Authors: E. Lockhart
“Do you guys ever plan out your funeral?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” Johnny crinkles his nose.
“You know, in
Tom Sawyer
, when everyone thinks Tom and Huck and what’s-his-name?”
“Joe Harper,” says Gat.
“Yeah, they think Tom, Huck, and Joe Harper are dead. The boys go to their own funeral and hear all the nice memories the townspeople have of them. After I read that, I always thought about my own funeral. Like, what kind of flowers and where I’d want my ashes. And the eulogy, too, saying how I was transcendentally awesome and won the Nobel Prize and the Olympics.”
“What did you win the Olympics for?” asks Gat.
“Maybe handball.”
“Is there handball in the Olympics?”
“Yes.”
“Do you even play handball?”
“Not yet.”
“You better get started.”
“Most people plan their weddings,” says Mirren. “I used to plan my wedding.”
“Guys don’t plan their weddings,” says Johnny.
“If I married Drake I’d have all yellow flowers,” Mirren
says. “Yellow flowers everywhere. And a spring yellow dress, like a normal wedding dress only yellow. And he would wear a yellow cummerbund.”
“He would have to love you very, very much to wear a yellow cummerbund,” I tell her.
“Yeah,” says Mirren. “But Drake would do it.”
“I’ll tell you what I don’t want at my funeral,” says Johnny. “I don’t want a bunch of New York art-world types who don’t even know me standing around in a stupid-ass reception room.”
“I don’t want religious people talking about a God I don’t believe in,” says Gat.
“Or a bunch of fake girls acting all sad and then putting lip gloss on in the bathroom and fixing their hair,” says Mirren.
“God,” I quip, “you make it sound like funerals aren’t any fun.”
“Seriously, Cady,” says Mirren. “You should plan your wedding, not your funeral. Don’t be morbid.”
“What if I never get married? What if I don’t want to get married?”
“Plan your book party, then. Or your art opening.”
“She’s winning the Olympics and the Nobel Prize,” says Gat. “She can plan parties for those.”
“Okay, fine,” I say. “Let’s plan my Olympic handball party. If it’ll make you happy.”
So we do. Chocolate handballs wrapped in blue fondant. A gold dress for me. Champagne flutes with tiny gold balls inside. We discuss whether people wear weird goggles for handball like they do for racquetball and decide that for purposes of our party, they do. All the guests will wear gold handball goggles for the duration.
“Do you play on a handball team?” asks Gat. “I mean, will
there be a whole crew of Amazonian handball goddesses there, celebrating victory with you? Or did you win it by your lonesome?”
“I have no idea.”
“You really have to start educating yourself about this,” says Gat. “Or you’re never going to win the gold. We’ll have to rethink the whole party if you only get the silver.”
LIFE FEELS BEAUTIFUL
that day.
The four of us Liars, we have always been.
We always will be.
No matter what happens as we go to college, grow old, build lives for ourselves; no matter if Gat and I are together or not. No matter where we go, we will always be able to line up on the roof of Cuddledown and gaze at the sea.
This island is ours. Here, in some way, we are young forever.
DAYS THAT FOLLOW
are darker. Rarely do the Liars want to go anywhere. Mirren has a sore throat and body aches. She stays mainly in Cuddledown. She paints pictures to hang in the hallways and makes rows of shells along the edges of the countertops. Dishes pile in the sink and on the coffee table. DVDs and books are in messy stacks all over the great room. The beds lie unmade and the bathrooms have a damp, mildewy smell.
Johnny eats cheese with his fingers and watches British TV comedies. One day he collects a row of old tea bags, soggy ones, and tosses them into a mug filled with orange juice.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Biggest splash gets the most points.”
“But why?”
“My mind works in mysterious ways,” says Johnny. “I find underhand is generally the best technique.”
I help him figure out a point system. Five points for a sprinkle, ten for a puddle, twenty for a decorative pattern on the wall behind the mug.
We go through a whole bottle of fresh-squeezed juice. When he’s done, Johnny leaves the mug and the mangled, leaking tea bags where they lie.
I don’t clean up, either.
Gat has a list of the hundred greatest novels ever written, and he’s pushing his way through whatever he’s been able to find on the island. He marks them with sticky notes and reads passages aloud.
