100 Days (25 page)

“Oh my God,” Moira says behind me, her voice blurry. “Agnes, what are you doing here?”

“We're supposed to study, remember?” I've stopped on the flagstone walkway, but my back is still turned toward them. It's all too much.

“Oh my God,” Moira sputters again. “I totally forgot.”

“Why didn't you tell me about this, about you and Boone?” My eyes are filling with tears. And because my funky, lashless eyelids are too thin and stretched out to hold them back for more than a second, the tears start streaming down my face almost immediately. I turn around to face the two of them anyway.

“I didn't think—”

“You didn't think what?” I challenge her. “You didn't think it mattered if you got together with Boone behind my back? Because it's not like I'm really even in the running or anything, of course. I mean,
look
at me. Right? Am I right?” My voice has reached such a high pitch that I wonder if they can hear me at all. Maybe I sound as invisible as I feel. Maybe only dogs and dolphins can hear me now.

“Agnes—”

“
Stop saying my name.
You go away to get your head screwed on straight, and while you're gone, I … Boone and I…” He's standing right there, so I don't say what I was going to say, which was … what? That Boone and I were somehow romantically involved? I'm not going to let the question get me off track. The point is, Moira deserves to hear what I'm saying right now. She needs to hear this. “And then you come strolling back in here, la-di-da—”

“Strolling?” Moira is looking at me with her head tilted, trying to comprehend.

“Just never mind. Forget it.” I feel suddenly dizzy.

“No. Agnes, I want to know.”

The girl who used to be my best friend is too pretty in this moment, her voice and hands too soft and feminine. Between the time when she got back from Berkeley and I left for Disneyland, I didn't have a chance to get used to how much she had changed. This new, lovely girl is not the Moira I know. This is not a Moira tough enough to protect me.

“Agnes, wait.” It's Boone's voice this time.

“And you!” I say, pointing at him. He flinches like he's just been zapped by a cattle prod. “You made me … You made me think…” I'm struggling for breath a little now, panting. I have no idea where this anger inside me came from or where it's been hiding. I feel righteous, all-powerful, and more than a little sick all at the same time.

Boone's looking at me almost like he's scared. “Agnes, I'm so sorry.”

“
You
don't say my name, either! Moira and I were fine before you barged into our lives again. We never should have let you back in.”

At that Moira takes a step toward me, but I hold up a hand to stop her. “Mom!” I cry, running back toward her car that's just now starting to pull slowly away from the curb. “Mom, wait!”

 

79

MOIRA

DAY 22: JUNE 3

When Boone calls me the next morning, I tell him it was all a mistake. That we should have just left the past in the past. I force myself to be strong, to not back down. It's the only way.

He doesn't want to hear it.

I tell him I should have known better, that I shouldn't have led him on.

He says I didn't.

I tell him not to call me.

He says he wishes I'd rethink that.

I tell him not to call Agnes.

He says he won't call her if not calling her will help.

I tell him Agnes and I are going to make up, that I'm sure of it.

He says he's sure of it, too. That it's all going to work out. That he'll be there to help. Whatever we need.

I tell him to just leave us alone.

He doesn't say anything more.

 

80

AGNES

DAY 21: JUNE 4

Mom tries to talk to me. She invites me to curl up in her big king bed on Saturday night like I did when I was younger. “Having a boy in the picture complicates things, doesn't it?” she whispers.

I don't answer right away. I'm glad it's dark. I don't want to have to monitor the look on my face in case it gives something away that I'd rather keep private. “Sometimes I just think it would be better for everyone if I wasn't here at all,” I say after a while. “If I was just … out of the picture.”

Mom sits there in silence for a minute, breathing slowly in and out. “It won't help for you to not be here,” she finally says. “You do realize that, right?”

“But you're so tired all the time. And sometimes you seem so sad.”

“I am sad sometimes,” she tells me. “Tired, too. But all mothers are tired. Every one of us is tired, Agnes. Do you understand me? So don't think for one second that your not being here will help me. Okay?”

“Okay,” I whisper. After that, sleep comes easily.

 

81

BOONE

DAY 20: JUNE 5

“I can't do this to her” was all Moira said as we stood in the middle of the street watching Deb's car drive away. We were both out of breath, having realized the futility of trying to chase down the car after Agnes got back into it. I'd like to think Deb would have stopped if she'd looked in her rearview mirror and seen me and Moira running after them, hollering for them to please wait. Probably, she'd been too worried about Agnes to even check her mirrors.

More than anything, I wish I'd noticed Agnes sooner. That's my biggest current regret. When I came up for air from Moira's luscious lips and opened my eyes, Agnes's face was the first thing I saw. Her eyes and mouth were frozen into three little round Os.

Before leaving Moira that night, I took her hand and held it between my own hands. “It's all going to work out,” I told her. I hoped I sounded convincing since I wasn't at all sure that what I was saying was true. Then I leaned in for a hug, but she leaned away.

“It's not…” she said. “I can't.” She hadn't been able to reach Agnes on the phone in the half hour since they'd driven away, and she seemed to know better than to go over there. She didn't want Agnes to get so upset that she made herself sick.

 

82

AGNES

DAY 19: JUNE 6

Finals start today, and I don't even care. I've been given an extension due to the fact that I've been “going through a rough time lately—on multiple levels,” as Mom wrote in her note to the school staff. I can even use the first week of summer vacation to finish everything if I want to. I'm also allowed to take my exams open-book, but I've decided to take them closed-book and in one sitting like everybody else. What's it really going to matter, anyway?

For this last week of school, I've been assigned a new chaperone to walk with me between classes. Moira tried to accompany me to first period this morning as usual, but I told her to go away. She tried ignoring what I said, so I planted my feet near my locker and refused to move. The two of us stood there in the hallway for about five minutes after the last bell rang. We were both late enough to our classes that the secretary from the office was sent to find us.

