Delia shrugged, then went on. “Why is it that so many of the most important things happen with your mouth? Kissing, telling secrets, eating cake. I don’t know.”
“Aren’t you afraid your mom or someone will find the list?”
“Nah. I keep it hidden in a really good place. Which is lucky, because shitbag would kill me if he knew. Like it’s any of his business at all what I do.” Delia tipped her head to the side and bit one of her very-kissed lips. “The messed-up thing is how so many people think your body is their business, especially if you’re a girl. It’s not really the same with boys. But your body isn’t their business . . . unless they’re your pimp or, like, a plastic surgeon. Or a pimp plastic surgeon. Then it totally is.” Delia stuck out her tongue. They’d only been friends for a couple months, but June already knew this was classic Delia—she’d say something real and true, and then something ridiculous in the very next sentence. And the world would suddenly seem bigger and smaller and more serious and less serious. And Junie would feel just how incredibly lucky she was to have found this girl.
“Showing you this list is an important moment in our best-friendness,” Delia continued. “It’s like when a couple is dating and one gives the other a key to their house and that’s how they know it’s true love.” Delia paused. Then smiled. “Except, of course, we already knew it was . . .”
Chapter 19
Standing there in the sun, the charred wood is the blackest thing I’ve ever seen. I force myself to look away and watch the house. I’m checking for signs of movement inside, even though I already know there won’t be any—it’s Sunday morning, and if they’re around at all, her mother and stepfather will be at church.
I’m not ready. But if I wait until I am, I’ll never do it at all. I give myself a countdown, 3-2-1. I pretend Delia is here with me now, holding my hand and pulling me forward. I run.
I make my way across the backyard, up the back stairs leading to the porch. I open the screen door, heart hammering. There’s the row of rocks. I spot the gray one, third from the end. It glitters in the sunshine. I lift it, and the key is right there where it always was, where it has been for years, tarnished and freezing cold between my fingers.
I slide it into the lock. And then . . . there I am, inside Delia’s kitchen for the first time in over a year.
I’m struck by the smell, exactly the same as it always was. Like air freshener and new paint, even though the house hasn’t been painted for a very long time, and that indeterminate Delia’s house smell that’s impossible to describe. The kitchen is all tile floors and yellow walls and cabinets made out of some kind of fake wood that is apparently more expensive than real wood. Delia said her stepfather claimed it was all “top of the line.” And when Delia imitated him saying it, she used a voice like a 1920s gangster. “Toppa the line, fellas!”
I run up the cream carpeted stairs and down the hall. I’m struck with a million memories at once. There is no time for this.
At the end of the hall a cord dangles from the ceiling. I reach up and pull. The attic stairs come down slowly, unfold like bent legs. I climb up into the attic, heart hammering.
I make my way across unfinished floorboards to a bunch of cardboard boxes, and then to an old trunk, black lacquer over peeling cardboard. Delia’s box, still here, same as always. I need to know who FUCKER is, and the answer might be here. Right inside.
I open it.
And what I see now in front of me is this: three empty Wolfschmidt vodka bottles, two empty cigarette packs, four metal nitrous canisters stolen from someone’s job at a coffee shop. There are condom wrappers and two empty Robitussin bottles. But none of this is what I’m looking for. No. What I’m looking for is a small paper scroll, light blue, worn from years of rolling and unrolling. The name at the top will be Fraser Holmes, and the name at the bottom . . . is what I am hoping to find out.
I rifle through the box, touching each item one by one. There’s a salt shaker she stole from the diner for no reason, a handful of loose googly eyes, a teeny tiny plastic bag with tiny red lips on the front, a dozen other random items. Only, no scroll of rolled-up paper. I check three times: it isn’t here. But flush against the bottom of the box is something I didn’t notice at first: an envelope, address written on the back in Delia’s lumpy little-boy handwriting. And the name at the top is mine.
My breath catches in my throat. When did she write this? And why didn’t she send it?
