The Secrets We Keep (9 page)

“You think Jake is still bent out of shape about the dryer incident?” I joked as I toyed with the small thread that had come loose from the hem of my dress. I knew full well he was away at college, but the thought of him still being afraid of me and my pointy shoes brought a little bit of happiness to an otherwise sucky day. “Maybe that's why he didn't come to the burial? Well, anyway, I brought you a flashlight. I know it's probably dark in…”

I stepped back, shaking my head. What I was saying was insane. Maddy didn't care about the dark anymore. She was dead, wouldn't know if it was dark. But I knew it didn't matter how much white satin they lined your coffin with. Once the lid was closed, it'd be horrifyingly dark. Once the coffin was lowered six feet and covered with dirt, it would be suffocating and dark. And I'd done that to her. I'd put her there.

I fell to my knees and let my hands sink into the loose dirt. I'd taken the one thing … the one person I loved most in the world and destroyed her. “I didn't mean any of those things I said to you in the car. You were right; I'm the selfish one. And I'm not sick of your crap. I never was. I wanted you to talk to me, for it to be like it used to be when we were little, when I'd kick boys in the balls because they teased you.”

I picked up a fistful of dirt and crushed it in my hands, watched as it fell between my fingers to the cold, damp ground. Everything was slipping away because of me.

“Oh God, what have I done!” I didn't fight the sobs that racked my body. I let them take over me, knowing that the pain and guilt I felt were nothing compared to what I'd done to Maddy. “I didn't mean for this to happen. I'd change places with you if I could, put myself in that grave if it meant you could live.”

“Don't say that,” Alex said as he knelt in the dirt next to me. He'd heard my last cry and had come over to try to drag me away from a reality I couldn't change. “Don't ever say that.”

“But it's true. You don't understand how true it is.”

“No, it's not. You feel that way now, but it will get better. I promise you, I'll make it better.”

“How? How can anybody make this better?”

Alex stood up, his eyes distant, as if he was trying to find the appropriate thing to say. “I don't know, Maddy, but I will.”

He held out his hand to me, his eyes tracking to a tree a few yards away. I knew Josh was there, knew he'd been watching me since I first stepped out of the car, knew he'd seen me break down and mourn for the sister who'd been his best friend.

“Come on,” Alex said as he took my hand in his. “Let's get you home.”

“What about him?” I asked, nodding toward Josh.

“I talked to him. He's good. I think he's waiting for us to go so he can say goodbye to Ella in private.”

Say goodbye to Ella … say goodbye to me. I should've gone over there, told Josh I was sorry, but I didn't. Instead, I turned and walked straight into my new life.

 

13

I'd watched nearly every Netflix movie available for streaming and was seriously contemplating DVR'ing bad reruns of
The Brady Bunch
to keep my mind off what I had to do tomorrow. I intended on keeping the promise I'd made to my sister—my life was hers; I owed her that much. But playing Maddy for my parents and Alex was easy. They were forgiving. Any little mistake I made, they explained away as the result of my grief or pain meds. But playing her in front of six hundred random kids … that I hadn't thought through.

My bedroom door opened, and I tossed aside the remote as I tried to pull myself out of the sea of blankets Mom had tucked around me. It was hard, my shoulder protesting every move. I finally gave up and sank back down to the bed.

Alex chuckled at my clumsy movements and dropped the new movie he had in his hand onto the bureau. It was the twelfth one he'd rented this week. My nightmares had gotten worse, each dream morphing into a hell I couldn't unsee. He'd stay as late as he could, watching movies or doing his homework. But eventually he'd have to leave, and I'd slip into the world where my dreams and reality collided into one terrifying truth.

“You worried about tomorrow?” Alex asked as he stripped three layers of blankets off my legs and helped me sit up.

Worried didn't quite cover it. I'd been hiding in the house, in this room for nine days, and it was time to become Maddy for the rest of the world. “No. I'm good.”

“I talked to Jenna earlier. She said she called you again today, but you didn't pick up.”

