“Owen, I’m such a fuckup,” Flynn said. He tried to put a hand on Owen’s shoulder, but Owen flinched away. He was still glaring at me.
“Owen, please don’t be angry,” I said desperately. But he just gave me a disgusted look before he turned and went back inside the club.
“What is wrong with you?” I shouted at Flynn.
Flynn shook his head, all his bravado gone. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. And then he went inside after Owen, leaving me alone on the balcony.
But the question I should have asked was,
What is wrong with me?
This wasn’t entirely Flynn’s fault. And it wasn’t the first time I’d done something stupid like this under the guise of being daring. Why couldn’t I stop screwing up?
I stayed outside for a few minutes longer, cursing the heels, the dress, the red streak that had made me feel bold and invincible earlier in the night. Fearlessness without common sense was just plain stupidity.
Once my fingers and nose were entirely numb, I went inside with a knot of dread in my stomach. I didn’t know what I was going to do or say, only that I had to try and make things right.
But Flynn and Owen were nowhere to be found, and Jess sat crying on the bench where I’d last seen her. “What happened?” I said.
“Nothing,” she spat at me through her tears.
“Well, obviously something happened.”
She glared at me with reddened eyes. “Why did you bring her here? Were you trying to prove something?”
“No, I wanted you guys to have a chance to talk. To work things out.”
“You shouldn’t have gotten involved,” she said.
“Why? Jess, what happened?”
“Go ask your roommate. She obviously told you everything else. My entire love life is like some pathetic tabloid news story.”
“Jess, that’s not true.”
“Yes, it is, Emma. You don’t understand because you can do whatever the hell you want, and nobody thinks it’s a big deal.”
I sighed and leaned back against the wall. “Not true,” I said. She looked at me, ready to argue. “I kissed Flynn tonight.”
“You what?”
“I don’t know what happened. One minute we were out on the balcony talking, and the next . . . well, Owen came out and saw us, and now he hates me.”
“I’m sure he does,” she said.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Well, you’ve been stringing him along all year—first with the kiss at the cast party and then making him listen to all your whining about Gray. And all this time you’ve known he’s had a thing for you.”
“I thought we were friends.”
“Friends?” she said. “Emma, didn’t you listen to the lyrics of our song?”
“What song?”
“ ‘Capsized Heart.’ Owen wrote it about you.”
“He did not.”
“He did.”
“I thought Flynn wrote the songs.”
She was shaking her head. “They’re collaborations, but that one was all Owen.”
“Oh God. I’m such an idiot.”
“Yeah, you are,” she said. “You and Michelle deserve each other. Neither of you can figure out what the hell she wants.”
And then she got up from the bench and started walking away.
“Jess, wait! How are you going to get home?”
“I’ll find my way on my own,” she said. “I always do.”
C
HAPTER
17
A
fter texting Michelle and Owen in vain, I walked to the shuttle stop and waited almost an hour for it to come. When I got back to an empty dorm room, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, mascara streaming down my face. I quickly changed out of my clothes and scrubbed my face, wishing I could erase that kiss.
About an hour later, Michelle let herself in the room.
“Michelle, are you okay?” I said.
“I’m fine.”
“What happened tonight?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “Right now, I just want to go to bed.”
Even though I couldn’t stand the fact that no one would talk to me, I respected her wishes and let her crawl into bed without pestering her. I had done enough damage already. In my zeal to play matchmaker, I had screwed everything up. Now Owen and Jess hated me, Michelle resented me, and God knows what Flynn thought of me.
I tossed and turned all night and finally got out of bed around five
A
.
M
.
, knowing it was hopeless to try to sleep anymore. After getting dressed, I took the shuttle into town to get some Dunkin’ Donuts, hoping to entice Michelle with sweet coffee, Boston Kremes, and French crullers. On the shuttle back to school, I watched flurries twirl and drift as they made their way to the ground. When I got back to the dorm, Michelle was sitting up in bed, looking like a freight train had smacked into her. She didn’t say anything at first, so I handed her a cup of coffee and set a doughnut on her nightstand. “Doughnuts,” I said. “Making people happy since 1950.”
