Wicked Games (19 page)

“Forever. Remember? You promised me that when you carved our names into the bench on the promenade.”

It was like she wasn’t even hearing him. Nothing was getting through to her.

“Things were different back then. And when things got rough, I wanted to help you, Lilah, but I can’t do it anymore. You need professional help.”

Lilah’s lips quivered with emotion. All the pain in the world seemed to have coalesced in her eyes. Her desperation—her delusion—was alarming.

“I don’t believe you. We’re going to be together forever. You’ve just forgotten how much you love me.”

“No, Lilah. I haven’t forgotten anything. It’s over. Nothing you do is going to change that. So stop messing with Jules to get back at me! You know, I could have you thrown in jail.”

Tentatively, conscious of how volatile his rage was right then, Lilah moved in closer to Carter. She placed a hand on his heart and held it there.

“You do still love me. It’s in there somewhere. It’s hidden right now, but it’s there. I know it.”

He swatted her hand away. “You’re delusional, Lilah.”

“You just need to be reminded,” she said. “Here . . .” She returned her hand to his heart and ran it down his chest. Then she unzipped his graduation gown.

“Stop it,” Carter said.

But she didn’t stop it. She was fumbling with his belt now.

He tried to push her off of him, but she had his belt unbuckled and she was on her knees, working on his zipper.

She gazed up at him. Tears were welling in her eyes. “I bet Jules wouldn’t do this for you, would she?” she said.

People were beginning to exit the theater building now. A trickle at first, the VIPs who’d processed down the aisle. They congregated outside the door waiting to
shake the hands of the seniors and their parents. Soon the hill would be clogged with people, stiff cardboard hats would be flying into the sky, discussions about the video of Jules would commence, and Carter and Lilah would still be here hiding behind the hibiscus, exacerbating an already bad situation.

Before Lilah could go any further, Carter pushed her off him and yanked himself away, rezipping his zipper, rebuckling his belt. “I said stop it. I. Do. Not. Love. You.”

She was stunned for a moment. It was like he’d hit her.

Then she lashed back. She went at him, slapping and scratching and hitting and bawling.

Carter wrapped her up in his arms, restraining her.

People were looking now, glancing in their direction.

“Get your shit together now, Lilah, and admit that you were behind all this,” said Carter. “Come on. I’ll take you myself.”

Keeping her caged in his arms, he jostled her, trying to turn her around and begin marching her toward the theater building.

Lilah flung her elbows, tried to punch him in the gut. That he’d sell her out like this boggled her mind. She’d kill him if she could—at least then he couldn’t go and love someone else. But his hold was strong. She couldn’t budge inside it. She tried kicking at his shins, but he held his ground. She had only one weapon available to
her, and so she used it. She bit him. She grabbed him between her teeth, took hold of him in the spot where his shoulder met his neck, his trapezius muscle, right above his jugular. She clamped his skin, his muscle inside her jaw. She dug deep. She broke skin. She was willing to take a part of him with her if that’s what was needed.

“Jesus, fuck, Lilah!”

He shoved her away from him with all his might. She stumbled. She fell. And she stayed down, curled in a ball, silently sobbing.

At this point, there wasn’t an ounce of sympathy he had left for her, and part of him felt guilty for it. But another part of him wanted to leave her there like that. However, with everyone looking, that seemed like a bad idea, so he went through the motions of seeing if she was okay, leaning in, reaching out to help her up.

And when he was close enough to touch, she pounced. She shoved him back. She was strong. She was a swimmer, a lifeguard. There was power in her arms.

Carter reeled back, his feet churning as he tried to keep his balance.

The particular path on which he traveled took him toward the hibiscus at a diagonal angle. The bushes were bedded in a landscaped row and the soil beneath them had been replaced with wood chips. There was a small divot, a moat where the grass gave way to these chips, and in this moat, there lived a family of voles. They’d dug
their tunnels. They’d shoveled the dirt away in places so that they’d have entrances and exits to their homes. They’d created holes in the earth and one of these holes happened to be in the path along which Carter stumbled.

His foot caught and twisted.

He felt a sharp pain.

And as Lilah fled the scene, sobbing hysterically, he went down with the feeling that something was broken.

