“And how do you find her?” my mother asked with real concern, like we were taking a focus group poll.
His eyes locked on mine. “I find her marvelous. I always find her marvelous.” He made a big show of looking at the clock. “Eight thirty? I’ve got to run. Goodbye,” he said to everyone. To me, “I’ll work on both those projects we talked about.”
I’d forgotten about him visiting the auto-body stores. “Great.”
He grinned. “See you tomorrow.”
“I can’t wait.”
When he was gone, Annie said, “Were you and Scott making out?”
My mother said, “Don’t be ridiculous, Annie. Jane is dating David.”
“Not anymore,” I announced.
“Why not?”
“Because I think I only liked David because he liked me. I never bothered to ask myself if I liked him.”
“Do you like Scott?” Annie asked.
“He’s a really good friend.” I wanted to change the subject. “And unlike some people, he doesn’t think I’m crazy.”
“Unlike some people, he may not have all the facts,” my mother said.
“How did you become so sure of yourself, Mother? How do you know you’re right and I’m nuts?”
“I’ve listened to the experts, Jane, and they say—”
“What about me? I’m the expert on me. What do you really know about me?”
My mother got very still and when she looked at me, it was like she was looking at me with her entire soul. “You’re right, Jane. I feel like I don’t know you anymore. I don’t understand what’s happened to us. Between us. I—I feel like I’ve failed you. Ever since Bonnie killed herself, there’s been this gap I haven’t known how to bridge. Oh, Jane, I’m so sorry.”
She was standing by the side of my bed, head hanging down, crying and holding my hand. This time I could feel the tears.
“Bonnie didn’t kill herself,” I said. I was done being the girl who ordered the cherry Slurpee.
“What?” My mother looked up at me, shocked. “Of course she did.”
“No. I have to tell you something. Something I should have told you a long time ago.”
Chapter 28
I remembered Bonnie’s funeral. It took place in the same chapel my father’s funeral had taken place in six months before, but it had been early summer then and now it was winter.
“Why would you go into a hot tub in the winter?” I heard the echo of my words to Bonnie.
“Stop trying to control me.”
The church was full when my mother and I got there. I remember my mother reaching for my hand, but I kept it clenched in a fist at my side and after two attempts she stopped. “I know you weren’t as close this year as you had been,” my mother leaned toward me to say, “but I know this is hard—”
“Stop it.” You don’t know. How can you? How can anyone.
“Jane, please, it’s—”
“I told you not to come.”
“Sweetheart, sometimes you want someone to lean on. Even when you don’t know it.” I could just spill it, I realized then. Just turn to my mother and tell her I’d been at the party and I didn’t think Bonnie committed suicide. That it just didn’t make sense. I had no proof, but—
A voice next to me on the pew said, “Jane. How are you?” and I was looking up into Liam’s handsome face. “I know you and Bonnie were friends,” he said, like we were just casual acquaintances, like we hadn’t ever kissed in the back of his car, “and I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”
“Hello, I’m Rosalind Freeman, Jane’s mother,” my mother introduced herself to him.
“Liam Marsh.” They shook hands.
My mother rifled her mental Rolodex. “Dudley Marsh’s son?”
“The one and only.”
“Your father is a very upstanding member of the community.”
“Upstanding enough that you would let me take your daughter out?” Liam asked. He winked at me. “If Jane doesn’t object, of course.”
My mother smiled. “If Jane doesn’t object.”
“In fact, a group of us are sitting up front. Then afterward we thought we’d have a sort of memorial. Jane, if you want to come—?”
“Go on,” my mother had said, almost excited. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. A change is what you need. It will be good for you.”
I still could have done it then, come clean. It wouldn’t have been too late. Bonnie hadn’t even been buried.
But my mother smiled her brave smile and seemed so eager for me to go with Liam. He was a nice boy from a good family. Maybe what he’d told me was true. Maybe Bonnie did OD on her own.
And maybe it didn’t matter. Because looking from him to my mother, who was nodding and gesturing to me to go, now he was all I had. Bonnie was gone. It was time for me to start over.
Besides, wasn’t this what I wanted? Why I’d gone to all the trouble of doing the make over that had gotten us invited to Trish’s party?
My mind veered dangerously back to the afternoon before the party, when I’d been bothering Bonnie about her appearance. She had a lot going for her in the looks department, including big boobs, but she never did anything with it. That day I tried to give her suggestions about outfits, but she ignored me. “It doesn’t matter what I wear because I don’t care what these people think and I don’t want to be friends with people who judge me based on my clothes,” she said as she stepped into the pair of overalls she wore every weekend. Her one concession was to wear a tank top under them and one of my new cardigans over them instead of her oversized unicorn T-shirt underneath and a sweatshirt on top. But that wasn’t much.
“At least let me tweeze your eyebrows.”
“You’re nuts,” she said. “You’ve gone totally around the bend. You leave my eyebrows alone. Plus I doubt I’ll stay long enough for anyone to notice. You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Bonnie, it’s our big chance.”
“Why, are they outlawing boredom at all other times?”