She'd called five times actually, and no, I hadn't picked up. I hadn't seen her since the burial, and even then it was from a distance. In the hospital, the doctors and nurses had kept everybody away, and I made sure the family-only visiting rule extended to Alex and nobody else.

“I know you guys had a fight that night at my party,” Alex continued. “But that was nearly a month ago. Don't you think it's time to let it go? She has.”

Jenna was the one person in my sister's life who I wanted no involvement with. If an argument at that party gave me a way out of the friendship, then I would take it. “It's been twenty-one days and sixteen hours since the accident, to be exact, and no, I'm not ready to give it up.”

Alex sighed and shook his head. We'd had this same quiet disagreement every day since I got home, and I'd yet to budge. “She is having a tough time right now. Things aren't getting any better for her at home.”

I tossed him a sideways glare. Things weren't so great around here either. To be honest, I was drowning in a hell of my own making. But you didn't see me complaining to everybody. “So why is that my problem?”

“I get that you're upset, but you know how Jenna—”

I held up my hand to stop him. I didn't want to talk about Jenna or how I was supposed to play nice with her. I was already freaked out about going to school tomorrow. Having him remind me that Jenna was going to be a constant fixture at my side was not helping. I needed to switch topics, and fast, before I changed my mind about everything.

“I don't want to talk about Jenna,” I said. “I'll see her tomorrow. I'll see everybody tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Alex said as he stretched out next to me on the bed and reached for the remote. “But I don't get why you're avoiding her. She's your best friend, maybe she can help.”

She was Maddy's best friend, not mine. I'd left
my
best friend standing at my sister's grave without so much as an apology. “I don't need her help. I have you.”

“That you do.”

He inched closer, his breath mingling with mine. I closed my eyes. I knew this was coming, that eventually he'd make a move, but I still wasn't prepared. I didn't want to sleep with him. I didn't even want to kiss him.

His lips had barely brushed mine before I pulled back, my heart pounding. I opened my eyes and stared down at my trembling hand pushing at his chest.

He saw it too and pressed his hand over mine, stilling the tremor. “Relax, Maddy.”

I nodded, unsure what else to do. I'd promised my dead sister I'd give her the life she didn't get a chance to live, sacrifice my own dreams so that I could live hers. I loved her, would do anything for her, but not this. Not him.

Alex leaned in again, his careful approach exaggerated as I analyzed his every move.

“Relax,” he whispered again, and I willed myself to try, focused on counting to twenty in my head.

“I love you,” he murmured as his hands found their way to my back.

I tried to relax, to follow his lead, but I couldn't. “Don't,” I said, and shoved him away.

Alex didn't have to say a thing. The disappointed way in which he unwound himself from me told me what I needed to know.

I knew what he was thinking and prayed my words would be enough. “Everything's different now. I can't … it's not … just no,” I stammered out, completely incapable of coming up with a plausible excuse for why I suddenly wanted nothing to do with him.

Alex slid back on the bed, keeping one of my hands locked in his. “You and me … the way you feel about me … is that what you mean?”

“No.” I shook my head, hoping my weak smile was enough to reassure him. Then I spoke the same words I'd heard Maddy say to him a thousand times: “I love you. Always have.”

“Always will?” he asked, that spark of life returning to his face.

“Yes.” That was the one thing I was a hundred percent sure of. Maddy loved Alex. Always had, always would.

“Then what is it?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. It's different now. I'm different now.” Different in that I wasn't Maddy and had never loved Alex. Different in that all these things—this room, this bed, the pictures tucked into the mirror, the boyfriend sitting next to me—weren't mine.

Alex tilted his head, the silent question
How?
reflected in his eyes. I took a deep breath and held it, searched for the courage to speak my greatest fears out loud. “I'm different now. I'm not the same girl I was before the accident. Not even close.”

Alex smiled, not the sarcastic grin I was expecting, but one of quiet understanding. “You're nervous.”

It wasn't a question, but I nodded anyway.

“We've done this hundreds of times, Maddy. Literally hundreds.”

