Afterward (28 page)

The lovely and amazing writer Christa Desir was willing to take time out of her incredibly busy schedule to read an early draft of this book, and she helped me trust that I was telling Ethan's story with authenticity and compassion. Christa, you are so giving of your spirit, and your work with survivors of sexual assault is one of the many reasons I admire you so much. One day we will meet in person, and I'll blush out of nervousness and happiness.

In developing the character of Dylan, I must thank the writer Cammie McGovern for her sensitivity and feedback, and for being willing to read a very rough first draft. Cammie, I'm so glad that through this process I not only gained terrific guidance in creating the character of Dylan, but also gained a friend.

I must also thank Jelisa Scott, MA, BCBA, for her willingness to read and critique the manuscript in regard to the character of Dylan.

Thank you to Lieutenant John McGalin, Homicide Division, Houston Police Department, for answering questions about police procedures surroundings cases like Ethan's.

Huge thanks to supporters and friends who are always there for me as I wrestle with title questions, plot questions, book business questions, and the like, including Liz Peterson, Kate Sowa, Julie Murphy, Jessica Taylor, Summer Heacock, Leigh Bardugo, Emmy Laybourne, Ava Dellaira, Tamarie Cooper, the YAHOUs, and all the great people at Blue Willow Bookshop, especially Cathy Berner and Valerie Koehler.

Thank you to Sarah LaPolla and the folks at Bradford Literary. Thank you to the staff, faculty, and students of The Awty International School and Bellaire High School.

Many thanks to my agent Kerry Sparks and everyone at Levine Greenberg Rostan. I'm so very lucky to have you on my side.

Katherine Jacobs, editor of my dreams and kindred spirit, I don't know how you manage to do it, but you take these words I send you and you turn them into a book I'm proud of, and you do it in a way that makes me trust myself and believe I can be a better writer with each book I tackle. Thank you so much, Kate.

A million thanks to everyone at Roaring Brook Press and Macmillan, especially Mary Van Akin, the hardest-working publicist in the business.

And as always, many thanks to my family for being so supportive. Enormous thanks to my dear and talented husband Kevin, who answered all of my music questions and made me sound like I actually knew something about playing drums and guitar. Texas-sized love to you and Elliott forever.

 

Elaine

I, Elaine O'Dea, am going to tell you two definite, absolute, indisputable truths.

 

1. Alice Franklin slept with two guys
in the very same night
in a bed IN MY HOUSE this past summer, just before the start of junior year. She slept with one and then, like five minutes later, she slept with the other one. Seriously. And everybody knows about it.

2. Two weeks ago—just after Homecoming—one of those guys, Brandon Fitzsimmons (who was crazy super popular and gorgeous and who yours truly messed around with more than once) died in a car accident. And it was all Alice's fault.

 

The other guy Alice slept with was this college guy, Tommy Cray, who used to go to Healy High. I'll get to Healy in a minute, and Brandon dying, too, but first, I should probably tell you about Alice.

It's weird, because
Alice Franklin
doesn't sound like a slutty name. It sounds like the name of a girl who takes really super good Chem notes or volunteers at the Healy Senior Center on Friday nights passing out punch and cookies or whatever it is they do at the Healy Senior Center on a Friday night. Speaking of old people, Alice sounds like a total grandma name. Like tissues-tucked-in-the-sleeves I-can't-find-my-purse what-time-is-
Jeopardy!
-on-again grandma. But that's totally not Alice Franklin. Hell no.

Because Alice Franklin is a slut.

She's not
overtly
slutty looking or whatever, but her look could go either way. She's a little taller than average but not freakishly tall, and I totally admit she has a really good figure. She never has to worry about her weight. Maybe her mom makes her count Weight Watchers points with her like mine does, but then again I don't think so, because Alice's mom doesn't seem to care that the entire town thinks her daughter is a total ho. I don't know if Alice's dad would care because Alice hasn't had a dad for as long as I've known her. Which is forever.

Alice has short hair that's cut sort of pixie-style, and she's one of those girls with naturally full lips. She always, always has raspberry-colored lipstick and lip liner on. Her face is standard pretty. She has multiple piercings in both ears, but she's not weird or punk or whatever; I guess she just likes a lot of earrings. In fact, she kind of dresses up for school. Or at least she did before all of this went down. She liked to wear pencil skirts and tight tops which showed off her boobs, and she'd always have on these open-toed sandals that showed off her raspberry toenails. Like even in February.

After it all happened, it's like she didn't care what she looked like. At first she came to school dressed all normal, but lately she's been showing up in jeans and a sweatshirt with the hood up lots of the time. She still wears the lipstick, though, which I find weird.

She hasn't ever been super crazy popular like me (I know that comes out conceited, but it's just the truth), but she's never been like that freak show Kurt Morelli who has an IQ of 540 and never talks to anyone except the teachers. If you're thinking of popularity as an apartment building, somebody like me is sitting on the roof of the penthouse, the band geeks are sleeping on the floor in the basement, and that freak show Kurt Morelli isn't living in the building at all. And I guess Alice Franklin has spent most of her life on some middle floor somewhere, but on the top of the middle.

