I'll Never Tell

by Catherine McKenzie

  “She’s your best friend.”

  “So?” She told me to have fun tonight, I almost said, but something stopped me.

  “I doubt she’d be happy with me . . . with us . . .”

  “She wouldn’t care. But even if she did, so what? She’s your sister, not your girlfriend.”

  He put his hands on my waist, keeping me from falling. “I’m not . . . I’m not good for you, Amanda.”

  My stomach was plunging, but I tried to keep it light. “You feel very good to me.”

  I thought he’d laugh, but instead, he stood up and deposited me gently on my feet.

  “I’m serious. You don’t want to be with me.”

  “What if I do?”

  “Well, it’s a bad idea. I’m not . . . I’m not a good person, okay?”

  “Come on, Ryan. I’ve known you for years. You’re great.”

  “You don’t know me. Trust me.”

  I sat on the rock. The night smelled of the lake and us, mixed together. My lips were swollen, and my body was still ready for whatever it was that Ryan wanted to do to it. His rejection felt like the cold night air. Like something that would seep into my cracks and chill me from within.

  “It’s me, isn’t it?”

  “No, Amanda. No.”

  “You were the one who suggested this. You were the one who wanted to.”

  “I know.”

  “And now you don’t. So it must be me.”

  That was the only explanation I could think of. What other explanation is there when a boy says that he wants you, then changes his mind when you’re in the middle of . . .

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  I was trying not to cry. I was embarrassed. Humiliated. I couldn’t believe this was happening. No, I could. Of course he was rejecting me. He was Ryan.

  I rubbed my hands on my arms, attempting to warm myself back up. The splinter in my finger caught at the fabric of my sweatshirt.

  “Ouch.”

  “You okay?”

  I held out my hand. “You never checked my splinter.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He looked at my finger in the moonlight. He squinted, then pinched the small piece of wood with the ends of his fingers, sliding it out.

  “There you go.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m going to go.”

  “Okay.”

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned around. I stared at the row of colored bracelets on his arm. All the girls he’d been with, the things they’d done together. I’d seen the answering bracelets on other girls over the years. I’d never asked what the system meant, though I’d seen a red bracelet on Simon Vauclair’s wrist after he and Margaux had sex last summer. Was there a color for the girl who wanted you to sleep with her but you stopped yourself from doing it because she was too pathetic? Puke green, maybe.

  I watched him as he slid the boat into the lake, then climbed in. It was already taking on water.

  “What if it sinks?” I said.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  I waited for him to ask me how I’d be, but he didn’t.

  “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” I said as he readied his oars.

  “I won’t.”

  I tried to make eye contact, but he was already too far away, even though he hadn’t moved. My bottom lip was trembling. I wanted him to go, go so he didn’t see me crying. I wanted him to stay, stay and take away the pain.

  He put the oars in and pushed at the rocks. The boat scraped across the bottom until it was in deeper water. He fit the oars into their slots and began to row, an uneven stroke at first, then smoother. I watched him meld into the night, and then the tears started flowing for real.

  I put my head down on my knees and wrapped my arms around my legs. I was having trouble breathing; the tears were coming so fast. Why, why, why. I whispered it to myself over and over, waiting for an answer that never came.

  I grew stiff and cold. Ryan was a speck on the lake, and then he was gone. It had taken me an hour to turn into someone who’d let Ryan do whatever he wanted to me. It’d take longer than that to turn me back into the person I was, if that was even possible.

  I was about to sit up when I heard the snap of a branch behind me. I turned as a hand clapped over my mouth.

  “Don’t scream.”

  Amanda

  Margaux

  Ryan

  Mary

  Kate & Liddie

  Sean

  9:00 p.m.

  Lantern ceremony

  Lantern ceremony

  Lantern ceremony

  10:00 p.m.

  On the Island

  On the Island

  On the Island

  Crash boat

  11:00 p.m.

  Back Beach

  Back Beach

  Back Beach

  On the Island

  Midnight

  Back Beach

  Back Beach

  6:00 a.m.

  Secret Beach

  Secret Beach

  CHAPTER 24

  HEAD-ON

  Margaux

  After she’d showered and eaten some of the breakfast Amy had prepared and laid out buffet-style on the counter, Margaux decided to take things head-on and talk to Ryan. Because Mark, for all his faults, knew her better than anyone, and his advice was probably worth following. She’d voted last night to let Ryan keep the property, writing that he wasn’t guilty. But did the truth matter after all these years? Yes. It mattered for Amanda. It mattered for her.

  Ryan was sitting at the kitchen table in their parents’ house. He’d showered and shaved and put on more appropriate clothing—chinos and a fleece rather than the suit he’d been wearing the day before. He looked rough around the edges, but so did she, she imagined. She felt that way, anyway, as if her insides had been scratched with sandpaper.

