Underneath Everything (6 page)

Something plummets in the pit of my stomach. Even here, with my hands in his, even now that I’ve told him Kris needed me—he’s still angry.

“Look, I know I didn’t show up for you, and that I stopped speaking to Jolene that night, too, and that you guys probably bonded over how much you hated me; but whatever Jolene told you, whatever she said, it isn’t—”

The burn from my throat has climbed to my eyes. I blink.

Hudson squeezes my hands. When I look up at him, his eyes are clear—blue water, sparkling. “Jolene told me you left. Nothing else.” Of course. She didn’t have to say anything else. Breaking my promise to Hudson, not showing up for him right after his mom left, would have been enough, and she knew it. “I was pissed,” he says with a quick breath and a small nod to himself. “But now I get it.”

“Get what?” I still haven’t told him
why
Kris and I left. But before I get a chance, Hudson lowers his head to our hands and takes a breath, then blows it out through the tight circle of his lips. It warms our fingers.

“You left with Kris.”

“Yes, and—”

“You stuck with her.”

“Yeah.”

He lifts his lips from our hands, but not enough for me to see his face; only that he’s nodding again.

“I would have done the same thing. For Cal, I mean. If he needed me. That’s loyalty.” Hudson looks up, finally. I can see the brown specks in his eyes, like markers on a map I have memorized. “And the rest,” he says. The rest. There is so much more. Hudson still doesn’t know what Jolene did. “—how you guys unplugged from everything. No parties, no posting. You two didn’t join in, and you didn’t give a shit.

That was hard-core,” he says solemnly. “Brilliant, really.”

My thoughts of Jolene and Kris get cut off.

Hudson thinks I’m brilliant. And even though I know he’s wrong, that he’s making history into fiction, I don’t stop him. Because I like his version so much better than reality. I want to hear more about the me that he sees.

“Really?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

In the few seconds that follow there is only the sound of our breaths, the feel of his hands, the dig of his ring. Hudson studies me: cheeks, nose, neck, and eyes in quick succession.

“I’m not her,” I say, chin up, back straight.
See me,
I think.
Choose me.
I wait, and so do the dull thuds above us. It’s like time is suspended, until he leans into me and whispers:

“That’s the point.”

Hudson runs his thumb along my cheek, above my chin, across the length of my bottom lip, and pauses.

I dip my head into the curve of his neck and brush my lips against his skin. Not quite a kiss. More like a memory. It was my favorite place on him. And it’s there, burrowed in the familiar, winter-scent of him—

as Hudson runs his fingers up my neck and through my hair, as he sifts his fingers through the strands and tugs on them just enough to tip my head back until we’re facing—that I lose my sense of time and place.

Then my phone rings.

Kris.
Shit.

I freeze. Hudson and I are tense and tangled, holding each other tight; but with each ring, the room comes back to me: the metal headboard, the crystal chandelier, the lavender walls, the glass end tables.

My phone, still ringing. I should be reaching for it. I have to reach for it. But I’ve crossed a line, and I’m not sure how to get back. I want to talk to Kris, but I don’t want her to tell me this is a mistake. I’m still trying to decide what to do—take my hand off Hudson’s neck or put it farther into his hair—when the ringing stops.

I exhale.

Hudson untangles himself, but his eyes never leave me. Instead, he drops his chin and tips his forehead forward until it’s resting lightly against mine. A stray strand of his hair falls against my face. I can’t feel anything but the one spot where we’re touching. I can’t think anything but
It’s not enough
. For over a year I’ve waited, stepped aside like a swinging door, while Jolene walked down the halls with him, and everything we could have been. And all that time, this is what I was missing. This is what she took from me.

Now I’m taking it back.

“Stay with me,” he says. And I do.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER 6

AFTER SAYING GOOD-BYE to Hudson behind Bella’s house, I can still feel his imprint on my collarbone, cheek, and chin, like bruises. Not because he kissed me—we never made it past almost—but from the way he held me. (Head on my shoulder. Nose to my neck. Palms pressed flat to my back.) The spots where our skin met are tender, cold when the air blows over them. Pieces of my hair whip across my face.

