Now You See Her (15 page)

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Didn’t you know that’s what happens? You have to make restitution. You have to pay back what your little joke cost people. Do you know how many people were terrified for their own children? Or how many people took their kids out of school here? Do you know what you may have cost the volunteers who took off work?”

“I didn’t ask them to take off work.”

“These people cared about a little girl lost out in the woods.”

“They cared so much it took them four days to find me!”

“Why aren’t you more grateful, Miss Romano?”

“I am, but I don’t know why you’re torturing me!” “Well, someone logged on to your Internet account

while you were tied up. . . .”

“I don’t know who did that. I know people. I have friends who know my password.”

“Who?”

“Logan does. And other people, too! They even used to call me Tinkerbell. That’s how I got the idea for my password!”

“Well, why would Logan Rose use your password to log on and check weather reports?”

“Maybe he was worried about me.”

“Or maybe you did it.” This guy was like an old TV

character in some show on Nick at Night. “Maybe you weren’t really tied up at all. Maybe you were out there laughing at all those poor people looking for you.”

“I never laughed at anyone! I was terrified I was going to die! Were you ever out alone in the cold at night like that?”

“Many times,” said the weasly cop. “Well, I’m only fifteen!”

“I know, and we’re all relieved that you’re safe. But there are so many things that don’t make sense in your story. It’s like you did this just because you were jealous of that pretty blond girl, Alyssa Lyn. . . .”

That did it. At last, I had to say it.

I sat up and yelled, “No way! It was his idea. Ask him! Just ask him! He even called it ‘The Idea.’ Ask Logan Rose! Ask him why I was so-called kidnapped! He planned the whole thing and he made me do it!”

And the hick said, “Well, I’ll just do that.”

At first Logan had at least talked to me. Then he went into “seclusion.” His parents were like two big fat pigeons around their chick. But after I said what I said, and the police questioned him, his big fat brother—who’s a lawyer about ten years older—came out flapping.

He said on TV, “There isn’t a single shred of evidence that connects my brother to this poor girl. You don’t have to take Logan’s word for it. Ask anyone. She had

this fixation.” Blah, blah, blah. I didn’t even know what “fixation” meant. Big brother said Logan took me out to have dinner the one night of tryouts as a treat and he tried to spend time with me so that he could help me learn my part, but that was it. He said I followed Logan everywhere until it drove him crazy and people noticed. He said Logan tried over and over to discourage me from thinking we could be romantically involved, but that I wouldn’t listen. He said maybe his little brother had been too gentle.

Romantically involved?

What did he call that night backstage? All those nights in the cabin? The times we talked for hours about our future—bagels and a tiny little apartment and a big dog and rolling in the leaves in the park? It made my heart practically stop to hear that Logan Rose, who took my love and my virginity and my future, talked about me as if I were nothing more to him than a little puppy dog with a crush. I knew why he did it. If he admitted the truth about us, he was going to get charged with setting this all up. But it was the worst disloyalty I’ve ever heard of. I felt worse than I would have if my parents told me they never really wanted me—they just found me on a church step one day and took me home and fed me.

And of course, everyone else they interviewed at Starwood agreed with Logan. They all hated me, the fat-

assed idiots, so they all said the same thing that Logan did: I was like this stalker. I followed Logan all over the campus and embarrassed him.

Then my own family turned on me! My brother told my parents about my grandfather’s ring. My grand- mother told my parents about the mittens. Everyone said I was stuck-up and thought I was a movie star and was a total pain in the ass. Jealous just like my mother said people would be all my life.

They were so jealous that they had to get rid of me. Why lie otherwise about my being the perfect Juliet? Why did the school totally, officially lie?

The only one who was true to me was Brook Emerson. He wouldn’t say a bad word about me. He said I was the perfect tragic heroine, a sweet wild blossom. I read one story—it was actually a
New York Times
essay Brook wrote about the experience. He wrote,

She was the very Juliet. She had the talent for it. I seri- ously considered letting her go with it. But it was obvi- ous how very, very delicate she was. She can’t be held to the same standards as these big hardy Swedes. It’s not easy to understand a spirit like that. It could wink out at any moment. I have a hard time, even now, believing she would do anything so wrong. I don’t have a child of my own. But if I did, I would want a child as alert and sensi-

tive, as intuitive and observant as Hope Shay was. If I’m not being too grand, I think of what Hemingway said about Fitzgerald, that his talent was so fragile it might be damaged by a touch, like the dust on a butterfly wing. Something like that must have happened to Hope.

Will Brook help me when I graduate? If he does believe in me like he wrote, I could get back on track. I could be the same Hope I was. It could happen if this place doesn’t break me in half like a pencil.

The true agony is that I have to forget Logan. That means forgetting a part of myself. It’s the only way I will ever feel better, but it means I have to erase the good memories, the pictures that drift across my mind.

I tell Em, “They were laughing at me the whole time. They thought they could get away with using me and blackmailing me as if I were a joke. But why?”

Em never answers. How can she?

There just is no answer.