I slip the letter into my jacket, close the trunk. I walk back across the attic, down the dark stairs, and push the staircase back up into the ceiling.
I check the time. Delia’s mother and stepfather won’t be back for at least twenty minutes. I go to her bedroom, the place we spent so many hours together, snuck out of and snuck back into, where we laughed ourselves sick, where we told all our secrets.
I turn the knob. The door swings open, and I freeze. Her room is completely cleaned out. The walls are bare, no sheets or pillows on the bed, the surface of her desk is empty, and the floor is spotless. I open a dresser drawer; there’s nothing in it, in any of them. She’s been dead for four days.
I feel a swell of anger at I’m not even sure who. I wonder if her stepfather did this, claiming it would be easier on her mother not to have to see Delia’s things. As though cleaning out a room means she never existed at all.
Where is all her stuff? I need to see it. The only bits of her that are left.
Down in the garage I find a pile of trashbags stuffed full. I open one. There are Delia’s clothes—a purple sweater she always wore drooping off one shoulder, a pair of jeans with huge holes in each butt pocket, a brown leather jacket she loved. I lean down, and the smell of her rises up. I have a sudden intense desire to take all these things, to take them away and keep them safe, in case . . . in case what? In case Delia comes back from the dead? The second bag contains more clothes, and books with fairies and dragons and princesses peeking out from their covers. There’s one full of bedding, her pillows, comforter. The last bag is trash—crumpled-up paper towels, tissues, cotton balls streaked with eyeliner. And there at the bottom of the bag is a plastic stick with a clear plastic cap over the top. A pregnancy test.
Holy shit.
Heart thudding, I reach in and flip it over, and there I see two pink stripes. Pregnant.
Was Delia . . . ? Again?
I check my phone. I have five minutes or less before they come home. I close the bags, put them all back where they were, walk through the house, and shut off every light.
Then I go out the back door, lock it behind me, and I’m gone.
Chapter 20
1 year, 3 months, 17 days earlier
If June was anyone else on earth, she wouldn’t even have realized anything was wrong. But June was incapable of not noticing the tiniest detail about Delia—she did it without even trying. It’s like when Delia was around, the borders of June’s skin weren’t there. Delia wrapped her up and sunk right in. At its best it felt like the most delicious kind of relief, to have someone in there with her, in her brain and heart, filling them up. Someone to make her less alone. But other times, when things were like this, it felt scary having to share her inside space with someone whose light was so bright but so easily, suddenly, switched off. And lately, Delia’s light was flickering.
Last week Delia had come to school high twice. She kept a water bottle full of vodka in her bag and sipped from it often. The other day June mentioned, very gently, that maybe Delia might want to take it easy a little. “I’m not your mother, June,” Delia said, her voice sharp. “And you’re not mine.” It was the first time Delia had ever brought up June’s mother like that. And June had felt . . . she wasn’t sure. Protective wasn’t it, exactly. But hurt, somehow, which was of course silly when she really thought about it, because basically everything Delia even knew about June’s mother was because June had told her. And besides, Delia was ri
ght of course, they were different, and the stuff with June’s mother was probably why June got so worried about Delia. But June’s own mother, messed up as she was, was at least consistent in her messed-up-edness. Delia, on the other hand, you never quite knew what she was going to say or do, especially lately. You never knew whether she was going to be the sparkly, charming person who glowed from the inside, who everyone loved, or more and more lately, a girl with a core of darkness that scared June sometimes, because as much as she thought she knew everything about Delia, June honestly couldn’t say how dark it was or how deep it went. There was a giant black hole inside her, she wanted to drag June into it. And June would let her, is the thing. She wouldn’t be able to help herself if she wasn’t very, very careful. Delia absorbed her. Phagocytosis, June had learned at school, that’s what it was called when amoebas did it. It’s how they ate. It’s how they survived.
But June needed to survive too. For the longest time that meant she needed Delia. Only now, sitting in Delia’s kitchen, staring at her friend, June didn’t quite know what she needed anymore.
