“He was.” I clenched my fists on his fancy bedspread. “Stop trying to gaslight me.”
Pierce looked even more confused. “Gaslight you?”
I sighed. “Never mind. It’s—Ingrid Bergman. This old movie. Her husband tries to make her think she’s crazy by messing with the lights in their house.”
Pierce stared at me like I’d started speaking in Pig Latin. “That’s not what I’m doing. Your dad came to stay here because your mom threw him out.”
Now I actually laughed aloud. “My mom? My mother threw my dad out?” I got to my feet, shoving the shoes and T-shirt off onto the bed. “I can’t even . . .” The ache was pulsing. I rubbed my forehead with both hands. “I don’t know who told you that, or if you just made it up, but that did not happen. That could never have happened.”
“Okay. Fine.” Pierce’s voice was cool. He took a step backward. “I’ll drive you home. And you should take that stuff, either way. I kept it for you.”
I wadded the shoes and shirt under my arm. I didn’t want them. I didn’t want their nearness, their memories, the ghost of Dad’s scent still on them. But I wasn’t going to leave them here either, where they could be some kind of proof for Pierce’s messed-up story. I stalked past him, back down the steps and out the front door into the cold.
He drove me home without saying a word. When I opened the car door to climb out, he finally turned to face me. “I didn’t—”
I hesitated, halfway out of the car.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he finished.
“I’m not upset.” Total lie. But I kept my face blank.
“Okay.” There was a beat. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He flashed me that perfect half smile, the one that makes the dimple in his left cheek deepen. “Good night, Stuart. Go check your socks.”
I gave him a half smile back. “Shut up.”
On the front porch, I stopped to stuff Dad’s shirt and shoes into my book bag. Then I let myself inside.
According to the clock, I was only twelve minutes later than I should have been. No one would have noticed the difference. If anyone had been around to notice. Mom still wasn’t back from work, and Sadie was out of sight. As I climbed the stairs, I heard the sound of the shower running, and I caught a hint of green apple shampoo.
I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. The ache swung back and forth in my skull like a wrecking ball. If I didn’t move, it seemed to swing a little less, but furious thoughts still crashed and tumbled around it.
Pierce had remembered wrong. Or heard wrong. Or gotten something wrong. There was no way. No way.
God, I wished we’d just gone out for coffee with the rest of the group. Maybe they were still at the coffee shop. All of my friends, without me. And Rob with them. He could be sitting between Hannah and Nikki right now. Tomorrow he’d probably be dating Hannah. Or in love with Nikki.
Empty stage. Empty stage. Empty stage.
The spotlight, the shining boards, the rippling curtain drifted into place.
Titania’s lines. Act Four. “Come sit thee down upon this flowery bed . . .”
As fast as I could, I filled the stage with words. Soon there wasn’t room for anything else.
CHAPTER 14
I was still lying on my bed, eyes closed, when damp fingers touched my ankle.
I jolted up.
Ophelia stood beside me. Rivulets of muddy water dribbled from her hair onto the carpet. Her eyes were blue-white. Dead eyes. Corpse eyes. She touched the book bag where Dad’s stuff was hidden. “I have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to redeliver . . .”
“You what?” I whispered.
“I said, what did Pierce do to you that it brought on a fainting spell?” Sadie folded her arms over her pale green bathrobe. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I wormed up onto my elbows. “I’m okay.”
“Was it a better day at school?”
“I think so. I mean, yes. I don’t know.”
“Very confidence-inspiring.” Sadie flicked a strand of shower-wet hair over her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. I just have a headache. I always have a headache. I have arms. I have knees. I have a headache.”
“Okay.” Sadie stepped back, raising her hands. “And you’ve got a great attitude too.” She moved toward the doorway. “Would you like a grilled cheese sandwich? I told Mom I’d feed you.”
I rubbed my forehead. “That makes me sound like a guinea pig. Thank you very much.”
“Guinea pigs don’t eat grilled cheese.” Sadie gave me a sharp look. “Did you and Pierce have a fight or something?”
“What?” I sat up, crossing my legs and looking away. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you look like you do after every fight. Kind of sulky and sad and Victorian.”
I snorted.
“So, what did you two fight about?”
“Oh my god, you’re nosy.”
“I’m well-informed.” Sadie mussed her hair with one hand, sending little droplets over the quilt, over the bag where Dad’s stuff was hidden. “If you don’t want to talk about it, fine. I’ll just assume Pierce was the one who was wrong.”
I gave a tiny laugh.
Sadie stepped through the door. Before she could disappear down the hallway, I called out, “Sadie?”
She turned back. “What?”
The door with the cold wind on the other side inched open.
“You don’t—I mean—this is going to sound weird, but Dad didn’t ever stay with the Caplans, did he?”
Sadie’s face did that thing it always does when we talk about Dad. Or I should say, the thing it’s done the few times we have talked about Dad. The color washed out of it until she was like a sketch of herself. Flat. Gray. Incomplete.
“Stay with them? Like, for a weekend?”
“No.” I shifted, crossing my legs tighter. The ache in my head reared again. “Like—for a few months. At the end.”
