Underneath Everything (29 page)

“You know the rules, right, Mats?” Cal asks as he reaches across the table to top off the Hurley twins.

I recognize them from school and Hudson’s pictures. They play soccer, but they’re built for football. Their plaid button-downs buckle at the biceps. Their baseball hats curve steep at the brims. Their sideburns drip wet with sweat, and the tips of their ears are tinged red. They remind me of garden gnomes, which makes my mouth open, which lets the energy bubble out.

I’m laughing.

Cal furrows his brow and tips his head toward me. At first I can’t figure out why he’s looking at me like that, then I remember—he asked me a question.

I bite back a grin and nod at him—
Yeah, I know them
—because I’m still thinking of the gnomes and feeling the energy, and if I open my mouth, it’s going to come out again.

He brushes a lock of black hair out of his eyes, and his face breaks into a smile.

“Of course you do. But I’m going to offer a refresher anyway, since these jokers have been cheating for the past half hour.” Cal ignores the halfhearted protests from the circle, caps the bottle, holds it by the neck, and slides it back and forth as he speaks, like a stick shift. “We go around the circle. Everybody talks. ‘I never whatever.’ If you’ve done the whatever, drink. If you haven’t, don’t. Or do it now. I ain’t gonna stop you.”

Hoots from the Hurleys. Eye rolls from the girls. A curved smirk from Jolene, who stands directly across the counter, surveying me. She glides the tip of her finger around the rim of her glass, then runs it across her lips. I lick my own—a reflex—and taste whiskey, even though I haven’t had a sip.

The game begins.

“I never broke into Memorial pool,” says Kristin Whelan—second-string goalie, first-string girlfriend. She bats her lashes at the bigger Hurley.

Everyone drinks. When they’re finished, they push their glasses to the center of the island. Cal leans in to refill them.

“I never forgot my bathing suit,” says the junior girl in the ivory, racer-back tank.

More shots. More refills.

“I never stole yours,” Cal says.

“That was you?” She punches him in the arm.

I grip and regrip my glass, waiting for my turn to drink. But I’ve never broken into a pool, or skinny-dipped, or cut school to go to Great Adventure. It’s starting to seem like I’ve never done anything. Like I’m not even here but standing on the other side of the kitchen again, watching.

Cal’s mouth moves. Jolene laughs. They drink.

People pack into the kitchen in search of the keg and the cups and the half-empty handles of liquor.

My tongue sticks to the inside of my cheeks and the roof of my mouth. So I swallow a few times, trying to work up some spit, make my lips wet, like everyone else’s. I skim my fingers along the top of the syrupy liquid.

The faint music from the dining-room-turned-dance floor cranks way up, or at least it does in my head.

A vibrating bass beat. Dizzying fades. The same words from different mouths around the circle, like lyrics over an endless loop of electronic music:
I never. I never. I never.

Then hers.

At first I think it’s in my head. Because isn’t that how it’s always been? A whisper in my ear. A pulse beneath my skin. A murmur in my sleep. The feeling of a forgotten dream.

Jolene.

But no. There she is, directly across the island from me—slender arm outstretched, shot of whiskey suspended between her thumb and middle finger. She extends the glass in my direction—an air toast—

before she speaks.

“I never got tied up.”

I lock eyes with Jolene. She lowers her lashes and curls the corners of her lips into a sly, knowing smile.

Eyes go wide around the circle, gazes volleying from Jolene to me. Waiting. It’s not the naked breakin or the backflip off a cabana roof they were expecting.

It’s better.

We’re better than real.

I’ve guarded my memory of that afternoon for so long—locked it in an airtight case and shoved it into the darkest recesses of my safest place. But now that it’s out there in the air, not just between me and Jolene, but on display at Bella’s party, where it can live and breathe and everyone can see it, I feel . . .

good.

I raise my glass to Jolene’s. She tilts her chin and gives me a thin smile before our glasses clink. We throw back our heads and drink.

The liquor burns my throat and warms my chest. It lights me up again. Like the whiskey is kindling and I’m the fire, throwing sparks.

