Ten (15 page)

The people here are pretty nice, though there is this one blond guy in P.E. that kind of makes me nervous. He was joking with his friends on the track yesterday and I think he was pointing at me. But I’m just going to ignore it, like Tom told me. I’m sure it’s nothing.

Also, we got the audition song for the spring concert solo yesterday. It’s SO beautiful. I can almost feel the music in my bones when I sing it. My friend loves it too, and she’s also going to audition for the solo. We were talking at lunch today (see? I already have lunch buddies!!!!) and she was saying that our choir director really likes it when his soloists kind of do their own thing. Riff on the music a little. He thinks it shows their musicality. So I’m going to practice and see where the music takes me, and hopefully impress him.

The auditions are in two weeks. I know I can get this solo and then when The Boy hears me sing it, he’ll totally fall in love with me.

Meg’s heart sank. She was doing it for a boy? That just couldn’t end well.

The Boy notices me sometimes, but not as much as I’d like. I watch him in class a lot, hoping he’ll see me and smile. He’s SO gorgeous when he smiles. I couldn’t even begin to describe it. But I know if he’d just see me—actually see me …

So I want to get this choir solo.

I have to.

Meg cringed. The girl was pinning her hopes on getting that choir solo, and in Meg’s experience, whenever you wanted something that desperately—say, for the guy you’re in love with to ask you to the Homecoming dance—that’s when things go horribly, horribly wrong. It felt like she was watching a train wreck in slow motion. She wanted to turn away, but she couldn’t.

The next entry wasn’t surprising.

How could he give the solo to HER?

The list of soloists was posted on the choir room door after school today. He gave it to my friend. She sang exactly what was on the page. Word for word. It was stiff and boring and she wasn’t showing that she understood the music AT ALL. And I actually interpreted the music. Like the composer and I were working together to create something new and amazing.

And now everything’s ruined! The Boy will never notice me. What am I going to do?

Tom thinks I should go talk to the director at rehearsal tomorrow, ask him what I did wrong so maybe I can improve for the next audition, but I feel like it’s over.

I should just end it all now.

TWENTY ONE

I SHOULD JUST END IT ALL NOW.

Wasn’t that what Lori wrote in her suicide note? Like, word-for-word?

Meg dropped the journal. Suddenly it felt dangerous. Off. Just like everything else in that house.

Maybe it was just a coincidence. “Ending it” must be a common sentiment in suicide notes, and though the author of the journal didn’t sound like she was on the brink, there was clearly something slightly troubled about her. So yeah, it could just be a coincidence. Right?

Meg shook her head. Too many coincidences this weekend. How did that journal end up in her room? Another coincidence? Like the song from the DVD being the same as the sheet music from Lori’s suicide note? And the damaged handrail?

No. Meg didn’t believe it. And T.J. thought there was more to it than just a series of accidents too or else he wouldn’t have asked her to keep quiet about the railing. He was worried everyone would suspect there was something weird going on and they’d panic. She wanted to show him the journal immediately, but she had no idea where he’d disappeared to. Damn.

She needed him to see what she was seeing. Somewhere in the deep recesses of her brain, a little light had gone on. These occurrences were all related. They had to be. And she needed to know why.

Meg picked up the journal and turned to the next entry.

It’s happening again.

They told me things would be different this time. That I could start over. Tom promised me things would be different.

Meg’s mouth went dry. Promises you could never keep. Once again, the journal sounded all too familiar.

I know I haven’t written in a month but, ugh, it’s been awful. I had to drop out of choir. I went to talk to the director, just like Tom said. He told me that I had a really beautiful voice, but he expects his soloists to sing what’s on the page. And my interpretation of the song was too freestyle.

I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach. My “friend.” She was the one who told me to improvise, to take it off the page. She lied to me on purpose so I wouldn’t get the solo. I thought she was my friend. Yeah, some friend.

I tried to explain that it was all a misunderstanding, but instead of hearing me out the director got angry. Really angry. In front of the whole choir. He said that if I had a problem with his decision I was free to resign.

Everyone stared at me. I wanted to fall through the floor. And how could I stay in choir after that? Now I don’t get to sing at all and The Boy will never love me. All because of her.

I went to confront her at lunch but she wouldn’t even look at me. Wouldn’t acknowledge me standing there. Just ignored me. I couldn’t help it at that point. I started crying right there in the cafeteria. That jerk from P.E. was sitting at the table behind me and he started fake crying, “Wah, wah, wah. Poor baby.” When I looked at him he yelled, “BURN!” Then he and all his friends laughed. It was a nightmare.

But I’m going to try and put it behind me. I still have debate team, so I’m going to focus on that.

Maybe then The Boy will notice me.

First the choir, then debate team. She seemed so manic in her need to be wanted and included. It was something Meg understood too well.

Back in seventh grade, when Meg was the new girl in town, she was always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. No one understood her jokes. The kids in her New York City school always did, but in Mukilteo, she was suddenly a freak. She didn’t dress the right way, walk the right way. She had met Minnie in P.E. and had sort of tagged along with Jessica Lawrence’s group of friends through her. One day Jessica had drawn a line in the sand: Meg was lame, Minnie had to choose between them or her.

In a move that to this day still shocked Meg, Minnie chose her.