I sweep them out of my eyes and look down the long, winding driveway.

No sign of Kris. She’s probably superpissed, and she has every right to be. I didn’t answer the phone.

I can’t believe I didn’t answer the phone. My stomach twists. I have to find her. I have to tell her.

I have to tell her about him.

And that’s where I get stuck. Because I should want to tell her. She’s my secret keeper, my mind reader. I should want to tell her everything. But I don’t. For the same reason I didn’t pick up the phone—

because it was this perfect moment, and she would have ruined it. Which seems impossible. Kris makes everything better. But I can already see the steely way she’ll look at me when I mention Hudson. She’ll say she warned me. She’ll be disappointed. And that’s not how I want to feel. I want to be happy.

I turn back toward the house. It looks deserted from down here. Dark. Quiet. I’m about to start back up the steps when I see a flicker of white in the window above me. I stop, look again, but there’s nothing.

Then the window flashes pink, then green, then blue. A dozen hands pump the air. Great. I’m going to have to walk through a late-night dance party to find Kris. Can’t wait.

Just then a few senior guys stumble by—the flip-cup players—shirt collars ringed with beer and sweat, fleeces unzipped, hats low over their faces. A girl in hot-pink heels follows, slipping on the final step. She catches herself at the last second, puts her arm out to steady herself, then pulls at her miniskirt.

The guys don’t turn around. “Hey, wait up!” she calls, running after them. Her heels hit the pavement hard:
click
,
click
,
click
,
click
.

Eventually the sound of heels disappears, but my heart picks up the beat. If Kris did stay to wait for me, it means she’ll miss curfew. I look at my watch. She’s got ten minutes. If she’s even a second late her parents will totally lose it—take her phone, computer, maybe even her car. Because of me.

I look up at the house. The dark window, the pumping arms, the flashing lights. Then I push off my right foot and take the steps two at a time.

I don’t pause at the kitchen. I don’t worry about how I look leaning up against the cup-covered counter or care that my sneakers squeak and stick to the floor. I scan the faces as quickly as I can—a few junior guys from drama and some sophomore girls laughing so loudly they can’t keep their cups straight; clear liquid spills with each cackle. But Kris isn’t here, so the kitchen doesn’t interest me. I walk past the tapped keg, through the living room, to the dance floor. The dining room is all lights and music. A disco strobe hangs from the chandelier. Pop music pumps from the wall-mounted surround sound. Everyone jumps to the beat. I squint into the pulsing light.

Pink. Black. Green. Black. Blue. Black.

No red curls.

I shoulder my way off the dance floor, cross back through the living room, and slip through the vanishing door. My blood pumps as I skip down the stairs as quickly as I can without slipping. I search the basement, the cave, even the spare bedroom Hudson and I were in; but everywhere I look, people are smoking, slurring, hooking up. I shove past them, across the cave again, out through the iron gate, and into the secret garden, as if somehow Kris will be waiting for me in the exact place I left her. As if time hasn’t moved forward. As if I never brought Hudson into that room. But when the iron door clangs shut behind me, Kris isn’t there, either, and the couple smoking next to the trellis, talking in hushed tones now that I’m here, is proof that time didn’t stop. It passed. It’s still passing.

I find the door to the ivy-covered gate surrounding the secret garden but miss the handle and end up slamming into sculpted metal. I ignore the pain in my face, chest, knee, as I turn the handle and push through the door properly this time.

“Who was that?” the smoking guy asks after I leave.

“You don’t remember her?” the girl asks, voice dripping with disbelief. “Last year she—”

I shove the words away and skip up the wood steps to the deck, but it’s empty. So is the hot tub. There are bubbles in it, but not because the jets are on. There’s an open bottle of gin, a pair of boxers, and a blow-up crocodile drifting in the water, which has a green tint. I head back down the steps into the dark, around the pool, and across the lawn. The grass hard and stiff. It crunches beneath my sneakers as I pick my way past shadowed groups of people and peer behind bushes.

“What the fuck?”

“Sorry,” I say, “looking for somebody.”

