I was confused. “So his parents never knew if Walt might have killed himself because he was sick?”
“He cut it off at the pass,” said Dave.
“I go back to our last conversation a thousand times a day. Maybe I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know? I felt so helpless, totally unable to handle it.”
“You can’t beat yourself up about this, Matt,” I said softly.
He shook his head. “Yeah, actually, I can.”
“I’m glad you’re here with us tonight,” said Claire after a moment. “That took balls.”
We exited old Route 9, the road we’d traveled since we left the interstate, and the passing town was so quiet it seemed abandoned. Dave finally broke the silence by changing the crackling radio to a pop hit by New Kids, one of those songs everyone simultaneously despised yet could sing every line.
It was like we couldn’t take on all of it at once—Walt, illness, suicide, injustice, payback. And so instead of thinking of everything, for a couple of minutes we went hard at nothing, filling up on music as the station wagon pulled us through a moonlight spiked by gathering anticipation for all this night might mean.
fifty-two
As we passed a sign pointing us in the direction of Strickland’s ice hockey rink, it all plowed through me. Tonight would be something I’d remember forever. For almost the entire drive, in the casual talking, in balling up fast food bags and listening to Dave’s exaggerated burps, in scratching at itches and shifting positions and endlessly searching the radio, I hadn’t focused on that.
Now it was real. We were here. We’d come up around back, Claire at the wheel and routing us above the campus so that we could make a shortcut getaway, once the deed was done. As we dipped around the bend, I caught sight of Strickland’s shadowed, rolling landscape. The puritan New England saltbox houses, the stylistic modern additions, the clean-cut playing fields. The picturesque sweetness of it all.
“Okay, folks. Tipton Lane, next left.” Claire spoke under her breath. Dave, in the passenger seat, spun the volume down to nothing, and I took hold of the plastic Blick Art bag, capturing it tight on my lap. Was Keith Haring an artist or a vandal? Plenty of people thought both. But there wasn’t any way better than graffiti to get a message across when you’d been left with no way else to say it.
Claire parked us under a tree about a hundred yards from the street of Victorian gingerbread houses with wraparound porches.
Faculty row.
Our target house, luckily, didn’t have the extra obstacle of a porch.
Claire had mapped out three alternative exits. She’d also briefed us on everything beforehand—both of them tended to turn in early, their yippy dog slept in the kitchen; the glow of the television didn’t necessarily mean they were awake.
It was a two-story, peaked-roof house with a long lawn, and a front door painted pale as putty. Per the plan, Claire would hit the front and Dave the back, while Matt and I both acted as guards, alert to the unexpected anything. Once Claire cut the engine, I distributed the canisters of paint.
My heart was charging. I’d never been more terrified of something going wrong with the mechanics of me. Seizure. Heart attack. Blacking out.
So far, I appeared as normal as the rest of them.
We crept in all at once, and then the guys vanished around back, leaving Claire to dart up to the front door while I hung in the shadows, gripping my canister, eyeing their fence-post mailbox.
Fifteen seconds, we’d reasoned. How long did it take to tag a door with a seven-letter word? I heard Claire start. The sound of spray paint was like air hissing from a punctured tire.
I couldn’t think about it too hard. I shook my can—Do it!—and then I pressed the nozzle. The sudden spurt of ink surprised me as much as my ease with these letters, all capitals, a purple jet, dark as blood.
Had I ever written this word before?
But now the Mosers’ dog was yipping excitedly. Time was up, the guys appeared, now we were sprinting, my heart pumping as the house took shape from the shadows, a pop of light in multiple windows, our sneakers pounding across the yard, a shove of bodies back into the car, Matt’s whispered “Lessgo lessgo lessgo!” as he turned the key in the ignition, doors softly slamming as the engine sprang to life like a startled bear, Claire pointing us toward the shortcut country road that would take us off campus to safety.
We were gripped and silent, all we wanted was more and more distance between the car and our crime. Even after we’d left the grounds, we were still holding on to the shock of it. It was only as we reached the interstate exit that Claire allowed a tentative whistle. And then we all were whooping, laughing, our voices overlapping as we started retelling the story.
We’d done it. We did it. It was done.
“I tagged the mailbox!” I bragged at the same time Dave yelled “I tagged the lawn!” But my gaze also kept straying over to Claire. She hadn’t been to Strickland in almost a year. It must have been so strange for her to return in this way, under the cover of night, with these plans of revenge. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Maybe it wasn’t my business to know.
Matt and I switched seats at the Exxon, and I was surprised by how calmly I took over, how assuredly I met road rules, how easily I remembered my brights and my turn signal, how neatly I finished a merge or decided a yellow.
I was a good driver, maybe? At least I could vouch that I was an attentive one, bolt upright in my seat, letting myself exhale a small sigh of victory only once we took the exit onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
This was it. The real way to enter the city.