Invisible Man. A Passage to India. The Magnificent Ambersons
. I only half pay attention when he reads, because Gat has not kissed me or reached out to me since we agreed to act normal.
I think he avoids being alone with me.
I avoid being alone with him, too, because my whole body sings to be near him, because every movement he makes is charged with electricity. I often think of putting my arms around him or running my fingers along his lips. When I let my thoughts go there—if for a moment Johnny and Mirren are out of sight, if for even a second we are alone—the sharp pain of unrequited love invites the migraine in.
These days she is a gnarled crone, touching the raw flesh
of my brain with her cruel fingernails. She pokes my exposed nerves, exploring whether she’ll take up residence in my skull. If she gets in, I’m confined to my bedroom for a day or maybe two.
We eat lunch on the roof most days.
I suppose they do it when I’m ill, too.
Every now and then a bottle rolls off the roof and the glass smashes. In fact, there are shards and shards of splintered glass, sticky with lemonade, all over the porch.
Flies buzz around, attracted by the sugar.
END OF THE
second week, I find Johnny alone in the yard, building a structure out of Lego pieces he must have found at Red Gate.
I’ve got pickles, cheese straws, and leftover grilled tuna from the New Clairmont kitchen. We decide not to go on the roof since it’s just the two of us. We open the containers and line them up on the edge of the dirty porch. Johnny talks about how he wants to build Hogwarts out of Lego. Or a Death Star. Or, wait! Even better is a Lego tuna fish to hang in New Clairmont now that none of Granddad’s taxidermy is there anymore. That’s it. Too bad there’s not enough Lego on this stupid island for a visionary project such as his.
“Why didn’t you call or email after my accident?” I ask. I hadn’t planned to bring it up. The words spring out.
“Oh, Cady.”
I feel stupid asking, but I want to know.
“You don’t want to talk about Lego tuna fish instead?” Johnny vamps.
“I thought maybe you were annoyed with me about those emails. The ones I sent asking about Gat.”
“No, no.” Johnny wipes his hands on his T-shirt. “I disappeared because I’m an asshole. Because I don’t think through my choices and I’ve seen too many action movies and I’m kind of a follower.”
“Really? I don’t think that about you.”
“It’s an undeniable fact.”
“You weren’t mad?”
“I was just a stupid fuck. But not mad. Never mad. I’m sorry, Cadence.”
“Thanks.”
He picks up a handful of Legos and starts fitting them together.
“Why did Gat disappear? Do you know?”
Johnny sighs. “That’s another question.”
“He told me I don’t know the real him.”
“Could be true.”
“He doesn’t want to discuss my accident. Or what happened with us that summer. He wants us to act normal and like nothing happened.”
Johnny’s lined his Legos up in stripes: blue, white, and green. “Gat had been shitty to that girl Raquel, by starting up with you. He knew it wasn’t right and he hated himself for that.”
“Okay.”
“He didn’t want to be that kind of guy. He wants to be a
good person. And he was really angry that summer, about all kinds of things. When he wasn’t there for you, he hated himself even more.”
“You think?”
“I’m guessing,” says Johnny.
“Is he going out with anyone?”
“Aw, Cady,” says Johnny. “He’s a pretentious ass. I love him like a brother, but you’re too good for him. Go find yourself a nice Vermont guy with muscles like Drake Loggerhead.” Then he cracks up laughing.
“You’re useless.”
“I can’t deny it,” he answers. “But you’ve got to stop being such a mushball.”
GIVEAWAY:
Charmed Life
, by Diana Wynne Jones.
It’s one of the Chrestomanci stories Mummy read to me and Gat the year we were eight. I’ve reread it several times since then, but I doubt Gat has.
I open the book and write on the title page.
For Gat with everything, everything. Cady
.
I head to Cuddledown early the next morning, stepping over old teacups and DVDs. I knock on Gat’s bedroom door.
No answer.
I knock again, then push it open.
It used to be Taft’s room. It’s full of bears and model boats,
plus Gat-like piles of books, empty bags of potato chips, cashews crushed underfoot. Half-full bottles of juice and soda, CDs, the Scrabble box with most of its tiles spilled across the floor. It’s as bad as the rest of the house, if not worse.