After a few more of those episodes, and twice as many bug bites, I reach the back of the yard. I’m ready to give up and call my mom for a ride—not cool, but not a death sentence either, since she’s told me to do exactly this if everybody’s drunk and I need a lift—until I hear a group of guys behind the last row of bushes wondering out loud what they can do to some poor girl.

“You see that G-string? Fuck-me red, man. She wants it.” The voice is slick, low, boasting. But even through a row of bushes I can tell it’s not entirely confident. I step closer, try to peek through the needles; but the bush is wide, thick. I can see only baggy jeans, cargo pants, and between them a set of long, honey-colored legs.

“Try a girl that’s conscious first, freak. You wouldn’t even know what to do with her.” This guy’s smiling; I can tell without seeing him. He’s the leader, or at least a step above the first kid. I inch closer, push a branch aside.

“Screw you,” the first guy says, sullen.

“That’s not just any girl right there, though,” says a third voice, smooth, easy. Someone who doesn’t care, not enough to stop the first two, anyway.

“No it isn’t,” the second voice says, slow, like he’s tasting each word, and enjoying it.

I push my face forward, into the needles. That’s when I see her: mouth open, eyes closed, cream-colored shirt slipping off her bony shoulder, exposing her turquoise bra strap; brown hair spread out on the lawn chair, like her legs, and three juniors circling her like vultures.

“That’s Jolene,” he continues. “Senior meat. The sweetest. And pretty much untouchable. Well, most of the time.”

I shove the branches aside and push myself through the sharp twigs and prickly needles. For a second I’m inside the bush, and then I’m out the other side. The junior guys aren’t staring at Jolene anymore; they’re looking at me, which makes sense, I guess. This is probably the only way I could win a contest between the two of us. She’s passed out, and I just walked out of a tree.

I brush a few needles from my face and push my hair behind my ears.

“Am I interrupting something?” I ask, hip to the side, glare in my eyes.

“Who the hell are you?” guy #2 says. He’s all cocky confidence. He steps toward me, to let me know how tall he is, how popular. Like I care. I don’t have anything left to lose in that area. I gave it all up a long time ago, but he doesn’t know that. He doesn’t remember me. But I remember him. He’s on the soccer team. I’ve seen him with Hudson and Cal in the hallways and practicing at the park.

“You don’t need to know who I am,” I say. “Cal’s looking for you.” The lie is easy enough. I keep my eyes fixed and still, tilt my head, raise my eyebrows. Cal is the cocaptain of the soccer team and Hudson’s best friend. He wouldn’t be pleased with this scene. And #2 knows it.

“Yeah, well,” he says, looking me up and down, the trail of his eyes sticky and thick like an oil slick. I let him look, just like Jolene would. I smile at him until he pushes past me. “We were just leaving anyway.”

The other two follow him. When I can’t hear them laughing anymore, I drop the act. My hands shake.

So does my breath. I stare at Jolene, who’s still sprawled across the lawn chair. If I hadn’t been here . . .

But I haven’t been here for over a year. Has this happened before? I swallow back the taste of bile in my mouth and bury the thought. If something that bad had happened—to Jolene, of all people—I would have heard about it. That’s the kind of story that flattens the forest.

I lift Jolene’s arm and lay it next to her on the chair, clearing a space so I can sit down and get my shit together. I can’t leave her back here. The same thing could happen again. And no matter what she’s done, I can’t let it.

I scoot down until I’m near her waist and push her legs together. She moves. I jump back, startled, like she just woke from the dead. She murmurs, rolls onto her side, lays her legs on top of each other, and curls up in a ball like she’s home in her bed.

I look at Jolene. Really look. Since I spend most of my time avoiding her these days, it feels strange.

So I start with the most familiar parts, her landmarks: the small scar on her neck from the edge of our necklace; the dimple in her ear from that third earring hole she always hoped would close up but stayed there instead, like her body refused to let her forget, like it was just as stubborn as she was.

Then my eyes travel down, to the hem of her skirt and the length of her legs. Even her feet are pretty, fit into ridiculous shoes for this weather. The fact that she’s wearing a skirt is bad enough, but sandals?