Текст книги "The Secrets We Keep"

Автор книги: Trisha Leaver

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

13

I’d watched nearly every Netflix movie available for streaming and was seriously contemplating DVR’ing bad reruns of The Brady Bunch to keep my mind off what I had to do tomorrow. I intended on keeping the promise I’d made to my sister—my life was hers; I owed her that much. But playing Maddy for my parents and Alex was easy. They were forgiving. Any little mistake I made, they explained away as the result of my grief or pain meds. But playing her in front of six hundred random kids … that I hadn’t thought through.

My bedroom door opened, and I tossed aside the remote as I tried to pull myself out of the sea of blankets Mom had tucked around me. It was hard, my shoulder protesting every move. I finally gave up and sank back down to the bed.

Alex chuckled at my clumsy movements and dropped the new movie he had in his hand onto the bureau. It was the twelfth one he’d rented this week. My nightmares had gotten worse, each dream morphing into a hell I couldn’t unsee. He’d stay as late as he could, watching movies or doing his homework. But eventually he’d have to leave, and I’d slip into the world where my dreams and reality collided into one terrifying truth.

“You worried about tomorrow?” Alex asked as he stripped three layers of blankets off my legs and helped me sit up.

Worried didn’t quite cover it. I’d been hiding in the house, in this room for nine days, and it was time to become Maddy for the rest of the world. “No. I’m good.”

“I talked to Jenna earlier. She said she called you again today, but you didn’t pick up.”

She’d called five times actually, and no, I hadn’t picked up. I hadn’t seen her since the burial, and even then it was from a distance. In the hospital, the doctors and nurses had kept everybody away, and I made sure the family-only visiting rule extended to Alex and nobody else.

“I know you guys had a fight that night at my party,” Alex continued. “But that was nearly a month ago. Don’t you think it’s time to let it go? She has.”

Jenna was the one person in my sister’s life who I wanted no involvement with. If an argument at that party gave me a way out of the friendship, then I would take it. “It’s been twenty-one days and sixteen hours since the accident, to be exact, and no, I’m not ready to give it up.”

Alex sighed and shook his head. We’d had this same quiet disagreement every day since I got home, and I’d yet to budge. “She is having a tough time right now. Things aren’t getting any better for her at home.”

I tossed him a sideways glare. Things weren’t so great around here either. To be honest, I was drowning in a hell of my own making. But you didn’t see me complaining to everybody. “So why is that my problem?”

“I get that you’re upset, but you know how Jenna—”

I held up my hand to stop him. I didn’t want to talk about Jenna or how I was supposed to play nice with her. I was already freaked out about going to school tomorrow. Having him remind me that Jenna was going to be a constant fixture at my side was not helping. I needed to switch topics, and fast, before I changed my mind about everything.

“I don’t want to talk about Jenna,” I said. “I’ll see her tomorrow. I’ll see everybody tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Alex said as he stretched out next to me on the bed and reached for the remote. “But I don’t get why you’re avoiding her. She’s your best friend, maybe she can help.”

She was Maddy’s best friend, not mine. I’d left my best friend standing at my sister’s grave without so much as an apology. “I don’t need her help. I have you.”

“That you do.”

He inched closer, his breath mingling with mine. I closed my eyes. I knew this was coming, that eventually he’d make a move, but I still wasn’t prepared. I didn’t want to sleep with him. I didn’t even want to kiss him.

His lips had barely brushed mine before I pulled back, my heart pounding. I opened my eyes and stared down at my trembling hand pushing at his chest.

He saw it too and pressed his hand over mine, stilling the tremor. “Relax, Maddy.”

I nodded, unsure what else to do. I’d promised my dead sister I’d give her the life she didn’t get a chance to live, sacrifice my own dreams so that I could live hers. I loved her, would do anything for her, but not this. Not him.

Alex leaned in again, his careful approach exaggerated as I analyzed his every move.

“Relax,” he whispered again, and I willed myself to try, focused on counting to twenty in my head.

“I love you,” he murmured as his hands found their way to my back.

I tried to relax, to follow his lead, but I couldn’t. “Don’t,” I said, and shoved him away.

Alex didn’t have to say a thing. The disappointed way in which he unwound himself from me told me what I needed to know.

I knew what he was thinking and prayed my words would be enough. “Everything’s different now. I can’t … it’s not … just no,” I stammered out, completely incapable of coming up with a plausible excuse for why I suddenly wanted nothing to do with him.

Alex slid back on the bed, keeping one of my hands locked in his. “You and me … the way you feel about me … is that what you mean?”

