The Safest Lies (10 page)

Out of force of habit, I found myself taking stock of the exits: the double doors behind me, an emergency exit to the side of the makeshift stage, another presumably behind the platform. I looked up: a few windows, but no way to open them. I stayed near the door, another habit I couldn’t quite break. “Always take note of the exits,” Mom had said, worrying her thumb over each of her fingers, until her knuckles popped, one by one. “Besides the obvious. There’s always another way out. The windows. The ceiling. The floor. You have to think beyond, and you have to think
fast.
”

I couldn’t help picturing that now: all these people trying to funnel through the double doors in the event of an explosion or a fire. And me, caught in a stampede. I shook my head, clearing her out of there. The words of a paranoid mind. The words of fear. It wasn’t too late for me.

Up front, it looked like they were about to get started. The men and women were in suits, and so was Ryan. He was fidgeting with his tie, and an older man stepped forward to straighten it for him, before placing a hand on his shoulder.

It’s in my blood,
Ryan had said. A family legacy. He was surrounded by a group of people who had watched him grow up, who were waiting for him to join them. He had a place he always knew he would belong.

Meanwhile, I was alone and completely out of place. I looked at my jeans, my purple shirt, my black sneakers. It hadn’t occurred to me that this would be a formal affair. I mean, it was the
community center.
The basketball nets had been retracted upward, toward the ceiling, but this was a place where people worked out. At least I was wearing my nice jeans. And at least I’d put some product in my hair. My curls were shiny and tamed, and I guess that counted for something.

A hush fell over the crowd as the people up front started assembling themselves into order, in a straight row. A man who must’ve been the mayor made his way to the podium.

I saw Ryan scan the crowd, the seats, but he never got to me. His gaze drifted back to the floor, and he took a deep breath. If I didn’t know any better, I’d guess he was nervous. He’d already done the hard part—me, the car, the fall. All he had to do now was stand there while other people in suits said nice things about him.

I noticed several people from our class in the chairs near the aisle—the guys I’d see Ryan with at school, in the halls, or the ones who stopped by the Lodge during the summer, looking for him. Mark and AJ and Leo, in khakis and button-downs. AJ had his girlfriend with him. There were also a few vaguely familiar faces, who I thought must’ve been from his fire department. One of them, standing behind Ryan, was watching me back, and I didn’t know whether it was because I was severely underdressed or because he remembered me. Had he been there that night? The only person I remembered was Ryan—the promise in his words, making me believe. Even the medic’s face had faded away. I understood how my mother could’ve forgotten everything after her imprisonment. Everything else was buried under a layer of fear, and I didn’t want to poke at it too hard.

The other firefighter leaned forward, whispered something into Ryan’s ear, and Ryan’s eyes scanned the crowd, settling on me. His face didn’t change, but he started raising his hand. But then the microphone snapped on, and the mayor’s quick intake of breath echoed through the room before he let out a booming “Good evening!”

The crowd settled, and even Ryan turned his focus to the mayor.

And then there was an all-too-familiar voice in my ear, a minty whisper, and a jangle of bracelets. “Hey there, you.”

Emma stood beside me with two of her girlfriends. At least Cole didn’t seem to be here.

“Hi, Emma,” I whispered. “What are you doing here?”
And are we friends again? I didn’t get the memo.

She nodded her head toward the girl beside her, leaning against the wall. “Holly wanted to come. For Ryan.” She smiled again, all teeth. I made myself smile back.

Holly-in-the-flesh was slightly less scary than the Holly-of-my-mind, who I’d turned into a vacant texting machine who chewed gum and had long, manicured nails. The Holly who had actually texted Ryan (all caps, super-excited) was rather sweet-looking, with dimples and wavy strawberry-blond hair, phone nowhere in sight.

“Shh,” someone said. The room echoed, like a gymnasium. It
was
a gymnasium after all.

The mayor was now talking about acts of bravery, and the average person, and looking out for our neighbors, and how community was built on the shoulders of people like this.

There were two people receiving the medal. One woman, for performing the Heimlich on a stranger at the Italian restaurant in town (heroic, yes, but brave?), and Ryan. “According to Chief Nicholas,” the mayor said, “Mr. Baker insisted he be the one to climb into Ms. Thomas’s car. There was no moment of hesitation.” Ryan hadn’t told me that part.
I’m the lightest
is what he’d said.
Least chance of making the car fall.

Even from here, I could see the heat rising on Ryan’s face. God, heroic much? Emma and Holly were whispering beside me, and I swear one of them audibly sighed.

The mayor pinned something to his jacket, shook his hand, and everyone applauded.

Everyone stood, and Ryan disappeared. I shifted to the side, stood on my toes—the room was all noise and activity again.

Emma turned to her friends. “You should invite Ryan,” I heard her saying, probably to Holly.

“To my house?” Holly responded.

“Yes. Tell him we’ll be there, no adults, heroes welcome.”

I turned away, needing air and space and
home
again.

“Excuse me.” I bumped into a woman with a badge clipped to her blazer and a notepad in her hand. She was smiling, big and bright, like I was exactly what she was looking for. “Kelsey, right? I thought I saw you come in.”

I strained to see the front of the room again, and I caught a glimpse of Ryan trying to push through the crowd, heading this way—maybe to see Holly, who was still talking to Emma.

Holly shook my resolve, and my confidence. I didn’t know, after all, what had happened at the party after the hospital. I didn’t know if Holly was his girlfriend, and I was just someone he could talk to about that night. If everything about that moment in the car shone brighter than it should, took on more meaning. Near-death experiences bonding people together—that was a thing, right? But it didn’t
mean
anything, unless I stayed there, stuck in that terrifying moment.