It was almost two in the morning by the time we arrived at Dave’s apartment. I wanted to sketch us all as we appeared, identically dressed and totally shot in the mirrored-glass elevator. Inside, we silently stripped the bed and sofa, and then made a nest of pillows and covers for us all to collapse inside. My hand reached out automatically for any hand, and the press of limbs was so comforting, even the act of sleep itself felt so knotted up in our togetherness that I wondered, as I drifted off, if we’d be sharing one another’s dreams.
fifty-three
Monday in homeroom, Claire was all smiles as she bounced over to me, her fingers snapping like rubber bands around my wrists. Seeing that light in her face made any unease I’d had about getting caught and in trouble all worth it.
“I couldn’t call you yesterday because it was too late,” she whispered. “But another Strickland senior, a friend of mine, phoned last night to tell me about a pretty major April Fools’ prank that got played at Mr. Moser’s house. Nobody can talk about anything else!”
“Do they have any leads on who did it?”
“Luckily no,” Claire said. “It could have been a bunch of kids from the town. But the prank was kind of personal, so they’re thinking it was seniors.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “Seniors do get up to mischief in the spring. What kind of a prank was it?”
“Just some graffiti, but it was super embarrassing for Mr. Moser and, of course, everyone in the entire school knows. As a matter of fact, a lot of people were shocked to learn that Mr. Moser is a pervert.”
“And now even the mailman knows,” I added. “Oh, poor Mr. Moser!”
“Poor, poor Mr. Moser!” Claire shook her head in mock dismay. “Also, his wife will be getting a package of letters, to add to his troubles.”
“How sad.”
“Very sad!” But then Claire’s expression turned serious. “If she reads those letters, she’ll know that something is wrong with him. That he pretended to be one kind of person, a safe person—when all along he was so dangerous. And if he goes after another girl, he’ll do it the same way, with charm and letters and all that phony safety. When I dropped that package in the mailbox, Lizzy, I felt like I was sending her a warning. And I knew it was the right thing to do.”
; Claire wasn’t aware that she’d been squeezing my wrist so tightly as she spoke, and as she released her hold, she laughed self-consciously. But I was happy for her grip, and even for the faint mark that held my skin a while after, because it made me feel so strong and present for her.
Later that day, I zipped over to the upper fields to watch the varsity lacrosse game, where Claire and Gage were bringing the team ever closer to the Inter-Ac League championships.
Jonesy and Kreo had broken up over spring break, so none of the usual Lincoln guys were in the bleachers, but I cheered for Kreo anyway. She’d never be a friend of mine, but she wasn’t really just another bitchy Nectarine to me anymore, either. And slowly, over that week, I let myself shake off the last of that unreasonable nagging in the back of my mind that some tipped-off cops might show up at my door, or that I’d be summoned to Mrs. Birmingham’s office for an inquisition about my whereabouts on the night of April first.
When nothing like that happened, part of me wished something would. We’d achieved something wild and perfect that night. We’d made a pledge to right a wrong, and we’d executed it with total success. The blight of Claire’s year, and the punishment that fell so wrongly on her shoulders, would always leave me feeling upset about Strickland. None of the so-called grown-ups had protected her when they should have.
But I felt deeply satisfied, like we’d restored a tiny purple karmic chip in the universe, whenever I thought about Jay Moser walking out into his perfect spring morning and seeing the truth staring back in his face from his doors, his lawn, his mailbox.
PERVERT
PERVERT
PERVERT
PERVERT
We’d done that.
I would never regret that.
fifty-four
The next Saturday, Mimi and I drove all the way up to Norwalk Community College, where Gage was competing in a fencing tournament. It was something Mimi and I had been planning for a while. I’d mentioned it briefly on the phone to Theo since Yale wasn’t too far, but I was as surprised as his sister when he strolled into the college gym.
“Theo?” Mimi was on her feet. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t get too excited.” Theo’s expression was perfectly nonchalant as he approached us, but I could feel my every nerve on end as he climbed the bleachers to join us. “I’ve never seen her compete.”
“How did you even know about it?”
“Gage never stops yapping about her fencing. I’m here for proof. Let’s find out if this girl’s as good as she says she is.” Theo put his fingers in his mouth and whistled through his teeth at Gage, who was on the floor practice-jousting with a teammate. When she looked our way, he raised his voice above the din. “I’ll take you out for pizza if you don’t totally embarrass us.”
Gage lifted her mask. “Nobody invited you, Theo!” Her face was suffused with delight. If Mimi suspected anything was slightly weird about the fact that Theo had shown up in Norwalk for Gage’s fencing competition, she wasn’t speaking up about it now.
What Mimi also didn’t know, but I did, was that after spring break, Theo and Violetta had decided to take some time off from each other. He’d called last week and we’d stayed on the phone for over an hour, and even though the conversation was about Violetta, we both knew something between us was changing, or would.
Maybe even today, it was shifting. Even in this pretend-casual way we were sitting next to each other on the bleachers, all this spark in the space that separated us as we watched Gage. Her fencing style was so excellent that when she took fourth foil, I got a little teary.