“I know.” Maddy and Alex had spent the better part of our junior year with their lips locked together and served their fair share of time in detention for getting caught kissing in the hall. And if the accidental glimpse I'd got of Maddy's diary was correct, then they'd spent most of their summer rolling around in bed, or in the backseat of his Jeep, or on the beach, or … “I'm sorry, but I can't. Not yet.”

He flashed me a grin and settled into the bed next to me. “I'll tell you what, we'll take it slow. It's Sunday, right?” I nodded, and he went on. “So, tonight we can hold hands. Next week we'll give kissing another try, and by the week after that, you should be good to go. What do you say? Sound like a plan?”

I nodded. That gave me two weeks to try to figure something out. Two short weeks, but at least it got me off the hook for tonight.

 

14

I spent an hour standing inside my sister's closet after Alex left and another twenty minutes this morning. It didn't matter what I put on, nothing felt right. Sweatpants and T-shirts had been my outfit of choice for the past few weeks, but I couldn't exactly wear those to school. Not if I was going to be Maddy.

My inspiration came not from my own wisdom, but from a picture Maddy had tucked in the corner of her mirror: her and Alex at the Fall Festival the week before the accident. She was beautiful, amazingly so, and I wondered why I'd never seen it until now.

I took that picture with me into the closet and went about assembling the exact same outfit—low-riding jeans and a wide brown belt that barely fit through the loops. Squinting at the picture, I tried to figure out which of three nearly identical gray hooded sweaters she had on. It was a closer peek at her hands that gave it away—the sleeves of the top had holes for her thumbs. I added a second long shirt, a pair of boots, an ugly scarf, and I was good to go. I was dying of heat, suffocating under the layers, but after one more quick scan of the picture, I was confident that I was dressed exactly like her.

Hair and makeup … well, that was a different story. I didn't have the slightest idea where to begin. Luckily, my left wrist was still in a cast. I could blame my less-than-perfect appearance on my inability to pull my lid taut with my left hand as I applied my eyeliner.

I wrapped the scarf around my neck one more time, pausing to breathe in her scent. The smell of her perfume mingled with a slight hint of Alex enveloped me, and for a second it was like she was there, giving me a hug. I missed everything about her—the way she smelled, the way she yelled at me for leaving my wet towels on the bathroom floor or using her crazy-expensive shampoo. I missed the amusement in her eyes when Dad told his lame jokes at dinner and the way she'd quietly poke her head into my room every night before she went to bed. Being surrounded by her clothes, her smell, her life made the heartache of losing her nearly unbearable.

The door nudged open, Bailey's nose inching in, pulling me from my memories. “How do I look?” I asked. He whined and lay down in the doorway. He'd been doing that since I got home—following me around, nudging my hands or my legs, begging me to acknowledge him. When nobody was looking, I would bury my head in the fur at his neck and remind him that I was still me.

“Come here, Bailey.” I bent down and clapped my hands, hoping he'd finally enter Maddy's room. But he never did. He'd sit at the doorway and beg for me to come out, sometimes bark, but never once did Bailey come in. Probably because Maddy had trained him to stay out of her room by hurling her shoes at him if he so much as put one paw across the threshold. She hated my dog, claiming he smelled like dirt and slobbered too much. He did, but that's why I loved him.

“Treat?” I asked, and Bailey stood up, ears pointing forward. He stood there for a second, then turned around, walked into my old room, and climbed up onto my bed. Lucky him.

“He still won't come in?” Mom asked. She was staring at Bailey as he circled my bed looking for a comfortable spot to sprawl out.

“Nope. But I don't know why I care,” I quickly added. Mom had been watching since I got home and had made more than one curious comment about why he was following me around. “He was Ella's dog, not mine. I feel bad for him. He misses her.”

“That's why you care, because he's Ella's dog?”

Mom and Dad had been trying to get me to talk to them for days, thought I needed to open up, that I couldn't start to heal until I did. That's what her question was, an opening for me to walk through. I wouldn't.