.” He rolled down the window, sniffed, and then coughed as the pungent stench wafted into the truck. “Everything here is dying. Or already dead. There’s no place to go, nothing to do. The day after graduation, I’m outta here and never coming back.”

  “Where to?”

  He slouched against the truck door, one arm dangling over the steering wheel. “The whole world, I guess. Everywhere.”

  “Everywhere is a pretty big place. Do you have a starting point?”

  “I don’t know. Alaska, maybe. My uncle has a connection with a guy who runs a salmon boat and is looking for gillnetters. Good money in that. You could make eight thousand in just a summer, easy.”

  Interesting. Until he brought up Alaska, I’d pictured Matt as the typical jock whose best years would be playing for Penn State. After that, it would be a mid-level job at the brewery managing inventory, a pretty but dissatisfied wife, two kids playing Little League, and on the rare occasion, a reunion with his frat brothers, where he’d get totally wasted.

  “With eight grand, I could go anywhere, cross the Bering Strait t
o Siberia, hike through China and check out Thailand,” he continued. “Then, I’d really like to get to India and see sunrise at the Taj Mahal. I hear it’s a very spiritual experience.”

  My eyebrows lifted. Was this the same Matt Houser who couldn’t have cared less about the Transcendentalists’ effect on American culture?

  “You seem shocked,” he said when we stopped at the light.

  “Not shocked.” I hunted for the right word that wouldn’t offend his precious male ego. “Confused. What happened to ‘I’ve got to pass US History so I can play football’?”

  “Technically, I still have to pass so I won’t sit on the bench.” The light turned green and he took a left toward the library. “But if I had it my way, I wouldn’t go to college. At least not yet. I want my life to be different than what everyone’s got planned for me, Graves. I want to be free.”

  That word hung in the air between us, potent with meaning.

  “You’re already free,” I said. “You’re eighteen and a boy. You can do whatever you want.”

  Matt threw an arm over the back of the seat and parallel parked into a space one block from the library, completing with one smooth move a maneuver that would have taken me fourteen tries. Then he killed the engine, removed his keys, and said abruptly, “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Do what I want.”

  “Sure you can.” I lifted my book bag from the floor. Like everything else in this truck, it was covered with Sparkle’s white hair. “Why can’t you?”

  “Because.” He stared straight ahead, his expression vacant.

  I followed his gaze to the library, where a girl sat on the steps, wearing a green tank top and shorts, her red hair pulled into a tight ponytail, her arms folded. Waiting.

  For us.

  “Uh oh,” I said.

  Matt rubbed his brow. “Shit.”

  “Want me to explain that you were only teaching me how to drive?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Are you serious? No offense, but Erin thinks you’re trying to . . . you know . . .” He bowed his head shyly.

  Already I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks. “No. I don’t know. What?”

  He exhaled. “Hook up. With me.”

  I flushed with outrage. Talk about ego. Erin automatically assumed that every girl—even, apparently, Matt’s parentally approved tutor—lusted after her boyfriend. “Well, I’m not.”

  “I know that. But it doesn’t matter.” Matt lifted his head and turned sideways. “You’ve got to understand. Erin’s not like you. Not at all.”

  I slunk down in the seat in case she recognized Matt’s truck. “What does that mean?”

  “It means she can’t just brush stuff off and go with the flow. I don’t know how to describe it, but sometimes I worry she’s such a perfectionist that if everything doesn’t turn out exactly the way she wants, she might hurt herself.”

  I was stunned. There was nothing about Erin Donohue that seemed the least bit self-destructive.

  For the most part, Erin was perfect. Teachers adored her. Guys were intimidated, and most girls wanted to be her.

  “You want to give me an example?” I said.

  Matt ran a finger under his lower lip, thinking. “Okay, like, last spring after junior prom I suggested that we might want to take a break for the summer, and . . .”

  “And what?”

  “It wasn’t good.”

  “Oh.” I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Possibly because a tall, thin guy with long, black hair bouncing on his shoulders was jaywalking across Main Street with a purpose. He was Alex Bone, aka Stone Bone, one of the weirdest dudes ever to grace the halls of Potsdam High.

  He’d been a senior when Sara and I had been mere freshmen, so he seemed scarier than he probably was. Though his penchant for wearing scruffy dusters and making videos about how much the school sucked didn’t help. For that reason, Sara nicknamed him Mr. Columbine and profiled him as Most Likely to Take Out the Cafeteria.

  He scared the crap out of us, but apparently he didn’t have the same effect on Erin, who suddenly jumped up and ran down the steps to give him a great big hug.

  “What’s she doing with Stone Bone?” Matt asked, leaning forward.

