Exposure (25 page)

“Uhh. Way to go?” Tess said, staring at Craig wide-eyed as she walked backward in front of us. “What's next? Parting the Red Sea? Turning water into wine?”

“Seriously,” Cat said. “Only a serious a-hole would chop down that tree now.” Nick slung his arm casually over Cat's shoulder. “Were you planning it all along?”

“Let's just say a wise woman once told me I'd never have to worry about ‘a single tree,'” Craig said, nudging Kaya in the ribs with his elbow. “I finally decided she was full of shit.”

“Okay, wise guy!” Kaya said with a laugh.

Duff came jogging alongside us to catch up.

“Craig! Brilliant speech.”

“Thanks man.”

“Did I do that?” he pointed to the bruise on Craig's temple.

“Believe me,” Craig said. “I deserved it.” Duff looked confused.

“Well, anyway, no hard feelings, man,” he patted Craig on the shoulder. “I had you pegged all wrong. I'm really sorry.”

“Sure.”

When we entered the gym, Craig grabbed me by the hand and pulled me away from the crowd. We found ourselves secluded under the bleachers.

“My herooooo,” I comically sighed, leaning in to plant a kiss on him. I was startled when he pulled away.

“Don't say that.” He was holding me affectionately around the waist, but he was deadly serious as I looked into his eyes.

IT WASN'T FAIR. Four days wasn't enough time to reign as Craig MacKenzie's girlfriend. Whatever he was about to say to me, I knew it would ultimately change the trajectory of our relationship forever. Was he dumping me? No … I knew deep in my heart it was something much worse.

“What's wrong?”

He sighed and his voice quavered a little as he answered. “I need to tell you something. It's bad. As soon as I say it, things will never be the same. I've been lying to myself for months, but I can't lie to you. Not anymore. You're too good a person to love someone who did what I did.”

His words sent a rippling ache through my body that started in my throat and fanned out into my limbs. Craig looked startled when I instantly started bawling and trembled from head to foot, but he continued to confess.

“Duncan's dead because of me. God,” he said, bowing his head, “that sickens me, to say it out loud. I never told anyone. I should have come clean about it from the very beginning but I was just too afraid. I'm still afraid. But living with my conscience is worse.”

“Craig, no.” But he hadn't finished what he was saying.

“It's still all a blur, but I did it. We were out in the woods and I hauled off and punched him and he stumbled … he struggled with Beth … I can still hear his scream when he fell through the — ”

“No!!!” I cried, throwing my arms tightly around his neck to stop him from saying anymore. “It was just an accident!”

“Sweetie, you have no idea — ”

“Yes I do!” I said, sobbing as I clenched his forearms with my fingers. “I've known this whole time. Beth was the one who messed everything up!”

“She didn't mean to push him … it all happened so fast, and we didn't know the ice was so thin.” I couldn't believe my ears.

“What? Beth was the one? What do you mean, she pushed him?”

“You don't understand. I thought Beth was the victim. She had just told me that night — swore, in fact — that he had tried to force himself on her.”

“What?!” This was entirely new information.

“Duncan tried to tell me the truth, and deep down I knew he wasn't capable of that, but I wouldn't listen. Instead I punched him. Only when Duff came back, on prom night, did I finally realize she was lying. I should have known all along.”

“So it's not your fault, then.”

“Of course it's still my fault. I set everything in motion when I punched him. Beth went all spastic, and by the time he went in the icy water, it was too late.”

“But it wasn't,” I protested. “He was still alive! He froze to death hours later, not because you punched him, not because he fell through the ice, but because Beth swore you to secrecy.”

Craig's head hung low, the shameful admission that everything I said was correct. He eventually lifted his gaze to meet mine.

“How do you know all this already?”

“I overheard you that night,” I said. “I was in the backseat of your car. And then the following Monday at school I heard the two of you arguing about what had happened. Beth filled in the rest during our run-in at the movie theater. I didn't know about her false accusation against Duncan.”

Guilt washed over Craig's face and he brought both hands to the back of his head, pulling at his hair in frustration.

“And you never said anything? Not to me? Not to anyone?”

I shook my head, tears still streaming down my cheeks.

“That makes me even more of a criminal.” He held my neck in his strong, warm hands. “I'm so sorry. God, I didn't think this could get any worse.”

“Quit talking like you're some murderer!” I said in a loud whisper. “You're not! What if someone overhears us?” Craig's face was still filled with self-loathing, but he looked more concerned for my feelings than for his own grim fate.

“It doesn't matter, because I'm turning myself in. I don't want to leave you, but I need to pay for what happened.”

I leaned my forehead against his chest, sobbing.

“There's nothing you can do for me now,” he said. “And you can't worry about me. You need to just go on with your life and be happy and find someone else.”

“Me. Find someone else? Now I know you're losing it.”

“I've never been more certain in my life.”

“But what about Beth?” I said, pleading with him. “
She
pushed him into the icy water.
She's
the one who really bears the guilt of his death. She's the one who swore you to secrecy.”

“But I didn't have to go along with it! I was just so freaked out, and so used to following her lead … anyway, there's no excuse,” he finally continued. “Duncan would be alive and graduating with us this weekend if I'd just told the truth. Maybe it was an accident, but I
did
kill him, by saying nothing. He was my best friend … other than you, I mean. I didn't do the right thing then, so I have to do it now. Besides, believe me, Beth is already suffering enough.”

