Vengeance (9 page)

“Do you have any idea
where
they were going?” he asked.

I had plenty of ideas where they were going, none of which I was about to tell her brother. “Nope.”

He scanned the crowd, his jaw clenched. “How about Delaney then?”

“She’s around here somewhere,” I said. And I left before he could ask me to find her for him.

I wandered back toward my car. The streetlights were just starting to flicker on. One glowed right above my car, and I sensed movement from somewhere behind me. I froze, listening, waiting for the feeling again. The sounds from the barbecue were blocked by the school. “Delaney?” I said. And then I hated that I said it. That she was my first thought, always, even now.

Someone was there, between the rows of cars, I could feel it. Or maybe I was panicking again.

“Decker?” I heard. And then Tara rounded the corner, coming from between a minivan and a pickup truck. “Hey,” she said. “I saw you leaving. …”

I was leaving because I didn’t want to see Delaney here. Didn’t want to talk about mayonnaise or burgers. Didn’t want to think about Kevin off with Maya. And if everyone was
here, Delaney’s house was empty. I missed having a house to myself.

When I didn’t respond, Tara bit her bottom lip. “You okay?”

I didn’t know whether she was referring to right this second or in general. “Sure,” I said.

She grinned. “I just meant … with everything going on. And you’re alone. …”

“I kinda want to be.” I didn’t want to be rude to her—most people didn’t know this other side of her. That she knew when someone was hurting, and she reached out. She wasn’t like most people who pretend it doesn’t exist, like that makes it better.

She nodded, then smiled. “By the way, the field house? Not so smart.”

I wondered if she had seen me do it. Or if someone had told her. “Can’t prove anything.”

She shook her head. “Well. You still have my number,” she said as she turned to leave. Funny. I’d never not had her number since we were old enough to have numbers.

“Hey, Tara?” I called after her.

She glanced over her shoulder. “Kevin’s loss,” I said.

She smiled and twisted her dark hair over her shoulder, and as the streetlight flickered off again, all that remained was cherry lips and chocolate hair and the realization that Kevin was a moron. Tara trumped Maya any day.

“Right?” she said, and strode back to the barbecue.

I parked the minivan in my driveway and walked across the yard. The Maxwell home was perfectly, gloriously silent. I found myself walking carefully and slowly through the downstairs, not wanting to disturb it. I opened the duffel bag from earlier today, pulling out the clothes from my room. And then I pulled out Delaney’s notebook, one of those black-and-white composition books.

I opened the notebook now to see if my dad was in it. But he wasn’t. She knew, she had to have known, but she never wrote it down.

But there was never a page for Carson, either. Like putting pen to paper made the whole thing too final. She didn’t write anything about Troy, either, but there was an article folded and crammed into the front of the journal. I didn’t have to read it—I had read it a hundred times already. It’s the article that started everything.

It has a black-and-white picture—the lake, frozen over. You can’t see the other people running for the ice, for Troy, because they were already down the embankment. You can see my back and the lake and my arm, reaching off the page. I was holding Delaney’s hand, but you can’t see her. In the picture it looks like I’m reaching for something that doesn’t exist.

This was the trade. I was staring at the hole in the center of the ice as the lake took another. My hand on Delaney, claiming her instead.

The picture said everything.

The article said nothing. The article said that nineteen-year-old Troy Varga fell through the ice at Falcon Lake. The
article said that this was the second accident this winter. It said he was dead, but a girl survived. The article said nothing about the guy staring on, like an innocent bystander. It didn’t name the girl just outside of the photo. It didn’t say that Troy committed suicide or that he tried to take her with him. It didn’t say that the girl ran for the shore—for me—while the lake swallowed up Troy.

The picture didn’t show that she was soaking wet. That we turned and ran for home a second after that. Or that the police came later that day to take our statements.

I lied first. Said we were both out walking, saw him standing there, and Delaney went out to get him because she knew him.

Delaney said she was almost there when he fell, and the ice started breaking, and she ran back.

This was the article that set everything else in motion. That gave the lake power. That tied it all together. After this, people started whispering about a curse. Delaney out on the ice again, and it split open, trying to claim her. When it couldn’t, it took another.

I wondered if it would’ve made a difference if they’d known the truth—that Troy committed suicide and tried to kill Delaney in the process—if they would’ve thought the same thing. But the lie shook something free. The curse was born from it. From us.

We gave it power, and now it lived.

I couldn’t stand to look at this. Maybe that’s why she kept it at my house. But it wasn’t mine, and I didn’t want it.

I ran up the steps and stood before her closed door, thinking it was creepy to go in her room if she wasn’t there. Wondering if she would think I was snooping. What ever. I opened the door quickly, before I could talk myself out if.

Only she was in it, and she was changing, and the whole thing happened so quickly.

How quickly she held her shirt in front of her. How quickly I looked away.

How suddenly you’re not allowed to see things you’ve seen a hundred times before. Do things you’ve done a hundred times before. Say things you’ve said a hundred times before.

Truth is, transitioning from friends to something more was slow and awkward and terrifying. Were we supposed to kiss good-bye, even though we usually didn’t? And should I hold her hand when we were walking, even though we never did before? And was I supposed to look away if I walked into her room while she was getting changed, or was I not supposed to hide that I was checking her out, or was that totally creepy, either way?

It took a month to figure out I should just kiss her when I felt like it. Hold her hand if I wanted to. Look every time I got the chance.

But it took a second to fall out of it. There was nothing gradual about breaking up. Everything undid itself in a heartbeat. Cut and severed and clean.