“Emma, I’m not in the mood for doughnuts right now.”
“Sorry,” I said. “And I’m really sorry about last night.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “I told you it was a bad idea, and I should have listened to my instincts. But I was excited about seeing Jess. I really was. And then I got to the club, and I saw her onstage, and it got . . . real. I freaked out.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought I was ready to take the next step. I thought I was a bigger person than I am. But suddenly I was thinking about what it would mean if Jess and I started dating. I don’t want to have some secretive relationship again. But I’m not sure I’m ready to have an open one. I can’t be like Jess and come out in front of the entire student body. I’m not strong enough for that. You guys all think I’m so tough, but I’m not.”
“Michelle, you’re tougher than you—”
“Emma, stop and listen to me. So much of last year, I spent being an outsider, feeling like I had to work so hard just to fit in. And now, I’m finally feeling normal. I just don’t know if I can put myself through that again. Look at what Jess has gone through since she came out. If that’s what comes from being honest, it’s a hell of a lot easier to live with a lie.”
I studied her face. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Sort of. Has anything good come out of this for Jess? All it’s done is make her miserable.”
“I thought things were getting better.”
“Emma, you have no idea what this is like for her. Or for me.” She sounded so defensive and hostile all of a sudden, like I was the enemy.
Not knowing what to say, I went out to the lounge and called Owen and Jess, but neither of them answered my calls. I tried in vain to do some schoolwork, but all I could think about was how I kept screwing up my relationships. Did I have some personal malfunction that made me incapable of maintaining friendships, that destined me for a life of solitude? Maybe everyone would be better off when I went to France next year.
As the hours trudged by, I watched the snow falling in larger, fatter flakes and drifting up against the side of the building. I felt like we were all trapped in our own personal snow globes, imprisoned by what we feared most.
By late afternoon, I had to get out of the room, come blizzard or flood. Michelle was sleeping again, so I changed into sweats, wrapping Michelle’s red scarf around my neck for warmth, and slipped out of the room quietly.
I almost fell a few times as I ran down the slick, snow-covered pathway. When I reached the stables, I figured running in the woods might be easier with the forest floor to provide some traction. Through a haze of white, I ran to the stream, treading carefully across the log bridge to the other side.
Even though the trail to Braeburn was obscured by snow, I cut a new path with my footsteps. The sky seemed to muffle and darken as I ran, and the air took on that chemical tinge of snow. When I finally reached Braeburn’s campus, the lawn was covered in a blanket of white, sparkling under the half-moon that hovered overhead.
How long did I run? Can it be night already?
The snow shimmered like sequins as I trudged across the field to the hillside where the bleachers should have been. Once again, they were gone, and I knew then that I’d made the passage into that other world. Feeling a keen and familiar sense of anxiety, I ascended the hill, expecting to hear the voices of the townspeople crowded around the scaffold like I’d heard that day back in November.
But when I reached the top, all was silent. Reverend Dimmesdale stood atop the platform alone, and Pearl and Hester stood off in the distance, staring at him.
“Pearl! Little Pearl,” Dimmesdale said. Then he whispered, “Hester? Hester Prynne? Are you there?”
“Mother, look,” said Pearl when she saw the minister. She grabbed her mother’s hand and dragged her over to the scaffold, their feet crunching through the heavy snow.
“Come up, Hester and little Pearl,” said Dimmesdale. “Come up, and we will stand all three together this time.”
I stood watching the scene from the outside as Hester ascended the steps and stood on the platform, holding little Pearl by the hand. The minister felt for the child’s other hand, and took it. Their bond was so strong it seemed the three of them formed an electric chain. And I felt like a voyeur who had no place there, hovering above them like a ghost.
“Minister,” whispered Pearl.
“What is it?” said Dimmesdale.
“Will you stand here in the town square with Mother and me tomorrow?”
Dimmesdale glanced at Hester first, then down at Pearl. “I cannot,” he said. “One day, I will, but not tomorrow.” Pearl tried to pull her hand away angrily, but Dimmesdale held her tight.
