That's Not What Happened

by Kody Keplinger

  “Maybe we should talk inside.”

  A minute later, we were seated across from each other at the kitchen table. I folded my hands together and focused on my ragged, bitten fingernails as I explained to Mom what had really happened in the bathroom three years ago. I tried to skip all of the more painful details, knowing there was a good chance she’d end up crying as I went through the events, and I wasn’t prepared to deal with that this morning.

  It had taken a while, but my relationship with Mom had improved since those first few months after the massacre. There were still rough patches, when I was overcome with irrational anger about what had happened, and she felt like the only safe target, the only one I knew wouldn’t leave me, no matter how I treated her. Or when her attention felt like suffocation. But over the last three years, thanks to a combo of therapy and time, we’d slowly learned to work through those moments, learned what buttons not to push and when to step away.

  Still, I’m not sure I’ll ever stop feeling shame for how I treated her back then.

  “So then I heard about Sarah’s parents writing a book,” I said. “And I … I couldn’t let the story get bigger. I couldn’t let it blow up again when it’s not true. It’s just going to make things worse for Kellie Gaynor. And Sarah would hate this, too, and I … I didn’t think about how this was going to affect you. I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “Lee baby.” She reached across the table, pulling my hands apart so she could take them in both of hers. When I looked up, I was surprised to see that she wasn’t crying. Her eyes were gentle, sad even, but dry. “You don’t have to apologize to me.”

  “But it’s going to get worse,” I told her. “You remember what happened to the Gaynors. They practically got chased out of town with pitchforks.”

  “And that might happen to us, too,” she said. “But I’m not going to be the one to tell you to keep quiet. I’m going to support you, no matter what you decide to do.” Her eyes went dark and her mouth twisted into a grimace. “And I’ll wring the necks of anyone who threatens you about it. Have you been okay? I’m guessing that’s why your truck got keyed. Has anything else happened? Do I need to talk to the police?”

  I shook my head. “No. Just the truck and the egg … and a few Tater Tots to the back of the head. Besides, do you really think the cops in this town are going to do anything? Half of them go to church with Sarah’s parents.”

  Mom sighed, but she didn’t argue. Detective Jenner had been right. People in this town, including the local authorities, loved the Sarah story. And they weren’t going to protect me if I was the one trying to take it away from them. They hadn’t protected Kellie’s family, either.

  “Maybe I should talk to Chad and Ruth myself,” Mom said. “They’ve always been such nice, reasonable people.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I told her. “They were pretty upset when I tried to tell them the truth. I don’t think they’d encourage people to do this …” I gestured toward the living room and the front window. “They aren’t like that. But I think we should probably leave them out of it.”

  Mom squeezed my hands. “Then is there anything I can do? Anything to help make this easier?”

  “Besides inventing a time machine so I can go back and never let this rumor get so big? I don’t think so.”

  “If I had a time machine, I’d stop the shooting from happening altogether,” she said, and the tears I’d been expecting (and dreading) finally appeared in the corners of her eyes.

  I removed my hands from hers and stood up, heading over to the cabinet where we kept the bowls. “I’m just going to have to deal with it,” I said. “I’ve already got a few of the letters. I don’t know what I’ll do with them, but once I have them all … I’ll come up with something.” I grabbed a box of Froot Loops and began to pour myself a bowl. “It’ll be something I can put out there. Something to show people that Kellie wasn’t lying.”

  Mom waited until I’d poured the milk into my bowl and joined her at the table again before asking, “How does Kellie feel about you doing this?”

  “I haven’t gotten ahold of her yet,” I said. “I’ve been emailing and texting.”

  “So you don’t know if she actually wants this?”

  I frowned at her. “Why wouldn’t she?” I asked. “She tried to tell everyone the truth three years ago. I should’ve helped her then, but I didn’t, so I am now. I’m sure she’ll be glad.”

  “A lot can change in three years, though.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Mom opened her mouth, then shut it and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Like I said, I’ll support you no matter how you decide to handle this. But you should make sure Kellie is okay with it. If you try to make these letters you’re collecting public, that’s going to bring a lot of attention on her again. She might not be prepared for that.”

  “The McHales’ book will do the same thing,” I said. “She’s going to get attention no matter what. I’m sure she wants to set the record straight more than any of us.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Mom said. She stood up and wiped the stray tears from her eyes. “I’d better go get ready for work. I’m taking over Nancy’s shift at the store for today. You going to be okay here alone? With everything that’s happening?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Mom. No one’s going to show up with the pitchforks yet. Give it a week or two.”

  She swatted at my shoulder. “Don’t be a smart mouth. And don’t forget to take your medication.”

  “I won’t,” I said. She was halfway down the hallway to her bedroom when I called after her again. “Mom?”

  “Hm?”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  There were so many answers I could have given. So many things that I’d never thanked her for. That she’d never ask me to thank her for.

  For not talking me out of telling the truth, even if it meant life was going to get harder for her. For putting up with me for the past three years, even when I took all of my anger and frustration out on her. For being my biggest ally and champion and protector, even when I didn’t want her to be there at all.

  “For everything.”