  “So,” she said, sitting across from him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat at this table. When they’d come up for the funeral in the spring, the fridge had been full of all the things that had been there when they were growing up, but they’d gone off: almost rotting milk, a brick of cheese that had started to mold, wilting lettuce that would never be used for a salad. Why hadn’t her parents thrown them away before they left on their trip? One of a million things she’d never be able to ask them.

  “So what?”

  “I can go if you want.”

  “No, stop. Sorry. Sorry. Fuck. I’m already fucking this up.”

  “Fucking what up?”

  “My plan for this morning. I want to talk to you. I want to talk to all of you.”

  “I want to talk to you too.”

  Ryan looked up. “You do?”

  Margaux’s heart melted. He looked so hopeful. The fact that it was something as simple as one of his sisters wanting to talk to him that brought this out was both sad and touching. This Ryan, this little-boy-all-grown-up, was what got him into trouble. You could never believe this Ryan would do anything wrong to anybody. And mostly that was true.

  But not always.

  “Yes.”

  “About Amanda?”

  She reached across the table and squeezed one of his hands. “I need to know if I should be fighting for you.�
��

  “I don’t understand why everyone doubts me. What did I ever do to deserve that?”

  “Stacey?”

  “That was an accident. That turn in the road, you know it’s dangerous. And there was a horse that came out of nowhere . . . I told her to put on her seat belt.” Ryan turned in his chair. He looked like he wanted to escape, but there wasn’t anywhere to go.

  She’d heard all this before, and he’d been exonerated. But there was more to the story, Margaux knew. The details he gave had sounded rehearsed, right from the beginning. Like something he’d learned by heart, rather than something he was recalling.

  “You can tell me what really happened that night.”

  “I did.”

  Margaux knew she wasn’t going to get anything further. Maybe he didn’t even remember what had actually happened, since he’d told this version so many times.

  “Okay, so what about Amanda, then? You were on the Island.”

  “I never hid that.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I told the police.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  He rubbed his hands across his face. “Maybe I should’ve, but Margaux, we were . . . Don’t you remember what it was like? Everything was so crazy . . . parents everywhere pulling their kids from camp, and Mom and Dad thinking this place was going to be shut down for good. I wasn’t thinking—”

  “Of anyone but yourself?”

  “Okay, yes, that’s fair. But you didn’t ask me either.”

  She thought back to those weeks and months after that terrible night. She’d spent a lot of time sleeping, barely eating. And then they’d returned to Montreal for school, and she felt as though she was supposed to act as if nothing had happened. As if there wasn’t an Amanda-size hole in her life. Anything else would be too dangerous.

  “You’re right, I didn’t.”

  “How did you know I was there, then?”

  “Amanda told me you were coming to see her.”

  “She did?”

  “Why are you so surprised? She was my best friend.”

  Ryan looked at his hands. His wedding ring was thick, a bit bruised. Margaux had always liked that about him, the fact that he didn’t try to hide his marriage, that he wore his wedding band where it couldn’t be missed, on the right finger on his left hand. And he was a great dad, she had to give him that. She had to give him a lot of things.

  “Did you see her after I left?” Ryan asked. “Is that when she told you?”

  Margaux felt her shoulders rise. What was he accusing her of?

  “She told me before you arrived.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So you left?”

  “Yes, I left.”

  “And . . .”

  “Was she okay when I left?”

  “Was she?”

  “Of course she was, Margaux.”

  “So tell me, then. Tell me what happened.”

  He raised his hands over his eyes. He always used to do this when they were kids. When he’d been caught doing something and it was finally time to fess up, he’d cover his eyes as if that might make it easier to face the truth.

  “We were going to hook up. I was a bit late; my cabin was being a pain in the ass. I met her on Back Beach. And we . . . well, anyway, you don’t want to hear about that. We talked a bit, then, um, you know, and then, okay, I told her that she and I weren’t going to work out.”

  “You broke up with her right after you slept with her?”

  “What? No. We didn’t sleep together.”

  “But I heard—”

  “No, we fooled around a bit, but then I stopped and told her it wasn’t going to work out.”

  “You’re such a jerk.”

  “I did it for you.”

  She thought back to how excited Amanda had been that night. She was always the outgoing one, the daring one. “Come on, Margaux!” she used to say as she leaped down the trail leading through the girls’ section. And Margaux would follow and do whatever it was she wanted. She missed that in her life now. That heedlessness. She probably hadn’t done one spontaneous thing since that summer. Even this morning with Mark on the phone, her realization that it was probably over—that wasn’t spontaneous. It had been building inside her for years, like a slow-growth tree. If you cut her open, you could count the rings.