“What's going on, girls?” she asked, sighing.

I was the first to answer. “I don't want Moira walking me to class.”

“She needs someone to protect her,” Moira protested.

The secretary nodded at Moira and tilted her head at me. “Everything okay, Agnes?”

I didn't answer.

“I think Moira's right,” she told me. “It's important for you to have someone to keep you safe in the hallways, don't you think?”

“As long as it's not her.” I stared down at the hallway floor when I said it so I wouldn't see the look on Moira's face.

Moira's replacement is a sophomore named Brittany who needs some quick extra credit to avoid summer school.

“Mrs. Deene is applying this to my home ec grade,” Brittany tells me when we meet in the main office. “She says it's a form of community service. Otherwise, I'd totally fail.”

“How does someone fail home ec?” I ask, slightly incredulous. I can tell by the look in her eyes that the question doesn't win me any points with my new handler.

Still, while we're waiting in the cafeteria lunch line, I laugh when Brittany says, “Ew, potatoes au gratin. More like au
grossen
,” even though it isn't remotely funny. I laugh so Moira will see me laughing. Boone, too. I notice that the two of them aren't standing in line together. In fact, there are about twenty people separating them, but that doesn't make me feel better. It doesn't make me feel anything.

As we're looking for a place to sit, Brittany's friends try to wave her over to their table. Brittany makes a sad face at them. She points to me and shakes her head, doesn't even try to hide it. A minute later, she starts to sit at the corner table Moira and I used on the rare occasions when we'd eat in the cafeteria instead of the home ec room, but I tell her I don't want to sit there. Not that it ends up mattering; I see Moira walking quickly toward the exit with her tray of food.

“God, you're lucky you're so skinny,” Brittany says when we finally find a decent spot. “You can probably eat anything you want.”

Sometimes there are no words. This is one of those times. If Moira was here, there would most definitely be words. I don't allow myself to wonder what they'd be, though.

After lunch, instead of chaperoning me through the busy hallway and back to my locker like she's supposed to, Brittany stands outside the cafeteria and checks her phone. She also makes blinky eyes at every handsome upperclassman that walks past as I sit on a nearby bench twiddling my thumbs.

Moira appears from around a corner of the building. She comes over to the two of us, sizes Brittany up, then makes a disdainful sound with her nose.

Brittany tears her attention away from her phone long enough to glance at me and then at Moira. “Um?” she asks.

Moira ignores her. “So this is it, then,” she says to me.

“I guess.” I don't look her in the eye. “It's not like we have to make a big drama out of it or anything.” I'm aware of how soon we could start sounding like we're reciting lines from some after-school special if we're not careful. I'm aware that doing so might make one of us laugh, and I'm not at all ready for that. I'm still mad. I'm still
betrayed
.

“If this is your decision…” Moira starts to say.

“This is my decision,” I tell her.

I don't expect those words to have an actual taste leaving my mouth, but they do. They taste the way I imagine old, tarnished coins taste—bitter and metallic.

They taste final.

 

83

BOONE

DAY 18: JUNE 7

I've picked up more time at the feed store. It's just a couple of hours after school, but I'm not going to complain. For one thing, it's a good distraction. For another, I'm going to show TJ that I'm a team player if it kills me. Maybe that way he'll be willing to bump up my hours permanently when summer vacation starts in a few days.

Just before closing, I see my neighbor's truck pull into the parking lot, and then Jackson Tate himself gets out. Heading toward the front entrance, he tips his hat and smiles at one of the register girls who's loading a case of canned dog food into the trunk of a customer's car. I'm stacking bags of alfalfa cubes at the end of an aisle near the doors, which means Tate can't avoid seeing me when he comes in.

“Help you?” I ask him as I lift one of the fifty-pound bags onto the stack and then reach for another. I try to use the same tone I use for every other customer. There hasn't been any drama between us for over a month, and I'd like to keep it that way. That last time Diablo escaped, the hoofprints he left in Tate's driveway gravel were so laughably faint that I could barely even see them. And Tate hasn't brought up the fence line in over a month, no doubt because he realized how off his measurements were.
That's probably not the only thing he's mismeasured
, I think to myself, smiling. Tate must see something he doesn't like in my smile. He must see all the stuff that's been simmering inside me since the first time we met, because he shifts his gaze away from mine and says, “No, thanks. I'm good.”

After work, I head home and grab my favorite pistol, the one called the Judge. Somehow, the weight of the blued steel always feels comfortable in my hand. I also grab the box of ammunition I've set aside for emergencies. Mom's in her bedroom. I can hear her walking around in there, so I know she's okay.

Dead pine needles crunch beneath my work boots as I head out into the woods behind the pasture. The air feels like it did the last time my father took me woodcutting with him, the last day I saw him alive.

Nobody else is at the gravel pit, which means I get to be alone as I shoot at the junk others have left behind for target practice. I start with an old stove, then move on to plinking beer cans. Finally, I decide to shoot the shit out of an old refrigerator somebody dragged out here years ago. There's still enough of the old, rusted steel left to make a satisfying sound when it's punctured. For a long while I stand there bracing my wrist against the kickback as I unload round after round before reloading and doing it all over again. I refuse to think about the money I'm blowing on ammo. For once, I couldn't care less about the waste. In fact, maybe I just need to let myself not care about anything for a while. My old man would kill me if he was here, but he's not here. Henry Everett Craddock will never be here, or anywhere, ever again.

“You're not here, are you?” I shout at the refrigerator, startling myself a little, as I fire off another several rounds. “Answer me, you sonofabitch! You're not here! You're not anywhere! You couldn't help me then, and you can't help me now.
You're
the useless one, not me!” My voice cracks a little on the last part.