Sadie’s nose crinkled. She looked almost disgusted. “What? No.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Pierce told you he was staying with them?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he’s wrong. Or confused.”
“That’s what I said. I remember Dad being gone a lot—”
“They were opening the new stores. They had to spend, like, a week at each one. And then they had that conference in Chicago or somewhere, and all those trade shows . . .”
“Yeah. I know. I knew Pierce was wrong, but he wouldn’t believe me.”
“Well . . .” Sadie shrugged. “Who knows what he heard? He just obviously got things mixed up.”
“Yeah. Obviously.”
“Okay, guinea pig.” She stepped back through the door. “I’m going to go make dinner now.”
“Sadie . . .” My mouth was there before my mind. “Why don’t you ever talk about him?”
Sadie stopped. She turned to face me. “Why don’t you?”
“I asked you first,” I said, like we were eight and nine again.
Sadie glanced through the doorway, listening for a second to make sure the downstairs was still empty. “Because of Mom,” she said, turning back to me. “Because even hearing his name makes her just—shut down. I guess she . . .” Sadie paused, tightening the belt of her bathrobe. “She can’t deal with some of it at all. Yet.”
“Yeah.” The memory of Mom’s face during the months afterward clawed its way to the surface. Gaunt and white and haunted. Literally haunted, as if something the rest of us couldn’t see was clinging to her with all of its weight. “But . . . even when she’s not around . . . why don’t we ever talk about it?”
“Because it hurts,” Sadie answered. “There. Your turn.”
“Because I think . . .
maybe it’s because I don’t want to remember. But I’m remembering anyway. All the time.”
Sadie leaned against the doorframe. Her long, slim body looked graceful, even in a bathrobe. “Sometimes that helps, though,” she said quietly. “Remembering the good things.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Behind my right eye, the ache moved like a piston. “I can almost hear his voice sometimes. Telling me what to do. What he would want me to do. Telling me everything I choose is wrong.” I pressed my fingers into my temples. Keep going. It’s still your line. Say it. “Sometimes all I can remember is how bad things were at the end. All the stupid things I did. How disappointed in me he always was. How angry he was.”
“Jaye—you were in middle school. Of course you did stupid things.”
“Oh? What did you do in middle school? Mouth off to Mom a couple of times? Everything I did was wrong. Everything. Dad hated everything about me. My clothes. My friends. Things I liked. Things I didn’t like anymore. He thought I was just—I was a loser. He said it.”
Sadie folded her arms again. Her face was stern. Teacher-like. “Jaye. You did some dumb things. You got scolded. Like every thirteen-year-old.”
I shook my head. “That’s not all it was. Did he ever say that to you? That you were pathetic? That he didn’t want to raise someone like you?”
“No. And I’m sure he didn’t say that to you, either.”
I sat up straighter. “Yes he did.”
“Oh my god,” Sadie burst out. “You’re so overdramatic. You turn getting grounded in eighth grade into some Cinderella story. Poor little Jaye, huddled in the corner, while the family goes off to the ball—”
“That’s how it was!” I shouted back. “You all went off together on trips, to games, out for meals, all kinds of things, and you didn’t even—you just left. Without me.”
“You stopped coming. You whined and complained about everything. Or you wormed your way out of it. Like those trips? Oh my god. Mom and Dad would try to plan something special, and—”
“I was terrified! I was afraid of heights, and I wasn’t good at the things all of you could do, and I knew I was going to hurt myself, and I was just supposed to suck it up because we were going skiing or hiking or waterskiing or—”
“I am so sick of hearing about the skiing trips!” Sadie shouted. “This is what you do: You play this sad outcast role, but nobody put you in it. You chose it. You chose it for yourself.”
“Did he ever lock you in your room? Did he stop coming to your events? Did he say you were ruining your life? Did he tell you that you couldn’t see your friends anymore?”
“No.” Sadie spoke loudly and clearly, as if she were confronting an idiot on the opposite side of a stage. “And he didn’t do that to you.”
I threw up my hands. “Why is everybody talking to me like I’m crazy?”
“If everybody is, maybe that should tell you something.”
The words struck like a slap. I sucked in a breath.
Sadie stopped, her hand clenched around the doorframe. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But he was just trying to make you better. He was trying to push you to the right choices. That’s what parents do. It’s what they’re supposed to do.”
I shut up. If I opened my mouth, I wasn’t sure what would come out. I didn’t want it to be a sob. I stared down at my socks instead. Pierce was right: They were two different shades of black.
“Let’s stop,” said Sadie. “You’re not supposed to be getting upset. I shouldn’t have gotten into this with you.” She shook back her damp hair, straightening her shoulders. “Okay.” She took a breath. “Back to cheese-related subjects. Do you want tomato soup with your sandwich?”
“I’m not very hungry,” I whispered.
Sadie gave an exasperated sigh. “Jaye—”
“Fine. Soup. Sandwich. Whatever.”
I heard Sadie’s footsteps thump down the staircase.
When I was sure I was alone, I opened my bag. Then I bundled Dad’s T-shirt and running shoes into an old blanket, dropped down on my knees, and stuffed the whole thing under my bed, as far into the dusty darkness as it would go.
