The Year We Fell Apart (8 page)

“Of course not. None of his business.”

After getting myself under control, I don’t have much of an appetite left. The girls walk me back to my car.

“So . . . we’ll see you tonight?” Mackenzie asks.

“Oh.” I look over my shoulder at a bed of daffodils, all of them wilting under the midafternoon sun. “Yeah, maybe. I’m not sure if I’m up for that scene.”

She bites her lip and nods. “I understand. But I do hope you’ll come. Feel better, okay?”

“Thanks,” I say. She gives me another fast hug, and I smile at Gwen before opening my door.

I drive home in silence. When I turn onto my street, I pull over and crank the radio up loud. I reach for the spare towel I keep in the backseat, roll it into a ball, and cover my mouth.

Scream until my voice goes hoarse.

THE HOUSE HAS A DELICATE
balance these days. Bloodshot eyes and a tea-stained shirt will throw everything off-kilter. I sneak up to the bathroom as quietly as humanly possible.

Hot water helps. Scalding my skin even though it’s humid as shit outside. But I need to feel clean, and ever since what I did in October, this is the only way.

Besides, I like sitting in the shower. It’s become the only place I ever feel really, truly alone. The only place I can break down and immediately wash away all the evidence.

At least until the hot water runs out.

After I get dressed, I call Sadie.

“What do you mean you’re not coming?”

I’m in the kitchen, which is the farthest from my parents I could get. “This afternoon I sort of had a run-in with Lindsay and Jenny. It wasn’t pretty. And look, Declan’s going to be there and things are already kind of weird between us. . . .”

“Come on, who gives a shit about Lindsay Sullivan? That girl is the worst. And things are probably weird with Declan because you
act
weird around Declan. Anyway, I’m already on my way to your house.”

I rub my temple. “I still have to ask my parents.”

“So go ask. I’ll see you in ten.”

I can’t say I really expected that conversation to go any differently. Sadie always gets her way. Anyway, she’s right. I shouldn’t let people like Lindsay get to me.

My parents are lounging in their bedroom, Dad reading while Mom dozes. More than a week after her first chemo treatment, the side effects finally seem to have taken hold. She stretches herself awake when I come through the door.

“Hi, honey.”

“Hey.” My arms cross. “So, I wanted to ask you guys . . . There’s this party tonight . . .”

Dad puts his book down. “Oh?”

Mom tries to sit up. “Who are you going with?”

“Well, I’m driving over with Sadie. But everyone will be there. Cory and Declan. Those girls—my friends, from Photography.”

Mom groans. She shifts over the side of the bed and blows out a deep breath. Dad walks around and crouches beside her.

“Need to get up?”

She nods and he locks his hands around her elbows, guiding her by both arms over to the bathroom. I stumble out of the way.

“Mom? Are you okay?”

She mumbles that she’s fine.

Dad looks over his shoulder. “We’ll talk about that party later, Harper.”

“But . . . okay. Just, I’m supposed to leave in a few minutes. . . .” He doesn’t answer. Mom bends over the sink, her head falling into her hands. She takes deep breaths through her mouth. “Dad? Can I help?”

“I’ve got this. See you later tonight.”

He shuts the bathroom door.

  *  *  *  

Sadie talks the whole way over to her town house. I roll down the window and watch as we drive past kids running through sprinklers and playing soccer on their front lawns. We pull out of the subdivision and pass Mom’s favorite flower shop and the produce stand that she says has the freshest strawberries. I catch bits and pieces from Sadie—Will called her to ask about the party, she bought a new top to wear—but I’m not really listening.

I’m replaying that moment back at my house. Over and over, I see Mom in pain. And I’ve never felt so helpless. I knew Mom would have bad days on the chemo, and that it would make her feel sick. I thought I was ready for that. But I wasn’t ready for this, for every last thing in my life to be completely out of my control.

We pull to the curb and I follow Sadie inside. She kicks off her shoes and I line my sandals up next to them, walking barefoot into her living room.

“Hey, you’re home!” Mr. Walker says from his desk in the corner.

Sadie blows past him and into the kitchen, grabbing a diet Boomerang from the fridge before thundering up the stairs and slamming her bedroom door behind her.

