Burn for Burn (20 page)

So I think about my mom and dad, why Kat wears all that eye makeup when she has such pretty eyes, what Lillia puts in her hair to make it so shiny, on to Friday’s geometry test, and last what to wear to school tomorrow. I think about everything and anything to keep Reeve out of my head. But it never works. It’s as if he’s in here with me, in this room, haunting me.

I roll onto my back and stare through the dark at the beams in the ceiling. I should ask Aunt Bette if she knows a special candle or some sage or incense I could burn to get rid of this negative energy. Aunt Bette’s into that New Agey stuff—smudging, tarot cards, crystals. Mom thinks it’s silly, but she still wears the moonstone ring Aunt Bette bought for her fortieth birthday. Moonstone is supposed to bring positivity and healing to your life. I could probably use some of that, too.

But I know I can’t do it. I can’t ask Aunt Bette to help me, because then we’d have to talk about what happened all those years ago. Neither of us want to do that. Her just as much as me.

Something pings my bedroom window and interrupts the quiet. I lift my head off the pillow and watch the glass without breathing. It happens again, this time while I’m looking. A pebble bounces off the pane.

I get up and walk nervously to the window, peeking just past the sheer white curtains. Lillia and Kat wave at me from down on the ground.

With a big sigh of relief, I step out from my hiding spot, smile, and wave back.

“Come out and play, Mary!” Lillia calls up.

And then I hear Aunt Bette’s bedroom door creak open from down the hall. I quickly hold up one finger to the girls, jump back onto my bed, and pretend to be asleep.

I open my eyes a teensy bit and watch as Aunt Bette pushes my door open with her bare foot and looks around my room. She’s in her nightgown, and her long thick hair is wild and puffy.

She tiptoes past my bed and over to the window. Hopefully, Lillia and Kat have ducked out of sight. I’d rather they didn’t meet Aunt Bette like this. I’d rather she had a chance to at least comb her hair and put lipstick on. Plus, it’s a school night. Aunt Bette’s been really cool, but I don’t want to press my luck.

Aunt Bette stares out my window; her hot breath makes a tiny cloud on the glass. Then she gently pulls my curtains closed and goes back to her room.

I know I should wait a while for Aunt Bette to fall back asleep, but I don’t want Kat and Lillia to leave. So after a minute or two, I grab a sweater and creep down the stairs, as quiet as a mouse.

Kat and Lillia are sitting underneath our huge pine tree in the backyard. Both of them have their backs up against the trunk. Kat’s legs are outstretched; Lillia’s hugging her knees to her chest.

“Hey,” I say. “Sorry that took so long. My aunt . . .”

Lillia yawns. “Was that her up there? She looks . . . kind of witchy.” Kat clicks her tongue, and Lillia quickly adds, “Sorry.”

It makes me sad to hear Lillia say that, but I know she’s right. I sink down to the ground. Aunt Bette is my favorite aunt for sure, but she’s had problems with depression for forever, according to my mom. I don’t quite understand why, because Aunt Bette has had the kind of life I’ve read about in books. She’s traveled the world, selling paintings and meeting all sorts of interesting people. She was beautiful once, and she knew how to play every single card game you could think of. But when the dark times would come, she became a whole other person. She could barely get out of bed some days. It’s why she once came to live with us here in the house for a whole summer.

“My mom says that when they were in high school, Aunt Bette could get any boy on the beach to buy them ice cream. They never had to bring change with them.” I thread some of my hair behind my ears.

Kat tucks a cigarette between her lips. “No kidding,” she says, and the words make the flame of her lighter dance.

And then there’s a long, somewhat awkward pause.

Lillia clasps her fingers together and puts on a big smile. “So, Kat and I came up with a way to get revenge on Rennie at homecoming.”

“Oh! That’s great,” I say, and then force a swallow. “Is she, like, dating Reeve? I heard some girls talking about that at the football game.”

Lillia shakes her head. “No. I mean, she definitely has Reeve in her crosshairs, but I don’t know if he sees her that way.”

“Oh,” I say, sitting up straighter. “I was just curious.”

Kat leans in and says, “All right, back to business. Homecoming ballots are passed out the week of the dance. Everyone votes, and then the ballots are put in the locked box they use for student council elections, which is pretty effing ridiculous, if you ask me. What we’re gonna do is break into that box and change enough ballots so that Rennie loses homecoming queen.” She cackles. “It will be the greatest disappointment of her sad little life.”

