The Telling (11 page)

“I'm glad you came,” Josh says. He's moved closer.

I try for calm and casual. “Where are your moms?” I ask. Fail.
What kind of social outcast brings up parents at a kegger?

“They went out to dinner and a movie in Seattle.” Josh frees a bottle of water from the pack at the center of the kitchen table and offers it to me. We settle against the oak table, facing the drama of the room. I twist the cap off and drink. He runs a hand down the back of his neck. “Am I the lamest eighteen-year-old ever that I hope my moms get home early so the party can end?”

Duncan's done toasting and our classmates have grown rowdier without his performance distracting them from their own drinking. The laughter is forced and bawdy; flashes fire as selfies and group shots are taken.

“I don't think so,” I say. “Up until a month ago, I'd never really been to a party.” Josh is being honest, I should too. “I was surprised that most people seem to be too worried about fitting in to have actual fun.”

Josh frowns and looks around the room for a few seconds. His eyes cut back to mine, and they're surprised. “You're right. Everyone looks miserable.” He laughs. “Like they have to be here and they know they should want to be, even though secretly they'd rather be home playing Assassin's Creed in sweats.”

“Or reading a Brontë novel,” I add.

“Or eating an extra-large pepperoni pizza, drinking a gallon of orange soda, and watching old-school
X-Files
episodes on Netflix.” He grins and then feigns embarrassment. “Or is that just me?”

“Everyone secretly loves Mulder and Scully.”

“This”—he waves his water bottle over the kitchen—“isn't what I wanted. Some of the others needed a party. It feels weird to celebrate after yesterday.” He slides closer, and our thighs meet.
Warmth washes up from our points of contact. “Not that I'm sad for her.” He reaches for my hand resting on my leg and hooks his pinkie with mine. It's an innocent little touch, the crook of my pinkie on the crook of his. My breath goes shallow, though. “I know she wasn't a good person. I bet finding her . . . being reminded . . . I don't know . . . makes you hurt worse for Ben.”

“Yeah,” I chance. I worry that I'll scare Josh by letting the grief spill into my voice. I try to keep it light with everyone except Becca and her policy of zero judgment. The core likes to reminisce about Ben the keg-stand champion or Ben the hothead who threw the first punch. Those are good. Those are safe, easy things to talk about.

“I know that the others can seem stuck in their own world,” Josh continues. “Seeing Maggie, how gone she looked, has everyone messed up.”

We watch as Becca tosses miniature marshmallows into Twinkie's snapping jaw. She tires of the trick and throws marshmallows to the junior girls so they take turns catching them in their mouths. Soon she's over that, and in a last-ditch effort to amuse herself, she targets a hapless girl standing in a nearby group. I recognize the girl as a reporter for our school's news blog. Becca does a little victory dance when her marshmallow nails the girl between the eyes. The victim tries to laugh it off as everyone around her snickers.

I almost gag at the wave of shame rising in me. I'm reminded that belonging feels so good because not everyone does. Becca's as much the sorceress of exclusion as belonging.

“It doesn't look like Becca is upset, but she called Car at three a.m. last night. She kept having nightmares,” Josh says. His pinkie tightens around mine. I look away from Becca. This is all I want to
feel, our pinkies, hooked and pressing. “Then I got to thinking that what all of us are feeling is like a millionth of a percent of what you've been feeling for months. If B's having nightmares over a girl she didn't like . . . I thought about what you're going through.”

I drop my eyes to our joined fingers. “You've made it easier. It helps to do the kind of things Ben used to do. He liked bonfires at Shell Shores, and he loved breaking rules.”

“And spitting in authority's face.” The corner of his mouth tucks up in a devious way that's exotic and charged on Josh. “Ben was always trying to turn parties into rallies for something, like protesting the school store because they got our mascot hoodies from sweatshops.”

I laugh. “I hadn't heard that one.”

“Yeah, but he'd be shouting about kid labor one second and then he'd be out-chugging every guy on the beer bong. That's why people loved Ben. He was so . . .
different
,” Josh says.