As I wiped the snot from under my nose and gasped in small spasms to bring oxygen into my lungs, I didn't know how to respond. It would make me no better than Beth to try to talk him out of this decision. I knew, on a commonsense level, that telling the truth about that night was the only answer. It would certainly destroy him if he tried to harbor this secret for the rest of his life. But my heart was broken to shards knowing that this conversation would probably be our last before the repercussions — I shuddered to think what they might be — ripped us apart.

“So what now?” I sighed through my teary hiccups as he held me tight against his chest.

“Now, I go and have a chat with Chief Towers,” he said. “Whatever happens, I'm willing to take it. I strangely already feel a little bit of relief having told you … it's like I'm finally on the path to making things okay again. Or at least being able to look in the mirror every morning and not despise myself.”

“Don't ever say that,” I said, hugging him closer. “I knew everything and I still loved you. I love you even more now.”

“I love you, too. I'm going to miss you.”

“Don't talk like that!”

“Skye, please. I need you to understand the reality of this. What I'm going to do now I need to do on my own. And I need to know I'm not ruining your life, too. Please. I'm not going to tell anyone that you knew anything about this. If you love me, you'll do me this one last thing. Just walk away.”

I was weeping uncontrollably now, thankful that we were hidden away under the bleachers while everyone else in the gym was flittering around eating lemon bars and oatmeal cookies. It hurt so much to breathe. He gave me one last lingering hug and a kiss to end all kisses. Finally, he inched his face away from mine, pried my arms off his neck, and gave me one last tender kiss on the forehead. He was going to walk to the parking lot, get in his Jeep, and drive straight to the police station. He made a halfhearted joke about not getting permission to leave school early, trying, without success, to lighten the mood.

“I think I have bigger problems to worry about than detention.” It was the last thing he said to me. I slid to the ground in emotional exhaustion as I watched him exit the gymnasium doors.

• • •

Whoever said it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all was a moron. After trying to wipe off my face with Kleenex and pull myself together so that I could somehow feign allergies if anyone asked me what was wrong, I, too, made a bee-line for the exit and continued in a sprint-walk to the art annex. Fortunately, my puffy eyes and splotchy face received only a few perplexed glances from a handful of stray students before I locked myself away in the darkroom. I sat on the stool and hunched over the counter, letting the chilly Formica cool my flushed cheek. Fifteen minutes later, the buzzing of my cell phone jolted me out of my catatonic state. A text from Tess:

“OMG. Did U2 really get a room? Ha ha.”
She obviously thought Craig and I were off on some romantic romp. Not much later I heard students shuffling back into the art room on the other side of the darkroom door. Guess that meant our final class of the day was back in session. I was missing physics, but we were only playing with Slinkys today to review transverse and longitudinal waves. In other words, Mrs. Kimball was phoning it in along with the rest of us this late in the school year.

I could tell by his exasperated murmurs that Mr. Richter was having similar difficulties getting the juniors in his watercolors class to buckle down as I listened to his halfhearted lecture through the closed door. His voice reminded me that my senior art project was due in two more days. Trying not to make a sound, I swiveled on my stool to look at the posterboard photo collage leaning on the floor in the corner. I'd been agonizing over it for the last few weeks, but I knew it was pretty much crap. Ever since prom, I'd devoted approximately zero time to completing it, preferring instead to spend every waking minute hanging out with, talking on the phone with, or texting Craig. Craig! He was probably down at the police station by now. Perhaps Chief Towers had called his parents. Hopefully, they knew a good lawyer. It would be only a matter of hours before the news spread across town. I wondered if they'd show him on the local evening news, a sea of reporters crowding around him as he exited the station, holding up a jacket to shield his face from the cameras. Or maybe he'd be held in some terrible jail cell to await arraignment, or whatever it was called.

Using all the restraint I could muster not to text him to ask if he was okay, I stared at my collage in disgust. I'd basically just taken a glue stick and some scissors and gone to town with a bunch of old photos from the
Polar Bear Post
, sprinkling in scrapbook sticker words like “friends,” “learning” and “fun!” It wasn't art, and it certainly didn't sum up my high school experience. I knew it would probably earn a nice, safe, “B-is-for-boring” from Richter, who would be disappointed but would ultimately let it slide. But what bothered me most was the fact that all the projects were going to be on display at graduation. I was irked with myself for not making a better effort. It would be humiliating to see this flimsy posterboard revealed to the entire graduating class and their relatives.

Of course, graduation was really an afterthought in light of everything that had just happened with Craig. I reflected on the dreaminess that was prom night. It was pretty much the only perfect memory that I had with respect to Craig, and even that was fraught with drama galore, what with Duff busting Craig's head open and Beth coming at me with a knife. But it wasn't the hype of prom night that stuck with me, or even our first kiss in the hotel basement. Instead, I kept replaying in my brain the quiet conversation I'd had with Craig in the hotel lobby before he got crowned Prom King. I could kick myself now, for being so stupid and shy with him. If I had behaved differently, he might not have ended up as Beth Morgan's boyfriend. He might not be currently facing a felony, for that matter. And it was all because I was too afraid to expose my true feelings to him, put myself on the line, step out of my comfort zone. I wasn't just disappointed in my photo collage. I was disappointed with what it represented. Until very recently, I never really had a true “high school experience,” because I was too busy running away from it.

The school bell rang, and a dissonant clamor of sliding chairs, shuffling feet, and chatty
arteests
let me know that the watercolor class was vacating the room. Desperate to find out anything I could about Craig, I only waited twenty seconds or so until I thought the room was entirely empty. But when I emerged, a friendly voice surprised me.