Smashed (11 page)

I feel a crazy urge to see Alec, to see if he’s okay. But it’s more than that. Waiting here is unbearable. I’ve got to
do
something.

Ripping through my desk drawer again, I search for my bankbook, the account where I keep all the money I’ve saved. I flip it open. Just over two thousand dollars. It’s certainly not enough for a new car, but it’s something. It’s got to be: it’s everything I have.

I stare out the window and wait for the clock to strike nine.

*     *     *

Nothing could prepare me for what I see.

When Alec swings his front door open, the gauze bandage is gone. His eye is black, his cheek purple. Exposed, a long row of stitches curves down his face from his cheekbone to his jaw. The wound is nearly four inches in all: red, swollen, held tenuously together by slender black thread. I hear the sharp intake of my breath. The ground is no longer solid beneath my feet. I can’t take my eyes off it.

Alec doesn’t speak. He simply waits, expecting me to enter. Hand gripping the door frame, I step inside.

In the living room, I offer him everything—all the money in my account—to pay for his car, his medical bills, whatever he needs. I even offer him the beat-up Escort.

He just turns his head away, and the black stitches on his bruised cheek stare back at me. “I don’t want your old shit box,” he says. “Or your money.”

Beyond the couch where he lays stretched out, I can see rain falling on the pool, sending tiny rings rippling outward in the unnatural cerulean blue. I haven’t been in this room since the night we went to the party in Bethel and we’d come here first to mix margaritas at his father’s bar. Margaritas the color of that pool.

Alec shifts slowly on the couch and winces, as if it hurts to move. My body is tense, perched on the edge of a nearby chair, hand clenching the rejected bankbook. He looks horrible.

“So your redneck friend was here last night, the one who has the hots for your mother.”

“Redneck guy . . . ?”

“The one who drove us to the hospital.”

“Ron Bailey.” I have no right to be mad at Alec now, but he has no right to talk about Ron that way, either. “He’s a nice man, Alec.”

“Whatever. He was here.”

I swallow, hold my breath, wait. It’s as if hearing Alec say it will finally make it real. Ron knows, I think. He’s already been here. He knows now that I was driving.

“You wouldn’t believe what he said.” Alec looks at me as if he can see through me, inside me; his eyes accuse. Stitches like miniature railroad tracks carve through the purple mess where his cheek used to be.

“He told me not to go around bragging about the accident
to my friends or I could have a DUI on my head. Imagine my surprise.” He pauses. “I didn’t even know I was driving.”

“What did he say?” My words are a whisper.

“He said this thing will just blow over if I keep it to myself, don’t make a big deal out of it. Told me if I pulled a stunt like that again, it would be different.” Alec’s eyes never leave me. He is taking in every ounce of my reaction.

“So you told him . . .”

“So I told him, ‘Thank you, sir. I appreciate that,’” Alec says in mock politeness. “And he says, ‘I’m not doing it for you.’” There’s a faint smirk on Alec’s face. He looks straight into my eyes. “Maybe it’s
you
he has the hots for.”

I bristle, but I don’t want him to see my reaction. He’s baiting me, but I can’t bite. I have no right. I lost my rights when I drove his car into that tree.

“Why didn’t you tell him I was driving?” The words tumble out but they are low, barely audible. I am shaking again. Can he see that?

“Alec?” I repeat.

He lets me wait; it seems like days before he replies.

“Why didn’t
you
?” he says.

“He—he—” I’m stammering now and I hate myself for it. “He didn’t ask me.”

“Right.” Alec’s eyes leave my face at last, drifting toward the French doors and the pool beyond. I cannot imagine what he is thinking, but it is clear that he is. It’s as if he’s no longer here in the room with me. He’s gone.

“I’ll tell him now . . .” I move toward the phone but Alec’s hand reaches it first, clamping the receiver down.

“Don’t be an idiot.” His voice is firm, like a father admonishing a small child.

I pull back my hand, searching his face for a clue. I have no idea what to do.

Neither of us speaks.

“I need a nap,” he says finally.

“Okay.” I hesitate.
We can’t just leave things like this, can we?
I think. But I am no longer in charge.

“I’ll see you around,” he says. That’s my cue to leave.