I smile without feeling it.

Josh chews the inside of his cheek and then continues staring at my shoes. “Is it weird that we were sort of friends with him, partying together and hanging out at school with the same people, but not you, and now he's gone and we're friends?” He meets my eyes.

“A lot's changed since Ben died,” I say, my voice shaking. I take a deep breath. “I don't care about being
weird
, as long as I'm moving forward, away from sad.”

Josh's side rocks into mine softly. “My grandpa died three years ago. My mom doesn't have other family, and she was really broken up about her dad. She stayed in bed for weeks. And my other mom still had to go to work, and when she wasn't, she was trying to be there for Mom. It was a rough time. I didn't know how to make toast or
wash laundry before that. You're going to think I was such a lazy shit.” He smiles guiltily. “I didn't know how to start the dishwasher, like, I couldn't have identified where the buttons were for a million dollars. I learned so that I could help out. I should have known how sad you were . . . are.”

We just sit there, the length of his side pressed to the length of mine, and he doesn't seem afraid of me and the sadness I'm hiding; nor is he telling me I need to stop grieving.

“Can I ask you a question?” he says. There are flecks of green like sea glass in his blue eyes. I nod. “It's okay if you don't want to answer. How did you get over it? Becca told me you said you stayed in bed for weeks after. Then all of a sudden you got up and made yourself better.” Phantom arms squeeze my chest. Becca spilled what I confided in her to Josh. He squints like he's attempting to read the answer on my face. “How did you do it?”

The air in the room is forced out by the size of Josh's question. Without knowing it, Josh is asking what started
after
. Ben's death ended
before
. I couldn't have been the same after he died if I'd wanted to be. Josh is asking what got me out of bed a month later. It was the truth inside an origami crane pressed between the secret pages of my journal.

Josh deserves the truth. But the words are giant and heavy, and they'd flop uncontainably to the floor, smashing this happy, ordinary house to bits. How do words have power like that? How can they open and drain you of all the I-hope-I-get-an-A, I-have-to-make-my-birthday-wish-list-for-Dad, and I-wonder-if-I-should-become-a-vegan thoughts that I was used to?

How did they fill me with questions I've never entertained
before, bizarre ones, like what will happen if I let that spider crawl over my hand rather than smack it dead on the wall? Or if the boys can jump from Duncan's roof into the pool, why can't I? Or maybe I was never as odd or alone as I thought for feeling what I did. Those words made me new with nerve and mischief until I wasn't myself anymore. I can't explain this to Josh without sharing the secret in the paper crane.

Duncan appears beside us. The skipper hat is slanted on his head, covering most of one eye. “Here's to Josh, the only guy in the room who isn't wasted,” he slurs.

Josh claps him on his back, an easy smile pulled onto his face. “Hey bro, you really had them going.” Duncan plants his feet, swaying counterclockwise, eyes unfocused and expression mean. He's a second away from saying something snide and stupid. “You hungry?” Josh keeps his tone light, sensing what I do. “I have that lobster mac-and-cheese you go ape for.” He mouths, “Sorry” to me over his shoulder and leads drunken Duncan away.

Becca's still surrounded by junior girls, and she's rearranging the friendship bracelets stacked on her wrist and—I guess—sharing the origins of each because she reaches the tangerine and gold and points to me, grinning. I brush its mate around my wrist. She bought them at a boutique that first morning she took me shopping. It was surreal, after all those years zipping by without so much as a text, having Becca confide her deepest, darkest secrets to me over lunch. She acted like we'd been separated by continents, cell-phone-less—
no one's fault we stopped talking
—rather than three houses away, an invisible wall that she put up between us. Becca sees me looking and waves me over to join them, the juniors looking over expectantly,
studying me as they would an exotic species of monkey introduced into the indigenous fauna.

I make for the staircase. Willa is here, and if there's anywhere I belong, it's with her.
Before
,
after
, whenever. I reach the third step and meet her at the fourth. She's sitting in the dim corridor, just beyond the sight line of the kitchen. Her temple rests against the wall and her eyes are closed. “Are you sleeping?” I ask.