  When I think of Kellie Gaynor, two memories flash in my mind. The first is a quick snapshot, her ashen face and wide, dark eyes when she turned around in the bathroom door and told Sarah and me to hide. It was the first word she’d ever said to me.

  Hide.

  The second memory plays more like a short film. It happened weeks later, at the local grocery store. It was the first time I’d left my house since the shooting. I’d told Mom I wanted to go to the store with her. I didn’t want to be left alone in our house. Not yet. But five minutes in and I already felt panicked. The store wasn’t even that crowded. There were maybe a dozen people with shopping carts. But it was enough that anytime someone came around the corner, my heart started to pound. When someone in the aisle next to mine dropped a can on the ground with a loud thud, I started crying.

  “Lee baby,” Mom said, her own voice shaking. She reached out to touch me, but I jerked away. I didn’t want to be crying in the middle of the cereal aisle and I definitely didn’t want her to cry, either. That would just get more people staring at us. And besides, this wasn’t about her. She lowered her hand slowly and said, “You can go wait in the car if you want. I won’t take long.”

  “I’m fine,” I snapped. “I can take care of myself.”

  But thirty seconds later, I turned around and headed back toward the front of the store, leaving Mom to do the rest of the shopping herself. I wasn’t sure if I was going to wait in the car or just stand near the front of the store, by the exit, so I could see down each of the aisles and make a quick escape at any sign of danger.

  But before I could decide, I saw her.

  Kellie.

  She was emerging from the freezer section, a curtain of dyed-black hair obscuring part of her face, her wounded arm still in a sling. She was staring at her b
oots and she hadn’t noticed me yet, which was just as well. I wanted to say something to her, but I wasn’t sure what just yet. “Hi” didn’t really seem sufficient given what had happened the last time we saw each other.

  I was running through a few possibilities in my head as she got closer and closer to me, when a middle-aged woman in a pink floral dress stepped out from the canned goods aisle and bumped right into Kellie.

  Kellie stumbled but caught herself. She turned to look at the woman, and if I’d assumed the collision was an accident, that thought went out the door almost immediately.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” the pink-floral woman yelled.

  I recoiled and wrapped my arms around myself. Even from this distance, I could see Kellie start to shake. Though she didn’t move. She stared back at the woman and turned her chin upward, letting her hair fall back, out of her face. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t run, either.

  “You’re nothing but trash.” The woman’s voice was so loud that everyone in the store seemed to have heard, stopping and staring, but no one doing a thing to intervene. “A lying piece of trash.”

  I should be clear: This was before I’d seen those flyers at the pharmacy. Before I’d learned about the Sarah rumors. I had no idea why this woman was screaming at an injured teenager in the middle of the grocery store. And it wasn’t just the one woman in the floral dress, either. There were others gathering around, most glaring, a few hurling curse words at her.

  It wasn’t something I’d ever seen before—a group of grown adults surrounding a teenage girl, talking to her like she was a cockroach, a vile thing to be squished by whatever means necessary.

  “Kellie.” A sharp voice came from the front of the store. A tall woman with strawberry-blond hair and thick-rimmed glasses was looking back at the scene from the checkout line. Even through her lenses, I could tell she had an expression of anger and shock on her face. “Kellie, honey, let’s go.”

  The woman, I realized, was her mother.

  Kellie took a few steps, breaking free from the small crowd, but as she moved toward the checkout counter, one of the bystanders spat at her.

  “Go to hell,” the man, who must’ve been in his forties, hissed.

  “Kellie,” her mother said again, her voice now tinged with a touch of fear.

  Kellie kept her head down as she hurried over to her mother, who was grabbing the freshly bagged groceries as fast as she could. She shoved one of the bags into Kellie’s good arm and began steering her toward the exit.

  But it’s the moment after that that sticks with me. The moment just before Mrs. Gaynor pushed open the glass door. In that split second, Kellie looked back, and our eyes met. I don’t think she knew I was there until that moment. And as she recognized me, her eyes narrowed and her lips twisted into a sneer.

  No one had ever looked at me with the same sort of fury that Kellie Gaynor did in that moment. It was so powerful, so visceral, that I flinched. She could have slapped me and it would have been less startling.

  When I think of Kellie, I will always remember that look on her face as she left the grocery store.

  And I’ll remember that I stayed quiet, even when I had plenty of chances to speak up.

  I hadn’t heard from Ashley since the text messages we’d exchanged during my visit with Eden. I’d thought about calling her, but I wasn’t sure what I would say. Especially once I knew that Brother Lloyd had talked about me to his congregation. And if her little sister was part of the crowd that had decided to hate me, I worried she had, too.

  I found out soon enough.

  Miles and I had driven to the next town over after school one day. If we were going to prom, we both needed something to wear. So we’d made our way to one of the strip malls that had, on one end, a place where Miles could rent a tux with the money his grandmother had excitedly given him when she found out he was taking “such a nice girl” to prom. On the other end, there was a consignment shop where I hoped I’d find an affordable dress that I could sell back in a couple of weeks.