“No.” I shook my head, hoping my weak smile was enough to reassure him. Then I spoke the same words I’d heard Maddy say to him a thousand times: “I love you. Always have.”

“Always will?” he asked, that spark of life returning to his face.

“Yes.” That was the one thing I was a hundred percent sure of. Maddy loved Alex. Always had, always would.

“Then what is it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s different now. I’m different now.” Different in that I wasn’t Maddy and had never loved Alex. Different in that all these things—this room, this bed, the pictures tucked into the mirror, the boyfriend sitting next to me—weren’t mine.

Alex tilted his head, the silent question How? reflected in his eyes. I took a deep breath and held it, searched for the courage to speak my greatest fears out loud. “I’m different now. I’m not the same girl I was before the accident. Not even close.”

Alex smiled, not the sarcastic grin I was expecting, but one of quiet understanding. “You’re nervous.”

It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway.

“We’ve done this hundreds of times, Maddy. Literally hundreds.”

“I know.” Maddy and Alex had spent the better part of our junior year with their lips locked together and served their fair share of time in detention for getting caught kissing in the hall. And if the accidental glimpse I’d got of Maddy’s diary was correct, then they’d spent most of their summer rolling around in bed, or in the backseat of his Jeep, or on the beach, or … “I’m sorry, but I can’t. Not yet.”

He flashed me a grin and settled into the bed next to me. “I’ll tell you what, we’ll take it slow. It’s Sunday, right?” I nodded, and he went on. “So, tonight we can hold hands. Next week we’ll give kissing another try, and by the week after that, you should be good to go. What do you say? Sound like a plan?”

I nodded. That gave me two weeks to try to figure something out. Two short weeks, but at least it got me off the hook for tonight.

14

I spent an hour standing inside my sister’s closet after Alex left and another twenty minutes this morning. It didn’t matter what I put on, nothing felt right. Sweatpants and T-shirts had been my outfit of choice for the past few weeks, but I couldn’t exactly wear those to school. Not if I was going to be Maddy.

My inspiration came not from my own wisdom, but from a picture Maddy had tucked in the corner of her mirror: her and Alex at the Fall Festival the week before the accident. She was beautiful, amazingly so, and I wondered why I’d never seen it until now.

I took that picture with me into the closet and went about assembling the exact same outfit—low-riding jeans and a wide brown belt that barely fit through the loops. Squinting at the picture, I tried to figure out which of three nearly identical gray hooded sweaters she had on. It was a closer peek at her hands that gave it away—the sleeves of the top had holes for her thumbs. I added a second long shirt, a pair of boots, an ugly scarf, and I was good to go. I was dying of heat, suffocating under the layers, but after one more quick scan of the picture, I was confident that I was dressed exactly like her.

Hair and makeup … well, that was a different story. I didn’t have the slightest idea where to begin. Luckily, my left wrist was still in a cast. I could blame my less-than-perfect appearance on my inability to pull my lid taut with my left hand as I applied my eyeliner.

I wrapped the scarf around my neck one more time, pausing to breathe in her scent. The smell of her perfume mingled with a slight hint of Alex enveloped me, and for a second it was like she was there, giving me a hug. I missed everything about her—the way she smelled, the way she yelled at me for leaving my wet towels on the bathroom floor or using her crazy-expensive shampoo. I missed the amusement in her eyes when Dad told his lame jokes at dinner and the way she’d quietly poke her head into my room every night before she went to bed. Being surrounded by her clothes, her smell, her life made the heartache of losing her nearly unbearable.

The door nudged open, Bailey’s nose inching in, pulling me from my memories. “How do I look?” I asked. He whined and lay down in the doorway. He’d been doing that since I got home—following me around, nudging my hands or my legs, begging me to acknowledge him. When nobody was looking, I would bury my head in the fur at his neck and remind him that I was still me.

“Come here, Bailey.” I bent down and clapped my hands, hoping he’d finally enter Maddy’s room. But he never did. He’d sit at the doorway and beg for me to come out, sometimes bark, but never once did Bailey come in. Probably because Maddy had trained him to stay out of her room by hurling her shoes at him if he so much as put one paw across the threshold. She hated my dog, claiming he smelled like dirt and slobbered too much. He did, but that’s why I loved him.

“Treat?” I asked, and Bailey stood up, ears pointing forward. He stood there for a second, then turned around, walked into my old room, and climbed up onto my bed. Lucky him.

“He still won’t come in?” Mom asked. She was staring at Bailey as he circled my bed looking for a comfortable spot to sprawl out.

