Unfriended (19 page)

Right?

“I don’t know why he did it,” Schuyler said. “But I hate not knowing where he is. It’s like …” She looked up at us, and took a breath before continuing. “It’s like he’s disappeared. And my last connection with him is now
gone. And I just … really miss him.” She said this last part softly, and very fast.

Lisa opened her mouth to say something, but then paused and looked at me. “Mad?” she asked. “
Votre opinion?”

Ruth turned to me as well, and I could see from her worried expression that she hadn’t let my earlier strangeness slip her mind in the midst of the Schuyler drama.

I looked around at the faces of my friends one last time, fixing them in my memory. Then I took a deep breath and shook my head. “No,” I said, trying with all my might to keep my voice steady. “I can’t help.”

Schuyler blinked at me, Lisa frowned, and Ruth leaned forward. “Maddie,” she said, urgency in her voice. “What’s going on?”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and despite my best efforts, my voice broke on the last word. “But I have to go now. And I won’t be coming back. I can’t—I can’t be friends with you anymore.”

Lisa was staring at me, utterly confused, like I was the one speaking in a foreign language. Schuyler had turned even paler than she normally was, and Ruth was biting her bottom lip, looking like she was about to cry.

Lisa was the first to recover the power of speech. “I’m sorry,” she said. She shook her head. “Madison, is this some sort of joke? Because it is not funny.”

Somewhere in the back of my head, I registered that she must have realized how serious the situation was, since she had spoken entirely in English. “It’s not
a joke,” I said, feeling my heart hammering, forcing the words out. “And I wish that I could tell you why I’m doing it. But I can’t.”

“Maddie,” Ruth said, and I saw that her brown eyes were filling with tears. “Don’t do this.”

“She’s not serious,” Lisa said, tossing her curls, but without enough bravado to pull the gesture off. “Madison wouldn’t decide to end our friendship out of the blue with no reason. She
wouldn’t do
something like that.” Though she was using the third person, she was directing this right to me, her eyes locked onto mine.

I felt my bottom lip start to tremble, and I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to keep things together for much longer. And I knew that the longer I stayed there, with all my best friends, the closer I was going to come to breaking down and confessing everything. “Sorry,” I choked out. “But I have to go—”

“Something isn’t right,” Schuyler said quietly, surprising me. She was leaning forward on the couch, looking at me closely. She shook her head slowly. “Last spring, you helped me when you didn’t have to. At all. You risked a
lot
to help me then. And I don’t believe that the Madison who would do something like that would walk away from us now.”

I swallowed hard, blinking back the tears that were threatening to spill. There was a piece of me that still couldn’t believe this was happening—and that I was the one who was bringing it about. I forced myself to stand on legs that were shaking, and shouldered my
bag. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I took a breath to try and compose myself. “I just need you guys to trust me that I have to do this, okay? And just … don’t try and contact me. I can’t …” My voice broke, and I looked away, forcing myself to focus on the Stubbs sailor and his pipe, until I got myself under control enough to finish. “I want you all to know,” I said very fast, looking around at them, “that you’ve been the best friends I could have ever imagined. And I didn’t realize, really, how lucky I was until now. And I’ll never forget you. But …” My voice trembled, and I felt the first hot tear hit my cheek. “But I have to go,” I choked out. Through my tears, which made everything fuzzy, I looked at my friends looking back at me—stricken, hurt, confused. Then I rushed toward the door, yanking it open and setting the bell jangling.

I stepped outside into the pouring rain, only remembering as I did so that I’d left my umbrella by my chair in the coffee shop. I hunched my shoulders against the rain and turned toward my car when I heard the Stubbs bell jangle again. Ruth rushed out and stood facing me, rain running down her face, quickly getting drenched.

“Maddie,” she said.

I just shook my head quickly and took a step back, away from her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t—”

“I’ll be here,” she said, interrupting me for the first time in nine years. Her voice was clear and steady, and she was emphasizing her words. “If you need me. Okay?” She looked at me searchingly, like she was trying to figure out why I’d suddenly turned everything upside down. “I’ll talk to you later.”

The phrase hung between us until I shook my head. “No,” I said finally, making myself say it. “You won’t.”

I turned away from the hurt that was spreading over Ruth’s face and ran across the parking lot to my car, not even trying to stop myself from crying now, tears just flowing freely, and mixing with the rain that was running down my face.

My phone had started ringing, and then beeping with texts, and chiming with Constellation messages as soon as I reached my car. I had no doubt that it was my friends, calling to try and find out what had happened—if this was all some elaborate joke, or if I had hit my head on something hard. Once inside my dry car, I took my phone out of my bag, preparing to check my Constellation messages, as was my ingrained habit. But at the last moment I stopped myself. The phone in my hand started to ring again, and I saw the call was from Ruth—though I had a feeling Lisa and Schuyler were currently clustered around her, and would be waiting to talk to me as well.