Lillia puts her hands on her cheeks and says, “I can’t wait to see her face!”

“And then Lillia wins, right?” I say.

“No!” Lillia says, shaking her head. “I don’t want to win.”

“Why not?” Kat says, surprised. “Rennie will freaking short-circuit with jealousy.”

Lillia bites her lip. “I think it’ll be even worse if someone else takes her crown. Someone she would never think could beat her. Like Ashlin.”

“Oh, yeah! Ashlin. My replacement. I always forget about her. Does she even have a personality?” Kat asks.

“She’s a nice girl,” Lillia says, glaring at Kat. “And she’ll be happy to win.”

Kat shrugs, and takes a drag off her cigarette. “Fine, whatever. But we still need a plan to get Reeve.” She blows out the smoke in a long, thin line. “Did you have any ideas, Mary?”

I shake my head.

“Okay,” Lillia says patiently. “Well, what do you want to have happen to him? Let’s start there.”

I chew on my nail and think. All the anger I’ve got starts to bloom up inside me. This is part of the reason I try not to think about Reeve, if possible. It’s a Pandora’s box. I’m afraid to open myself up and relive exactly what happened. But maybe that’s the only way I’ll know what kind of revenge will make me feel like justice was served.

After a deep breath I say, “Whatever we do has to be big. It has to be cruel. It has to hurt him on the level that he hurt me.” If that’s even possible.

Kat and Lillia look at each other, startled by my intensity, I guess. I know what’s coming before Lillia even says it.

“What did he do to you?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper.

“You can trust us,” Kat says. “We won’t tell anyone.”

Lillia moves her hair over to one shoulder and makes a little cross over her heart. “Promise.”

I drop my chin to my chest and let my hair fall around my face. I know I have to do this. I have to tell someone the whole story of what happened.

I lift my head and wet my lips. “Reeve had a special nickname for me.” I feel the words come into my mouth, hot and metallic. “Big Easy.”

I can tell by the way Kat’s face wrinkles up that she was expecting something worse. “What’s the story there?”

“I looked different back in seventh grade. I was fat. And we were studying New Orleans in social studies.”

“Seriously? You were heavy?” Lillia’s surprise is like a compliment.

I nod, and push the sleeves of my sweater up to my elbows. “Huge, actually.”

“So he made fat jokes about you,” Kat snarks, her top lip curling into a snarl. “How totally Reeve.”

I twist around and look back up at my bedroom window, to make sure Aunt Bette isn’t watching. She’s not. The curtains are still closed. I turn back around and keep going, sure to keep my voice low. “You remember how Reeve and I went to the Belle Harbor Montessori, right? Well, we were the only two kids in our grade from Jar Island, so we both had to ride the ferry back and forth every day. I tried to stay away from Reeve, because we didn’t get off on the right foot on his first day.”

Then I tell them the story of that day in the cafeteria, when Reeve made the joke about me eating off his tray. How he made it so nobody wanted to be seen with me in public. Kat and Lillia don’t interrupt, but every so often they
tsk
or shake their heads. Each response is a bit of encouragement that helps me keep talking. I tell them about the pocketknife day and the time we went out for ice cream, too.

“After that we developed this weird kind of . . .” I take a second to pick the right word, but nothing seems to fit, so I just go with, “friendship,” even though that’s not exactly it. “The ferry ride was kind of our time-out. Reeve used to say, ‘Us islanders have to stick together, right Big Easy?’”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kat says, rapid-fire. “Wait up. You let him call you ‘Big Easy’ to your face?” She’s fired up, rolling onto her knees and leaning forward.

It’s hard to look at her. “It was different when we were on the ferry, just the two of us. It didn’t sound as mean, for some reason.” I pull my sweater tight around myself. “But once we’d get to the mainland, thing would change. He wouldn’t talk to me in public. Well . . . except to make fun of me.”

“What a two-faced bitch,” Kat says. “He’s worse than Rennie!” She grinds her cigarette out in the dirt and then immediately lights another.

Lillia’s staring at me, unblinking. “Why would you let him do that, Mary?”

“Because he’d tell me things,” I say. “He’d complain about his dad, who I think was a pretty bad alcoholic. He’d tell me how his dad would drink, and then his dad would yell at Reeve and his brothers. I felt bad for him.”

