Underneath Everything (25 page)

Kris stops to catch her breath. It’s not just her chest that’s red anymore. The rash has crept up her neck to her chin and across her cheeks. Just like the heat inside me. Kris and Jolene shared a bunk and a bed and a summer. They shared all those things, and Kris never told me. Neither of them did. I feel left out again. Like I’m in the backseat of Kris’s car watching Jim’s hand creep up Kris’s leg before she slaps it away. Jolene didn’t just get Hudson first. She also got Kris.

I feel sick.

“That doesn’t explain anything,” I say, which isn’t exactly true. It explains some things—why Kris and Jolene always seemed like opposing forces—but it doesn’t explain everything.

The tendons in Kris’s neck tense before she speaks again. “When Jolene moved here, we were good friends, you and me, remember? I mean, not like the last year, but good. Solid.”

I swallow, nod. Nothing feels solid. Not the ground beneath my feet. Or the last fifteen months. Not Kris, or me. Everything feels slippery.

“I warned her not to screw with you,” Kris says.

“I didn’t need your protection.” My voice feels far away again, like my ears are underwater but my mouth is out, and the sounds I make can’t reach me, not completely.

“But you had it.” Kris says, her breath fast, her stare sharp. “When I told her to stay away from you

—”

“You had no right—”

“When I told her,” Kris says again, sounding out each syllable, “she said it was
you
calling and texting
her
all the time. She told me you’d do anything for her.”

Something inside me loses its white-knuckled grip and slips.

It’s one thing to know you’d do anything for someone. It’s a secret, dark thing that’s hard to admit, because most of the time you don’t think about it. You just do the things you need to do. You run with them over rocky cliffs, go to their house at midnight, stroke their hair and hold them close. You carry them away from drunk boys on your shoulder. You take them home. But you don’t say it out loud, and neither does she. Because it makes you feel weak. Because you don’t know what it means.

My skin tingles, and my head hammers at the thought of them talking about me like that, taking the deepest parts of me and airing them out. Of Jolene saying it out loud. But I still need to know how the conversation ended. “And you said?”

“I told her it was bullshit,” Kris says, “that if she went too far, you’d see her for who she really is, just like I did.”

“I’m not you.” This one thought keeps my head above the water. I’m not her. Whatever she had with Jolene doesn’t matter. It’s different with me.

Kris looks at the crushed paper at her feet—the issue I know she’s been killing herself to finish for the past three weeks—and smiles. But it doesn’t look like a smile. It looks more like our school mascot, the blue devil baring its teeth under her sneakers. “That’s what
she
said.” Kris drops the smile, lifts her head.

“But I told her it didn’t matter. That there were just some things you wouldn’t do. ‘Name it,’ Jolene said to me. ‘Tell me.’”

“
You
came up with the ropes?”

“Only because in a million years I never thought you’d actually go through with it!”

“But it was your idea.”

“Yeah. Fine. It was my idea. But I didn’t do it. Jolene did. And you let her.”

Yes, Jolene did it. And yes, I let her. And I know Kris will never understand why—for the same reason she’d laughed when I said I wanted to be something new. Because Kris likes everything just fine the way it is. Including me. She won’t give me gills or gowns. She doesn’t think I can change.
I told her . .

. there were just some things you wouldn’t do.

But Jolene had listened. She’d taken me seriously.

I’m back in that room, wrists bound, mouth taped, pulse racing. I’m screaming. Bella’s laughing. I’m leaving, eyes wet and blurry. I won’t speak to Jolene. And nobody will speak to me, except for Kris.

“You’d been my only friend after the ropes thing, so I went back for you. I found you in that shed. I thought I owed you. But you only kept talking to me then because you felt guilty.”

“No,” Kris says, eyes wide, cheeks red, curls loose.

I step toward her. “I gave up Hudson. I gave up everything for you. And you couldn’t even tell me the truth?”

At least Jolene had come clean. The night she called me to come over, she’d admitted that what she’d done was fucked up, even if she had done it for me. She also told me how easy it had been to turn my

“friends” against me.
But not Kris,
I’d said to myself.
Kris didn’t quit on me.