She just knew this: something was going on with Delia. June could feel the light flickering inside her own chest.
Delia crunched down on a sunflower seed, spit out the shells, and ate the tiny seed inside. Then she looked up thoughtfully and said, as though it had only now occurred to her, “If I got pregnant I’d kill myself.” Then she crunched another seed, shell and all, chewed it, and swallowed it down. June stopped, a seed halfway to her lips. She paused only for a second before tossing it into her mouth, salt stinging her tongue.
“No you wouldn’t,” said June. She tried to keep her voice as light as Delia’s, even though this conversation was making her heart pound. She’d been planning to make a joke, like, “You’d get fat and then you’d kill yourself.” But there was something about Delia’s tone—June couldn’t even bring herself to say it.
Delia looked up and smiled. “Okay, maybe not. I sure as hell would kill that baby though.” Delia watched June, one eyebrow raised. June knew Delia was waiting for her to react.
“It wouldn’t be a baby yet,” June said. “I mean, not at first.” She pulled out another seed, cracked it open. “It would be goo.” But even as she was saying the words, she knew it was more complicated than that. That she didn’t mean anything she was saying nearly as casual as she said it.
“Yeah,” Delia said. “I guess you’re right.” Delia threw another seed into her mouth and split it. Then spit the shells into her palm. She stuck one onto the tip of her finger so it looked like a pointy black-and-white fingernail. And then, without glancing up, she said, “So I had an abortion this morning.” She put the other half of the shell on her middle finger and held her hand out. She didn’t look up.
“Samesies,” June said. “My third this week.” She knew Delia was kidding, trying to rile her up the way she used to. June used to fall for this sort of thing all the time. Not now, though.
June scanned Delia’s face for the tiny hint of a smirk that would bloom into a naughty grin. Only the thing was, the hint of smirk was not there. June closed her mouth and swallowed, anxiety sliding all the way down into her gut. “Wait, but really? Are you okay?” June was calling Delia’s bluff, she thought. She knew it wasn’t true. She didn’t like this particular game anymore. She wanted to play her part and get it over with.
But, still, Delia didn’t smile. “Sure,” Delia said. “No big.” She shrugged like it was nothing. Which is how June knew she was serious.
June stared at Delia’s face, the ground shifted, Delia looked like someone June maybe didn’t actually know very well. Then the world lined up again and everything snapped back into place. June’s head was filled with a million questions she knew she wouldn’t ask.
“Did it hurt?” June said finally.
Delia shrugged. “Not more than the boning that got me there.”
June opened her mouth, her heart beating hard. Was Delia saying . . .
Delia looked at June’s face, shook her head, and let out a cold laugh. “I wasn’t raped,” Delia said. “Jesus, Junie. It hurt because it wasn’t good.”
“Oh,” June said.
“Because I wasn’t that into it. So the condom broke.”
“Right.”
“It was this guy from Sammy’s party last week. Boring party, you didn’t miss anything. The dude was so awkward with his hands, like he’d just been issued a pair and hadn’t read the instruction manual yet. And his breath smelled like . . .” Delia started to perk up then. “Okay, remember that time that weird girl at the diner showed us her infected belly-button piercing and we almost threw up because it smelled so horrible? Well, his breath smelled like he’d been sucking on that chick’s belly button. So it’s lucky I got an abortion. It would have been a really stinky baby, probably would have stunk me up from the inside with its weird-ass breath.”
June tried to smile then, but she couldn’t. She felt sick. Delia went back to her sunflower seeds, crunching away. She seemed relieved, like a weight had been lifted. The weight was lifted because June had to carry it now. Delia kept the tiny striped shells and stuck one to each of her fingers with spit. When she had ten, she held up her hands.
Chapter 21
Back in the car, driving away, heart hammering, a letter from my dead best friend on my lap. As soon as I’ve gone far enough, I pull over.