Honestly, it confuses me as much as it did the police. I’m not a psychologist. I don’t know why people do things that they have nothing to gain from. I understand wanting attention! Especially now. But why couldn’t you get attention in a good way, instead of by hurting some- one else? Why do that? It totally shocks me. I was just

minding my own business, studying, doing what I do best. And then Logan came along. He made the first move, in the cafeteria. I didn’t intend to get involved with any boy until I was at least a junior. I knew it would be too much of a distraction. He reeled me in. I cry and cry and look up at the same moon that Logan and I looked at together, the inconstant moon, like it says in
Romeo and Juliet
. It was Logan who was inconstant. The moon is still there, gentle and pale, like the face of a sad mother. But Logan is gone. I have bad thoughts. Like, was he looking up at the moon with Alyssa Lyn at the same time? Did he . . . do it with her, too? Was all that stuff about us having to hide our love just so he could have two girls? I’ll never know. They all protected Alyssa Lyn. Because she was older. Because she was part of the Starwood circle. I was the one who was the outsider, the kid who got the role all of them wanted—no matter what anyone says about it now. I was so stupid to think they would like me or understand me at Starwood. They were like sharks in a pool, and I was thrown in. I don’t feel sorry for myself. But I am so sick of the way people are. They don’t give you respect. They don’t give you trust. That’s what I hate most. You can’t trust human beings any more than a pack of wild wolves. They don’t have consciences. One minute they let you touch them, and the next minute they rip you apart and walk away

and don’t look back. You have to deal with the damage. You don’t know people until they totally betray you,

I always say to Em. She gives me her sad, knowing smile. After it was all over, after the investigation that they dragged out for weeks, probably so that the retard cops could feel important about the biggest case in their

meaningless lives, they charged me with a crime.

They charged
me
with attempted fraud and obstruct- ing a police investigation.

There wasn’t even a trial. I just had to stand in front of a judge with my parents a month later. Stand there and take the sentence the judge gave me. I couldn’t tell my side, my father said. This was the best I could hope for, my father said. No one was allowed to talk to me, but one photographer got to take my picture to give to all the newspapers.

But when the judge said that the crime was punish- able by eighteen months in jail and a fine of ten thou- sand dollars, I couldn’t help it. I started to moan and say, “No! No!
No!
I’m not responsible!”

But then she said, “We know that, Hope.”

I thought somebody finally got it. But she only meant I was cuckoo. She said, “Calm down, Hope. There are what we call mitigating factors here. You’re very young. And while this was very wrong, we don’t think you are a danger to anyone in society or to yourself, and that is

usually the standard for a punishment in juvenile crime. There’s no reason for a trial here. In juvenile cases like these, a trial is very rare. No one was hurt, but a great deal of money and resources were wasted because of your poor choices. And so this is what I’m going to do.” She gave me probation for two years because of “special circumstances.” Then they made my poor father pay thousands of dollars toward the cost of the investigation. And of course, I was expelled immediately from Starwood. I got a letter about that as soon as I got back

to Miss Taylor’s!

When I walked out of the Mesquakie County court- house, all the photographers who had to stay outside went crackers and photographed me. I tried to hide under my dad’s coat. I must have looked like some witch from a comic book. Big mascara stains under my eyes.

I didn’t even get the chance to have
my
hair cut and styled for the cameras the way
Logan
did.

Why did this happen? Why was I blamed? It’s so unfair for one innocent person to be the target of some- one else’s plot! I don’t even know how many people were involved. Maybe it was more than Logan. Someone had to put him up to it. He couldn’t have done this to me on his own.

I got Logan’s new number off the Internet so at least I could say good-bye to him. That’s all I wanted, really

and truly. To say good-bye, my love. I wanted to be big, and forgive. Otherwise, it eats you alive, the way it has with me. I wasn’t going to blame or accuse him. I had to call him from the pay phone. I waited four rings. I could hear laughing and music in the background. When Logan heard my voice, he said, “Enough of this, Hope. You poor kid.” And he hung up on me. But not before I heard just a trace of the old Logan in his voice.

When I finally let the whole story out to Em, she just did one thing. She held up her arm.

And I saw the cuts on her wrists.

I knew what she was trying to suggest.

IX
‌

I

DON
’
T KNOW IF IT
’
S
the end of my life or the begin- ning of another part of my life. But I’m writing this right before I do something so drastic it could kill me.

It has to work. If it doesn’t work, I’ll just be gone.

That would be the worst-case scenario, like they say. I’m taking a huge risk. But I’m a risk-taker. I always have been. If I have to end my life to get them to listen, or at least make a convincing attempt at ending my life, I will. I can do it because I know how to act and people have always believed me whatever I do.

It’s so sad that it’s come to this, having to fake things. Having to hurt yourself to get people to see how much
you
have been hurt! I have never felt so sad in my life. So sad that my shoes are too heavy to lift. This must be what they mean by self-sacrifice.

The “X” up there, on my next-to-last journal entry,

marks the end of Hope. “X” marks the spot.

The little “I” is the Hope I was, but can’t be anymore. You know the whole story now. A life taken away, a whole bright future. This isn’t just a loss to me. It’s a loss to the whole world. No one will ever see me the way I would have been. I’ve been scarred on the inside. What will a scar on the outside matter? (Well, not a totally huge one; that would be different. I don’t want to look freaky, like Em.) Right now I just look totally pale and sick. I’m glad it shows. When I look into the mirror, I see a girl whose eyes have no life and sparkle. They’re like pools of muddy water. This is a tragedy, plain and simple.

I put this off. I thought Logan would come around. I thought my parents would show some sympathy.

But it has to happen.

You can only fight so long—even when you know you’re right. Em knows that.

Then you have to give in. That’s why she showed me her arm.

I have to give in.

Yesterday I felt so down I didn’t think I could go on. The pain was unbearable, the way my mother said it is to give birth. It was like my guts were coming out. They say that people who commit suicide really want to kill someone else, and maybe for me that someone would be Logan. But all I really want—all I ever really wanted—is