So she was cool enough to come to my party.

You need to understand that this thing with Alice sleeping with two guys and Brandon dying in a car accident are
the
two biggest things to go down in Healy in a really super crazy long time. I don't mean just big with the kids who go to Healy High. I mean big with like everyone. You know how there's this whole world that exists only to teenagers, and adults never know what's going on there? I think even the adults are aware of this phenomenon. Even they realize that they don't know what a certain word means or why a certain show is popular or like how they always get so excited to show you a YouTube video with a cat sneezing that you already saw twenty hundred years ago or whatever.

But Alice sleeping with two guys and then Brandon dying have become part of the whole world of Healy. Moms have talked about it with other moms at meetings of the Healy Boosters, they've asked their daughters about it, and they've looked at Alice's mom in the grocery store with a look that's always, “I feel so sorry for you, you terrible, terrible mother.” (I know this because my mother has done all these things, including staring at Alice's mother in the dairy aisle while looking for some fat-free pudding she'd heard about at a Weight Watchers meeting. The pudding was only two points, so of course my mother was nuts for it.)

And this thing about Brandon dying is even crazier because he was Brandon Fitzsimmons, King of Healy, Texas. Quarterback and totally handsome and funny and everybody knew him. The dads have been talking about it at meetings of the Healy Boosters and in line at the Auto Zone, and they shake their heads and say what a damn shame it is that Brandon Fitzsimmons had to die in a car accident just a few weeks into football season. (I know this because my father has done all of these things, including wondering out loud why that Alice Franklin Slut, as he put it, had to go and mess up Healy's best chance at the 3A State Championship since he played for the Tigers back in, like, 1925.)

Football is enormous in Healy, but Healy itself is not. It's basically the kind of place that is just far enough away from the city that it can't really be considered a suburb, but it's not big enough to be considered much more than just a small town. There are two grocery stores, three drugstores, and, like, five billion churches located in strip malls. The movie theater shows one movie at a time, so you never get a new one, and the big thing to do on the weekends if you're under twenty is go get fast food and beers and park in the Healy High parking lot and talk shit about people or hope that someone's parents go out of town so you can have a party. Most people either love it here and never plan on leaving, or they hate it here and can't wait to go.

Healy isn't as bad as it sounds. I know it's totally lame that the biggest store is a Walmart and we have to drive an hour and ten minutes to go to a real mall, but still, I love it. I guess, yeah, it's all I know, but I love walking into almost any store in town and people know me and smile at me, and they ask me about my mom and dad and they ask me if I'm on the varsity dance squad this year (yes) and if I'm planning on being on the junior prom committee (yes) and if I think Healy has a chance at state (always). And the things I do seem to be the things that everyone else at Healy High wants to do. Like when my girlfriends and I were freshmen and we started using toothpicks to write letters on our nails with fingernail polish, so we could spell out ten-digit messages like I AM SO CUTE! and SCHOOL SUX! In about a week practically every other freshman girl at Healy High was copying us.

But back to Alice Franklin.

In the movies, high school parties are always these huge, crazy events with five hundred kids jammed into one house and naked people jumping from the roof into the pool, but in reality, high school parties are nothing like this. At least not in Healy. Healy parties basically consist of people sitting around the living room drinking, texting each other from across the room, watching television, and every once in a while someone goes into the kitchen to get another beer. Sometimes two people will go upstairs to one of the bedrooms and everyone makes a joke about it, and around midnight or 1 a.m. people pass out on the couch or go home.

Not so exciting sounding, I know, but I suppose what makes them exciting is the possibility that one of these nights, at one of these parties, something will happen.

And I guess that something did.

 

Kelsie

The night of Elaine O'Dea's party, I was throwing up and had a fever of 102.

So I didn't go.

This was truly an epic emergency in my eyes because despite being almost a junior in high school, the old Kelsie from Flint was not completely dead and buried inside of me yet. Back when I lived in Michigan, I was a nerd. A nothing. A nobody. In Healy I am
popular,
and this blows my mind, and I guess the night of the party there was this part of me that was sure that if I missed even one opportunity to remind everyone of my social standing, I would be kicked back to the solitary cafeteria table of doom, destined to live out the rest of my high school days completely on my own. I would have to give up the fun that came with being part of this super elite club where there was no secret handshake or door knock, but there was still plenty to make it worthwhile.

I mean, to be totally honest, it's not like I'm on the very top rung of the social ladder like Elaine O'Dea and her crew, but if for whatever reason Elaine O'Dea and her friends are ever unable to perform their duties as the Most Popular Girls at Healy High, I am happy to be part of that Most Popular Girls Runners-Up group that is totally available to step in. And even as a runner-up I have privileges. Like … the feeling I get when I walk into the cafeteria and I know I can sit anywhere I want and people will
always
want to sit with me, and the fact that I
know
the teachers will already know my name on the first day of school without me having to tell them, and the fun in not worrying for even
one second
about whether or not I will have people to hang out with on the weekends. I
always
have people to hang out with on the weekends. Or anytime. Texting, talking, calling, drinking, kissing, laughing, dancing, drinking, texting, talking, and drinking. And I'm right in the middle of all of it.