“Come on,” I pleaded. “You’ll have fun.”
She hesitated for a moment, then her shoulders slumped and she shook her head. “You and your Jedi mind tricks.”
Mark Ellis, the bait I’d used to lure her there, was the first person we saw when we arrived at the popular kids’ party. He was the principal’s son, which gave him an air of authority. With ice-blue eyes, eyebrows and eyelashes so blond they were almost invisible, and lips that were always chapped during the winter from snowboarding, he looked rugged and a little older than his seventeen years. I don’t know if it was because his eyes were so cold or if it was just instinct, but Mark gave me the creeps.
Not Bonnie, though. She’d been in love with him since school started, even though he was two years older. As we walked through the door, he said to her, “Hey, aren’t you a lifeguard at the pool in the summer? I remember seeing you there.”
Bonnie slid from my mind after that because that’s when Liam Marsh, Mark’s best friend and my personal pick for hottest guy in the junior class, came over and started talking to me. The next time I saw Bonnie, it was much later in the night and she was grabbing me and pulling me into the bathroom. She started taking off her clothes.
“Isn’t this fantastic?”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Mark wants us to go skinny dipping with him in the Jacuzzi.”
“No,” I said, stopping her as she pulled off her shirt. “That’s a bad idea.”
She looked at me and hiccuped. “Why?”
“Because you’ve had a lot to drink and it’s cold out there and you don’t know what will happen.”
“I thought the reason we came here was to have experiences we’d never had. With boys.” She was pulling off her pants then.
“It is. It was. But not like that.” Her eyes were unfocused, and as I watched, she tripped over her pant leg and almost fell down. I reached out to steady her, but she pushed my hands away.
&nbs
p; “Don’t touch me,” she said, glaring at me. She stood up and steadied herself on the side of the sink. “Why are you staring at me? Huh?” Her expression was challenging, her jaw tight. “Wait, I know. You’re jealous.” She laughed maliciously. “You’re jealous because I’m going to be kissed before you are.”
“That’s not true. I just don’t think what you’re doing—”
“Jane is jealous, Jane is jealous,” she sang, weaving her head back and forth. “Well, let me tell you something, Jane, you may end up a prude stick-in-the-mud, but I don’t want to be one.”
“Bonnie, you’re not acting like yourself.”
She sneered. “You mean I’m not acting the way you want me to. Letting you control me.”
My face burned like I’d been slapped. Before I could say anything, Bonnie was going on, saying, “Everyone else seems to like the way I’m acting just fine. Especially Mark.”
I found my voice. “If he really likes you, he’ll still want to kiss you tomorrow.”
“Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today? That’s what my mom always says. Step aside, Jane. I told you it wouldn’t matter what I wore.” She was naked except for a towel now.
“Why would you want to go in a Jacuzzi in the winter?”
“Stop trying to control me.”
I stood in front of the door.
She stepped up to me and stood with her nose touching mine. “Get out of the way, you jealous bitch, or I’ll make you.”
“What’s wrong with you? What have you been—”
She slapped me.
“Now will you get the fuck out of the way?”
I did. I knew she was very out of it, the girl who slapped me wasn’t a girl I recognized, but I was too mad to realize what that meant. I spent the rest of the night upstairs just talking with Liam and listening to songs on his iPod and being upset in ways I didn’t understand about what Bonnie had said. I was not controlling. I was just trying to help her. Help us. Wasn’t I? I must have dozed off because the next thing I remember is Liam rubbing my shoulder and saying, “We need to get you home.”
“Where’s Bonnie?”
“There’s been an accident. Come on, get your shoes on and we’ll get you out of here.”
I was completely awake then. “What kind of accident?”
“The kind where the police come. You don’t need to be here for that.”
“But—”
“Listen, Jane. This is going to be hard for you, but Bonnie—Bonnie died. She took too many drugs and she killed herself.”
I laughed. I had to laugh. Because it was impossible. He had to be joking.
“I’m serious. And the police are coming soon. And there’s no reason for anyone to know you were here.”
“But Bonnie wouldn’t kill herself.”
“Trust me. This is what happened. But you won’t have to tell anyone about it if you just let me take you home now. Otherwise there could be a lot of trouble.”
He was looking down into my eyes with his big brown soulful ones and I knew he had only my best interest at heart. I nodded and we left.
“I want to see her,” I said.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes. I have to.”
He said, “Fine,” and pointed to the door that led to the deck.
She lay at an angle in the Jacuzzi, her head bobbing on the surface of the water, hair splayed out around her, her body beneath it. Her arms floated peacefully at her sides. Her eyes were open, lifeless pools.
Even with the heat turned up full blast in Liam’s red Jeep, I shivered the entire way home. Before he let me out at the end of the block, he said, “You okay?”
I nodded.
“Good girl.” He grinned at me and cupped my cheek in his hand. His lips came over mine, soft, then harder and demanding, pushing me against the door until the handle gouged my back. I knew there was something I was supposed to be remembering, that something had just happened, but all I could think about at that moment was that Liam Marsh was kissing me.
