The Secrets We Keep (12 page)

“Hey,” I said as I took my backpack from his outstretched hand.

I don't know what I expected. Perhaps that he'd hold me or offer to skip his next class and sit with me. Maybe make an attempt to talk me down off the crazy ledge I was teetering on, but what I got was a confusing glare and a nod.

“I saw Molly come out of the bathroom before you,” Alex said as he shoved his phone into his pocket. “She looked … I don't know, better.”

I wasn't aware she looked like crap to begin with. “Better than what?”

“Better than she has since she came back. You say something to her?”

I winced, unable to hide the surprise in my face. I'd said hi to her in class and silently begged her not to tell the other girls in the bathroom that I was crouched up on a toilet hiding out, but that was it. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing remotely helpful or sympathetic.

“No, I didn't say anything to her, but why would it matter if I did?”

“We talked about this at the party, Maddy. It's safer if we keep her on the outside.”

Alex took a step forward, his body suddenly within inches of mine. I could smell his cologne, see the smooth lines of his jaw and the tiny spot he'd missed when shaving this morning. “You have to trust me on this. You need to keep your distance from her, at least until things settle down and you're feeling more like yourself.”

The pain in his voice stabbed at my heart and I shook my head. There was a fear behind his words, a fear that I would change my mind and reveal a secret I didn't even know. My reply was easy, I wouldn't tell Molly anything—not because I was trying to protect him or my sister, but because I had no clue what he was talking about.

“I wasn't planning on telling Molly anything,” I said.

I felt his relief and offered him my hand. He took it and laced his fingers through mine. “What happened with Molly is in the past, Maddy, and it needs to stay there.”

Every part of me was begging to ask him what he was talking about. I searched his expression for a clue as to what was going on between Alex and Maddy, and what Molly had to do with it. I got nothing.

I tried to think of a time when something seemed off between them. I remembered the muffled conversation in the bathroom the week before Maddy died—the one about some plan of Maddy's going wrong—and I remembered the tears streaming down Maddy's face at the party. But other than that, everything between Maddy and Alex had seemed fine. Perfect, actually.

Alex took my silence for indecision and reached out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “I made sure everything went away. Made certain you got to be co-captain of the field hockey team, prom queen in junior year, the girl everybody wants to be, didn't I?”

I nodded because agreeing with him seemed like the logical thing to do.

“Seven more months and we're out of here. We can start over and forget everything that happened. I can keep things together for you until then, but you've gotta stop trying to make amends with Molly and remember who
you
are, how you got here, and what you've been willing to do to make sure nobody, including Molly, stands in your way.”

Whatever this was, whatever lie my sister and Alex were covering up, I hadn't agreed to it. I thought I could put on her clothes, sit in her classes, talk to her friends, and make everybody so happy she was alive that they'd overlook tiny mistakes I made here and there. But this was different. Complicated. Too complicated.

I stared at Alex, unable to speak, unable to wipe the look of sheer confusion from my face. I would have been more than happy to hand the crown of popularity over to Jenna and sink into the background. But what I wanted didn't matter. The most important thing was keeping Maddy's life intact, every piece of it, including this.

Alex caught the frustration on my face, his tone purposefully gentling as he pulled out his phone and started to dial my dad's number. “Maybe your parents were right. Maybe it was too soon for you to come back to school. Maybe you should go and talk to the therapist with your parents, give yourself some more time before—”

“I don't need to talk to anybody.” I reached for the phone and hit the Off button before the call connected to my father's office. “I'm fine, Alex, honest. People are acting weird around me, and it makes me … I don't know, edgy.” The words tumbled out as I desperately tried to bluff my way through the rest of the conversation. Until I figured out what I'd walked into, I needed to keep my cards close. Watch more and say less.

“Probably because
you're
acting weird around
them
,” he said. The concern and confusion that had dampened his features for the past month were suddenly gone, the confident Alex I was used to seeing with Maddy back in place. “Plus, edgy is good. That's what they're used to. It's freaking out in class and hiding in the bathroom that is going to get you in trouble.”

“I know,” I said, trying to sound convincing.

“Molly is where she is today because she didn't have the strength that you do. And, she didn't have me. There are plenty of people here willing to take your place. One wrong move and you'll be exactly where she is now—at the bottom, staring up at where you
used
to be. I can help you, cover for you and keep you safe, make sure that doesn't happen, but you gotta let me. You gotta stop shutting me out and talk to me
before
you lose it.”

I nodded. He wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know.

“Listen, Maddy. You can fall apart at home with me if you have to, but I need you to hold it together while we're here. If you can't do that, then let me take you home, because trust me, it's not worth undoing everything we've worked so hard to get.”

“I'm fine,” I said again as I hitched my backpack farther up on my shoulder. A chill raced along my spine as I considered my limited options—play the popular sister or go home. The choice was easy. For the foreseeable future, I'd keep my mouth shut, not talk to anybody but Alex, and, if I was smart, start paying better attention to the conversations going on around me. Clearly I'd missed something … a lot of things. And if I was going to survive this mess, I needed to learn about Maddy's past, fast.

Until that epiphany hit, I'd focus on the small stuff. I'd avoid passing any American Lit tests by more than the bare minimum. I'd feign interest in choosing the color scheme for the Snow Ball, fake interest when Jenna went on about her dress, and come up with something catty to say about the ten pounds her sister had gained. I'd start treating everybody else the way I was used to Maddy treating me—with indifference.

“You have study hall next,” he reminded me.

“Umm hmm.” I knew Maddy's schedule, made sure I had it memorized before I set foot in school.

“Try to say something nice to Jenna. She's still bent out of shape that you have been avoiding her. But don't mention her parents losing the house or her brother having to drop out of college and work at their uncle's garage. She doesn't want anybody to know, especially you. If she finds out I told you, she'll never forgive me … or you.”