  Mom didn’t have the money to buy me a new dress, not even from one of the department stores, and I was trying to save every penny I could for my move to Los Angeles. But buying used clothing isn’t really the shameful thing in Virgil County that it is elsewhere. A lot of girls at VCHS would be getting their dresses secondhand. Being poor—or at least on the very bottom of lower middle class—was kind of the norm. In fact, you were more likely to be teased if it appeared as though you’d spent too much money.

  Anyway, I chose a spot in the middle of the parking lot so we could each go to our separate destinations and reconvene once we’d finished shopping.

  “Meet at the pizza place in two hours?” I asked, pointing at the restaurant roughly in the middle of the strip.

  He raised one thick eyebrow. “Two hours?”

  “Listen,” I said. “You’re going to walk in, probably get measured, and try on a couple of tuxes that will all look the same and be done with it. I have way more options to deal with. And since I’m shopping secondhand, the sizing is a little less straightforward. You’ve got it easy. I need two hours. Which, really, all things considered, isn’t that much. Oh my God, if Sarah was here …” I trailed off as that old, familiar pain seized my chest.

  Sarah would have loved shopping for prom. Not just for her dress but mine, too. She would have dragged me to every store within an hour’s drive. She would have taken pictures and notes on her phone so we could compare and make the perfect choice. It would’ve involved weeks of shopping.

  But instead, it was just going to be me, shopping in one store, without her.

  Miles covered my hand with his own and squeezed, anchoring me the way he always did. “Okay. Two hours.” He paused. “I have a question, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Should we … Are we going to coordinate?” he asked, his words slipping out in a quiet slur. “You know. Colors.”

  “You mean, like … match? Your tie or whatever matching my dress?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Do we have to?”

  “I don’t care if you don’t.”

  “Hmm. Well, I say we pick what we like, and if we end up clashing, we’ll revel in it.”

  Miles gave a lazy smile. “Let’s both pick ridiculously bright colors.”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “We can blind all of our classmates.”

  “Well, Denny has always said he needed more blind friends.”

  We both laughed before sliding out of my truck. I’d worried that, now that he knew about my asexuality, things would be awkward between us. But, if anything, it was the opposite. I felt more at ease with Miles than ever. The last secret I kept from him had been revealed and, while I still didn’t know where that left us in terms of our feelings for each other, things were comfortable. Easy.

  Unless I brought up the letters, of course.

  I didn’t, though. Not that day.

  He gave me a quick wave before slumping off to the other end of the parking lot. I turned and started toward the consignment shop, but I’d only gone past two rows of cars when I saw Ashley’s van parked in a handicapped spot. And there was Ashley, with her husband, loading shopping bags into the back.

  I ducked my head and tried to walk past as quickly as I could, but of course it couldn’t be that easy.

  “Hey, Ash,” I heard Logan say before I’d managed to slip by. “I think that’s Lee over there.”

  Ashley looked over her shoulder, her eyes meeting directly with mine. She was in her power chair with Miriam on her lap. She looked away from me and passed Miriam to Logan. “Will you put her in the car seat for me, babe? I’ll only be a minute.”

  Once he’d taken Miriam, Ashley turned and began moving toward me. I stopped a few feet away, lingering on the sidewalk just across from the spot where Ashley had parked. I couldn’t move, even though all I wanted at that moment was to run to the consignment shop and hide behind clothing rack
s. Ashley’s stare had pinned me in place.

  She maneuvered her chair up the small curb and stopped when we were only a few feet apart. At first, she said nothing. I guess she must’ve been waiting for me to speak. We both knew I owed her an explanation. But my mouth felt dry and my tongue was heavy. After nearly a minute, all I could manage was a quiet, “Hey.”

  “Hi,” she replied, her tone terse. After another pause, she said, “What’s wrong with you, Lee?”

  “Ashley—”

  “I know what you’ve been saying … about Sarah,” she said. “Brother Lloyd told us. It’s all anyone in my church can talk about. They keep asking me why my friend would tell these kind of lies. And I don’t know what to tell them because I have no idea.”

  “It’s not a lie,” I said. “I’m sorry, Ashley. I should’ve told you, I know, but the necklace wasn’t—”

  “Stop.” She held out her hand, palm facing me. “Just stop. I can’t believe you, Lee. I thought you wanted to tell the truth. I thought that was why you had me write that letter.”

  “That is why,” I said. “I want to tell the truth and this—about Sarah. It’s the truth. It’s the whole reason I decided to do this.”

  “It is not the truth,” she argued. “It can’t be. I heard her. I was outside the bathroom and I heard her.”

  I shook my head, but Ashley kept going.

  “If it really wasn’t her necklace—if she really didn’t talk to him—you would have told everyone sooner. You would have told me sooner. I thought we were friends, Lee. I thought of you like my family.”

  “We are friends, Ashley.”

  “We’re not.” And I could see tears in her eyes then. She wasn’t just mad. She was hurt. Really hurt. Ashley wasn’t the one of us who cried. Me, sure. Eden too, sometimes. Even Miles and Denny had shed a few tears since the shooting. But never Ashley. She was the one who held us when we cried. Who comforted us when we were hurt. Who protected us from those who might hurt us in the first place.

  But I was the one making her cry now. Just one more thing to feel guilty about, I guess.