“Remember, you were home all night tonight. You didn’t see your friend, and you didn’t sneak out to go to a party.”
I nodded. How could I think of anything except his kisses?
“I’ll call you and we’ll go out.”
He did. We went out almost every night for the rest of my freshman year. Under his wing I became popular. I had everything I’d ever wanted.
Bonnie’s suicide shocked everyone. “How—what? Why? Jane, why would she take her own life?” her mother said, pleading with me for answers.
“I don’t know,” I told her.
“A godforsaken party.” Her father paced their kitchen, wearing new grooves in the yellow linoleum. “Bonnie never went to a party in her life.”
“Who were those people she was with?” her mother wanted to know. “I know you girls weren’t as close recently, but who were they? Why did she want to be with them?”
Her father raked his hand back and forth over his hair, leaving it standing up in patches. “She said she was going to your house. Why would she lie to us? Why would she do this?”
“I feel like I didn’t even know her anymore, my own daughter,” her mother sobbed. “Oh dear, I’m sorry, Jane, I know this must be hard for you too.”
I was numb. I pushed the pain down and the confusion down and I chose to believe what Liam had told me and what I had told everyone. I became the girl who hadn’t been at the party, the girl who dated Liam Marsh. The girl who was popular. Who everyone loved. The girl who forgot the truth about Bonnie.
I’d traded my best friend for a few kisses and a place at the popular lunch table. Because after my dad died, I was too scared to be left alone. I didn’t see that I wasn’t alone at all. I had Bonnie and my mom and Annie. And myself.
I’d been a coward. But I was done with that now.
“Bonnie didn’t commit suicide,” I repeated in my hospital room, saying it to my mother and Joe and Annie.
“What are you talking about, Jane?
“I was at that party. Bonnie wasn’t alone in the corner with her book like they said. She was with Mark Ellis. I think he gave her something, some kind of drugs. I tried to get her to stop, but she wouldn’t. I think he must have given her too much. She OD’d, but not on purpose, I know not on purpose. She died in the Jacuzzi and they must have moved her afterward. I saw her, there in the water. She looked—peaceful. Like a princess.” I gasped when the word princess came out of my mouth. A dead princess. How had I not realized what I’d been photographing all these years? “I tried to get her to stop, but she wouldn’t. She slapped me and told me to get out of the way. I tried to get her to stop, I did, but—” I couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down my face.
“Jane, what are you saying?” my mother demanded. “You weren’t at the party. You were at home. In bed.”
“I snuck out. That’s where I met Liam. And—” It was time for me to come clean about this to myself as much as everyone else. “I think he only dated me to keep me quiet. It’s hard to talk when you’re being kissed.”
My mother was frozen. “All these years, all this time. Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“I didn’t know anything definite. I just had a hunch. And I guess it seemed like it didn’t matter. Whether she’d tried to kill herself or overdosed accidentally, she would still be dead.”
“There’s a huge difference.” My mother’s hands were clenched. “An enormous difference.”
“I know that now,” I said miserably. Bonnie mattered. Her parents mattered. And the fact that someone got away with murder definitely mattered. “I almost did tell you at the funeral. But then Liam came over and you gave permission for me to go with him. How could I after that? You seemed so happy to be rid of me.”
“Rid of you? Darling, I just wanted you to be happy. I knew what Bonnie meant to you; you two had been inseparable and I thought maybe if you had new friends, it would help ease your grieving. I was trying to let you know
you didn’t have to stay to take care of me.” My mother sank down into a chair with her head in her hands. Joe put his arm around her. “My God, her parents.”
I swallowed, gulping back tears. “I want to call them. To tell them.”
My mother looked up. “No, darling, I’ll do that. You need to focus on getting better. It’s too hard.”
“Doing something hard will help me get better.” I’d been sitting on the sidelines of my own life, watching it all through autofocus, for too long.
Joe had been completely silent through my story. Now he came toward me and stood at the side of the bed. His face was set, almost angry. He said, “That was a brave thing you just did, kid. And a brave offer. I’m impressed. Shake hands.”
He held out a hand. I held out my hand. We shook. I felt more tears prick my eyes.
“Good. Now I think we’ll both agree I should get your mother and sister home.”
I looked at them. My mother looked shattered, fragile. And old.
”Thank you,” I said, with genuine gratitude. “Thank you, Joe.”
They left the room, her arm around his waist, his over her shoulders.
Annie came over and kissed me on the cheek. “I thought it was brave too. I have the best big sister in the world.”
“I have the best little sister,” I whispered. Tears hovered at the corner of my eyes.
“What kind of cake do you think you will have for your welcome-home cake?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Ice-cream cake.”
“That sounds like an excellent choice.”
She left and I was alone.
I waited until I heard the elevator doors open and close before reaching over and pressing Robert Frost’s toe.
My father’s voice, low and sweet, came to me, wrapping me in its honey.
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…”
The tears poured out of me in a torrent, like a cleansing stream. When they were done, I was spent, exhausted. I dozed off. Through half-closed eyes I had the impression of someone peering into my room, but it must have been a dream because it stayed quiet.