High and Dry (26 page)

THE TRUTH ABOUT ELLIE

ON TUESDAY, I PAID A VISIT TO JANE THOMAS. AS EDITOR, SHE
was leading the staff meeting and doling out assignments. I requested a private conference, and when she shot me an irritated look, sweeping her hand in the direction of her reporters, I said, “I'm here to finish what Maria Salvador started.”

That got her attention. Jane yanked me into a corner and I nearly tripped over my feet.

“You have proof teachers have been tampering with grades?” she whispered.

“No. I used to have proof, but not anymore. I have something else that could help vindicate Maria. I have proof an LSD assembly lab is operating at night, right here in the school. I have dates and times. But it's going to cost you.”

“I told you, I never pay for stories,” said Jane.

“All I want in return is a printout of Ellie Chen's file. I want to see where she sent her transcripts, see where she applied.”

“You were awfully cuddly at Café Kismet yesterday. Everyone knows you're back together. Why don't you just ask her where she's going?” Jane wondered.

“I
have
asked her. Her answers don't add up. If I can see for myself, then I'll rest easy.”

“Pretend I agree, and I hand over her file,” said Jane. “What if you don't like what you find out? Will you take it out on the messenger?”

“I won't.”

“You really have proof of this alleged drug lab?” she said.

“Photos.”

At the mall with Ellie the previous night, I'd picked up a key-chain camera, the kind Salvador had used, and I'd brought it with me to school. I was in possession of photos of Ryder (from the neck down), the chem lab, and the supplies.

Maybe it wouldn't stop him. Maybe it was useless information. But at least he couldn't use school anymore. At least I could put a stop to that.

I handed over the key chain. I hadn't made any backups; I was beyond that now. Beyond caring, beyond planning ahead with foolproof ideas in the hopes of finding justice or peace. There was no justice for Maria Salvador. There was no peace for her or her family.

Jane told me to come back at the end of fifth and she'd give me an answer.

I did as requested, and still she held out on me.

“Just ask yourself, wouldn't you rather talk to Ellie about this instead of going behind her back?”

“I want to know if I can trust her.”

“I think the real question is, can she trust you?” Jane pointed out.

“If you're using the material I gave you, hand over Ellie's file. If you're not using the material, we can forget the whole thing.”

She pursed her lips, then handed me the file.

I didn't wait to get home to open it. I found a vacant desk in the journalism room and tore through it. Transcripts and jewelry portfolios had been e-mailed out, all right. Plenty of them. The closest place she'd applied was Northwestern. There were even transcripts sent to England and Ireland. Three or four to New York. And of course the acceptance from Maine.

There was no transcript sent to Lambert College.

The bell rang, a droning sound I was pretty sure I'd hear the rest of my life.

I invited Ellie over that night and we sat in the backyard under the awning, even though it was windy and dark. The San Gabriel Mountains loomed overhead, the impenetrable fortress between Palm Valley and the rest of the world, perpetually keeping us out.

“I don't know why I'm surprised,” I said. “You were always going to leave, from the moment you moved here. It was your main attribute.”

“What are you talking about, Charlie?” she asked, puzzled. She rested her slim fingers on my arm. “I'm not going anywhere.”

“Not yet, but you will be. In the fall.”

“Not this again,” she said, drawing her hand back and clenching
it in her lap. “I know it freaked you out seeing all those brochures. And I'll admit, my dad wants me to go someplace else. But I don't care! I can go to Lambert! Okay? This is the last time we're going to have this conversation. I mean it.”

“Stop lying,” I said. “Stop lying!”

She jumped at my voice, looking scared. “I'm not lying. Why won't you just believe me?”

I felt like a scab she'd picked off and discarded, leaving behind a small, pinched scar. “Face it, it was never going to last between us. Not the first time, and definitely not this time. I was never your long-haul boyfriend. I was just your California boyfriend, the one you look back on fondly, on the way to better things.”

“Or not so fondly,” Ellie snapped. She was done being scared of me and had moved on to being angry. “I'm not sure what I'm being accused of here?”

