Underneath Everything (31 page)

I wrap my arms around my bare stomach.

“No.”

Jolene props herself up on her elbows and considers me. Her eyes don’t look hazel in the moonlight; they look like light. Like her irises are on fire. She stands up, walks toward me, and stops just short of stepping on my feet.

“No?”

I think of earlier on the dance floor: the lights becoming the sky above us. The music through my body.

The collective energy. Her arms reaching for me.

“Yes,” I admit.

Jolene nods, satisfied.

Shouts and noisemakers sound from the house. We turn toward the lit windows.

“They liked it too” she says, as if she’s translating for them.

“What about you?” I ask.

“What
about
me?”

I face her. “Did you like it?”

She keeps her eyes on the house, her profile set off by a thin shine of moonlight. Until she turns and the light is behind her. The crooks of her face are dark caves as she lifts the loose ends of her sweater that flap against my waist. She rubs them between her fingers. I half expect her to rip them off and roll them the way Hudson does. Instead she holds both sides open so she can see every inch of my winter-pale skin.

I breathe deep, feel the gooseflesh of my breasts press against my bra and go slack again under her gaze. I wait—chin up, eyes steady—as she makes her way back to my face.

Jolene drops the edges of the sweater, fastens her eyes on mine. “No.”

The breath from her word warms my lips. Maybe that’s why I kiss her. To prove she’s lying.

She kisses me back, at first: mouth open, tongue strong, lips soft. She tastes bitter and sweet, a mix of burned cocoa and sugar.

Behind my eyelids, the darkness folds and shifts, like covers for us to burrow under. I clutch her hand and curve into her. I tilt my head so I can taste her better. And when her chin doesn’t turn with me, I claw at her jaw, dig my thumb into the skin on the side of her nose and force her head to the side. I push her, for all the times she pushed me. I’m the rope on her wrists. The hand on her mouth. The glass through her skin.

Until Jolene jerks back again, and I lose my grip. When she breaks the seal of our kiss, there’s a hiss

—a shared breath escaping.

“What?” I grab the tattered edges of the sweater and cross them like a cardigan over my stomach.

“You want this.”

Jolene smoothes her hair and squares her shoulders. “I don’t.”

“Then why—?” My head is spinning, and this time it’s not from the pot or the alcohol. It’s from the memories: her hand in my hair, her palm covering my mouth, the curve of her back as she pulled me close.

Those things were real. They happened. She has to want me. She has to want this. But if she doesn’t—

“Then why did you do all those things?”

“What? Up there?” She flicks her head toward the crowd of silhouettes gathered in the living room, backed by blue light from the television. “I did those things because I can. Because that’s what I’m good at. I can dance and drink and lie. I can give guys what they want. And girls too, apparently.” She sighs.

Her breath steams like smoke in the cold. “And now you can, too,” she adds with a smile.

“No, I mean.” An ache grows in my throat, but I force the question around it. I have to know. “Why did you do all those things
to me
?”

Jolene’s smile shrinks but doesn’t disappear. It almost seems appreciative. “Because you like it.”

“You think I like being tied up and suffocated and lied to? You think I like losing all my friends, and my boyfriend?” I’m shaking now, not shivering. It’s almost like my skin is vibrating.

“Yeah. I do,” Jolene says simply. “I think you like the fact that something finally happened to you.”

“I like you.”

“No you don’t. You don’t even know me, and you don’t want to. Why did you want to be friends with me in the first place? Think about it.”

I see the cliff, feel her hand, hear the rocks falling beneath my sneakers. I was scared and excited at the same time. I felt alive. But it wasn’t just that, was it? It couldn’t have been.

“Let me remind you,” Jolene says. “It was because you hated yourself. When I met you, you were making lists and checking boxes. You had a million maps of the same place. You were trapped. You wanted out. You wanted to be new, and you figured I could give that to you. And you were right. Though I have to say, I think you made a real mistake running away on the dance floor like that. Not that it can’t be fixed.”

I wiggle my fingers. I haven’t felt them tingling for the last few minutes, and I’m afraid they’re going numb. Then I realize I’m having a hard time feeling anything. I let my hands go slack at my sides.