“Promise,” she said, “to take my hand and Mother’s tomorrow!”
“Not then,” he said. “Another time.”
“What other time?” Pearl persisted. “Why can you not meet us tomorrow?”
“The daylight of this world shall not see our meeting,” Dimmesdale said sadly. And I knew what he meant, even if Pearl did not. Hester and Dimmesdale would not meet again until after death.
Before he could go on, a light gleamed across the sky, like a meteor burning itself out in the atmosphere. It illuminated the cloud cover and brightened the sky as if it were daytime again.
I watched the three of them—Dimmesdale with his hand over his heart, Hester with her letter gleaming, and Pearl watching the sky—all of them showered by this brilliance as if it were the light to reveal all secrets. And then the darkness returned, and red lines streaked across the clouds. I gazed up, astonished, as they took the shape of a letter
A
.
We stood in awed silence until a sound startled us from below. I turned to see Chillingworth’s hunched form ambling toward us. “That’s him,” gasped Dimmesdale, terror-stricken. “The man who haunts my steps. Who is he, truly?”
My stomach clenched as I remembered the oath Hester had made not to reveal Chillingworth’s identity. Chillingworth’s arrival had broken the spell that had briefly united father, mother, and child. He came and stood behind Dimmesdale.
“Master Dimmesdale! Can this be you?” he said in an oily voice. “Well, you have been busy this night while I have been preoccupied with my studies.” He was holding a bundle of unsightly plants.
I could tell Dimmesdale was unnerved by his presence, but he tried to make friendly conversation. “Where, my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs?”
“In the graveyard,” Chillingworth said. “I found them growing on a grave which bore no tombstone, no other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds that have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his heart, no doubt, and typify some hideous secret that was buried with him, which he had done better to confess during his lifetime.”
Oh, how I hated Chillingworth at that moment. Why did men like him and Overbrook derive so much pleasure from the suffering of others?
“Perhaps,” Dimmesdale said, “he earnestly desired to confess, but could not.”
“Why?” Chillingworth said. “Why not, since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart to make manifest an outspoken crime?”
“That, good sir, is but a fantasy of yours,” Dimmesdale said. “The hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of will yield them up at that last day with a joy unutterable.”
“Then why not reveal them here?” asked Chillingworth, glancing aside at Hester. “Why should not the guilty ones sooner avail themselves of this unutterable solace?”
“They mostly do,” said Dimmesdale, gripping hard at his breast as if he, too, wore a scarlet letter.
“And yet some men bury their secrets,” Chillingworth said, giving Dimmesdale a knowing scowl. I turned to see Dimmesdale’s reaction and nearly stumbled off the scaffold.
I had only seen Dimmesdale one time before—on the day when the townspeople had crowded around Hester on the scaffold. Then, Dimmesdale, like the others, had been shadowy and vague, his features unrecognizable. But now in the moonlight, even with his face shadowed by stubble, I could see him clearly. And his eyes were sad and haunted. Familiar. They were Gray’s eyes.
I tried telling myself that my brain was playing tricks on me. I was only dreaming. Hallucinating. If I could take control, I’d be able to pull myself out of the dream, to make this end. And yet my heart went out to Gray as if he were standing right in front of me.
I heard myself saying, “Haven’t you tortured him enough?”
Everyone looked at me in surprise, and I was suddenly part of the scene, standing just a few feet from Dimmesdale and Pearl, Chillingworth’s presence behind me like a clammy hand on my back. It seemed my voice had triggered a transformation because I suddenly wore Hester’s clothes, which hung limply from my frame.
Gray’s reaction to me was immediate; he seemed overcome with emotion. But I had to remind myself—we were not Emma and Gray. We were Hester and Dimmesdale. Nevertheless, our connection was palpable, and a current of warmth traveled between us through the cold night. Yet something prevented me from going to him. It was as if an invisible force stood between us, preventing us from touching.
“What say you, Hester?” Chillingworth said. “Do you think men should bury their secrets?”