  “How could treating my friend like crap be for me?”

  “Because what about when it didn’t work out? It wasn’t going to work out, not long-term, and then she’d be all upset and you’d be all upset, and I liked Amanda, so . . .”

  “You made her all upset.”

  “I guess.”

  “Couldn’t you have figured that out before you hooked up?”

  “My brain was a bit slow getting there, I guess.”

  “Please. She was just another colored bracelet to you.”

  Ryan looked at his wrist. It was bare. After Amanda, he’d cut off the rainbow of colors, the skin underneath puckered and white.

  “Yeah, maybe. I kind of sucked back then, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I did notice.”

  “But I’m different now. I am. After Stacey and becoming a dad . . . I’m trying to do right by my family here. I need the money. That’s why I want to sell.”

  “Your business is in trouble?”

  “Of course it is. John stole our working capital. I can’t get new investors. I’m hanging by a thread.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Why would you?”

  The reproach in his voice stung. They lived separate lives. She didn’t call as often as she should or hang out with her nieces either. She always blamed Mark—his awkwardness around her family—but the truth was that she was the one who found it easier to isolate herself from them. Not to get too involved, too entrenched. To keep her life contained, manageable.

  “You’re right. I should know this. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  She could see the stress on his face. It was a stress she’d never ­experienced—other people counting on her, the responsibility of it. Sure, she had to show up to her job every day, but if she didn’t, the school would go on. They’d pull someone from the substitute pool, and within weeks she’d be permanently replaced. She had a feeling it would be like this with Mark too. That within weeks, or at most months, she’d see him tagged in some photo on Facebook with his new girlfriend, and they’d be doing all the things she’d never wanted to do. Buying a house in the suburbs, shopping at outlet malls, having a baby.

  “You need to sell,” Margaux said.

  “Yes. But it’s moot anyway, right, because of the will.”

  “Is what Dad did even legal?”

  “I doubt it is, to be honest.”

  “Why not challenge it, then?”

  “And what—announce to the world that my parents thought I did that to Amanda? No, that would be the end of my career.”

  She watched him sip his coffee, letting the silence hang there.

  “So the only way is to convince the others you’re innocent.”

  “Looks like. Which is probably an impossible task.”

  “Why?”

  “Come on, Margaux. Be serious. They were one vote away from convicting me last night. What’s going to change by tomorrow?”

  “What if you told them what you’ve told me?”

  “Why would they believe me?”

  “Because you weren’t the only one who was on the Island that night.”

  “So?”

  “Well, someone hurt Amanda. If it wasn’t you, it was probably one of us.”

  “What about those guys from that house across the water?”

  “I would’ve heard them. That boat they had was so loud, don’t you remember? T
hey kept buzzing the sailboats all summer. No, it was someone from camp, one of us. I’ve always known that.”

  Ryan contemplated his coffee. He looked like a man wanting to find hope. “Even if that’s true, what does it matter?”

  “It’ll matter to whoever it is. If we threaten to expose them.”

  “You’d do that?”

  Margaux felt her throat tighten. She loved the others as much as she loved Ryan, but the same reasoning had to apply. If Amanda deserved the truth, she deserved it no matter what it was or who it implicated. She couldn’t be selective.

  “It’s not fair that this is happening to you if you didn’t do it. So yeah. Let’s get this right. Whoever’s responsible for what happened to Amanda shouldn’t take away your share of the property.”

  “But even if they vote me in, that doesn’t mean the vote will be to sell.”

  “I know. But maybe you can borrow against the value or something. We can cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  Ryan stood up and came to stand next to her. He reached down and hugged her, hard. He still smelled faintly of alcohol underneath the fresh veneer of soap.

  “Thank you.” He let her go.

  “What do we do first?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure yet, but I do know one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We need to be very, very careful.”

  CHAPTER 25

  FROZEN

  Kate

  “That is so sick,” Liddie said in reaction to the knowledge that their father had been spying on them—and cataloging it—for much of their lives.

  “It’s horrible,” Kate said. She felt unsteady. The timeline she was looking at—her timeline—was stark, to her at least. Amy, Amy, Amy, and then a string of anonymous women even she had trouble remembering. How had her father known all this? It was one thing when they were safe and secure at camp, visible to him, easy to follow. But after she’d left? How could he know about it unless he was following her regularly or having someone do it for him? What possible purpose could doing that serve?

  “Did you have any idea?” Liddie asked.

  “None.”

  “Fuck.”

  Kate used the sleeve of her sweater to wipe her brow. The Craft Shop felt oppressive, like the worst days of summer, when even the night was humid. Was her father mentally ill? Is that what this was? Where did the compulsion to spy on people come from, otherwise? And what did that make her twin, until now the chief spy of the family.