“You felt bad for
him
?” Kat says incredulously.

“He hated his dad. He said his dream was to get a scholarship to go to a big university off Jar Island and never come back.”

Lillia scoffs. “Scholarship? Reeve makes Bs and Cs! He only gets As in gym.”

Kat shakes her head. “You don’t know because you didn’t grow up here,” she tells Lillia. “Reeve used to be the smartest kid in our grade. I remember him getting sent to that fancy school on a scholarship. It was a big deal, because his family wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise. Our teacher threw him a good-bye party with cupcakes and stuff.”

“It wasn’t because I was special to him, or anything like that,” I clarify. “We were just passing the time together. I knew how hard the other kids at school worked to get his attention. Everyone was a little in love with him. I guess I felt a weird sense of pride for getting to spend some time with him every day.”

Lillia grumbles, but Kat says, “Lil, you have to admit Reeve can be a charming bastard when he wants to be.”

“All right,” she concedes. “I guess I could see that.”

I stare at the dirt and say shamefully, “I let myself think that there was something real between us, that I knew Reeve in a way that no one else did. But really, the Reeve I thought I knew didn’t exist. He was just setting me up, tricking me into letting my guard down, so he could hurt me even worse.”

Before I know it, I’m crying. I guess because I know what happens next. The story I’ve never told anyone.

The wind suddenly picks up, like a storm might crack open the sky above us. My hair whips around my face, stinging my cheeks. Lillia zips up her coat; Kat tucks her hands inside her sleeves. Neither of them move.

A voice inside me tells me to stop talking, because once I tell Kat and Lillia, there’s no turning back, no pretending it didn’t happen. But I swallow the fear down and keep going, because holding on to this secret for one second longer suddenly feels like it’s going to kill me.

*    *    *

I didn’t expect to see Reeve that afternoon.
Ms. Penske kept a few of us after school to discuss plans for the student mural we’d be painting in the gymnasium. I missed the three o’clock ferry, and figured I’d catch the three thirty. But Reeve had stayed late too, playing basketball with a few of his friends. When I walked by the fence, Reeve sank the last basket, and everyone started grabbing their books and putting on their jackets. Reeve saw me. I kept walking toward the water, but slower than I had been, and eventually he caught up with me.

We’d almost reached the dock when a bunch of guys he’d been playing basketball with ran up from behind us. They had a notebook in their hands, one Reeve had apparently left at the courts. When they saw us, their mouths dropped open. Reeve and Big Easy walking together? It didn’t make any sense.

Reeve didn’t say anything to me, but he suddenly picked up his pace. I walked faster too, to keep up with him. The boys called out, “Hey, Reeve! You forgot your book!” but Reeve pretended he didn’t hear them. He practically sprinted the last few feet to the ferry, like he was afraid he might miss it.

The cars and trucks had already driven onto the freight deck, and it was just the people left, lining up to climb the plank onto the ferry. Reeve and I took our place at the end, him first and me right behind him. Then the boys from class came up and stood a few feet off to the side. They handed Reeve his notebook, and Reeve mumbled a thank-you. They started to walk away.

I don’t know where this surge of courage came from. Maybe because things had been good between us. Maybe because I wanted to put Reeve in a spot where he’d have to admit what was going on. Maybe because I knew he didn’t really care about what these guys thought of him, from our conversations.

There was one thing I did know for sure. Reeve had started the Big Easy thing, and it had caught on like wildfire. But if he showed everyone in class that we were cool, I knew it could end just as quickly. That’s how big a deal he was.

I stepped forward so Reeve and I were side by side, and shouted at the boys, “So what? We’re friends!” as loudly as I possibly could. Then I threw my arm around Reeve’s shoulder and smiled at him.

Reeve stared at me with unbelieving eyes. Once he blinked, though, he looked furious. He shouted, “Get the hell away from me!” And then he lunged. His palms went straight into my chest, and, throwing all his strength behind it, he shoved me toward the guys.

The force of it was unbelievable. I didn’t have a chance. My sneakers skidded over the gravel. The boys quickly stepped out of my path, revealing the edge of the dock. I tried to just fall down, to keep myself from going into the water, but I kept flying backward. At the last second I put my arms out to try to stop myself from going over the side of the dock, and tiny splinters embedded in my palms. The pain had me gasping for air, my last breath before I plunged into the water.