I tear open the envelope. The letter inside is dated over a year ago, a fact which fills me with disappointment and also, somehow, relief.
Dear Junie,
Oh, hi there. It’s me, Delia. Isn’t that a weird way to start a letter? Isn’t it weird that I’m writing you a letter in the mail? It’s just like a text message but longer, more like an e-mail, except that a tree is involved. Heh. This is starting off weird. But I guess that’s sort of the point of this whole thing . . . things have gotten kind of weird in the past couple of weeks. And I don’t know how to unweird.
I’m sorry things have gotten weird is the first thing I wanted to say. Did you just count and see that I used the word “weird” five times already in this letter (and six if you count that last one and, like, fifteen if you count all the ones I wrote in invisible ink). I love you (you know this). You’re my best friend (you know this, too). And if you think I did something, I wish you’d talk to me about it. Because we used to talk about everything. Although I guess lately there’s been stuff I haven’t told you, either.
So here’s something: Ryan isn’t right for you. And the reason I’m saying that is not because he’s too boring and normal or because his face is made of meat or because I’m worried he’s taking you away from me (I mean, all of those things too of course, ha-ha, but it’s not just that). Really it’s because he is, as it turns out, an asshole. He’s been calling me lately. I picked up the first time because I assumed it was you on his phone, but it wasn’t. And he wasn’t calling about you, either. He’s been calling to . . . It feels weird to write in a letter, but let’s just say when things got super odd the other night part of that was my fault. But not most of it, most of it was him. Here is a thing that you will not like, but I hope you will believe me because I swear it is true, and I was not too drunk to be a good judge of this (we drank the same amount, but, girl, you have the tolerance of a fruit fly and I have the tolerance of the big burly hairy dude the fruit fly landed on): while you were out of the room when we were playing that game, he tried to go on without you. And I’d been planning to tell you this. I thought we’d have a chance to discuss everything after that night but we haven’t really talked since then, not in the way we always do. And maybe some part of me is hurt that you just immediately assumed I was to blame. When I wasn’t.
I’m not sure if I’ll have the balls to send this letter or not. I guess if you’re reading it, you’ll know what I did. And if you’re not reading it, then I guess I’m writing this to myself. Hello, D, you’re looking
pretty sexy today, hotness.
But really, Junie, you have to believe me. I would never, ever, ever lie to you.
Yours always and forever,
D
I let the letter fall into my lap. My heart hammers. I don’t know what to think, what to make of this. I just know I need answers, and that of the two people in the world who ever had them, only one is still alive to give them to me. . . .
I’m watching Ryan’s face as his eyes move across the page. I keep having to remind myself to breathe.
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking for here.” He leans back against the wall next to his bed, crosses his legs at the ankle.
He knows I’m staring. I can tell he’s trying to keep his face calm, but I can see it in his eyes the moment he gets to his name. “What the heck even is this?” he says. Heck. When he usually says hell. “You don’t . . . actually believe any of this, do you?” He looks up then.
The world is spinning too fast, and I am going to fly right off. I might be sick. My head nods.
“But how can you? She was messed up in the head! When did she send it?”
“She didn’t,” I say.
“Then how do you have it?”
But I don’t answer. There is no way in hell I’m going to tell him. No way in heck, either.
He keeps going. “From the very beginning I knew that girl was messed up, and I tried to be her friend for your sake, but I never liked her from the start. And she tricked you into thinking you had some sort of special relationship beyond regular friendship. But did you even know how crazy she was? Do you know she hit on me that night? And after?” His words are coming out in a frantic rush now, like he’s scared to stop talking. “This letter is a fantasy. What she wished would happen, I guess. She hit on me so many times I can’t even count them. I never told you, because I didn’t want to hurt you and you already didn’t seem to be seeing very much of her anymore, so I thought there would be no point. Like, who the heck wants to know their friend, even a former friend, could do something like that? But it’s true.” He softens his voice. “Come on, you know I wouldn’t do this . . .”