Meg squeezed her eyes closed, pressing those painful memories to the back of her mind. It was a debt she could never repay. Minnie had been her only friend at a time when she desperately needed one, and that was why she’d pushed T.J. away.

The whole thing made her sick. Los Angeles. She was going to Los Angeles to start fresh. At least she had that, unlike the poor author of this diary who was trapped in a school with no friends and no allies.

Meg turned the page.

He does love me! I can’t believe it.

I was eating lunch today and The Boy’s best friend came up to me. He asked what I was doing after school because The Boy was wondering if I wanted to get coffee.

OMG! I started shaking, I was so excited and nervous.

The Boy knows who I am. He noticed me!

We met for coffee and he’s SO sweet and SO cute. He said he noticed me in Spanish class but that he was kind of shy. And we talked about school and class and he admitted that he’s having a hard time in algebra so I offered to tutor him. He seemed so surprised and happy! So now we’re going to meet after school every day....

happy sigh
I knew he loved me. I knew it. I can make him happy. I can make him better. All those girls always hanging off him—they don’t really know him. But I do. They don’t mean anything to him. We have a connection no one else can understand.

Meg blushed. She recalled a diary entry she made over the summer about a night that Meg wished she could forget. Minnie threw herself at T.J. at a house party, and as the night went on and everyone got drunker and drunker, Minnie’s approach seemed to be working. The next thing Meg knew, people were whispering about how T.J. and Minnie had gone upstairs together.

She remembered the panic she felt, knowing the guy she was in love with was upstairs nailing her best friend. Meg never thought T.J. would actually hook up with Minnie. She thought she knew him better than that.

Apparently not.

She never asked Minnie what happened, and Minnie never completely shared. Just hinted. But Meg always remembered the pain she felt that night as she poured her soul out into her journal. She needed to protect herself from it, so she’d never feel it again. And maybe that was why she pushed T.J. away over and over....

Meg had been angry that T.J. was so close to her but didn’t see her in that way. Just like the author of this journal, though for her, at least, things seemed to be working out with The Boy.

I don’t know what happened.

It was fine. Everything was fine. I was tutoring The Boy almost every day. I was trying really hard on debate team. I was starting to feel good again after the choir thing. Confident. Then all of a suddenly it all came crashing down.

The president of the debate team came to me on Monday, the day before our biggest meet of the semester, and told me they’d all taken a vote and they thought I should leave the team.

LEAVE THE TEAM? I told her it wasn’t fair, but she said I needed to think of the greater good because the team would be much stronger without me.

I told her I didn’t want to leave, that it’s the one thing I’m actually enjoying at school. Then she got nasty. Told me that if I didn’t leave I’d “be sorry” and that she could make life at school pretty miserable for me.

I talked to The Boy about it when I was tutoring him after school. He told me not to worry. That I had him, so who cared about debate team? He’s right. I should be happy with what I have. I was just so hurt by that backstabbing.... Ugh. Never mind. I’m trying to get over it.

Something else is bothering me though. The Boy asked me to do something. He said if I really loved him, I’d help him because if I didn’t it would be like I was shooting him through the heart.

I want to, but … I don’t know. I kind of don’t think it’s right if I

Meg turned the next page, desperate to know what The Boy wanted her to do, but there was a gap in the pages, as if several had been torn out. At the top of the next page, the sentence began midway through.

… is coming this weekend. He promised. He’ll know what to do. He takes care of me, and I always feel better when he’s here.

Right beneath was a photo. It was in color, printed out on a low-quality inkjet printer on regular computer paper, and pasted directly onto the journal page. It was a girl with long black hair, swept away from her face by a flowered clip. She was smiling, not a boisterous, laughing smile. More like a tight grin. But it was definitely a smile of happiness and her blue eyes crinkled at the corners. She was wearing a heavy winter coat, and there was a gloved hand draped over her shoulder as if someone had been standing next to her. But the face of the other person in the photo had been snipped out along with the corner of the journal page it had been glued to.

Below the defaced photo, in small, allcaps handwriting that didn’t match the other script, was a quote of some kind.

FOR THE TIME WHEN THEIR FOOT SHALL SLIDE.

Weird. And totally random. It absolutely made no sense.

Or did it? There was something familiar about everything—the stories in the journal, the apparently arbitrary quote, and the girl. Especially the girl, but Meg couldn’t quite place her. And yet she knew that girl, didn’t she? Or someone who looked like her? Something was so different. The smile? The eyes? The hair?

The hair. Meg’s eyes grew wide. She pictured that same face with dirty, stringy hair hanging in front of it and suddenly she knew who it was. Claire Hicks.

Meg slammed the cover shut. Holy crap.

She was reading Claire Hicks’s diary.

TWENTY TWO

MEG FELT SICK. SHE’D BEEN READING A DEAD
classmate’s diary. There had been something familiar about the journal, something Meg couldn’t quite put her finger on, but she’d never imagined it belonged to someone she knew. And not just anyone, but Claire Hicks.

Claire’s diary. Claire’s photo in her room. Why? What was the connection?

The sun was low on the horizon, the daylight, such as it was, rapidly retreating. How long had Meg been reading the diary? Two minutes or two hours, she couldn’t even tell. It was as if time had stopped. The diary had sucked her in and cut her off from the rest of the world.