  We watched as Alex touched his hands together prayerfully and bowed. Erin did the same. Alex reached into his back pocket and pulled out a book. Erin took it and clasped it to her chest before kissing his cheek. Alex touched his cheek with his fingertips and brought them to his lips. There was something ritualistic in their mannerisms—intimate, yet almost orchestrated.

  Then he backed up and jogged across the street, pausing to look at her affectionately before pulling open the door of the Pots & Cups Café. I remembered hearing somewhere that he was a barista. Struck me as odd job for a guy who couldn’t stand people. Erin, meanwhile, had climbed back up the steps of the library, where she sat reading Alex’s gift.

  “I better find out what that was all about,” Matt said, getting out and closing the truck door softly so she wouldn’t twirl around to see me sitting in Sparkle’s shotgun spot. Leaning in the window, he said, “I think we should skip our session today. Okay?”

  “Sure. Absolutely.” I didn’t want to face Erin anyway.

  “I’ll drive you home. Just give me a minute.”

  I nodded and let him go. After twenty minutes of watching the two of them talk on the library steps, I slipped out with my book bag and walked the four miles.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  SEVEN

  Hey, Graves.” Matt shook my shoulder. “Wake up.”

  “I don’t want to,” I whispered.

  “You’ve got to. I need you.”

  I could sense him weighing down the foot of my bed. Though my eyes were closed, I saw his white T-shirt and the rounded contours of his quarterback shoulders in the morning dusk. Oddly enough, his hair was longish, which was how I knew it was only a dream. During football season, he wore it super short.

  I opened my eyes and let reality sink in. My room was empty, the garden window closed. Matt had never been here. He didn’t care about me.

  “Goddammit,” I whispered, and turned on my phone to see if by chance he’d written during the night.

  A bazillion texts filled the screen.

  Erin would be alive if not 4 u.

  You should pay for what you did.

  I don’t know how you can stand to live with yourself!

  You should be the one dead—not her.

  The phone fell from my hand as I reeled from all the vitriol. This was a whole new level of hostility. For some reason, the Tragically Normals—at least, I assumed it was the Tragically Normals—had apparently decided to lay the blame for Erin’s death on me.

  I leaned over to get my phone and, bracing for the worst, forced myself to read the texts again. They originated from Pinger, which meant they’d be almost impossible to trace. With a shaky thumb, I deleted every one. Bing. Bing. Bing. And then I called Sara.

  “Hey!” she answered cheerily. “I was just about to call you. I might be a little late because—”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Huh?”

  I described the texts, right down to the last breathtaking zinger: Lily Graves should be IN the grave. “It’s like suddenly I’m under attack for no reason.”

  “Okay, okay. Take a deep breath.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “First of all, you have done nothing wrong. Don’t be manipulated. Second of all, those texts violate the school’s bullying policy. I spent half the night lying awake and strategizing how best to bring them down without making you look like a whining snitch.”

  Sara was already aware of the rumors? “But why are they ganging up on me all of a sudden?”

  “I’ll tell you in the car. Just take a shower, get a cup of coffee,
pull up your big-girl panties, and stay calm. All right?”

  “I guess. Though I still don’t . . .”

  “And whatever you do, do not go online. No Twitter. No Facebook.”

  Facebook? Who went on Facebook anymore?

  “Meet you at seven thirty-ish. I might be a little late. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I felt slightly better knowing that whatever it was, Sara had my back. I pressed end and there was a buzz. Another message.

  I. Hate. You.

  I wondered if that one had been sent by Matt.

  Following Sara’s advice, I slid out of bed into the cold morning and dragged myself to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. Meanwhile, I dialed up the thermostat, fetched the newspaper off the top step, and let out our cat, Mitzy.

  Coffee in hand, I opened the French doors off our kitchen and stepped onto the brick patio. The air was chilly and scented with autumn decay, rotting pumpkins, moldy flowers, and other glorious dead things. As each bright ray of the rising sun touched the remaining red and gold leaves, they fluttered to the ground in a silent rain. It was so pretty and bittersweet that for a brief moment I forgot about the awaiting horde of hatemongers.

  “Good morning!” my mother announced as her heels clicked onto the patio, nearly scaring me out of my skin. Being Ruth B. Graves, she was already showered, suited, and ready for work, right down to her tasteful nude lip gloss and tightly wound chignon. “You’re up early.”

  “Noisy garbage truck.” There was no point in telling her about my dreams about Matt or the hate bombs. It would only make her fret, and already the worry lines between her eyes were turning permanent.

  She placed her coffee and iPad on the glass table and took a seat on a wrought-iron chair before scrolling through the morning paper to the obituary section. Mom read the obits like stockbrokers checked the morning overseas markets, part and parcel of staying up on the competition.

  “Do I dare ask what you’re going to wear this morning?” she asked without looking up.

  The eternal question. “What I always wear.” And before she could object, I said, “Please don’t argue. It’s going to be a stressful day, and I need all the support I can get.”