“Nope. But I don’t know why I care,” I quickly added. Mom had been watching since I got home and had made more than one curious comment about why he was following me around. “He was Ella’s dog, not mine. I feel bad for him. He misses her.”

“That’s why you care, because he’s Ella’s dog?”

Mom and Dad had been trying to get me to talk to them for days, thought I needed to open up, that I couldn’t start to heal until I did. That’s what her question was, an opening for me to walk through. I wouldn’t.

When I stayed silent, Mom sighed and came into my room. “You sure about this?” she asked as she handed me an apple—which I presumed was supposed to be breakfast—and the doctor’s note excusing me from gym for the foreseeable future. I also had a note I was instructed to hand to any teacher or administrator who questioned my prolonged absence. I doubted I’d need it. Everybody, including the principal, knew why I’d been out.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I want to go back. I need to go back.”

I grabbed the apple from her hand and headed for the kitchen. She was following me, her quiet footsteps echoing behind me on the stairs. I took a quick glance at the fridge, briefly wondering if I was supposed to pack a lunch. Hmm … I didn’t remember Maddy standing in the lunch line, but then again, I never saw her toting around an ugly brown paper bag either. Crap, it was barely seven in the morning and I was already stumbling.

“You hungry?” Mom asked. “I can fix you something to eat if you want.” She looked confused and mildly optimistic that I’d say yes.

I was starving and wanted nothing more than a stack of pancakes with a side of sausage, but I didn’t have time. Plus, I hadn’t seen Maddy eat anything pork-related since middle school. “Nah, I’m good.”

I grabbed my keys off the counter and headed out the door. “Remember to be home by six,” Mom called after me. “I made an appointment for us to see the therapist tonight. You’ve been so…”

“Quiet? Closed off? Different?” I supplied when she struggled to find the right word. I’d always been those things. Problem was, I was no longer me. “I’m fine, Mom. We already had this conversation. I don’t want to talk to somebody about what happened. I want to forget it and go on.”

“We discussed this, Maddy. You’re—”

“No, we didn’t,” I said, cutting her off. The last thing I was going to do was let some shrink go mucking around in my lie. I was having a hard enough time keeping it together as it was. “You said you wanted me to see a therapist. I never agreed to go.”

“Maddy, sweetheart, your father and I met with the doctor. He thinks we need to come in as a family, try to work our way through this so that…”

“Work our way through this?” I could hear my voice climbing with each syllable. I didn’t need to talk about it. I relived it every night. My hands crushing the steering wheel. The smell of pine and dirt as the branches shattered the windshield. The blood trickling down Maddy’s face. Her dead eyes staring at me from the passenger seat. Those images were my constant bedtime companions.

“You want to know what I need?” I asked. “I need everyone to stop talking about it, stop making me think about it. I want to go to school, go watch field hockey practice, and then come home. I can’t fix what happened. I would if I could. I’d trade my life for hers, gladly put myself in that grave so she could have her life back, but I can’t. And I don’t see how meeting with a shrink is going to help!”

Not wanting to listen to her reply, I slammed the car door closed. I didn’t want to see the anguish in her eyes, hear the concern lacing her voice. And I didn’t want her to see me cry. I couldn’t pull this off if everybody was coddling me, asking me how I was, and reminding me it wasn’t my fault. None of that, no matter how well intentioned it was, was going to help.

And none of it was true.

It was my fault, all of it, and I had every intention of fixing it. I was going to give them back Maddy, become Maddy. But in order for me to do that, I needed them to stop making me miss myself.

I jammed the key into the ignition, my entire body vibrating with so much anger that I could barely get my hands to move. After three tries and one silent plea for strength, I finally got the key to turn a notch, far enough to get the radio and heat going. I wasn’t going to cry. I refused to cry. But my hands shook, and tears I hadn’t let fall in days came pouring out. I cursed each one, tried to banish them all to the tightly locked box I held inside my mind.

This was a brand-new car. It smelled like leather and new carpet. Different make. Different model. The car I’d totaled was a pale blue Honda. This was a Ford Explorer. It was a different color—black—and there wasn’t a lip gloss tube stuck to the floor or cleats shoved under the backseat. There were no pictures of Alex taped to the glove box, no discarded bra stuffed under the floor mat. So how was it possible that no matter where I looked, all I saw was her?

I didn’t want to do this. I couldn’t. The simple task of putting the car in reverse, tapping the gas, and driving the same route I had to school for years suddenly seemed impossible. My hands shook, my knuckles going white as I grasped the steering wheel. My mind was racing along the street and I could feel every turn, every catch of the tire as I struggled to stay on the road. It was so real, so present, and yet only in my mind.