CHAPTER 15
Water splashed my face.
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia . . .
I threw my head back, gasping, and banged into someone in a letterman jacket. The guy—some senior whose name I didn’t know—gave me an annoyed look as he strode away.
Shaking, I wiped the droplets off of my cheek. My hand was dry. I wasn’t drowning. I was in the science hall, standing next to a drinking fountain, with my book bag slung over my arm.
I pressed myself against the wall, getting out of the flow of traffic. The hall was jammed with people talking, slamming lockers, hurrying in all directions. I pulled my phone out of my bag. 9:04. I’d already gotten through anatomy. Had I already gotten through anatomy? I looked down at my body. Boots. A skirt and snagged gray tights. A different sweater from yesterday. I’d managed to dress myself. If I’d avoided talking to anyone so far, maybe no one would have noticed that I was a body wandering around without its brain.
I shoved the phone back into my bag. My anatomy textbook and notebook were inside. Nothing else. American literature came next. I needed . . . What were we reading? Something about red. Scarlet. Crimson. Beauty’s ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, and death’s pale flag is not advanced there. Who said that? . . . Romeo. In the tomb. God, stop it.
I stumbled down the hall in the direction of my locker. The Red Badge of Courage. The Scarlet Letter. The Crimson and the Black. There were too many books about red. Red petals melting into the snow. Red spatters in my hair. Romeo lifting my hand.
No. No. No.
The ache swung.
I put out a hand to catch myself and almost groped a passing freshman. For a second, I leaned against the bricks, trying to steady myself. Then I shuffled to the end of the hall, staring at my feet the whole time.
But as soon as I turned the corner, there he was. Pierce. Leaning against my locker door, his hands hooked in his pockets, his perfect profile turned away as he scanned the crowd. Waiting for me.
I lunged into the nearest classroom.
Inside, a bunch of freshmen were setting up a DNA helix made of marshmallows. They stared up at me.
“Um . . .” I groped for the first freshman theater kid name I could find. “Is Lia Gomez in this class? I have to tell her something about rehearsal.”
They shook their heads.
“Oh. Thanks anyway.”
I tiptoed back through the door.
Pierce was still leaning against my locker, looking like a magazine ad.
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t walk up to him and smile and act sane. Not after the things he’d said last night. Not after the argument with Sadie. Not with this giant blank spot dragging right behind me like a weight chained to my ankle. What if I lost myself again and said something, did something that gave everything away?
I took a step backward. Then I turned and ran.
I ran all the way up to the third floor, winding past the art rooms, keeping my head down, walking like I had somewhere important to go. I was already going to be late for my next class. There was no way I could go back to my locker, get my things, and make it up to English on the second floor.
I picked the third-floor bathroom tucked away at the end of the choir hall instead. Most people forgot it even existed, maintenance workers included. It was still full of hand-cranked towel and soap dispensers, and probably hadn’t been painted in forty years.
It was empty when I entered and locked myself in a stall. Curdled things sloshed in my stomach. My head seared. I leaned my forehead against the cool metal wall. Fragments of magnified graffiti blurred in front of my eyes: Lisa H. is a . . . 412-83 . . . B&S 4 EVER.
A
bunch of choir girls burst in.
They gathered at the mirrors outside, checking their hair, their voices ricocheting off the tiles.
“Can’t believe she gave her that solo . . .” one of them said, slamming into the stall next to mine.
“Apparently she loves nasal, slightly flat sopranos.” The lock on my stall rattled. A fist knocked at the door.
“Knock, knock, knock,” Shakespeare’s voice muttered. He’d appeared next to me, wedged between my side and the toilet paper dispenser. “Who’s there, i’ th’ name of Beelzebub?”
The fist knocked again.
I realized I’d been holding my breath. “I’m—someone’s in here.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Another stall door creaked. Flushing. Talking. Someone sang an arpeggio. Then the bell rang, and the choir girls scurried out.
The bathroom went echoingly silent. I closed my eyes, still leaning against the divider. The ache was like a presence beside me.
When I finally opened my eyes again, Shakespeare was gone.
Now what? I couldn’t avoid Pierce forever; rehearsal was creeping closer. If I could make it until then.
I slipped back out of the bathroom. 9:16. Already late for American literature. Still bookless. As I climbed down the staircase, my vision began to swim. By the time I reached the first-floor hallway, I was squinting like a driver with a dirty windshield. The ache thrummed. Walls were melting. Doors and lockers and posters and windows all smeared into each other until there was nothing to hold on to—except for one dark, solid shape headed straight toward me.
I blinked. The windshield cleared.
Rob Mason was walking swiftly in my direction. I felt a strange surge in my stomach, like something that had been crawling had suddenly grown wings. He was wearing a long black wool coat, and a bag on a leather strap hung over his shoulder. He’d clearly just arrived.
He saw me and slowed. His face stayed blank.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey,” he answered. There were melting snowflakes in his hair.
I couldn’t think of what to say next. The new thing in my stomach was too distracting. Rob didn’t say anything either.