The Secrets We Keep (24 page)

“Yeah. That is exactly what you wanted, what I assumed you still wanted. Jenna was a shoo-in; it was between you and Molly. You know how it goes, captain spots go to the team members who clock the most playing time, the best players. You and Molly … you were both goalies. If she had missed Sunday practice or played crappy because she was sick, the second captain spot would have gone to you. You weren't trying to ruin her life, Maddy, just eliminate her chances of becoming co-captain.”

“Of course Jenna was a shoo-in.” The mere mention of Jenna's name had my blood boiling. The more I learned about Maddy's life, about her friends, the less I liked Jenna. She had her hands in everything, and none of it was good.

“Don't blame this on her, Maddy. She may have given you the idea, but you are the one who actually did it.”

“Wait. What?”

“You and I talked about this for days. I told you to let it go. It didn't matter to me whether you were captain or not. I doubt it mattered to your parents or the colleges you wanted to apply to. You were good, that was enough.”

“Molly was good, too,” I mumbled, remembering the one game of my sister's I went to. Molly played that day, and she was as good as, if not better than, Maddy.

“She was. But remember, it wasn't about Molly. It was about Jenna. You were the one who didn't want to be one-upped by Jenna.”

I already knew the answer to the question I was about to ask. Jenna had made it pretty clear earlier today, but I asked anyway, wanting to see exactly whose side Alex was on. “So she knows. This whole time she's known that I drugged Molly and she hasn't said a word? Hasn't tried to use it against me? Don't you find that the least bit odd?”

Alex flinched, as if what I said had caught him off guard. “Of course she knows. Her older brother got the pills for you. And no, she would never use it against you. She can be conniving sometimes, I'll give you that, but she is not that cold.”

I thought about selling her out to Alex, clueing him in to her little ultimatum in the bathroom. It took me less than a second to decide not to. That'd make me no better than Jenna.

But I wasn't going to let that comment go unanswered either. “I don't think you know Jenna as well as you think you do, Alex.”

“Maybe it's you I don't know as well as I used to.”

He was spot-on there. “Probably.”

Neither of us said anything after that. I'd gotten what I'd come for. I had the answers I had been seeking, but somehow that knowledge didn't help. Having to carry the weight of my sister's secret was something I wasn't prepared to do. I hadn't signed on for this. I could play Barbie doll, pretend I wasn't smart, and fake interest in things I hated, but this … I didn't know what to do with this.

Sitting here in the dark with Alex waiting for the rest of my world to crumble down wasn't going to help either. “I don't know what to say.” I didn't look at him when I spoke, didn't have the energy to dissect the emotions playing across his face.

“I don't think there is anything else to say.”

Alex tore the newspaper clipping in two and shoved it in his coat pocket. He could destroy that one and the dozen others sitting in that shoe box if he wanted to. It wouldn't change anything.

He opened the car door and got out. “Go home, Maddy, and forget about this. It wasn't your fault, and there is nothing you can do to change what happened.”

I disagreed. An apology to Molly would be a good start.

“Take tomorrow off from school and get a handle on yourself. I'll cover for you, tell everybody you have a doctor's appointment or something. I'll pick you up at three and take you to your field hockey game. And on Monday…”

Alex didn't finish his thought, but I didn't need him to. I knew what he meant. On Monday, I had to get up and do it over again. Pretend to be my sister, try to find a way to deal with the emptiness that filled me while making pointless conversation with her friends … with Jenna.

I waited until Alex had pulled out of the lot to start my car. Going home wasn't an option. Mom was there and Dad was probably trying to coax her out of their room, away from the collection of my stuff she had surrounded herself with. I didn't need another reminder of how I'd messed everything up.

I pulled out my phone and texted the one lie I was sure Dad would buy:
Staying at Jenna's.

It took a few minutes, but the phone finally chimed with a simple message:
Have fun.

I drove around for hours that night, pulled into our driveway twice, then pulled back out. I would've gone to talk to Maddy, curled up on the ground beneath my own name, but the cemetery gates were locked at dusk, leaving me with nowhere to go.

It was past midnight when I pulled up across the street from Josh's house. The house was dark, the streetlight at the end of his driveway broken and flickering to its death. That's where I spent the night—in my car, parked across the street from Josh's, watching, remembering, and dreaming about what I would've done differently had I known, as soon as I woke up in the hospital, that he loved me, too.

 

39

The sharp rap on the window jarred me awake. I snapped my head up, making contact with the back of my seat. My neck hurt, not from the sudden motion but from sleeping hunched over my steering wheel for the past few hours.

The knock was softer now but equally urgent. I cleared my eyes and looked toward the window. The thin layer of ice covering the glass made it difficult to see, but eventually I could make out a face. It was Josh. He had his hat and gloves on, his backpack slung over one shoulder. I turned on the car and jacked up the heat before rolling down the window.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I looked past him to his driveway. Kim was standing there staring straight at me.

“I asked you what you are doing here,” Josh said again.

“Nothing.”

“Go home,
Maddy
.”

“But—” I started to argue, to tell him to stop calling me that, to give me a second chance, but he waved me off.

“You had your chance yesterday. There's nothing here for you anymore.”

I didn't wait for him to walk away this time, couldn't stomach watching him get in the car with Kim. I put my car in gear and left, driving until I hit the town line. I sat there for hours, parked in the breakdown lane with my flashers on, literally feet away from a new town … a new life.

Nobody stopped to help me. Not one cop or Good Samaritan pulled over to see if I needed help. Funny how I could sit here for two hours and seventeen minutes and not one of the hundreds of people who drove by thought to stop. Yet spend two seconds acting weird in the high school cafeteria and you were suddenly the object of everybody's attention.