“So this is all a game to you?” I ask. “I’m just this thing you’ve been playing with? You saw that I was weak—an easy target—and that gave you the right to take advantage?”

“You’re not paying attention.” Jolene shakes her head and clucks her tongue. “I wasn’t using you, Mattie.
You
were using
me
. You came to me every time you needed a little something interesting, and when someone else looked better, you left.” She clamps her jaw shut, as if something big, or bitter, has landed on her tongue. Then she grimaces and swallows it whole. “You were only in it for yourself.
You
used
me
. And look what you got out of it!”

“What I got out of it? Are you kidding?” I pick up the ends of the ripped sweater. I think of Hudson storming out, and the tone of Kris’s voice when she called after me: Angry. Shocked. Full throated. The same way I sound when I say, “I lost everything!”

“Not everything,” she says, swiveling toward the house. And as if everyone inside can sense Jolene’s attention, the hollers get louder. “You’ve got them.”

“But they don’t know me. They’re not my friends. What I did up there—what they saw—that wasn’t me.”

“It sure looked like you.”

“Okay, I mean, obviously it was me, but—”

“Then own it,” Jolene demands. She huffs out a hard, impatient breath. “Do you really think what happened at Bella’s party broke me? That I stayed home, sulking about some stupid fight, some dumb breakup, until I could drag myself back to school the next day to live in the shadows? That I just
let
it all happen?”

I open my mouth, but only air comes out.

What
did
I think when I slid into my old seat in the cafeteria and Jolene slid into the seat next to me in the auditorium? That we’d switched skins? That the world had finally righted itself, decided I’d served my sentence? That it was time I reclaim what was rightfully mine?

Or is that just the version I wanted to believe?

I swallow a mix of whiskey, shame, and spit.

Because I knew, didn’t I? That Jolene had something to do with it? As soon as she missed school on Monday, and then again when she came back changed, no longer full of bite and blaze. I knew, and I buried it. Because I wanted to believe it was mine. That I earned it. That I deserved it. That I was worth it.

But if she orchestrated it all, why?

And if that’s not the real version, what is?

The questions kick at my closed lips, but Jolene’s not finished.

“Tell everyone you were drunk and wanted to put on a show. Or tell them you went home with me.

Tell them
something
, and it’ll be your story instead of theirs.”

“I don’t care about the story.” I step in front of Jolene, cutting off her view of the living room, where every arm is raised, black strips against the blue light. “It’s not about the story.”

She laughs. It’s a sad, sorry-for-me sound. “It’s always about the story, Mattie.”

As soon as she says it, something in me settles, clicks, like the metal ridges of the flint wheel. Jolene and I, we’ve never been the real thing. We’ve always been a story. Our story. “The Two Little Girls.”

That’s how we were born, and that’s how we’ve lived. I think back to the auditorium and the early parties, where Jolene always made people into fantasies. I think of her face, grim and determined, as she stared at me in the bed and held her breath. I think of the ropes and the cliff and the shed and the texts.

Hudson. Even these last few weeks when she played dead.

Jolene told me the night I walked to her house at midnight. She said it:
Maybe we’re both not here.

What if we’re both not real?

I look hard at Jolene—at the curve of her lip and the line of her chin, the angle of her neck and the bend of her elbow—trying to find something genuine. For a second I think I glimpse something—the rope-throated version I saw inside the party—but then it’s gone, buried beneath a veneer of dark hair, auburn streaks, and gleaming teeth. It’s a practiced pose, but not the real thing. More like some kind of covering.

And it occurs to me now that maybe Jolene was right. Maybe I don’t know her at all. Maybe I’ve never seen what’s underneath. But if I could just lift the film . . . if I could just see—

I reach for her cheek.

She pulls back a fraction of an inch.

And suddenly I’m struck cold. Not from the weather or the wind but from fear—fear that the story is all there is. That she’s as insubstantial as a collection of words and phrases I could erase. That if I reached out and pulled off the covering, she’d cease to exist.

Or that, if she did, every word out of her mouth would be another lie. Another layer. Another story.