I was in her room, definitely not looking at her. I didn’t know where to look or what to do or what to say. “I thought you were at the barbecue,” I said.

She scrambled to get her shirt on. “I hate crowds,” she said, as if I didn’t know anything about her.

“I didn’t know you were here,” I said. “I just …” I held up her notebook. “I was leaving this for you.”

It was almost comical. Funny how something so small can carry such finality.

I put the notebook on her desk, still not looking at her, and turned to leave.

Walk away, walk away, walk away
.

“Why isn’t my dad in there?” I asked, pointing to the journal. Sad thing, how desperate I was, too. Maybe she’d tell me she didn’t know until later that night, and her mom took the phone and she was locked in her room. I’d let her lie. I would.

She didn’t answer.

“Was it because it hurt too much to write in there?” That’s what happened with Carson. “Or because you didn’t want me to see? Or did you just not have enough time?” I said through my teeth.

“Because I didn’t want it to be true,” she said, and the simple honesty of it made me nauseous. And furious. There should be nothing simple about my dad dying.

“You’re serious,” I said. “That’s all you’ve got?”

“I don’t want to know, Decker.” This was her big, illogical defense. It reeked of desperation.

“But you do,” I said, turning back around. “You
did
know. I don’t get you, Delaney. You knew I was going to find out. You knew. You’re supposed to be the smart one. Didn’t you realize what I’d think?”

“Your dad was
dying
. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time wondering what you’d think of
me
.” I couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t focus on what she was saying. “I mean, you can’t get any madder, right?” she continued. “You already hate me. So what’s the point in lying?”

“I want you to tell me why,” I said. “Because I don’t understand. I don’t understand how we could be like that …” Everything that we were, which I couldn’t even put into words. … “And you would lie to me.”

She didn’t say anything. “Seriously,” I said, stepping closer. “What’s the point of it all? You knowing and doing nothing!” I felt the anger bubbling to the surface. Bubbling over. “Don’t you think you’re meant to do something with that information?”

Her head whipped to the side, like I had slapped her. We never talked about this. I always just deferred to her since it
was
her. And since it was also very solidly my fault in the first place.
I
was the reason she was out on the lake that day.
I
was the one who left her standing there. So what ever she chose or didn’t choose to do, she had every right to it. I figured she had her reasons, but now that it was my dad, I thought of all the things she could’ve done to prevent it. “You let him die!” I yelled.

Her fingers were pressed to the sides of her forehead, and her face was streaked with tears. I couldn’t remember when she started crying—whether it was before or after I started yelling. She was staring at the carpet, breathing heavily, and she yelled, “I couldn’t do anything!”

“You didn’t even try! You didn’t give him a chance!”

“I
did
try. I
told
him.” I felt all the air getting sucked out of the room. I felt the room stretch out and hollow. I felt my heart sink into the pit of my stomach. “I told him,” she repeated, and then she looked up at me. “But he already knew.”

Chapter 6

Everything inside of me froze. “No,” I said, and I thought about time. “Don’t lie to me. There was no time.” I pictured that day again. Her, in the lake. Us, in the house. She left. Her phone was off. I was home the whole day. I cooked with him. She didn’t have the time. “When?” It wasn’t possible.

She crossed the room and put her hand around my wrist, and I looked at her fingers, wondering in what universe she thought it would be okay to touch me right now. “I told him,” she whispered, “in July.”

I had this moment where I felt like everything inside of me was about to break open. Understood that this was a different side of her holding my wrist. July.
July
. Dying for months.
Lying
for months. I thought about all the ways this didn’t make any sense. I thought about my dad most of all. “He wouldn’t believe you.” He wouldn’t.

“
You
did,” she said. But that was different. My dad didn’t
believe in things that didn’t make sense. He believed in justice. Facts. Without facts, in life, like in the court room, it didn’t count.

“He
didn’t
believe you,” I said. He did nothing about it. Nothing.

“He knew, Decker. He asked if you told me. He asked me if
you
knew. And when I said you didn’t, he asked me not to tell you.”

He would’ve told me.

Her fingers were still around my wrist, like she was my friend, telling me I’d been betrayed by someone other than her. And in that moment, with time standing still, I felt her stepping closer. Felt her thumb rub across my cheek. Heard her shaky breath. Wondered where this part of Delaney ended and the next began. If there was a line between the person I’d known forever and the girl I couldn’t look at. Whether I was mad at them both.

I felt her arms around my back, felt myself sinking into her. “Decker,” she whispered, like she was scared of breaking some trance. “Please.”

And it doesn’t matter how mad I was after that because she was too close—too close to push away. Too close to remember why I wanted to, even. I rested my forehead on her shoulder and felt us sinking slowly to the ground.

I was numb.

So I sat there, with Delaney an inch away, sitting cross-legged in front of me. “Let me say it,” she said, but it’s not like I was doing
anything to stop her. It’s not like I could do anything to stop her right then. All I could do was lean back against the carpeted floor and pretend to be somewhere else. But I heard her say it all. That she went to my dad’s office. That he asked her how she knew, and she flat-out told him that she could sense illness, like pheromones or something. And he looked at her funny but didn’t say anything for a while.

And then her voice was closer, and I realized she was lying on the floor beside me, and her hands were hovering just over her body as she spoke, as if she were illustrating a point, except they were palms up. She looked like she was pressing against some invisible barrier, like she was back under the ice. I wondered if she had any clue she was doing it.