When we all jumped to our feet to cheer and stomp, Theo’s eyes held mine just that second longer, before we glanced away.
After the match, we hit a pizza place in town, where Theo and I sat next to each other again. Theo’s forearm, resting on the table, touched mine by a hair. Nothing suspicious, but my own arm felt like a bar of magnets drawn to his. We split a large cheese pizza plus an order of garlic knots and buzzed through an intense discussion of Star Wars trivia that was just as dumb and fun and easy as ever. Mimi, Gage, Theo, me—old friends who knew the old me best. Except that I also felt completely new.
Later I waited with Theo for the check as the other girls headed out for the parking lot. Nobody seemed to think that was unusual, either. I was just keeping Theo company. But after the check came, and he paid and signed, and we ducked out through the side entrance, we both knew exactly what we were looking for—a single stolen private moment. He stepped toward me and quickly bent to brush my lips with his. His kiss lit me up like a flame in the darkness.
“Guess I’ve been meaning to do that for a while,” he said.
I moved forward and kissed him back. “Me, too.”
Then we just looked at each other. A little bit shocked. We’d known each other for so long. Was he also thinking how it was impossible to know the shape of this brand-new door we were opening on our story? Except that nothing was supposed to stay the same forever, and the timing felt right, and so did the butterflies—and right now that was enough for me.
fifty-five
Matt swore he wasn’t worried about it. “I hardly even think about it,” he’d said more than once. But the thing was, he’d brought it up on the phone too many different occasions, and I was starting to get skeptical.
“It was last spring break,” he told me over the phone. “It was just casual.” On another call, he let slip more details. The guy’s name was Ryan and he was older, a college kid. And they’d been safe. “But seriously, I almost never think about it.” The third time he brought it up, he said that he didn’t know anything much about Ryan—and that they’d been mostly safe.
“Can’t you get ahold of this guy, Ryan?”
“Nah, that’s not gonna happen.”
“Never?” I questioned.
“Uh-uh,” Matt answered crisply. “But, I mean, I hardly think about it. I don’t know why I brought it up.”
Brought it up again, he meant. Had this thing with Ryan been a brief encounter, or maybe a few? I had more questions. I didn’t pry.
But when Matt brought it up for a fourth time, I was ready.
“Listen,” I broke in, “you’re thinking about this a lot. It’s seriously on your mind, and my advice, for what it’s worth, is that if you want to be one thousand percent sure that you never have to worry, doubt, or overthink it again, there’s a health clinic right on Broad Street that can give you test results in twenty-four hours. It’s all privacy protected, too. You don’t have to give a social security number or a phone number or anything.”
“Really? How do you know?”
“Because I called over,” I said. “I was asking for a friend.”
I could hear tension in his laugh. “Stripes, you get me better than I get me.”
“It won’t be a big deal,” I told him, though of course I had no idea. I wanted to be brave, but how could I not be a little worried myself? I knew you couldn’t get it from a kiss, but what about that night in Valley Forge? Did that qualify as risky behavior? “You’re just going to get the test to learn that you don’t have it,” I said calmly, to assure us both. “But I think you should take a friend along for support. If you want, you can pick me up at school on Friday, and we’ll do it together. Then we go back Saturday for results. They don’t tell you on the phone, because you need to show ID.”
“Huh.”
I could feel my advice, unwieldy, a little bit unwelcome in his brain. “It’s a solid plan, Matt. Let’s do it together.”
He let go of a slow breath. “This has been giving me some stress. I mean, I know I’m okay. Mostly I know that. But if I could, yeah, not think about it anymore . . . and you’re sure you’re cool to come with me?”
“Yes. If not this weekend, next. Whenever you’re ready.”
Matt was in the senior lounge that
Friday. After we went into the city, and he took the test, we attempted to shake off the mood by hanging out for a while, dropping into a Chinese noodle shop for dinner, and then a vintage poster store where we discussed how we’d decorate our dorm rooms next year.
The next day’s return trip was different. We were quiet most of the way.
“It sucks to think about Walt doing this all by himself.” He sat back and cracked his knuckles down the line. “Although I guess some of the worst things you do are also the loneliest.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m right here,” I reminded.
“For what it’s worth, I love you,” he answered.
The words were so unexpected we both burst out laughing.
“I love you back,” I told him, meaning it.
We found free parking on a street a couple of blocks up from Broad, an easy walk. April was greenly budding in trees whose species names I didn’t know, which all seemed to share a living-monument splendor as guardians of the city.
“Funny to think those results are somewhere,” Matt said, almost to himself. “In a tube. Marked with a label. As yet unknown by me.” He pushed through the reinforced glass door, and then held it open.
“I’m not worried,” I told him as I slipped past. “You’re only getting it done so you can stop thinking about it, remember?” I knew my chirpy confidence had been helping Matt, easing him along, and since being a worrywart would do no good, I kept my fears to myself, holding back yet again for more about this lost Ryan, who happened to share Walt’s middle name.
Tell Me No Lies Page 25