An hour later,
Carter was in the emergency room at St. Francis Hospital, getting his foot X-rayed and having a bright blue cast put on the broken ankle the doctors discovered under the skin.

An hour after that, he was at home, lolling around the living room with his leg elevated, watching old episodes of
Futurama
on Comedy Central.

One thing was for sure. He knew—he just knew—that he would never talk to Lilah ever again. He’d stay away from her part of the beach, stick close to Jeff and the guys. His presence in her life would just cause her more problems. He hoped she would get the professional help she needed.

But what about Jules? He wished there was some way to protect Jules, too.

And then it occurred to him:
Fuck. UPenn. Four more years of this shit from Lilah.

He’d requested that he and Lilah be put in the same section for the August orientation weekend. That would have to change. Immediately.

He hobbled as quickly as he could down the hall to his bedroom, and rifled through the folder he’d filled with all the correspondence and brochures and admittance materials he’d received until he found the orientation contact number.

He punched in the numbers and was routed to an electronic greeting system. Once he’d followed the prompts through enough corridors, he was put on hold for a live person. As he waited for the admissions officer to get to him, he could feel the rage that had raced through him earlier that day surge back into his blood.

“University of Pennsylvania Admissions Office, Kelly speaking. How may I help you?”

“Hi, my name is Carter Moore. I’m wondering if I can maybe change orientation sections.”

“Well, you realize they’re all pretty much the same, right? Is there something specific you’re concerned about?”

Carter explained his predicament. He knew he sounded crazy, that this wasn’t really the school’s
problem. But Kelly in admissions was respectful and courteous. “Well, let’s see,” she said. He could hear her fingers clacking at the keyboard. “Lilah Bell. Hmm.”

He felt like he needed to apologize for bothering her. “You can’t do it, right. I’m just going to have to deal.”

“Carter, do you and Lilah still talk at all?”

“Sort of. I mean, she broke my ankle yesterday, if that’s what you mean by talk.”

Kelly in admissions didn’t laugh at this, thankfully. “You won’t have to worry about that sort of thing here,” she said. “Lilah Bell isn’t going to UPenn.”

“She is, though. Can you check again?”

“I’m looking at it right here. Lilah Bell. Dream Point, Florida. I’m not supposed to tell you this, but here’s what it says. Wait-listed, February nineteenth, and then denied, April eighth.”

Confused, Carter at first refused to believe what he was hearing. “That can’t be right,” he said. “She told me she got in. We celebrated together.”

“I think maybe you’ve been misinformed,” said Kelly in admissions.

Then the reality caught up with him. He’d never actually seen Lilah’s acceptance letter. In a flash, he saw the anxious panic she must have felt when she found out she had been wait-listed. Here was an explanation for the nervousness, the defensiveness, the unending arguments they’d been having back in February and March. She’d
been terrified. She’d been staring at the end of their relationship long before the possibility had crossed his mind, and that must have pushed her over the edge.

Still, did that excuse anything that she’d done over the past few months? Did that give her the right to terrorize Jules and attack him when he told her enough was enough?

“I see,” he said. “Well, I guess that’s all.”

“Wait, since I have you on the phone,” said Kelly in Admissions. “Your friend Lilah Bell is . . .” The professional tones in her voice cracked and a new emotional velocity entered her speech. “We all know Lilah and we’re not very happy with her. I personally have had about twenty conversations with her. And they’re not fun conversations. She calls us up virtually every single day and curses us out for having rejected her. She’s writing letters to President Hassinger, trying to get us all fired. I mean, it’s not going to work, but . . .”

“Jesus. That’s horrible,” he said.

“Your friend Lilah could get herself in real trouble if she keeps acting like this.”

“I—like I said, I don’t really talk to her anymore.”

After he hung up the phone, Carter lay back on his bed and thought about the things Kelly in admissions had just told him. He thought about his broken leg. He thought about the cruel things Lilah had done to Jules.

For the next hour Carter lay there motionless,
running through scenarios, working through all the possibilities, regretting more and more that he’d ever gotten involved with Lilah. If the way he’d treated her today didn’t stop her, he was pretty sure nothing would. She’d be chasing him forever, destroying everything and everyone he ever touched.