I’m at the door when his voice reaches across the room like a hand and stops me.

“Don’t worry, Katie.” His tone is quiet, measured. His eyes are on something beyond the French doors, on something far away. All I can see is the back of his blond head resting on the couch. “Your secret is safe with me.”

Back at my house, Alec’s words run through my head.

Your secret is safe with me.

Trembling, I pace my bedroom, unable to sit still. Can I do this? Can I let Alec take the blame for something I’ve done? Can I live in a lie this big? Can I actually fool people? Pull this off? Do I
want
to?

People have called while I am at Alec’s. Word is out across Westland and Deerfield. Alec Osborne crashed his car with me in it. That’s the story.

I have to pull it off. There is no other choice left.

The panic I’ve been feeling over losing my scholarship is replaced by the dread of being found out.

“Katie!” my mother calls up the stairs. “Matt’s here!”

I freeze. I’ve been so caught up in my thoughts, I didn’t even see him walking across the yard.

“I don’t want to see anyone, Mom!”

But it is too late. I recognize his footsteps on the stairs.

He is hugging me before I have time to think, his long, lanky arms squeezing me tight.

I pull away and sit down on the bed. “I was going to call you. . . .” My voice trails off.

“I’d gone to work,” he says. “I started hearing stories. . . . I told them I couldn’t stay. I just left.”

I grip the crumpled sheet on the bed, clench a ball of it in my fingers, and look out the window. I don’t want to cry again, but my voice is shaking now. I can feel the tears coming.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I had to,” he says simply. “I had to see you for myself.”

“Thanks for being here.”

He nods and looks into my eyes, then sits down on the bed beside me.

“It scared the hell out of me,” he says.

I wipe a forearm across my nose and face like a five-year-old. My head hurts. Matt crosses the room and brings back a box of tissues.

“So what happened? You look like an army of mosquitoes got you.”

Small red bumps cover my arms and face. I’ve been scratching them nervously and some are raw, bleeding. I’ve dabbed each bite with calamine lotion, but the pale pink blotches make me look like I’ve been splattered with Pepto-Bismol.

“I had to walk down Haley Pond Road to get help. The bugs were awful.”

Matt nods, but that isn’t what he meant. “So what happened?”

I explain how I’d ended up going to the party with Alec after Megan bailed on me, how I’d ended up in his car. “It was pouring out. The road was a mess. A real mud pit—and we were . . . we were just going way too fast.” I shake my head and gaze out the window. I can’t meet his eyes.

Matt doesn’t say a word, but I can feel him looking at me. It’s the way he looks when he knows I’m not being straight with him. The look he gave me when I turned fourteen and swore to him that I didn’t think about my dad at all anymore, especially on my birthday, and why did he even have to bring it up?

“We were going way too fast,” I say again.

“Were you guys drunk?” he asks.

I freeze inside. I need sympathy, not an inquisition. Up until now, I thought that’s what I was getting.

“No,” I say.

“Come on, Katie. People know.”

It is the wrong thing for him to say. If he’d just shut up, I might have given in, told him the truth. Maybe even the whole truth. But it is a matter of pride now; I won’t admit anything.

“They weren’t there. I was.”

Matt stands up and walks slowly across the room. “Lots of people were there—at the party.”

I don’t say anything. He stands by the window, looking at me, waiting for me to say something. Waiting for me to tell him the truth. The low evening light shines through the window, illuminating half his face.

“A deer jumped out in front of the car, Matt. It was slippery
and late. That’s it.” It is a colossal lie, a stupid fake lie, but it is too late now. It is out. And I am not backing down.

Silence stretches out between us like the widest part of the lake, deep and blue.

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you,” he says softly.

It isn’t an accusation and it isn’t a threat. It’s just Matt trying to put into words how he feels. But that doesn’t matter to me. He might as well have launched a missile at my heart.

“Then maybe you should just stay out of my
goddamn
life.” I spit the words out, my whole body trembling. I want to snatch them back that very instant, but I can’t. It’s like hitting the tree; it’s done, over. There is nothing I can do to take them back.