But I barely heard her. I'd started a good circular ramble, and I wasn't ready to take the off ramp. “Your California boyfriend who always pays for gas and soda and movie tickets—that is, when you deign to go to the movies, that lower-class pursuit, God forbid—the easygoing boyfriend, quick to make you laugh, buy you presents, eager to please, do whatever you want, even if it's never what
I
want. I don't think you ever really knew me, and now you're leaving me behind but you refuse to admit it! Just admit it.”

Ellie stared at me. Tears fell from her eyes and dripped onto the table. It made me think of Jonathan, at the top of the stairs, the flash drive in his hand.

So there it was; I'd said it. She didn't know me. I didn't even know myself.

There were no correct answers to the multiple-choice questions of me. That's why my parents could never quite figure me out, pin me down. There was only Ellie with a pencil, filling in the dots and then changing her mind, erasing them, and seeing what formed up in their place; altering people's futures, like Donovan and his tests.

The only thing I knew about myself was that I was drunk again, and by my incoherent monologue, Ellie knew it, too. I'd taken a hit of vodka before she arrived; Granddad's latest drink of choice.

“I would've become whoever it was that would make you stay. But now I know it doesn't matter,” I said, standing up and swaying on my feet. “And it never did. But it's okay, Ellie. I get it,” I added bitterly. “You're doing what you have to do. At MECA. In Maine.”

“I still don't understand what you're saying. If I get accepted at Lambert, I'll go there,” Ellie said, remaining at the table, staring up at me with tear-glossed eyes.

“It's pretty difficult to be accepted at a college you never applied to, don't you think?”

“I'm telling you, I applied,” she sobbed.

“And I'm telling you
I know you're lying
. I'm so sick of guessing what you might like. I'm so sick of worrying about when you're going to leave me. And now that I know, I just want you to admit it.” I got down on my knees and clasped my hands together. I really did. “Please, Ellie, just admit it.”

She closed her eyes, rubbed the tears off her cheeks. It was a long time before she spoke. “Sex was a big deal to me,” she said at last.

I think she was thinking of the safety bar, my arm across her chest. The feeling that told her the ride was just beginning; it was only going to get better and more exciting, but I'd be with her the whole way, dependable and safe.

“If I didn't think we had a future, I wouldn't have had sex with you,” she finished.

I stood up and dusted off my knees. “It was a big deal to me, too,” I said, but I might've been lying. I might've wanted it to be true, or felt that it should've been true, but the sex was always secondary. The sex was a side effect of being together; it hadn't bound us any closer. It hadn't made the relationship any more likely to succeed; it hadn't kept her with me. “Just tell me the truth. You're not going to college with me, and you never were.”

She cried into her hands, and I watched her back rise and fall, her delicate shoulder blades shivering. When she stopped, a minute or so later, her eyes were pink and her face looked puffy.

She approached me, and I looked away: at the ground, at our shoes, anyplace but at her eyes.

“I really did love you,” she said. “I'm sorry you don't believe me. I'm sorry you don't trust me. I'm sorry you think I don't know you.” Her voice was distorted, magnified by her tears. “I didn't realize you were so angry at me. Good-bye, Charlie. Please don't talk to me at school.”

She weaved, a dizzy mess, and when she reached the end of the yard, she tripped, and fell into the grass.

I didn't help her up.

I walked inside and picked up Granddad's left-behind bottle of vodka and poured myself another slosh with trembling hands.

A minute later, the garage opened. I downed my drink and filled part of the vodka bottle with tap water to replace what I'd taken. You water it down enough times and sooner or later the only person it affects is you. If I changed the cells out one by one, at what point did it stop being liquor and start being water, the drink I'd truly wanted all along?

Dad walked in and saw me standing by the sink. I pretended to be filling my glass with water.

“Did I see Ellie outside? She looked terrible.”

“Yeah, she just left. Things … It didn't work out. Between us.”

“But you guys seemed so close on Saturday … and with her going to Lambert next year … I thought you had a good shot.”