I looked down at the picture that came up when Ruth called, one of the two of us that Lisa had taken at my seventeenth birthday party last month. Ruth was looking
at the camera, smiling, but there was something in her expression that indicated that she was about five seconds away from cracking up. I was next to her, already laughing hysterically, pointing at something off-camera. I wished I could remember what it was we’d thought was so funny. Especially since right now, I had a feeling that I might never laugh, ever again.

I wiped my eyes, trying to pull myself together a bit. The phone was still ringing, and before I lost my nerve, I pressed the button to ignore the call. Then I turned my phone off, watching the screen until it powered down and then faded to black. I started Judy and drove home in silence, even turning my iCar off, so the only sound in the car was that of my ragged breathing and the windshield wipers turned up to their highest speed,
whapping
back and forth.

I reached home and stepped inside the quiet, dark house, remembering that my father was working at the library. I stood in the doorway, dripping, and felt myself missing my mother for the first time since she’d left. If she hadn’t been in England, she would have been home now, and the lights would have been on, the stock report playing on her financial channel while she worked in the kitchen. She would have lectured me about forgetting an umbrella and told me to take a hot bath. But instead, there was only dark and quiet and the sound of the kitchen clock ticking. For just a moment, it was all just so lonely that I almost cried again. But I still—unfortunately—had a lot more to do today. I kicked off my wet shoes, took the stairs to my room
two at a time, and sat down at my desk with my laptop. Then I logged on to Friendverse and started typing.

Friendverse Message

From: Madison MacDonald,
To: Ginger Davis, Sarah Donner, Dave Gold, Brian McMahon, Kittson Pearson, Mark Rothmann, Glen Turtell, Tricia Evans
Date: 6/23, 6:15
P.M.

Hi guys,

I’m so sorry to have to do this, and without any explanation. But as of today, I can’t be friends with you any longer. I wish I could tell you why, but you’ll just have to trust me that it has to be like this. I promise it’s nothing personal. You guys are the best, and I’m going to miss you all more than I can say. Don’t ask why or message me on Constellation about this. Please just trust that I’m doing what I have to.

Mad

I pressed SEND and watched the message disappear, knowing that it was heading to my friends’ inboxes, to no doubt confuse and hurt them. I had included Tricia on the list even though Isabel hadn’t included her on the dossier. But I knew that it would hurt my friends even more if I stopped being friends with all of them but kept in contact with Tricia. It seemed better, perversely, to just cut myself off from everyone.

I logged out of Friendverse immediately, and out of Constellation as well. I had no doubt that perplexed and worried messages and posts were piling up, but I didn’t feel up to reading any of them at the moment. Right now, I was feeling utterly overwhelmed by what I still had to do.

I had to break up with Nate.

The thought was so terrible that I actually had to close my eyes, as though that would make it go away. But it wasn’t going away. It was just sitting there, a cold, hard fact, refusing to be ignored.

Was I really going to be able to dump Nate without an explanation? Was I going to be able to leave him as confused and hurt as all my friends? I could feel myself on the verge of tears once again as I thought about what I was going to have to do to my boyfriend—and soon.

Feeling like I could go to sleep for about twelve years, I pushed myself away from my desk, climbed up on my bed, and curled into a ball. Next to me, on my bedside table, I could see the carved tortoise, standing atop a stack of Nate’s unread spy books. I turned to face the other wall; they were too painful to see right now.

But a second later, I sat up straight, heart pounding. I looked at both the books and the tortoise. I had just realized that there might be something I could do after all.

Around eight, my father came home bearing Chinese takeout, and he seemed too preoccupied by the steroid scandal (which had broken that morning) to notice that I was not exactly my normal self. But he did comment that
he hadn’t seen me go this long without my phone since our trip to the Galápagos.

I had left my phone turned off, and hadn’t logged back on to Constellation to see what the damage was. As a result, I was feeling incredibly disconnected from what was going on. Once I’d finished this whole terrible thing, and had had the conversation with Nate, I’d log back on and see just how bad things were. But until then, I was determined to remain in a state of Constellation blackout.

My father headed to bed early, and I realized I had no idea what to do with my time. Since I couldn’t go on to Constellation, iChat, talk, or text with any of my friends, I was a little bit stuck. While I racked my brain for what I could do, it hit me for the first time just how lonely my life was probably going to be now. Perhaps this was the moment to finally learn to knit.

I ended up downstairs in the family room, watching
Point Break
, from Travis’s stack of DVDs. Since it was about surfing bank robbers, and featured Keanu Reeves as an undercover FBI agent, it wouldn’t have been my first choice of an evening’s entertainment. But all of my first choices seemed to remind me of Nate or my friends, and this one had no associations with either. Things seemed grim when Patrick Swayze realized that Keanu had pretended to be his friend to spy on him but at the end, Swayze surfed into the sunset, and the credits rolled.