A thousand thoughts flew through my mind about Molly and what my sister had unintentionally set into motion. I knew Maddy was sorry for what she'd done. I could feel it in my heart, saw it in the tears she'd tried to hide the night of Alex's party. And I'd taken away her chance to apologize to Molly.

The emptiness I'd been struggling to overcome settled around me like a dark, unwavering cloud. My sister, my best friend, the one who shared my birthday, was gone. Forever. And it was there on the side of the road, as I raged in my car, screamed and cried and cursed my sister for leaving me, that I finally embraced the pain and made my decision.

I turned the car around in the middle of the road and drove, without thinking, back to school, back to the two people I wanted to apologize to first.

The school parking lot was full. I could either wedge my car between the Dumpster and the buses-only zone in front of the school or park way over on the other side of the fields. The Dumpster-buses-only spot worked; I wasn't planning on being here long anyway.

I didn't bother to sign myself in. The front office had probably already marked me absent. By the time the school secretary got around to calling my parents this afternoon, it'd be too late. By then, they would know the truth.

It was noon, and the hallways were crowded with kids at their lockers swapping out books for their next class or going to lunch. The fact that I was wearing the same clothes as yesterday didn't go unnoticed. I could see people pointing as clearly as I heard their hushed comments. My hair was pulled into a messy ponytail, and what little was left of yesterday's makeup was smudged. I didn't care. I was done pretending. I was done trying to fit in. I was … done.

The cafeteria doors were closed, the roar of noise inside barely audible from the hall. But I knew they were there.

It went dead silent the minute I walked in, one hundred and twenty-nine senior heads and a handful of underclassmen turning in my direction. I didn't have to waste time trying to find them, they'd be in their assigned sections of hell. Molly was at the end of Maddy's table, a safe three empty chairs between her and everybody else. Alex was sitting there, too, Maddy's friends crowded around him and Jenna cozying up to his side.

Alex pushed Jenna away when I walked in, the color draining from his face. Dismay—no, fear was what I saw in his expression, pure fear. “Maddy,” he called out, his eyes signaling me over.

I shook my head and walked toward Molly. I'd get to Alex, but not yet. Molly had been kind to me, extending her friendship and an offer to help. Because of that, she was going to be first.

Alex was up and out of his seat the minute he realized I wasn't going to quietly retreat to the hall and wait for him. “This isn't what I call laying low,” he said.

I actually laughed at his words, a distorted chuckle that took even me by surprise. “I'm not trying to lay low, Alex.”
I'm trying to fix what I did,
I finished silently to myself. “I'm sorry I took Maddy from you, sorry I can't be the girl you used to know, you used to love.”

“Let me take you home. We can talk about this there.”

“No, I don't want to talk about it.”
Not anymore.

“Nobody expects you to be the same Maddy.”

“I expected it, Alex. I tried, I really did. For you, for my parents, for everyone, I tried.” I took out the original drawing I'd made of Maddy three years ago and handed it to him. I'd looked for a half hour the other day before I finally found it underneath a pile of old Barbie dolls in my closet. “It's not very good, but it's yours.”

His eyes scanned mine for some sort of explanation. I swallowed hard and counted to three, then told him the truth. “I can't be her anymore. It hurts too much to be her. I don't want to spend my days trying to dress and act and talk like my sister. I want to spend them remembering her illogical hatred of my dog and her love of lavender-scented shampoo. I want to cry for her, miss her, and I want everyone to know just how much Maddy being gone hurts, does that make sense?”

He shook his head, the shocking knowledge of what I was saying finally settling in as he whispered my name.
“Ella?”

I nodded and took a quick look at Jenna. She had her hand on Alex's arm as if somehow it was
her
support he needed. “She's right. You deserve better than I can give you.”

Jenna's grin widened at my comment and she moved in closer to Alex, as if telling me who owned him now.

“I know you think Jenna is what you want. What you need,” I continued. “But she's not. Trust me, she'll take everything good in you and destroy it and Maddy wouldn't want that.”

“How dare you—” Jenna began to argue, no doubt to tell me how pathetic and wrong I was.

I cut her off. “You, I have nothing to say to. You're cold and calculating and not worth my time.”

I walked away, relieved that I was almost done. Molly sat there watching me, her smile genuine. “Feels good, doesn't it?” she said.

I nodded. It felt great to finally tell the truth, to lay into Jenna after years of listening to her belittle me. “But it is you I owe the biggest apology to.”

“No you don't. I get why you kept your distance.” Molly kicked the chair out across from her and motioned for me to sit down. “But none of that matters now.”

I slid the chair back in and watched as the hope slowly drained from her face. She had thought I was going to sit down and be her friend, forget about the other end of the table and stick with her. I would've had I not already made up my mind.

“There is a seat at that table if ever you want it,” I said as I pointed to the table Josh and I always sat at. “I know it won't make up for what happened to you last year, but I thought perhaps some
real
friends and an apology would be a start.”

She looked confused. “I don't understand,” Molly said.

“I didn't either until last night. You were up for the co-captain spot on the field hockey team. You were good, probably better than Maddy. The other spot was going to—”

“Jenna,” she said, finishing my sentence.

“If you were hungover or sick, then you'd miss the mandatory Sunday practice and probably lose your chance of being co-captain. At the very least, you'd play like crap for the first quarter and then Coach would have no choice but to pull you out.”

Her eyes darted between me and Jenna, and I swear I saw a flash of understanding in her eyes. “What are you trying to say?”

“Maddy slipped something into your drink that Saturday night. She was trying to make you sick, figured you wouldn't be able to make practice the next day. I don't think she ever imagined they'd test the team, I can't believe my sister—”

She was staring at me as if I were a stranger, as if the words pouring out of my mouth were somehow not mine.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I know that doesn't even begin to make up for what happened to you, but I don't know what else to say. Don't know how to make it right.”