She’s been this way with her dad for as long as I’ve known her. They moved here at the start of freshman year, as soon as her parents’ divorce was finalized. That year, both Cory and Declan had a different lunch period than me. The swim season hadn’t started yet, and after spending all my free time with Cory and Declan since elementary school, I wasn’t exactly flush with other friends. Sadie’s first day of school, she walked into the cafeteria like she owned it, spotted me sitting alone, and sat down across from me. She was the most self-assured and, frankly, gorgeous girl I’d ever met. Model-thin, with a mane of golden hair reaching all the way to her waist and ridiculously perfect skin. She was a force to be reckoned with. The only boys immune to her charms were Declan and Cory, who made it clear they thought she was shallow and stuck-up and a few other choice
S-
words. But despite their antagonism, I certainly wasn’t going to argue when Sadie inexplicably chose me to be her friend.

She never talks much about her mom, or the reason her parents split up. And I try to respect her privacy. Unlike most people in Carson, I know when something is none of my business.

Her dad raises his eyebrows at me, eager like he hasn’t had a conversation with anyone in days.

“Hi, Mr. Walker.”

“Harper! Haven’t seen you around much lately. How have you been?”

“All right.”

“How are your parents?”

My finger slips under the elastic band around my wrist. It snaps against my skin. “They’re good. Thanks.”

“Well, tell them I said hello.”

“Will do.” I make an awkward gesture toward the stairs and take them two at a time, slipping into Sadie’s room without knocking.

Her walls are covered floor to ceiling with concert posters and cutouts from fashion magazines, with a few pictures of us scattered into the mix. Sadie grabs a bottle out of a shoe box in her closet and I practically lunge for it. Because if I can’t get out of this party, I’m at least going to need some help getting through it.

“Go for it,” she says. “I’ll drive tonight.”

Two shots and half a can of Boomerang later, I manage to repress the memory of my mother doubled over and dry heaving, and arrive in my happy place.

Sadie comes over with a flat iron. She actually has the patience for straightening my curls, so I let her have at it.

“Beautiful,” she says when she’s finished.

For some reason, I always believe her when she calls me that. Partly because she’s beautiful, so she really ought to know. And maybe also because she was the first person besides my mother to use that word to describe me.

“Thanks.” I absentmindedly take another sip of Boomerang and immediately regret it. Blech.

She circles back with eyeliner and puts the finishing touches on my makeup.

“You look so hot tonight. Kyle’s gonna be all over you.”

“Which is precisely why we should go to the movies instead.”

Back when we first started hanging out freshman year, I didn’t have much interest in all the parties Sadie got invited to. I was perfectly content dragging her out for ice cream or getting dragged through the mall in Raleigh. It wasn’t until sophomore year that she wore me down and I finally accepted one of her invitations.

It’s comical, looking back at how intimidated I was by everyone Sadie hung around with. I used to beg Declan and Cory to come with me, though I couldn’t blame them for refusing 99 percent of the time. At these parties, we were on Sadie’s turf, and they still wanted nothing to do with her. Sadie didn’t exactly set out a welcome mat for my other best friends, either. But I kept tagging along because other boys I’d never even spoken to were suddenly paying me an awful lot of attention. Being in Sadie’s company made me desirable by extension. And at first, I liked the way it felt to finally step out of my bubble and into a foreign social life. Like I was better than the freakishly tall tomboy who swam under everyone’s radar.

Sophomore Harper was downright hilarious.

Sadie raises an eyebrow and dabs a fresh layer of gloss onto my lips with the pad of her ring finger. “Well, what else do you expect from Kyle? He tasted the honey and now he wants the whole pot.”

“Gross, now I keep picturing him dressed as Pooh Bear.”

“Ha, Pooh Bear. That’s gonna stick.”

Pooh Bear is going to be disappointed if he thinks he’s getting any honey from this pot. Anyway, if I’m being honest, he’s not even the real problem here. He’s like a fruit fly: annoying, but harmless. With most of Carson’s underage population planning to attend this shindig, I can think of several graver threats. Including Mackenzie.

