The After Girls (24 page)

Ella’s face fell, and she stopped flipping through the pages. “It’s just more of the same,” she said. “Graduation. School. She doesn’t explain why she lied. She doesn’t even say goodbye.”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Sydney yelled. “What, did you think she was going to leave a tidy little note in her diary? If we wanted to know, we should have asked. We should have asked her before it was too late.”

“But,” Ella said, “but we didn’t know.”

“We should have,” Sydney said. “What is all this going to do now? It’s too late. It won’t bring her back. It won’t change anything!”

Ella shut the book and stood up quickly. “Something is going on,” Ella said. “Look at the cabin. Look at the things that have happened to me. Look at what I’ve seen.”

Sydney shook her head. “We can’t have this conversation if you’re not even going to be logical.”

Ella raised her voice then, too. “When have you ever been logical? How many times have I urged you to apply to a good school or to end things with Max or to finally just forgive your mother for the fact that she’s happy? But no, it’s always about some feeling you have. Now I have a feeling and you’re ignoring it. I guess I’m not allowed to go by my gut like you are.”

“You’re talking about things that are crazy,” Sydney yelled. “You’re talking about things that are impossible.”

Ella shook her head, her eyes darting about the room. “You’ll never understand if you don’t want to,” she said. “You’ll never — ” but then she stopped because her eyes locked on Sydney’s nightstand, and in an instant, her voice took on a new tone. The hopelessness was gone. Replaced by something else. “What’s that?”

“What?” Sydney asked, but as she turned to follow Ella’s gaze, she knew. Her friend’s eyes were frozen on her aunt’s book. That damn book. Boy, was this not good for her cause.

Ella pointed at the bewitching offender.

“Nothing,” Sydney said. And she flipped it over, as if to negate its very existence. Which didn’t help. At all.

Ella quickly grabbed it. Her voice was calmer now. She had purpose. “The other history …”

Sydney interrupted her. “My aunt gave it to me. She just pushed it onto me like all her mumbo jumbo.”

“I know what it is,” Ella said. “But I didn’t know you were
reading
it.”

“No,” Sydney said. “I was just looking through. Just to see what all the fuss was about. Since everyone in this town seems so totally caught up — ”

But in moments, Ella’s whole demeanor had changed. “You totally were reading it. Like … like a tiny part of you believes me.”

“No,” Sydney said, trying to keep her voice firm. Or at least as firm as possible under the circumstances. She had been caught red-handed. Why, oh, why hadn’t she at least put a cover around the thing? “No, I don’t.”

“Oh, but you do,” Ella said. “Just a little. Or you wonder.” She had a smile on her face for the first time in maybe … forever. A real one. Not the cloying type that she favored when she was trying to make a point. “Do you think that everyone in this whole book is crazy?”

“Umm, it is possible,” Sydney said, sarcastically, but Ella just ignored her.

“And you think your aunt is crazy, too?”

“Again,” Sydney said. “Totally within the realm of reason.”

“And me?” Ella asked, her lips almost forming a pout.

And that was the thing. That was what got Sydney — every time she thought about the flowers and the candles and all that Ella seemed to believe — that had kept her reading the stupid book when she knew that she shouldn’t. Ella was a bunch of things — bossy, proper, indignant — but crazy had never been one of them. She was the one who reasoned, who made the right choices, who ran through all the consequences before taking a single step. And here she was just begging Sydney to break every rule of logic, to believe that their dead friend was trying to talk to them, almost like they were twelve-year-olds sitting around a campfire.

She couldn’t do it, but she couldn’t very well condemn her friend to insanity either. There had to be an explanation.

“I don’t know,” Sydney said. “No, I don’t think so. I
can’t
think so, but Ella, listen to yourself. It doesn’t make sense. Listen to what you’re saying, to what you’re asking me to believe.”

But that was enough.

“I’ll prove it to you,” she said. “I’ll show you. You’ll feel it. I know you will. You loved her too much not to. Don’t you get it?” she asked, her eyes wide. “We’re the only ones who can. We’re the only ones who knew her, who loved her well enough. We’re the ones that she’s reaching out to. No one else. Just us.”