The woman beside me kept pressing—her hand on my arm now, like walls closing in. “It’s so great that you came,” she added. “Wonderful for you to show your support. Can I get a quick picture?” She jutted her head toward Ryan, who had just broken through the group in the middle, and was shaking free of the latest person who stopped him to shake his hand. “Of the two of you together? The readers would love that.”

“You’ve got the wrong person,” I said, backpedaling out the double doors. This was all a mistake. I should’ve sent him a message first. Let him know I was coming. Let him tell me about Holly first. I should’ve worn something different, arrived a little earlier. Convinced Annika to come with me so I wouldn’t feel this blind rush of terror—because I’d learned in high school, after years of being homeschooled, that loneliness was something felt more powerfully in a crowd.

I fumbled for Annika’s keys in my purse—heard footsteps behind me and started running. My hands shook as I turned the key in the ignition, and I peeled out of the parking lot. But I couldn’t slow my heart. I couldn’t shake the nerves. And I couldn’t shake the headlights, always just a curve behind.

T
he headlights were gone by the time I pulled into Annika’s driveway. Nobody came out at the sound of the car on the gravel. Amazing, that people could come and go so freely, without someone keeping tabs on them. I left the keys in the visor like she’d asked and started walking back up the road, arms folded across my stomach in the dark. I didn’t want to go through the back, hopping the wall, where my mom was much more likely to notice.

The mountains were darker against the moonlit sky—the world, shadows on shadows.

I stayed on the roads, striding quickly in the gap between the streetlights, but I stopped when I turned onto my drive. A car with its engine running. A car was
here.

There were no other houses on this part of the street. It was too late for a delivery. If it was Jan, my mom would probably knock on my door, and I’d be found out. I moved faster, keeping to the bushes, trying to work out how to slip through the gate and climb through the window with neither of them noticing.

The engine turned off, and I froze. I eased my body slowly around the corner, until I could see the car. A green Jeep, just like Ryan’s—

Before I could stop myself, I had jogged alongside the car, which was practically in view of the front gate. If someone leaned to the side in the front window, they might be able to see him.

He was going to get me busted. As I approached the car, I saw him still sitting in the driver’s seat, texting on his phone. His tie was undone, and so was the top collar button, and his jacket was tossed in a heap on the passenger seat.

I tapped the car window, and he jumped, dropping the phone into his lap.

He let out a relieved sigh as he opened the car door. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“What are you doing here?” I whispered, while making hand motions for him to
keep it down.

“I tried to catch you when you left. I saw you pull into the development, but…then I couldn’t find you.” He grabbed his phone. “I’ve been writing to you.” He showed me a string of open text messages, then turned the phone back to himself. “Um, you can delete them now.” He looked down at his shoes, which had probably been shiny a few hours earlier, but were now coated in a layer of fine dust.

“I was borrowing a friend’s car,” I said. “I left it at her house. And my phone’s in my room.”

“Oh,” he said.

“I wasn’t supposed to go out,” I said. “So I left the phone, which also has GPS tracking, you know?”

He raised an eyebrow. Maybe he didn’t know.

“The thing is,” he said, just as I said, “What did I do?”

“What?” he asked.

“I did something wrong.”

“You didn’t,” he said.

“It sure seems like it,” I said. “Because we were talking, and it was nice, and then in class you just…stopped. And went back to ignoring me.”

“I wasn’t ignoring…,” he said, and winced. “Sorry. It’s not you, Kelsey.”

I was pretty sure that was a line.
It’s not you, it’s me.
Famous. And final. Like a shrug from Cole. I raised an eyebrow at him in return. I remembered Holly’s adorable dimples.

He shook his head. “You don’t understand.” He wasn’t whispering anymore, and I didn’t try to stop him. He was working his way up to something, stepping a little closer. “I feel like such a poseur,” he said. “I don’t deserve this. Here. Take it.” He already had the medal for bravery in his hand, and now he was thrusting it at me.

I laughed, pushed it back toward him. “No way, what am I supposed to do with this?
I
was terrified.”

He took a step closer. “I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.”

I shook my head. “No, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t have been in the car in the first place.
I’d
be dead….”

“I was hanging in midair, Kelsey. You held us up with…” His eyes drifted to my hands, and I balled them up. I couldn’t look at the gash across my fingers—raw and starting to scab over—without reliving it all, and now it seemed he couldn’t, either.

“Look,” I said. “You chose to climb into my car. I held us up because…well, because what was the other choice? It was an instinct.”

His eyes went wide, and he laughed. “Well, I’m glad your instinct was to
not let go.
” He was looking at my hands again, but he was smiling.

“Self-preservation,” I added, half laughing. “Pretty sure it’s what anyone would do.”

This time, his gaze shifted from my hands to my arms, my neck, my mouth. He lowered his voice, took a step closer. “No, I don’t think so.”

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, kicking up rocks in the driveway, and it made him seem younger than a man receiving a bravery medal on a podium.

“So, I want to try something again,” he said, his lips curving up into a smile. God, I loved that look. “Do you want to do something sometime?”

I smiled back, big and stupid, and didn’t even bother trying to stop it. “Yes. But maybe we should specify this time.”

“Hang out. Somewhere. Sometime.”

I heard my heartbeat echo inside my head—not nerves, not quite, but something close. “You mean besides upside down in my car?”

“Yeah. Definitely besides that. Like…my house. Or the movies. Or the park. Or here, right now.” He gestured to the iron gate in front of us, the house hidden behind it.

I chewed the inside of my cheek, picturing Ryan filling up my room with that smile. “I’m not allowed to have people over. I’m also not exactly supposed to be out right now. It’s going to be hard enough for me to sneak back in alone.”