The tree I’d hit had been cut down, the cement curb replaced, or so Alex had said. The only remnant left from that night was a wooden cross with Ella’s name … my name etched into it. And to get to school, to get anywhere, I’d have to drive by it.

I swore and let my head fall to the steering wheel. Maddy wouldn’t be sitting here in the driveway frozen in panic. She would’ve driven away by now, swallowed down her fear and simply done it. She was that confident, that determined. And if I had any hope of truly becoming my sister, then I needed to be as well.

“Maddy,” Mom called as she knocked on the window. I rolled it down. She reached for me, and I flinched. I didn’t want to be soothed. I didn’t deserve it.

“Why don’t you let me drive you today? We’ll get some breakfast on the way and then I’ll drop you off later. Nobody expects you to—”

I shook my head and held my hand up for her to stop. That was where she was wrong. “Everybody expects me to,” I fired back, remembering my last conversation with Maddy. Everybody expected something from her, wasn’t that what she said? That it would be easier to be like me, to have nobody expect anything from you? “I expect myself to.”

It took more effort than I ever would have imagined to turn the key that last notch. I heard the ignition catch, felt it waver as if it were in tune with me. I picked my head up and swiped at my tears. “I gotta go,” I said as I put the car into gear.

There was no point in looking back as I pulled out of the driveway. I knew Mom would be standing there, watching, hoping that I’d let her help.

15

I was a senior and hadn’t missed more than a week of school ever. I knew every hallway and how to make my way from the gym to the parking lot without having to pass by the office or cafeteria. I knew the exact number of steps it took to get from Josh’s locker to mine and could navigate his combination as easily as my own. I knew the gym floor had been replaced last year and that there was a small hole above the mirror in the boys’ locker room, one that looked directly into the girls’ showers. There wasn’t a thing about this school that should have surprised me, and yet, today, standing in the parking lot, staring up at the front doors, it seemed foreign.

I reached out, my hand falling short of the door handle. I felt like a freshman—not knowing who I’d meet or what I was walking into, hoping people would accept me, terrified that they wouldn’t. But unlike that first day of school our freshman year, I didn’t have my sister as a buffer. Today, I was truly on my own.

You can do this, I said to myself as I willed my hand to rise and demanded that my feet shuffle those few paces into the school. I had friends here. Maddy had friends here. And Maddy had Alex. I wasn’t on my own. I just wasn’t me.

Who knows what I expected to be waiting for me inside, but silence wasn’t it. Quiet, hushed whispers followed me down the hall. My eyes caught the pitiful stares of two girls waiting outside the front office. I nodded and gave them a small wave. They quickly looked away, pretending to be interested in the notices hanging on the student info board. I think I preferred the hushed whispers to the pity I could feel pouring off them.

I picked up the pace and kept my eyes trained straight ahead as I tried to pretend they didn’t exist. It was no use trying to insulate myself. No matter what way I looked, regardless of which hallway I turned down, they were still there—hundreds of eyes watching me, waiting for me to crack.

With my head down I shuffled along faster, but that didn’t stop the sickening feeling from overtaking me. There was nowhere to hide. Ignoring my classmates didn’t mean they weren’t there, whispering about how I was doing.

I let my feet guide me, not once stopping to think where I was going. I rounded the corner and climbed two flights of stairs, my feet propelled by rote memory. I came to a stop in front of locker number 159 and reached for the combination lock. It wasn’t until I had it open, until I saw Josh’s most recent drawing taped to the inside of the door, that I realized where I was. My locker. Ella’s locker.

The hall fell deadly silent, the muffled chatter that had followed me now gone. I dropped my backpack to the floor and searched my mind for something to say, some excuse … some justification for why I was here, for why I was standing in front of what everybody assumed was my dead sister’s locker.

Alex broke the silence. I couldn’t make out what he was saying: it was stifled and not intended for my ears. But I knew the inflection of his voice—the way it rasped when he was struggling to contain some emotion, how it ground deep when he was angry. Instinctively, I turned and sought him out. He’d help me—help Maddy—through this.

Josh was standing there, three lockers down, like he used to every morning before the accident. His dark, haunted eyes met mine, his gaze burrowing through me as if searching for the truth. I saw a flash of recognition, brief and full of forsaken hope before it faded away.

“Maddy?” Alex said.

I tore my eyes from Josh. I could handle the anger I’d seen in him at the burial and deal with the misplaced stares from my morbidly curious classmates, but what tore me apart was the agony I could feel radiating from Josh. I couldn’t take his pain away, not without telling him I was Ella, not without crushing Alex and my parents, not without going back on my promise to Maddy … the one that traded my life for hers. Either way, somebody lost.