“But you
can’t
prove it,” Sydney said. “There’s no way.”

But Ella was flipping through the book quickly. “I know it’s in here somewhere.”

“How do you know?” Sydney asked.

“My mom has a copy,” she said. “Your aunt gave it to us ages ago.”

Sydney couldn’t help rolling her eyes.

Finally, Ella stopped. “This is it,” she said. “The last chapter, ‘Communicating with the Dead.’”

“Oh, God,” Sydney said. “You’re not serious.”

“We could go to the cabin,” Ella said. “Tonight. We’ll sleep there. Just like old times.”

“We could never get through a single night there,” Sydney said. “We were always running scared back to Astrid’s house within an hour.”

“All the more reason to finally do it,” Ella said, her eyes still alight.

But Sydney just shook her head. “I have band practice.”

“We can meet up after,” Ella said.

“Come on. Just say that you’ll give it a chance. Just say you’ll try it.”

Sydney hesitated, looking at her friend. She wanted to cross her arms and say no. She wanted to say absolutely not. She wanted to grab Ella and shake her and make her believe that whatever was going on, it wasn’t going to bring them any closer to healing.

And she opened her mouth to do it. Even though she didn’t believe what Ella was saying, the thought of going back there made her feel ill. She wanted to be far away from it all.

But Ella’s eyes were so sad and so hopeful and so passionate and so
angry
at the same time that she was afraid to say no. As much as she hated the idea, she hated the thought even more of Ella doing it alone. She remembered Ella’s words that night at Johnny’s.
You have to be there for me. It’s your job. You’re the only best friend I have left.
She knew that Ella needed her now more than ever.

And the thought pressed down on her from all sides, squeezing her, crushing her — what would have happened if she had done more for Astrid? Had been there for her when she needed her? How much differently could things have turned out?

Where would they be now if she’d only bothered to open her eyes — to ask?

Sydney took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “But this is it — this doesn’t mean I’m going to play detective with you or read her diary or sneak into her house or look on Facebook for messages that don’t exist.”

“Okay,” Ella said. “But you’ll do this with me. Tonight?”

Sydney let out a defeated sigh. “Yes,” she said. “We get done around nine.”

Ella’s smile broke across her face again, lit it up like sunshine. Haunted, deranged sunshine. “Can I borrow this?” she asked, holding up Aunt Audie’s book. “I don’t want to have to dig up our copy.”

Sydney nodded.

“Great. Meet you at the cabin, then,” Ella said with authority.

“Meet you at the cabin.”

Ella headed straight to the cabin as soon as she left Sydney’s house. She wanted to read through the rest of the journal before tonight, and their old haunt seemed like as good a place as any.

Ben called her on the way, but she quickly hit ignore. She didn’t want to talk to him right now. She didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. She had too much on her mind — too much to figure out — too much to prove.

When she got to Astrid’s house, she hurried through the side of the yard. The dewy grass wet the edges of her sandals, and she couldn’t help feeling like she was being watched. She stopped, looking back at the house, but the shades were all drawn.

She took a deep breath. She knew that she needed to stay calm, now more than ever. She could feel that she was getting so close.

The clearing was bright and sunny. Carefully, she opened the door and held her breath, unsure of what she’d see on the other side. She stepped in, but things were just as they had been the other night. Flowers. Candles. No sign of a difference. She let herself breathe.

The room smelled faintly of coconuts.
Had it been like that before?
But she wouldn’t let herself be scared — she spread out the blanket, took out the journal, and sat down.

The “Property of Astrid” page sent a jolt through her, but Ella quickly flipped past it. They’d already read part of it — she might as well do the whole thing. But she stopped — thinking of her friend, scribbling in this thing over and over, always shutting it tight when she was done — Astrid hadn’t shared this with her. Was it really okay for her to just jump right in like she would a paperback novel?

But Astrid hadn’t shared anything with her. And now she was gone. If she knew more, maybe she could have done something. If it hadn’t been for all her damn secrets, she might be alive today.