No. She didn’t quit on me. She lied to me.

“Why are you even here?” I ask Kris, scanning the pile of papers on the floor. “Shouldn’t you be delivering those?”

“You said you’d help me.” Kris’s cheeks have gone from red to pink to pale. “I was in the journalism room all morning stuffing the inserts,” she says. “I said I’d find you.”

This morning, in the car, as the snow fell. That’s right. She said she’d find me. Like the time I found her in the shed. And the time I didn’t, at Bella’s party.

“Well, I guess you did.”

“I guess so,” she says, squinting. I wonder if I look different to her, the way she looks different to me.

Not because of the clothes, but because of what we now know.

Kris doesn’t pick up the papers when she goes. She leaves them strewn across the floor—headlines about the holidays, black-and-white photos, pixilated people. I think. It’s hard to tell from this distance. I bend down. Each senior in the picture smiles crisp and clear; the problem is, they do it twice.

Two mouths, two sets of eyes, two heads. One exposure dark, the other light, and a fraction of an inch to the right. It must be a printing glitch. Whatever it is, the effect is eerie: bright smiles broken, clear eyes clouded, perfect hair pulled.

Two people where one should be.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER 28

I HAVEN’T WALKED anywhere in over a year. I used to walk home from school every day, starting in fifth grade. I complained about it to my mom, but the truth is, I liked walking the streets I’d seen on my map, and the ones that didn’t exist then. Even in the snow and cold. Especially then, actually. I liked the way the white flakes covered everything and made it even, like fresh canvas I could paint with my own colors and shapes.

Today it just looks blank.

My feet crunch over salt in front of the school and sink into slush as I cross the street. An icy stream seeps through the top of my sneakers and into my socks. Then it stops, and I fall into a rhythm. Me. My breath. My legs.

It’s not snowing anymore, but it’s cold. A clear crust covers the white lawns along Lenox, some still dressed for Thanksgiving with paper Pilgrims and plastic turkeys, others looking forward to Christmas with blinking bushes and ribboned wreathes. Ice covers each needle on the evergreens—the trees that refuse to give up their leaves, that can’t bear to let them turn beautiful because it also means losing them.

I walk faster. I can’t feel the soles of my feet or the tips of my fingers, though when I press them to my lips, they’re hot. Burning. I wipe my nose and sniff. Instead of charred winter air I inhale something heavy and wet. Humidity. My shirt clings to my back inside my jacket. The snow sinking under my sneakers is fresh dirt. The trees have leaves, bright and green. I’m between buildings at Cal’s complex on the night of the manhunt game. But this time I don’t choose Kris. I’m hand in hand with Jolene, on my way to home base, where Hudson sits, waiting for me.

The game is over.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER 29

HUDSON OPENS THE door in a plain, white tee, worn and tight at the sleeves, and baggy jeans. The sconces in the foyer light him up from behind and throw a yellow glow through the doorway. The day went dark on my walk over.

“I’ve got something to show you.” He grabs my hand and pulls me in. I want to tell him about Kris, but that means telling him about Jolene, so instead I follow him up the stairs to his room without telling him anything. Though I can’t help noticing how his fingers, which have slipped between mine countless times, feel bigger this afternoon, his skin rougher than usual.

Hudson flicks open the door with his free hand. At first I think he’s taken one of my maps. But when I look closer, I see it’s not a single map, but a book of them. And the pages aren’t ancient, just old. It’s an atlas. And it’s enormous. It covers the length of his desk—spine soft, covers flush against the wood, like it’s used to being open, handled, read. There are more on his bed.

“What is this?” I step first to the bed and then the desk to run my fingers over the pages, faded white with use, ripped and rescued with Scotch tape. It’s strange to see such oddly shaped borders, so many new routes. I’m used to looking at maps of Westfield. These places are different. Foreign.