“Maddy?” Alex repeated. “What are you doing here?” he asked as he physically backed me away from the locker and kicked it shut with his foot. “Why are you going through Ella’s locker?”

I shook my head, the physical motion jarring me back to the present. “Her stuff…” I said, not bothering to keep the emotion out of my voice. “Why is it still in there? Why has nobody cleaned it out?”

Alex looked past me to Josh as if somehow he had the answer. I watched the silent conversation play out between them, nothing more than an elaborate game of who was going to answer first. I’d never seen this before, never seen Josh hesitant to answer me, to talk to me. But then again, in his mind, in his reality, I was somebody completely different.

“Why?” I had to clear my throat, to swallow a mouthful of tears to get the words out. “Why is Ella’s stuff still in there?” I asked again.

“I couldn’t,” Josh said as he turned around and buried his face in his own locker rather than look at me.

“Couldn’t what?” I asked.

Josh ignored me, and I took a step toward him, wanting to demand an answer and soothe his grief at the same time. Alex stopped me, hooked his arm around my waist, and gently pulled me in to his chest.

“Your parents were going to do it. I offered to help. I thought it’d be easier for everybody if I cleaned it out myself and brought her stuff home in a box. I figured you could go through it when you were ready,” Alex told me.

“But—?” I asked when he paused.

“Josh wanted to do it himself. He promised me he’d have it done before you came back.”

I caught the forgiveness in Alex’s voice, knew he understood how hard this was for Josh. My guess was that that was why Alex had offered to clean out my locker in the first place—he wanted to spare Josh and my parents the pain of having to do it themselves.

I looked at my locker, then back to Josh. If it’d been him, if it was his locker that I’d been charged with clearing out, I’d have done the same thing: let everything he owned sit there undisturbed on some insane notion that he’d be back, that whatever had taken him from me was nothing more than an impossible nightmare I’d soon wake up from.

“I’ll do it,” I said as I yanked myself free of Alex’s hold and emptied the contents of my bag onto the floor. I’d need to make two trips to my car to get everything out, but if it saved Josh from having to do it himself, I’d gladly be late for my first class.

The top shelf was easily cleared off, the textbooks stacked next to me on the floor. I’d turn those in to the office, or the teachers, or whoever was responsible for collecting textbooks, once I got everything else cleaned out. I went for the door and was carefully trying to peel the tape off the pictures when Josh exploded.

“Leave it!” he shouted. I’d never heard such rage in Josh’s voice before or seen his body vibrate with such raw emotion. I stopped and looked at him, my hand still clutching the corner of a picture. “I. Said. Leave. It,” he repeated.

I nodded and let it go, took two steps back to give him some space. He looked like he was about ready to lose it.

We’d accumulated quite a crowd of spectators. Every available body in the school—teachers and students alike—was there, waiting to see what I’d do. At this point I didn’t care; they could grab some empty wall space and watch the show if that’s what they wanted.

“Let it go,” Alex whispered in my ear. “I’ll talk to Josh and ask your parents to help clear Ella’s locker out.”

I nodded, knowing quite well that my parents wouldn’t help Josh. They could barely enter my room, let alone go through my personal things. And from the looks of it, Josh had no intention of clearing out the remnants of my life either. He already had the textbooks stacked neatly back on the shelf and was smoothing out the crinkled photo on the door.

“I can help you,” I said to Josh, hoping he wouldn’t agree to my offer. I didn’t want to spend time with him. I didn’t want the constant reminder of who I once was, who I’d made the choice to never be again. What I wanted was for him to stop looking at me that way—with pain, anger, and hope rolled into one confused mess.

“I don’t need your help,” Josh said.

The anger I’d seen at the burial was back in place, and I sighed in relief. His anger I could deal with.

“Fine, if that’s the way you want it,” I said.

I turned to walk away, planning on leaving the discarded contents of my bag strewn across the hallway floor rather than spend one more second trapped in Josh’s gaze. But his next, broken words stopped me, the truth he spoke echoing through my mind.

“That’s not the way I want it. What I want is to see Ella again, but you can’t help with that, can you?”

I tamped down the urge to respond, my good hand clutching Alex’s so hard that I lost the feeling in my fingers. I couldn’t do this here, not now. Not with Josh. Not with everybody, including Alex, watching.

“No. I can’t,” I said, not bothering to turn around and look my best friend in the eyes as I confirmed his worst nightmare. “She’s gone, and I can’t change that.”