The Hurleys and their girls clap and cheer.

I wipe my lips with the back of my wrist and slide my glass across the counter.

“Tell me again why I haven’t seen you at one of these things in so long?” Cal shakes his head like it’s a shame and upends the bottle, but the brown liquor that’s left barely fills my glass halfway. I make the whiskey disappear. Cal reaches beneath the counter and produces a pitcher of beer. Red plastic cups appear in front of us. Like magic.

They need us,
Jolene said. And now I believe her.

Because as the game rolls on, the “I nevers” come fast, the beer goes down faster, and the laughter is manic; the circle spins like a compass, but it always stops on us.

Because they’re playing for fun, and we’re playing for each other. We’re trading lines back and forth, the same way we have for years. We’re used to this. The only difference is, tonight we have an audience.

First me: “I never got slapped.”

Jolene purses her lips. Swigs.

Then her: “I never got suffocated.”

I open my throat. Gulp.

With each piece of our past that’s set free, I tip my cup to my lips and drink. And drink and drink and drink. Until there is only me and Jolene. Swimming, circling, submerged in a place that drowns out hollers and whistles and winks. Until I can swallow and breathe simultaneously, like the fish Jolene always knew I could be, if she pushed me.

My turn again. “I never felt like I wasn’t real.”

Jolene tosses her hair. The auburn streak underneath floats in the air for a second and catches a spotlight from the disco ball in the dining room before falling to her shoulder and settling on her sweater.

My sweater. She lifts her cup to drink. The bottom blocks her face. I can’t see her again until she claps the red plastic on the counter and licks the foam off her top lip.

When Jolene’s up again, and she has everyone’s attention, she lengthens her neck, like a cat stretching in the sun. “I never ran away from everyone. I never disappeared.”

I feel the edges of my vision contract, go black, expand again. And then I laugh. If I could have disappeared back then, I would have—gathered up all my dark, scarred parts and folded in on myself until there was nothing left. But I don’t want that anymore. I want to be here. I want to slice open the memories, peel back the skin, and let them bleed out in front of everyone.

I coat my throat with flat beer, let the voices recede and circle back to me. “I never wished someone would save me.”

Jolene doesn’t bother with beer this time.

“I never wished someone would love me,” she says, her voice clear and cool over the slurs and shouts of the kitchen crowd.

Another part of me unearthed, released.

My eyes are locked on Jolene, but I don’t need to see the rest of the faces in the circle to know they’re looking at me. I can feel their eyes stuck to my body like a harsh August heat.

I breathe in the humid stink of the kitchen and breathe it out again.

I hold the moment.

Not because I can’t think of a response, but because the response is so easy. It comes to me ready, willing. Like it’s already been written. Which is actually sort of true. The line isn’t mine; someone gave it to me. The same person I was thinking of when I made that wish, who my sophomore self hoped in her deepest, secret heart would love her, because she had no idea there’d be someone else—that there already was—someone who’d inhabit her heart, seep through her skin, curl up and take residence, poisoning her for everyone else. Even him. Especially him.

Hudson.

I say it to Jolene, because he said it to me. “I never begged my boyfriend to love me.”

Jolene’s eyes go wide. The tendons in her neck rise into ropes, and the corners of her lips pinch.

I’m afraid, for a second, that I’ve crossed a line—stepped into some invisible division.

Then I blink, and her lashes are lowered again, her neck smooth and slender, her lips imperceptibly curved in that Mona Lisa smirk.

But I can still see the other face underneath. The strand of auburn hair stuck to the sweat on her neck, the coiled tension cloaked in the posed slope of her bronze shoulder, the flash of fire hidden in her half-lidded eyes.

One version of Jolene set over the other, like a piece of tracing paper. Or a double exposure.

I blink and blink and blink, but the two images won’t line up exactly.

The effect is haunting. Disorienting.

I press my palms on the granite counter for balance, but when I shift my weight, the corner of my boot skids on something slippery—beer? whiskey?—and the room spins.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER 35

I FLAIL FOR something stable. Instead I connect with soft, slippery skin.