I was considering trying to go to sleep when the house phone next to me rang. I saw that the caller ID
read ELLIS, and I snatched it off the cradle. “Hello?” I asked, speaking more softly than usual, even though I had no doubt my father was fast asleep and dead to the world.

“Hi,” I heard an achingly familiar, gravelly voice say on the other line. “This is Nate Ellis calling. Apologies for the late hour, but I was trying to reach my girlfriend.”

I felt myself smile involuntarily, but the smile disappeared only a moment later when I realized that there was a ticking clock on that title, and I was about to say goodbye to it forever. “You’ve got her,” I said.

“Sorry to call so late,” he said, and I could hear him muffling a yawn. “But I just got back. I tried calling your cell, but it was going right to voice mail. And my phone’s charging, since I didn’t bring a charger with me and kept it on for two days. I’m actually not sure it’s ever going to turn on again. So to make a long story short—”

“Too late,” we chimed in together, my heart giving a sad little thump as we did.

“Right,” Nate said, and I could hear a laugh in his voice. “Seriously. Anyway, I couldn’t text you or anything, and I just wanted to say hi.”

“No, this is great,” I said. “My phone’s off, so …” I paused, turning over what he’d just told me, and hoping that maybe a tiny piece of luck was on my side. “So have you checked Constellation or anything tonight?” I asked, trying as hard as I could to keep my voice light and untroubled. Though it had gotten harder, lately, to remember exactly what light and untroubled felt like.

“Not yet,” Nate said, and I could hear him speaking around another yawn. “I wanted to call you first.”

My heart gave another slow, sad thump at that. At how sweet my boyfriend was, and how he so didn’t deserve what I was about to do to him. “Oh, great,” I said. It actually was, for the purposes of what still hadn’t happened. If Nate logged on to Constellation and saw the messages that were no doubt piling up among our mutual friends, he’d know something was wrong. And if Nate was concerned, and asking me questions, and wanting to help, I knew there was no way I’d have the strength to lie to him and keep up the ruse. And I had to. I had to do it for him, even if he didn’t realize it now—even if he never realized why. “So I know you’re tired,” I said, crossing my fingers that he wasn’t too exhausted, “but I was wondering if maybe you wanted to meet up tonight? Just for a little bit?”

“Now?” Nate sounded surprised, but I could hear that there was a bit of a smile in his voice as well. “Really? Can you get permission to go?”

This was a bit of a sticking point, but I’d passed the point of worrying about getting in trouble with my father. And if he ended up grounding me, what was he going to be keeping me from? He’d probably just help me put my knitting plan into effect a little earlier. “Absolutely,” I said as confidently as possible.

“Well … great,” Nate said, and I could hear that he was really smiling now. “How about I pick you up, and—”

“No!” I said, more emphatically than I meant to.
“I’ll meet you,” I said quickly, trying to cover. “It’s faster that way.”

“Okay,” Nate said. He sounded a little skeptical, but clearly wasn’t going to argue. “Should we meet at the diner?”

“How about the Bluff?” I asked. It had stopped raining a few hours ago, and I was just hoping that the ground wouldn’t be too muddy to make this a real option. It was where, if this had to happen, I wanted it to happen—in the place that had always been ours alone, and where we could be utterly private, our location unknown to anyone else.

“Sure,” Nate said after a moment, maybe doing the same muddy ground calculation that I had. “But are you sure I can’t come get you, my Mad?”

I had to press my lips together hard after hearing that, to pull myself together before I felt that I could speak again without Nate hearing that something was wrong. “No, I’ll meet you,” I said quickly. “I wouldn’t want you to go out of your way.”

“I don’t mind, for you,” he said. I closed my eyes, thinking that if there had ever been a moment for Nate to have been uncharacteristically grumpy and mean, this would have been it. The more nice things he said, the harder this was going to get.

“So, the Bluff,” I forced out. “I’ll leave now. See you there in twenty?”

“Totes,” Nate said, and I heard one of his low, slow laughs on the other end. “Can’t wait. SYS!”

“SYS,” I repeated, forcing my voice to stay upbeat,
and then pressed the button to hang up the phone. I hadn’t realized how hard it was going to be to lie to Nate—and we hadn’t even been face-to-face. But I was just going to have to get through this. I wasn’t quite sure how yet, but maybe I’d figure it out on the drive to the Bluff.

I hurried into the kitchen and scrawled a note for my father, something about needing to pick up some emergency “feminine products.” I knew that if he happened to wake up and find me—and the car—gone after midnight, this would be the one excuse he would accept without question, and not want to talk about in the morning.

Then I headed up to my room and took the carved tortoise from my bedside table. I turned it over in my hands once before dropping it into my purse. I picked up the note I’d worked on that afternoon. I read it over once more, then folded it and dropped it into my bag as well.

I turned to go, resting my hand on my bedroom light switch. When I came back to my room, I knew it would look exactly the same, even though my life would be utterly destroyed. I shut off the light and walked downstairs slowly, heading toward Nate, and what still had to be done.