Anyway, he’s not there. He must be at the beach.
I leave the book on his pillow.
THAT NIGHT, GAT
and I find ourselves alone on the roof of Cuddledown. Mirren felt sick and Johnny took her downstairs for some tea.
Voices and music float from New Clairmont, where the aunts and Granddad are eating blueberry pie and drinking port. The littles are watching a movie in the living room.
Gat walks the slant of the roof, all the way down to the gutter and up again. It seems dangerous, so easy to fall—but he is fearless.
Now is when I can talk to him.
Now is when we can stop pretending to be normal.
I am looking for the right words, the best way to start.
Suddenly he climbs back to where I’m sitting in three big steps. “You are very, very beautiful, Cady,” he says.
“It’s the moonlight. Makes all the girls look pretty.”
“I think you’re beautiful always and forever.” He is silhouetted against the moon. “Have you got a boyfriend in Vermont?”
Of course I don’t. I have never had a boyfriend except for him. “My boyfriend is named Percocet,” I say. “We’re very close. I even went to Europe with him last summer.”
“God.” Gat is annoyed. Stands and walks back down to the edge of the roof.
“Joking.”
Gat’s back is to me. “You say we shouldn’t feel sorry for you—”
“Yes.”
“—but then you come out with these statements.
My boyfriend is named Percocet
. Or,
I stared at the base of the blue Italian toilet
. And it’s clear you want
everyone
to feel sorry for you. And we would,
I
would, but you have no idea how lucky you are.”
My face flushes.
He is right.
I do want people to feel sorry for me. I do.
And then I don’t.
I do.
And then I don’t.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Harris sent you to Europe for eight weeks. You think he’ll
ever
send Johnny or Mirren? No. And he wouldn’t send me, no matter what. Just think before you complain about stuff other people would love to have.”
I flinch. “Granddad sent me to Europe?”
“Come on,” says Gat, bitter. “Did you really think your father paid for that trip?”
I know immediately that he is telling the truth.
Of course Dad didn’t pay for the trip. There’s no way he could have. College professors don’t fly first-class and stay in five-star hotels.
So used to summers on Beechwood, to endlessly stocked pantries and multiple motorboats and a staff quietly grilling steaks and washing linens—I didn’t even think about where that money might be coming from.
Granddad sent me to Europe. Why?
Why wouldn’t Mummy go with me, if the trip was a gift from Granddad? And why would Dad even take that money from my grandfather?
“You have a life stretching out in front of you with a million possibilities,” Gat says. “It—it grates on me when you ask for sympathy, that’s all.”
Gat, my Gat.
He is right. He is.
But he also doesn’t understand.
“I know no one’s beating me,” I say, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “I know I have plenty of money and a good education. Food on the table. I’m not dying of cancer. Lots of people have it much worse than I. And I do know I was lucky to go to Europe. I shouldn’t complain about it or be ungrateful.”
“Okay, then.”
“But listen. You have no idea what it feels like to have headaches like this. No idea. It hurts,” I say—and I realize tears are running down my face, though I’m not sobbing. “It makes it hard to be alive, some days. A lot of times I wish I were dead, I truly do, just to make the pain stop.”
“You do not,” he says harshly. “You do not wish you were dead. Don’t say that.”
“I just want the pain to be over,” I say. “On the days the pills don’t work. I want it to end and I would do anything—really, anything—if I knew for sure it would end the pain.”
There is a silence. He walks down to the bottom edge of
the roof, facing away from me. “What do you do then? When it’s like that?”
“Nothing. I lie there and wait, and remind myself over and over that it doesn’t last forever. That there will be another day and after that, yet another day. One of those days, I’ll get up and eat breakfast and feel okay.”
“Another day.”
“Yes.”
Now he turns and bounds up the roof in a couple steps. Suddenly his arms are around me, and we are clinging to each other.
He is shivering slightly and he kisses my neck with cold lips. We stay like that, enfolded in each other’s arms, for a minute or two,
and it feels like the universe is reorganizing itself,
and I know any anger we felt has disappeared.
Gat kisses me on the lips, and touches my cheek.