“This is me not giving a shit,” he says. Hudson’s leaning against the doorframe, hands shoved in his jeans, smiling at the atlases like old friends. I know how he feels. Even though I haven’t taken out my Sanborns in weeks, I haven’t forgotten why I wanted them, why I wanted any of them: maps are so much easier to read than people. I just didn’t know anyone else felt the same way. For a second I see us from above: two dots in this room, in his house, on this street, in Westfield. Together. The same. Until I remember what he said.

“Not giving a shit about what?”

“College. Plans. What people expect.”

That’s when I notice the highlighted lines weaving their way across every open page. None of them stop. Each one falls right off the edge. They’re escape routes.

“You mean you’re actually going to these places? And your parents are cool with it?”

“Not even close,” he says. “My dad doesn’t know. I told my mom. She’s not thrilled, but she gets it. I mean, she left him. She’s split her time between here and the road ever since.” Hudson shrugs. “She’s half the reason I came up with it.” He tips his head toward the atlases.

“Half?”

“Well, yeah, I mean . . .” Hudson pushes off the wall and walks to the bed. His arm hangs next to mine.

I can feel heat radiating from it and, on the other side of me, a chill from his always-open window. “You gave me the idea to begin with,” Hudson finishes.

“I did?” It doesn’t make sense. I’ve never told him about my maps. He’s never been to my room. And anyway, mine are nothing like his.

I follow a jagged red line across the page, imagine expansive skies and an open road. Then I drop my eyes to the yellow line in the middle of that made-up concrete. Because even in my imagination, looking into something infinite makes me dizzy. Disoriented.

My maps are familiar—places I’ve been, where I live.

Hudson’s maps are a way out. Mine are a way in.

“Yeah.” Hudson threads his fingers through mine. “You and Kris. If you two ditched everyone, I figure I can do it.”

But I guess no matter how many times you draw yourself out of a place, you’re still in it. It’s been a year, but we’re both back at the manhunt game.

And I came over here with words in my head, in my mouth. I came over here to tell him something.

“Kris isn’t what you think,” I say, shifting my hand in his. It feels too big.

“Good thing I’m not in love with her then.”

“No, I mean the night of the manhunt game. Me and Kris leaving—”
Ask her.
“Kris lied to me. About the ropes. She said she was trying to protect me from Jolene—”

“Mattie.” Hudson grips my shoulders, forces me to face him. I had it all figured out on the way here—

how to tell him—but then he showed me those atlases, and now something’s wrong. Hudson’s holding me too tight, he’s breathing too hard, he’s creasing that spot between his eyes so deep his freckles meet. “I just told you I love you, and you’re talking about
Jolene
?
Still?
”

“You’re the one who started talking about her in the first place!” I was fine. I was sealed.

“I talked about her. Fine. Then I stopped. When are you going to stop?”

“But this changes everything.”

He throws his hands out to his sides. “No, it doesn’t. Who gives a shit whose idea it was? Jolene still did it.”

An engine revs outside. Headlights slice through the night; two beams slide across Hudson’s room, lighting him from behind, blinding me for a split second.

“But Kris lied to me. She admitted it.”

“To protect you. You said so yourself.”

“
Kris
said that. Not me. And, really, what did she end up protecting me from anyway? The truth? If I’d known what she did, I wouldn’t have left—”

“And I never would have known you like this. Why do you think I’m showing you these?” He motions toward the atlases. “I never thought, when I left this place, I’d want anyone to come with me. But you . . .

I’m telling you I love you. And you still haven’t said anything back.”

I used to imagine this: Hudson telling me he loves me. Sweet words hot in my ear as we lay between his sheets. One hand on the small of my back, the other on my cheek. How it would make everything perfect.

But it doesn’t. Because the girl Hudson is in love with is the one who leaves. It isn’t me. It’s who he wants me to be.

Something pounds inside me. It can’t be my heart, because it’s not just in my chest. It’s in my ankles, my thighs, my throat, my gut.

I step away from him. The backs of my knees hit his bed.

“You don’t love me.”

“I do.” Hudson tries for my hand, but I pull it away.

“You don’t know me.” I’ve pretended long enough. But he’s going to find out at some point. Just like Kris did. It may as well be now. It may as well be from me. “I took Jolene home from Bella’s party.”