On Monday afternoon,
Jules’s mom closed the crystal shop early and drove over to Lilah’s house for a discussion. She shifted her weight back and forth as she waited for someone to answer the door, struggling to hold on to her Buddhist presentness.

The door opened a crack and Lilah’s mother, her hair blown out into a perfectly quaffed helmet, peeked through. The expression on her face was guarded and pinched. When she opened her mouth, her voice was nervous and sharp. “You’re—”

“Jules’s mom.”

Lilah’s mother pushed the door wider to let Jules’s mom in. She was an anxiously polite woman with
strangers, and her emotions twitched at the corners of her mouth as she led Jules’s mom into the kitchen and pulled out a chair at the sun-drenched table there for her.

“Please sit down,” she said. “Would you like something? Coffee? Tea?”

“No. I’m fine.”

Hovering over the counter and compulsively wiping nonexistent crumbs from its marbled surface, Lilah’s mom asked, “Have you decided what you’re going to do yet?”

Jules’s mom shot her a dumbfounded look. “What would you do if you were me?” she asked. “I can’t let this continue. I have to press charges.”

Lilah’s mom suppressed a frown. This woman might be messy in ways that made her cringe—those jean shorts, that loose-fitting spaghetti-strapped top, a sense of style fit more for a coed than a mother—she may have instinctively disliked the woman, but the details she’d presented on the phone were too specific; they explained Lilah’s nervous, secretive behavior over the past couple months too perfectly. Much as she didn’t want to, she knew the things Jules’s mom had told her must be true.

“There’s no other option?” she asked.

“Do you see any other option?”

“I was hoping—Lilah’s always been a troubled girl. Since we talked this morning, I’ve learned that she
hasn’t been following her treatment. I’m going to make sure that changes, of course, and . . . I thought maybe, if I promise to monitor her . . . I’m hoping we can maybe work this out between ourselves.”

Jules’s mom contemplated this for a moment, her pulse slowly beginning to pick up speed. Her beliefs preached mercy and compassion, and though she could be vigilant when she needed to, she strove to be a force of positivity in the world. But no matter how troubled this Lilah girl was, she had hurt and degraded her daughter in front of hundreds of people. Keeping her composure right now was taking up all the energy she had.

“Does she understand how wrong what she’s done is?” she asked, her hands trembling a little. “Whatever mistakes Jules may have made, there’s no way she deserved that kind of public humiliation. And the stalking? I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it.”

“I know. It’s hard to know what goes on in Lilah’s head. Her father and I, we’ve tried so hard with her. But it’s . . . she’s too much for us. Too much for anyone, actually.”

Jules’s mom raised an eyebrow. She would never say anything like that about her daughter, no matter what her problems were. It almost made her feel a little bad for Lilah. Her parents had obviously given up on her.

“We’re sending her back to the doctor. In a few days,” said Lilah’s mom.

“I’d say that’s long overdue. Wouldn’t you?”

Lilah’s mother narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth as though to defend herself against this sharp criticism, but then closed it again and nodded. “Let me go get Lilah,” she said. “She’s upstairs. We’ll be down in a moment.”

Lilah’s mom disappeared around the corner and up the stairs, leaving Jules’s mom alone to study the watercolor fruit on the wallpaper. The house was beautifully decorated, everything so appropriate, the correct tables in the correct places with just the right bland pictures mounted above them. She felt like she’d walked into a Pottery Barn catalogue, and again her heart went out to Lilah. It must be hard to live in such a sterile house. She herself had grown up in a home like this one. She understood the expectations a place like this held, the pressure to keep up appearances whether you agreed with them or not. But none of this justified the horrible things the girl had done to her daughter.

Lilah’s mom returned as promised, trailing Lilah behind her.

So there she was, the girl who’d been making Jules’s life such hell for these past two months. She didn’t look the type, unless maybe she did. Her straight shoulder-length hair was too perfectly combed, too carefully situated under her headband for a day of lounging around the house. Her skirt was too well pressed. Her
blouse too buttoned up. She looked like a doll that had been dressed up by someone else. But underneath this costume, Jules’s mother noticed, was an insolence that couldn’t be disguised. She kept picking at her clothes. The looks she gave her mother behind her back were icy, like something a prison inmate would give the jailor who’d just taken his privileges away.