“Is anything about you real?” My voice shakes.

Jolene doesn’t respond right away. She waits until the voices lift through the open living-room window and float across the lawn toward us.

“FOUR!”

“THREE!”

“TWO!”

But she keeps her eyes on me. They shine like wet paint when she smiles.

“You used to be.”

One.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER 38

I STAMP THE snow from my boots, peel off my knit hat, and pad up the steps to my room, where hundreds of crumpled pieces of paper—yellowed at the edges, brittle to the point of breaking—carpet the floor. I step through the stacks, around clear, curled balls of packing tape piled like popcorn, and sit down on the only spot of open carpet. Then I reach into the worn, cardboard box sitting next to me and slowly slide out the final sheaf of thin sheets.

Since Bella’s party I’ve kept to myself, and so has everybody else. I drive to school. I eat lunch alone.

And when I get home, I hang out with happyelizabeth’s grandmother in 1901.

Turns out I won the auction. The beat-up box was sitting next to my bed New Year’s Day, with a Post-it that shouted, “THIS CAME IN THE MAIL FOR YOU!” in my mom’s handwriting. The caps alone had

caused me pain. I’d woken with a raw throat and a heavy head, wearing a black thermal. I’d tried to crawl back into sleep, only to wake again with a bucking stomach, tasting whiskey and cocoa, fending off flashes of shot glasses and strobe lights, smoke and liquor, sweat and secrets. Me: dancing. Jolene: leaving. I’d turn over in bed, only to feel the cold creeping over my skin again. The hands between my back and the stretched rubber strips of a lounge chair. Kris’s curls covering my face. Curses. A flannel shirt. The scenes had faded in and out like the music had on the dance floor. And for a few hours I’d felt like I was fading too—skin papery thin, vanishing, then solid again. But eventually the sensation had gone away. It wasn’t until noon that day, when I’d finally gathered the courage to sit up straight (elbows dug into my thighs, head in my hands), that I’d seen the stained box.

I’d opened it immediately—picked and pulled at each long piece of clear tape until it screamed with release, even though the sharp smell of glue and plastic turned my stomach.

My room doesn’t smell like that anymore. Now it’s a musty mix of oil and wood, grass and vanilla, same as my Sanborns. I haven’t found any maps so far. I’ve sorted handwritten letters and typed telegrams. Loose pages of old newspapers. Medical information. Lists of food and supplies. Political flyers. Theater playbills. And a pencil drawing of a farmhouse dated 1865 (on a piece of paper so old I thought it might be woven, but no; when I brought it to my nose, it reeked of vinegar—a sure sign that the paper was wood pulp).

The small stack in my hand is the last of it. A few stuck-together pages. I set them on my lap and begin to peel them apart, starting at the corner. The first two don’t release so easily, but the third comes away.

And I see it. The map. There are more beneath. Hand-drawn plans of the house with floor layouts and measurements. A land survey with symbols for fences and farmland. Sales documents with plots and dollar amounts. Half-torn pages from a printed Colton atlas. Most of them only capture the southern part of the state, where the estate must have been located. But there is one that climbs north, detailing each county in central Jersey. It’s not a Sanborn, but it’s similar. Clear lines. Crossed boxes. Stark depictions.

I take that one to my bed, cross my legs, and smooth it flat with my hands. I don’t worry about the oil from my fingers, because this map is already ruined. It’s got color spots from the other paper it was pressed against in the box, not to mention the water stains and yellowed edges. So I touch it where I want, adding myself to the history of the page. I run my fingers up from Camden, through Mercer and Monmouth Counties, up to Union, and across the name printed on the yellow, claw shape: West Field. Two words, separated by a space.

I get up and lean over my desk to lift my framed Sanborn off its nail, where it’s been hanging since Thanksgiving. Then I set it on my blanket next to the decaying map from happyelizabeth. Both maps are from the 1860s. Both are survey maps. But they’re not the same. The northeast corner of Westfield, which stretches to meet Springfield, looks longer, narrower in my map. The dip in the middle looks steeper, as if Mountainside were dripping water into the top of Westfield and deepening the decay.