Underneath Everything (19 page)

A dog barked down the street. I whipped around to see a dark figure dragging it along on a leash,
moving toward me. I sped up and rounded the last corner onto Carleton Road.

All the lights were off in Jolene’s house, except for the one in her room. I walked past the front
door, toward the right window on the first floor, and ran my hand along the top of the frame, sending
the spare key clattering to the cement porch. The noise startled me—not because I was worried about
waking her parents—they were always out—but because it had been so tinkly and bright, so different
from the sounds of the night.

I opened the door a crack and climbed the rug-covered steps in my boots. I listened to my heart, its
thudding pulse in my neck, my chest, all the way down to my toes, like I was in some Edgar Allan Poe
story. Beat, beat, beat, beneath my feet. When I got to Jolene’s bedroom, I peered beneath the door. The
light was solid, no shadows of movement. I pushed it open.

“You scared the shit out of me!” Jolene stood against the wall, her eyes wide, her hands clutching
a baseball bat. She threw the bat to the ground and dragged me into the bed. I kicked off my boots. She
drew the covers up and over us.

“You told me to come over,” I said in my defense.

“And you did,” she said, reaching under the blanket, squeezing my hand.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” she said, looking away from me, our hands locked and hot, her toes curling and
uncurling next to mine. “I just hate being here alone.”

“Now you’re not.”

Jolene smiled at me then. Not the smile she gives everybody—the wide one where she dips her chin
to the side, narrows her eyes, and flashes her teeth—the real one: lips pressed together, corners of her
mouth curved up, eyebrows up, like she’s surprised herself that it happened at all.

It was the smile that made me say it. “Two little girls all alone in the world, who woke from their
beds and decided to live.”

Jolene looked at me, her eyes wet for a second, before she said, “Two little girls who walked out of
this world, peeled off their skin, and let magic seep in.”

“You win,” I said. “That was good.”

Jolene rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Her sheets smelled like her: cinnamon
shampoo. The lavender lotion she used before bed. And something astringent too, something she must
have washed her face with.

We didn’t talk for a while. Just lay there, holding hands, in the only lit room of the empty house;
until she reached over, switched off the lamp on her nightstand, and leaned back in the bed next to me.

The lengths of our arms touched.

“You hurt my feelings, you know.” Jolene pulled my hand onto her stomach and let it rest there.

“That whole thing with the ropes—” My body tensed. Jolene pulled my hand farther across her body,
past her belly button. “You didn’t trust me. You were always saying how bored you were, how you
wanted to do something different. I was trying to do that for you.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice tight.

“Wouldn’t that have been boring,” she said, turning her head toward me, smirking. She looked
back at the ceiling, inhaled. Our hands rose and fell with her breath. “I can’t believe you thought I’d
do something like that to you,” she said, guiding our hands up a few inches. I could feel the ridges of
her rib cage. “I mean, I know I shouldn’t have done what I did, with everybody. But you left. You were
supposed to stay, and instead you just walked away.” Her voice broke a little at the end. Was Jolene
crying? I’d never seen her come close. “Anyway,” she said, with a sniff, “you may as well thank me.

Nice friends who would turn on you like that, in a second. I was hurt. They didn’t have an excuse.”

“It’s true.” I hadn’t thought of it that way. Jolene rolled over so she was facing away from me, but
she took my hand with her again so that my chest was pressed against her back, my legs against her
legs.

We listened to the sounds of the house. The creak of the windows. The whoosh of the heater.

“So,” Jolene said as the rush of air stopped, leaving the room suddenly quiet, “now that you’re
something new, let’s play again. What do you want to be, if you could be anything?”

you’re something new

I tried on Jolene’s words, and they were true: Right after the ropes, I’d felt isolated. Then I’d
gotten used to it: walking, stone-faced, through school; spending my free periods in journalism. I’d
gotten used to the sight of Hudson, too, leaning over his locker, hair hanging over his eyes. Him in his
faraway place and me in mine. Until he looked up one day when I walked by as if I wasn’t a stranger
who stared at him in the hall, but someone he recognized.

He was the only boy who’d looked me in the eye. Other than Kris, he was the only person who saw
me.

What would make him call me at midnight, I wondered? What would make him hold me tight? What
would it feel like? What would I be, if I could be anything?

“I want to be loved,” I whispered.

Jolene held my hand to her chest.

“What about you?” I asked.

It was a few moments before she answered. “I want to be real,” Jolene said softly. “Sometimes
when my parents stay out late, I wonder if I’m even here. Do you know the last time my mom was home
to see me most nights? It’s when she still tucked me in and told me stories.” Jolene let out a breath.

“She told the best stories.”

I smoothed Jolene’s hair back with my hand and set my lips against the lobe of her ear.

“You’re here,” I said. “I’m with you.”

“Maybe we’re both not here.” Jolene shifted her hips. I shifted too, until we fit again. “What if
we’re both not real?”

“We’re not,” I said. “We’re better than real. We’re the two little girls.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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CHAPTER 20

AFTER MR. RILEY’S red-faced, desk-slapping lecture in calculus, the corridors seem calm. Quiet. I start to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing—her palm against the glass in Spanish class, her name in the wind. But when I walk into the library for study hall, I stop thinking and see. The wind never stopped; it’s just a storm whirling around me.

Jolene’s sitting in my seat.

She hasn’t morphed into someone else the way people said. Her honey-colored skin still glistens. Her dark hair still shines. The auburn streak still glows underneath, even under the horrible, halogen lights.

She doesn’t look sick. But something is different.