I’m not even sure if I trust her or Gwen yet, and they certainly don’t owe me any favors. What’s to stop them from telling Declan what happened this afternoon? Hell, half the kids from my own school would leap at the opportunity to talk shit about me. Sooner or later, Declan is going to hear the rumors. He thinks sneaking into the pool is bad? If he knew the real reason I stopped speaking to him in October, or that Jake wasn’t even close to the only guy I had a lapse in judgment with this past spring, he would never see me the same way again.

Sadie finishes my makeup and touches up her own, then turns to her closet. I sit down on her bed and wipe some of my lip gloss off on the back of my hand.

“So who’s it going to be?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“If Kyle’s done, who’s next?” She slips out of her shorts and steps into a spandex skirt. “No, wait, let me guess. Could it be . . . Declan?”

My fingers find my necklace. “Nothing is going to happen between Declan and me.”

“Mm-hmm. I’ve heard that one before.”

She pulls out a different skirt and tosses it in my direction. She’s always offering up her closet to me. But if the clothes are tight on Sadie, they’re catastrophic around my hips.

“Anyway, I’d hope not,” she goes on. “Because we both know how much better you could do.”

Summer after eighth grade was the first time I caught Declan looking at me differently. I’d tagged along on one of his numerous trips to the driving range, and by the time he finished hitting a bucket, we were both starving. I found a vending machine and bought us each a bag of pretzels. Then I put the rest of my change into the machine and turned to leave. Declan reached for the coin release, but I tugged his hand away.

“Leave it,” I said. “Might make someone’s day better.”

He left it, but not before giving me that split-second glance—one so intense it seemed like he wanted to memorize every atom of me. I turned that moment over in my mind for weeks afterward.

But by the time summer wound down and high school started up, I’d decided I must have imagined that look in his eye. And for the next two years, we remained firmly planted in the friend zone. That’s the real irony here. Declan and I may never have gotten together if it wasn’t for Sadie.

She’s the one who gave us the final push during April of sophomore year: a game of Truth or Dare at Leah Gilmore’s sweet sixteen party. It was a few months after Natalie’s funeral, and at that point Declan and I still hadn’t gotten any further than holding hands when we watched a movie alone in the dark, or when we went for walks in the woods. He had this way of smoothing his thumb over the back of my wrist. Sometimes the memory of his touch is so vivid, I can almost feel it.

Declan’s dad had already started to throw himself into his work, and Cory was busy with afternoon swim practices, while mine were usually first thing in the morning. So Declan and I began spending more and more time alone together. We spent hours doing homework in the tree house, or playing I Spy at the edge of the quarry. But sometimes our shared history felt like a roadblock. Like it was the fear of losing anything more that kept us from making the leap.

Part of me sensed Sadie was going to do it all along, but I still flushed a deep red when she dared me to kiss Declan. It would be my first kiss. Sadie knew that.

I managed to mumble that it was no big deal, mostly to settle my own nerves, but Declan wouldn’t look at me. He was too busy glaring at Sadie.

“What’s the matter, Declan?” Sadie asked, a smile playing on her lips. “Can’t handle a stupid game?”

Declan finally looked away from her, shaking his head. He stood up, and might have looked down at me, but I couldn’t bring myself to meet his gaze.

“It’s not a game for me,” he said gruffly.

I found him on the front porch. The street lamps cast a puddle of cool light up the lawn. I crossed my arms against the chill and hesitated on the welcome mat outside the door. Declan stared straight ahead when I sat down next to him, and when I shivered he took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders without a word. When he finally spoke, he spoke quickly, telling me that he was sorry, but he just didn’t want to kiss me like that—with everyone watching and on Sadie’s terms. He paused, taking a long breath before looking at me and smiling shyly. “But I do want to kiss you.”

“What’s so bad about Declan?” I ask now. Sadie turns to face me and I look down at the pleated skirt in my lap. “I mean, he’s gotten kind of cute, don’t you think?”

She stares at me for another beat, her lips pursed, then turns back to her closet. “You’re really considering going down that road again? After all those weeks you spent whining about how much you missed him?”

She doesn’t mean to be harsh. This is just how Sadie looks out for me. Same as when the rumors about me first started. She defended me to anyone who dared open their mouth in front of her. But when it’s just the two of us, she’s never been afraid to dish a serving of cold, hard truth.