“She's not going to Lambert. She never sent in her paperwork. She told me she had, but she hadn't.”

“No, I saw her Friday morning. She dropped off her portfolio in person. I saw her outside the admissions office and we said hello.”

The glass I was holding fell to the floor, where it clattered and rolled away, but it also stayed with me, waiting to be filled.

It was inside me, in the place where my happiness was supposed to be.

SPRING BREAK

THE MONEY WAS MINE TO SPEND, SO I GAVE MY COLLEGE
fund, every last dollar, to Maria Salvador's family. I couldn't go to Lambert College now even if I'd wanted to.

“Is this because of Ellie?” my parents wanted to know.

“It's not because of Ellie,” I said, explaining
myself
for once, so they wouldn't have to. I knew myself better now, like an acquaintance I was still getting used to, more and more each day. “It's because of me, of how I lived. So long as the ref doesn't see, it's okay; so long as you don't get caught, you can do whatever you want. I feel like I have to do this—I have to help her. Even if that means working for a year or two and saving up and starting over. Maybe what happened to Maria wasn't my fault. Maybe it was the fault of too many people to name, and I was just one of them.”

“Maybe I was one of them, too,” said Mom, and when she went to brush my hair off my forehead, I let her.

I told them the whole story, from the drunken party, to my quest to find the flash drive, to the flash drive's contents, to Ryder's betrayal and my own foolishness.

They had no theories about me now. I was impossible to
understand, like a Chekhov story, minus the Russian or the literary quality or an ending. I'd just have to find a way to continue from this point, start a new chapter, and hurtle toward whatever it was I was going to become.

I'd finally stumped my parents, so they listened until I was through.

For the next two months I visited Salvador once a week after school, hoping upon hope she'd wake up, the way I was trying to.

On the first day of spring break, I walked out of the hospital and Ellie was there, standing by my car. We hadn't spoken since the day she'd staggered away from me in my backyard.

“So where exactly has Amelia traveled? Where's the farthest she's ever been?” Ellie asked.

I set my backpack in the car and turned to face her. “Besides California? Nowhere.”

“Don't you think it's time she went someplace? Got a real voyage under her belt?”

“I didn't name her after Amelia Earhart,” I said bluntly, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I named her after Amelia Pond. She's a character on
Doctor Who
. I didn't want you to know, so I pretended it was something else. I didn't want you to think I was a sci-fi nerd who watched too much TV.”

Ellie looked down, shoulders sagging, regret etched across her face. “I hate that I came across so judgmental, that you felt you couldn't tell me things.”

“I wish I had been real with you,” I said.

We sat with this information a while, rolling it around in our heads and knocking it away like we were working triggers on a pinball machine. The outcome was always the same, though; the thought always came back, always fell down the slot:

GAME OVER

I'd never believed Ellie could be with me long-term, so in the end, I made it true. I'd been wrong about Ryder, so I needed to be right about her. Pushing her away was the only way I got to be right.

It still hurt to think about Ryder. Although he was unidentifiable in the key chain photos, after the images ran in the
Palm Valley High Recorder,
he dropped out of school. I heard he was lying low for a while at the Mobile Estates by himself while his mom finished rehab. I liked to think he spent his days playing MLB on Griffin's Xbox.

Strangely enough, I never pictured him in the chem lab, arranging bundles of drugs for distribution. I still associated him with Little League, but in my mind's eye I didn't watch him throw the bat anymore. I watched everyone else.

I watched the people in the stands, waiting for Ryder to run around the bases, waiting for a moment that was never going to happen. Nobody thought to look at the baseball he'd hit, soaring up through the sky, leaving all of us behind. Nobody thought to see how far it went, or whether it would ever come down. Someone should've looked.

I
should've looked.

With Ryder out of the way, I'd been an undisputed soccer star. For a while, anyway. So I didn't look too closely at the situation; I didn't try too hard to find out why he'd failed his drug test, I just accepted it as his choice and my good fortune.