Ella took a deep breath and turned the page. It started when they were sixteen, in just eleventh grade. The beginning was fairly mundane — even normal. The pages were filled with Astrid’s tight handwriting, sometimes so tight that the lines were filled double. It was almost as if Astrid had set out to make this one book last her whole life. Ella felt a pang of sadness as she realized that it had worked.

She found the usual journal scribblings. Did this today
.
So and so broke up with so and so. A boy smiled at me in class. I dropped my pencil and he picked it up. I wish he liked me. Ella couldn’t help but smile as she remembered every crush her friend had had that year — they’d all called it the year of the boy. Sydney had long discovered and, according to her, mastered, the art of the French kiss; Ella had had quasi-boyfriends, the ones that hold your hand between classes and kiss you behind the soda machines in the lunchroom, on and off since fourth grade, but Astrid hadn’t even given boys so much as a look until that year. The pages were full of them. Johnny, the Emo Boy in her art class; Thomas, the wavy-haired Music Whiz who wasn’t quite popular but was still friends with their entire class; Matt, the too-cute-to-be-a-Math Geek; the list went on.

There were so many boys. Probably not a single one of them knew that the quiet, reserved girl was filling her diary pages with detailed descriptions of the shapes of their earlobes. But she and Sydney had still pressed her for the details on every crush, no matter how fleeting and short-lived. She and Sydney had been the ones Astrid let in.

As Ella read on, the pages became less about boys and more about the things they did. Sydney got a car. They had more mobility — more fun. Astrid described in detail the first time they’d gone to the rock quarry, the way the water felt on her skin, even though she only ever dipped her toes in. She talked about clothes and the new dresses she got. She talked about how stupid Sydney could look sometimes when she was drunk.

It was as if nothing ever went wrong. Astrid never talked about missing her father. She never even mentioned her mother. She never mentioned any of the bad things that happened between them — when Sydney had accused Ella of being jealous of Max, when Ella had decided for a week or two to sit at a different lunch table with some of the other football players’ girlfriends (she still felt bad about that). None of that was there as she turned the pages. There was a description of her newest purchase from the thrift store, down to the last polka dot, but that was all. There was nothing to tell Ella why she’d gone and left them. There was nothing to give any indication that she’d had so much of a reason to leave. But still, there was a wrongness to it. Ella could see it in the strain of the almost-touching letters, in the way she pressed down her pen so hard. Reading it now, it seemed almost fake. All the bad stuff forgotten — all the good stuff in brilliant detail. It was like a Technicolor picture — so bright and vibrant and amazing — but the colors were off.

Was Astrid still okay then? Or was it all just another lie?

The light through the window dimmed, and Ella’s eyes were beginning to feel strained. She set the journal down and walked to the window.

Her breath caught in her chest, because in the corner of the woods she saw red hair. A flash of cornflower.

She froze, her heart racing now, and then she bolted for the door, ran to the edge of the woods. When she got there, she stopped. Listening.

Nothing there. No one. Not a single patter. Not a step. The woods would make noise if someone ran through them. Especially right in the middle of the day. When there were no owls or cicadas. When the only noise was that of the running brook in the distance.

She was just about to turn back to the cabin when she saw it. There on a twig, dancing in the breeze.

A tiny piece — maybe a centimeter thick, a few inches long.

A tiny piece of fabric.

Of cornflower blue chiffon.

Ella ran back to the cabin, stuffing the journal and Sydney’s book into her bag as quickly as she could.

She had to get out of here — she could calm herself down, get everything ready, come back tonight. It would be okay, she told herself. It would all be okay.

But she couldn’t stay here. Not now.

She ran to the edge of the clearing, not bothering to shut the cabin door behind her — she was a few steps into the woods when, on impulse, she turned back, knelt down, and snatched the blue silk from the branch.

This is real, she told herself. This is proof.

She clenched it in her fist and she ran — through the woods and past Astrid’s house as quickly as she could. It wasn’t until she was down the road, several streets away, that she let herself catch her breath.

She slowed to a walk as she approached her street.

The sun hadn’t yet set, but the street lamps were already beginning to glow as an old man stood in his driveway, hosing off the dirt and the clay — everything appeared so normal, so lazy, just like any summer day — and as her breathing calmed, she opened her hand.