They could find another house, but Jenna's brother—he was the pride and joy of the family. He'd graduated when we were freshmen and he'd gotten a scholarship to Notre Dame, the same school his father and grandfather graduated from. I'd met him once when he came to pick up Jenna at our house. He had seemed nice enough … nice enough that I actually felt bad for him.

“Ask her about what happened between her and Keith while you were out of school,” Alex added, and I stopped thinking about Jenna's brother stocking parts at the garage to help with bills and focused on Alex's words. “That will keep her talking for a while so you don't have to.”

Alex spun me around and headed me in the opposite direction from him, a silent message to not screw up barely hidden in his voice: “I know it sucks, Maddy, but remember, the sooner things get back to normal, the better off we'll both be.”

 

19

I walked in the direction Alex had nudged me toward. I wasn't anxious to hear Jenna talk about herself, but standing there in the hall staring wide-eyed at Alex was not going to help. Normal. That was what I was striving for. Problem was, I had no idea what Maddy's version of normal was.

Mine was sitting in my room drawing or arguing with Josh over whether or not banana peppers and chicken was a good combination of pizza toppings. My normal was constant. The people around me were predictable. I could tell you that Josh had a poppy seed bagel with veggie cream cheese every morning for breakfast. I could tell you that he never filled his tank past the quarter mark and always went to the 7-Eleven on Reservoir Avenue because it was the only one that had watermelon Slurpees. He'd bring two brand-new mechanical pencils to every test, same make, same brand. One for me, one for him.

But Maddy's friends … Alex … there was nothing predictable or consistent about them.

I didn't have a clue what I was supposed to do. I'd never had a study hall in my life. I always filled those empty spots with an open studio or an advanced class. Plus, I had nothing to study. In fact, if I wanted to play the part of Maddy, then I needed to dumb myself down, not get a jump start on tomorrow's homework.

The halls were pretty much empty. A couple of girls were heading toward the bathroom and a few more were digging forgotten books or homework assignments out of their lockers. The rest of the students were in their classes. Having nowhere in particular to go, I slowed my pace. It was nice to be alone, to have a second of peace to reorient myself.

I had forty-five minutes until my next real class started, and I thought I'd use it to sift through the contents of Maddy's locker. I'd already gone through her desk, bureau, and closet. None of those revealed anything out of the ordinary, except perhaps the box of condoms I found shoved down in the toe of one of her boots this morning.

I don't know where the urge to count them came from, but I did. Box of twelve, seven left. That only confirmed my suspicion that Alex wasn't kidding when he joked that I'd be ready soon. Yeah, no clue how I was going to handle that one.

I slowed nearly to a stop when I heard Jenna's voice. She couldn't see me; there was a bank of lockers blocking her view, but I doubted seeing me would've stopped her. I carefully eased my way forward until she came into full view. I intended to do as Alex had instructed and pretend to be interested in what Jenna had to say. I mean, how hard could it be? All I had to do was smile and nod every once in a while.

I counted the lockers three times to make sure I wasn't mistaken, then searched the numbers for further confirmation: that was Maddy's locker Jenna was standing in front of.

But it was my name—Ella—mingled into Jenna's conversation that had my ears trained on her words. I shrank into the lockers out of Jenna's view and let the cold metal support me as I stood there and listened.

“Alex is angry that we didn't have this done before she got here this morning,” Jenna was saying.

She had a roll of crepe paper in one hand, a giant poster board in the other. She tore off a chunk of streamer paper and waved at the girl next to her to hurry up and give her some tape. “If he wanted her locker decorated with this welcome-back crap, then he should've done it himself. Like the one in the locker room isn't enough.”

The girl laughed as she dug some sort of homemade sign out of her backpack. I couldn't read the names on it from where I was hiding, but there were a lot. She tacked it to the front of my locker and offered Jenna a pen. Jenna shook her head and shoved the pen away.

“I don't know why he's mad. It's not like anybody knew she'd be here today,” the girl said.

Jenna nodded, playing along. Leave it to her to play innocent. She knew I was coming back today. I was sitting next to Alex on my bed last night when he called her and told her to tell our “friends” not to ask me any questions about the accident or Ella. Apparently, she'd conveniently forgotten to pass that message on.

“Did you see her at Ella's locker this morning?” I still couldn't place who that girl was—probably an underclassman or one of the JV field hockey players that Jenna had promised a varsity spot to. “She lost it on that weird boy her sister used to always hang out with. I kind of feel bad for her. It's got to be hard facing him.”

Josh wasn't weird; he was the most genuine person I knew. And I wouldn't qualify me trying to clear out my
own
locker as losing it. I'd call it being considerate of Josh's feelings.

Jenna nodded and stepped back to admire her work. Maddy's entire locker was covered with streamers and well wishes scribbled on Post-it notes. “Yeah, well, what did you expect? You kill your sister in a car accident, you're bound to be a little messed up.”

There it was, that snap of brutal honesty that I'd always associated with Jenna.

I remembered asking my sister about her when we were freshmen. It was toward the end of the year. Jenna had become a constant fixture in my sister's life and the bane of my existence. I didn't get what my sister saw in her, and why she chose to surround herself with such mean people.

“She's not as bad as you think. I mean, you don't even know her,” Maddy said as she flicked through the TV channels. Mom had grounded us for arguing over whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher. We'd been arguing about everything back then, from who didn't put the cap back on the milk to who was smarter. Our punishment was a weekend at home with nobody to talk to but each other.

I rolled my eyes. I didn't need to know Jenna. I'd watched her flip off some random girl at school that day, for looking at whatever boy she had marked as her own, and heard her tear an exchange student a new one in the cafeteria the day before for accidentally sitting down in her seat.