“Due to some schedule changes, we’ve got someone new today, as you can all see.” Ms. Glick says, motioning toward Jolene. And then, in a decidedly sharper tone: “Maitreya! Seats, please!” For a librarian, Ms. Glick has always been loud.

She starts the roll call. I clutch my calculus text to my chest, walk past the biography section, along the decal-decorated window, and take the only open seat, which is across from Jolene.
What is she doing
here?
My eyes dart down, my fingers itch for a to-do list, my mind wants its mantra of street names, color-coded blocks, neat divisions. But I don’t give in. For almost a year and a half I’ve kept my head down. I’ve done my time. Now I’m the one at the corner table with Bella and Kris. I’m the one heading to Hudson’s after school today. And I deserve it. Whatever’s wrong with Jolene, whatever’s she’s doing, won’t make me retreat.

I fight through the clawing, restless feeling. I still my hands, steady my breath, and lift my head. I look at her.

Jolene’s slim fingers pull at the zipper on her black backpack, which sits on the table between us. Her nails are unpolished, her eyes unlined. I haven’t seen her this colorless in years. Not since we had sleepovers and she came back from the bathroom, face clean, and told me stories.

We spend study hall in silence, the way we’re supposed to. I stare at my calculus notes. Curves and graphs I don’t understand. I try to do the homework, but instead of tangents and proofs, I end up drawing what I always do. The same thing that covers my notebooks and scrawls across my margins, hangs above my desk and lives in my head. But this time, instead of starting with a border and a compass rose, I go straight for the center of the map and work my way out, until intersecting streets take over the page and bleed off the edge.

Across the table, Jolene takes notes from one of those thick Norton Anthologies. Her hand moves smoothly along the page, script slanting slightly to the right, letters round and wide, same as always. She doesn’t say anything about being outside my Spanish class this morning or why she transferred into my study hall. She doesn’t say anything at all. Until the last few minutes before the bell, when everyone’s shutting books and capping pens and sliding zippers. Only then do I feel her hot, strong grip under the table and the thick triangle of paper she presses into my palm.

I close my fingers over it.

I don’t unfold the note during English, or when I pack up my books after class. I hold it tight in my fist as I sit shotgun next to Kris (who doesn’t have a cigarette, did she finish it?) and listen to see if Jolene spoke to anyone else. But Bella’s telling a joke, and Kris hasn’t said a word to me since the cafeteria. So it’s just me and the whispers and the note I clutch tight against the cold when Kris drops me off with a hard look and a weak salute.

It’s not until I’m parked in front of Hudson’s house that I cup my hands around the note—the same way Jolene did with her treasures—and pry them apart slowly, as if the paper might sprout wings and fly away.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

CHAPTER 21

I GATHER THE sleeves of my sweater in my fists as I walk up the slate path to Hudson’s front door and ring the bell. For a few seconds I don’t hear anything. No voices, no footsteps, no movement. The wind blows under my jacket and up my sweater. I’m about to peek through the side windows when I hear the fast thud of feet down the stairs. Hudson opens the door. I’ve barely slipped off my boots and jacket before he takes my hand and leads me to the second floor, past the framed pictures rising in a line on the wall.

Hudson as a bald baby, a little boy with a bowl cut, a skinny middle-schooler kneeling next to a soccer ball, a scowling freshman in front of a washed-out blue background. His older brother at all the same ages, looking at me with the same sparkling blue eyes but from a face cut with sharper edges: square jaw, dimpled chin, angled cheekbones. A family portrait—one with their mom still in it. She’s smiling. She seems happy. Even though inside she was screaming to leave.

I wonder if Hudson ever suspected who she was underneath. I wonder if he suspects me. I look up at him, as if the answer might be in the arch of his back or the slope of his shoulders. But all I see are broken-in jeans hanging loose on his hips and the soft stretch of his thermal across his back when his arm swings forward to push open his bedroom door.

The smell envelopes me—wood and wind. Him. It’s from the furniture. An ancient, stained-wood bookcase stuffed with peeling paperbacks, ruffled comics, used pads of drawing paper, pencils. A wide dresser with deep drawers (perfect for ditched phones) and bronze metal handles. A long, sprawling desk with nothing on top of it but nicks and dents. A worn wood chair to match, shoved out and angled back, like it’s waiting for someone. A window above the desk, open a crack to let in the late-fall air.

I know every inch of Hudson’s room by now, but it’s the window that’s always seemed the most familiar.

The first thing Hudson does when he closes the door behind him is tell me he’s sorry. The second thing he does is kiss me—light on my collarbone, insistent on my lips. He doesn’t hold me back or pull away like he did this afternoon. He leans into me until I’m up against the wall and out of breath.

“I’m sorry about today,” he says again. “I should have told you.” I can’t help thinking Hudson knows, somehow, about the note. Or that I took Jolene home. I can’t help feeling guilty, like I should be the one coming clean. But even so, I don’t speak. He’d get angry. He’d see me differently. And that’s something I can’t give up right now. I need to be the girl he sees. I need to know she exists. I can’t risk it.

“Told me what?”

“Hold on,” he says, turning away from me. “Music.” He walks toward the huge, black stereo sunk into the corner of the thick carpet, reaches down into what looks like a lake of circular silver fish, and plucks a disc from the middle. He slips it into the tray and presses play. While it spins, he takes my hand—the one Jolene grabbed under the library table—and leads me to the bed. He sits down on the green flannel sheet, leans back against the wall, rests his elbows on the fraying knees of his jeans, and faces me.

Then the deep voice sings from his speakers, the one that was playing in the car at the reservation. It’s so intimate—like there’s another person in the room.

And then there is.