The hit is hard. Matt stares at me, mouth half-open, but no words come out. It is as if I am Scott and I’ve just pushed his head into that snowbank all those years ago. He blinks, lets out a quick breath, and turns on his heel.

Then he is gone.

“Matt!” I call after him.

But he doesn’t come back.

*     *     *

I stare at Matt’s house, at the kitchen door, hoping it will swing open and he’ll come back out, come back and say he knows I didn’t mean it. It has been an hour since he left and disappeared into his house.

The phone rings. I jump and run to the top of the stairs, but my mother calls out that it is Stan; he wants to see if I’m all right.

“Tell him I’m fine,” I say. “Tell him I’m asleep.”

I go back to my vigil. Soon it will grow dark, and Matt’s light will shine in his room. Maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of him. See if he is okay.

Below, in the driveway, is Ron Bailey’s truck. I can hear my mother talking to him downstairs, their voices muffled. Alec told the lie—or let it stand, anyway. But if I see Ron now, I have to let him believe it. Keep believing it. Can I play my part? Will he see the guilt in my eyes? “Please don’t make me face him,” I whisper, and curl up on my bed, eyes still glued to Matt’s house through the open window.

Footsteps come up the stairs, then down the hall, and pause at my door. A knock. I sit up. “Come in,” I say, my voice weak.

Ron stands at my door and looks at me with his gentle eyes. “How you doing, sweetheart?”

“I’m okay.”

He nods, his eyes still on me. It is clear that I am not.

“Listen, if you need anything—anything at all—you just give me a holler, okay?”

He won’t leave until I nod my head in agreement. “Okay, Ron.”

“Okay then, take care of yourself.”

I stare out the window into the dark. The lie is fixed now; it is fact. The truth? I feel like I don’t know myself anymore, either.

A week passed and I’d barely moved. I ate in my room, I slept there, I went nowhere. A cluster of maple leaves tipped with orange hung outside my window. Fall had arrived.

Cassie came to see me the minute her plane landed, before she’d even slept, insisting her parents drop her off at my house before she went home. She burst into my bedroom, tripping over a pile of dirty dishes. But it was the sight of me that stopped her cold. “Oh my God, Kay,” she said, her face grave. Her red hair had been cut short around her ears. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.”

That was the first thing out of her mouth. It was so Cassie to apologize for something that wasn’t her fault. As if she should have
known
I’d be crashing a car so she could cut her trip to England short.

“You didn’t know . . .”

“I just mean . . .” She shook her head, her face pale under her freckles, her words tumbling out. “My mom said you both could
have been killed, that you’re lucky you’re not dead. Is it true you had to walk a mile to get help?”

I sat up, nodded. “The mosquitoes didn’t mind.” I held out one arm. The red bumps had faded to small pink spots, tiny scabs where I’d scratched them raw.

Cassie’s eyes landed on a bruise, now a sickly yellow and lavender blotch that covered the soft underside of my forearm. “Jesus,” she said, her voice quiet, almost a whisper. She came and sat next to me and rested her hand on my arm. “Is it sore?”

“A little. Not so much now.”

She nodded and we sat there, silent.

“Kay,” she said finally. “Why . . . I mean, what . . .”

It was weird watching her pick her words—like I’d break if she said the wrong thing. We’d never held back before, always told each other everything.

“Alec,” she said. “We used to . . .”

“Laugh about what a jerk he was?”

“Yeah.” She seemed relieved I’d said it. “I was pretty surprised you were in his car.”

“It’s a long story.”

She waited, but that’s all I said. I didn’t want to talk about Alec right now, didn’t want to explain anything. It was too hard, too complicated.

“Was he drunk?”

“We both were.” It was my stab at the truth, my attempt to come clean, for whatever it was worth. I’d screwed up with Matt; I wasn’t going to do that again.

Cassie nodded, her lips pressed tight.

“Cassie, you can’t tell anyone.”

“Of course not,” she said, and she meant it.

“I need that scholarship.”

“I know.” She got up and walked across the room, randomly picking things up off my desk, looking at them without seeing, and putting them back down.

“You look thin,” she said, her eyes on me again. She sat on the edge of the bed. “Have you been eating?”

“A little,” I said. “You know how I get when I’m stressed out.”