“The twins love you, babe, but show some restraint.” Bella flashes me a big, lip-lined grin. Then I realize where my hand is, and take it out of her cleavage.

“Bells, I—”

“Oh, don’t worry about them.” Bella waves one hand in front of her chest and tips a champagne glass to her lips with the other. “They like the attention.” She takes in the cups, the circle, the crowd. Then she sidles up next to me and rests the twins on the granite, between her elbows. “What are we playing?”

“
We’re
playing I Never.” Cal twirls his pointer finger in front of him like he’s mixing an imaginary drink. “Those two,” he says, wagging his finger back and forth between me and Jolene, “have got their own game going on.”

I turn back to Jolene, who looks serene. Like she’s in this pristine, shimmering sphere while the rest of us are dirty, drunk, dim.

Maybe it’s because she lines up again—one face, one expression. There’s no overlay of thin, rustling paper pinching her lips and roping her throat, just solid lines and strong strokes.

She stares back at me, still as a portrait.

“But you know me,” Cal says, flashing Bella a million-dollar grin. “I’m game for anything.” He brushes the same lock of black hair off his eyes and lifts the pitcher like it’s evidence.

“Ladies first,” Bella tells Cal, her doe-eyes big and serious. Then she turns to us, and her hands fly forward, wrists bent, hands flexed, like two stop signs. “Okay. I was mad at you, Jolene, I’ll admit it. But let’s just agree here and now that we’re all friends again. It’s senior year, and we promised we’d be amazing things; and I can’t take any more fighting.” Bella tips her stiff waves of hair toward Jolene first and then to me. “I can do it. Can you two?”

“Of course,” Jolene says—animated once again. She leans onto her forearms and drapes her hair on the granite, lifting her body over the counter in Bella’s direction. “For you.”

“Yeah,” I agree. But Bella’s already squealing.

“Yay!” Bella takes another sip of champagne. Imprints of lips overlap on the glass rim. “I’ve been wait-ing for this!” Bella separates each syllable into its own song and does a little dance in her stilettos.

“I’m in!”

Cal hands a cup to Bella, and the game picks up again; but I have a hard time keeping track of whose turn it is, and when. At some point the original girls switch out and two more take their place. Then the Hurleys are gone too, replaced by more boys in hats, like they’re a renewable resource.

Then Jolene is next to me—her chin skimming my shoulder, her fingers on my forearm—and everything’s okay again. Maybe nothing was ever wrong. Because her head is on my chest. My cheek is on her neck. We’re curling into each other.

What do
you
want to be, Mattie?

I want to be loved.

I lift my chin. My lips brush the lobe of Jolene’s ear. She laughs at something Bella says and leans into me the slightest bit.

My skin pricks with adrenaline, the energy that was inside, pushing its way through my pores, to the surface. Turning my insides out, so everybody can see:

I want to be loved.

There’s no order to the game anymore. Just drinking and shouting and more drinking.

“I never kissed a girl!” someone says. Is it me?

Jolene and I click our cups together and drink.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Bella chimes in, catching the back of my neck. “I’m not going to be left out at my own party!” She smashes our mouths together. When she pulls away, her lips are half lined, and mine feel sticky.

Bella lifts her cup again. “I never liked it!”

We laugh into our beer.

We drink. As the beer flows down my throat, a sweet ache rushes up. This is how it should have been.

All of us, together. The only thing that’s missing is Kris. Even though she would have hated this.

Jolene pushes a hair out of my eyes with her middle finger and trails it lightly along my hairline. For a second her eyes flick up and above me, but before I can turn around to see what she’s looking at, she’s raising her cup again. She’s talking.

“I never slept with a girl.”

Shouts erupt around us. The house tilts, rights itself.

“Sleepovers, people! Deal with it!” Bella drinks.

We join her.

“I never slept with a boy.”

It’s hard to tell who’s talking anymore. All the voices are so familiar, so similar. Saying things we all did. And then.