Her lids open. “There was a couple sucking face against Josh's door. I didn't want to interrupt them,” she inflects, annoyed. “Actually”—she taps her cell—“Mom would only let me come if she dropped me off and picked me up. I called her for a ride.”

“Already?”

A long pause. “You're kidding, right?”

I can't decipher her expression in the dimness. “About what?”

“Trust me”—she rubs at her eyes—“you won't notice that I'm gone. You came with Becca and Carolynn. You want to flirt with the birthday boy. You won't miss
me
.”

I drop down a step to bring our heads level. “I do miss you. I tried calling you earlier. You were upset last night and you said we'd talk about it today.”

“I'm still upset, and I didn't want to have the conversation over the phone.” Her voice has a crackly, choked quality. “But I don't want my mom to come to the door and see that there's alcohol here.”

“I'll wait with you out front, then,” I offer.

My fuzzy schnapps blanket has thinned and the cool, fresh outside brightens my senses. The white liquid moon gives everything a silver skin. The porch is empty, other than a couple in the corner making out; the baseball team gave up their post.

Willa's arms are folded rigidly against her chest, and her hair lashes her cheeks as she shakes her head. She stifles a strange sob that comes from nowhere. “I get that you're sad.” She holds a hand out, blocking me from approaching. “I don't understand how sad because I don't have a brother or sister.” I turn away. Willa's always said we were sisters. “I know that loss changes people. And that's okay.” Her tone softens. Her hand tucks in mine and she squeezes. “Lana.” Now she sounds just like her mother with steel running through her voice. “I shouldn't have even been at Swisher Spring yesterday. We were lucky that the police didn't charge you guys for underage drinking. There were beer bottles everywhere. We dragged up Maggie Lewis's body.
We were brought to the police station.
”

I take my hand from hers and place it in the folds of my dress. “Ben died in June. Dead. I watched it happen.” She flinches. “So what that the police brought us to the station? So what that
oh my God
, there was drinking going on around you? Someone is dead.”

Her eyes, round and hurt, flick to me and then to the road. “
Two
people are dead.” It smacks of accusation. “I came tonight to tell you that I can't be around
this
anymore. We weren't supposed to waste our final summer before graduation. What happened to finishing our early admission applications? We were going to edit our personal essays. The eight-semester plan is leaving Gant. I thought you wanted that. And it isn't just what's stopped mattering to you; it's what's
started
mattering to you. You used to be counting down the seconds until you could escape all this
islander
crap. The core is their own little island in a sea of regulars. The core is Gant.”

“I've always liked Josh; I used to be friends with Becca.” I'm aware these aren't my strongest arguments.

She gives me an inscrutable look. “You're kidding. You can't think crushing on Josh and doing the monkey bars with Becca when you were ten is the same as hanging out—
every day
—with Carolynn Winters and Duncan Alvarez. Tell me you see the difference. Tell me that you see what a hypocrite you are, complaining about how exclusionary the core is and how nasty all the populars are, and then you sell out and spend the whole summer with them the moment they'll have you.”

I hold my stomach. There's pain there. “I don't just want to study and plan,” I say. “We've been in high school for
three years
and what have we done? I don't want to go to college a virgin who's never been hungover, or gone to a football game, or piled into a limo with friends for winter ball, or even had more than
one
friend.”

Her chin juts out and she gives me this sidelong look.

“None of it is real, Willa. Chem lab and honor society and Latin—my God, Willa,
Latin
is a dead language.” I duck between her and the road she's so intent on. “I wasted three years on all that stuff.”

Willa's expression, her arms at her sides, her bearing, all of her hardens until I don't recognize her. “I'm sorry that I've been such a waste of your time.” There's a bitter lilt in her voice. “Now is when I need to concentrate on what matters to me. If I don't matter to you, I don't see how we can continue being friends.” She pushes past me. I make to go after her, but P.O.'s station wagon has just pulled up and the passenger window is being lowered. I spin and retreat around the side of the house.