Fury (29 page)

For a second she debated just leaving him there in the cold. He’d have to give up eventually. But the knocks kept coming, echoing through the empty house.

With a sigh, she got up, slipped her bare feet into the puffy slippers next to her bed, and headed back downstairs. She told herself she was
not
going to forgive him. At least being mad gave her
something
concrete to focus on.

In the foyer, she steeled herself, cleared her throat, and flung open the door.

“JD—” But the words dried in her throat. Because there, on the Winters’ rough granite stoop, stood the girl. Ali.

She was smiling brightly. In her hand was a gleaming red orchid. Beautiful, translucent, like something blown from glass. “Hi, again,” the girl chirped. Her tiny nose quivered like a rodent’s and her teeth gleamed white. “Santa never found out you were naughty. But we did.”

The words crashed through Em’s skull.
Santa never found out you were naughty.
It was almost exactly what Zach had said to her that night, the first night they’d kissed.

She slammed the door in Ali’s face and for a moment stood frozen, heart pounding. There was a rasping sound coming from somewhere; it took Em a moment to realize it was the sound of her own breathing.

“Knock, knock,” came Ali’s singsong voice from the other side of the door.

Em unfroze. Terror coursed through her and she tore into the living room, then to the dining room, then to the kitchen, locking all the windows and pulling the drapes. She felt prickles along her shoulder blades, as though Ali were right behind her with every step.

She was being punished for what she had done with Zach. She was sure of it now—Ali had parroted Zach’s words to her almost exactly. She would pay for her sins the same way Chase had paid for his.
Are you ready for your turn to pay, Em?

She was crying now, whimpering. “Please leave me alone.” She whirled around to scream at every skating shadow, yanking closed curtains and blinds. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She froze in the foyer, not daring to look outside, terrified of what she might see. “I didn’t mean it. It just happened. It’s not my fault. It wasn’t even worth it.”

In the hallway—as far from any windows as possible—she backed up against a wall and sank to the floor, trembling, drawing her knees to her chest. Barely breathing. She didn’t hear anything. She pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt down around
her thumbs and bit them—a habit from childhood, from being freaked by scary movies and ghost stories.

That’s what this was: a ghost story.

And then the knocking started again.

“No, please!” Her sobs rang out in the empty house. “Leave me alone! I said I was sorry. I’m trying to fix things. It—it was a mistake. Please just leave me alone!” She brought her knees to her chest, rocking, letting tears run into her mouth. “I didn’t mean to let it happen.” Her voice was rising hysterically. “It wasn’t even fucking worth it!”

And then she heard Gabby’s voice—sweet, familiar, beautiful.

“Em? Em, are you okay? Are you in there?”

Em raised her head, wiping her nose and face with the cuff of her sweatshirt.

“Em? It’s Gabs. Please let me in. We need to talk.”

Em stood up shakily, wiping her sweaty palms on her pants. She took one tiny step forward, calling out tentatively, “Gabby?”

Gabby’s face appeared, also tentative, also miserable, in one of the small rectangular windows next to Em’s front door. She pointed to the doorknob.

“Em, please let me in.”

Em opened the door and after a moment’s hesitation, Gabby stepped into the foyer. Em scanned the lawn quickly. Nothing. Ali was gone. But after she closed the door, she made sure to double lock it.

Gabby was standing awkwardly in the dark foyer, wearing a puffy jacket Em didn’t recognize and that was too big for her. “I tried calling,” she said. “You didn’t pick up.” She was chewing on the inside of her cheek, and her face was streaked with tears and mascara.

“I was in bed.” Em’s voice was hoarse, and she swiped her eyes on the cuff of her sweatshirt when Gabby wasn’t looking, hoping she wouldn’t notice that Em, too, had been crying. “I turned my phone off.”

“I drove by and saw your light was on . . .” Gabby fidgeted nervously with her zipper.

“I’m glad,” Em said, wishing things didn’t feel so awkward. For a moment they stood in silence.

“Oh, Em,” Gabby gasped out suddenly. “I saw him. I had to go to Portland for a new pair of gloves and I saw him kissing some girl outside some restaurant. I almost crashed my car when I saw it. . . .” Gabby was blubbering. “He never takes me out to eat!”

Without thinking about it—without worrying about the fact that the last time they had seen each other, Gabby had pushed her into a coatrack—Em stepped forward and put her arms around Gabby, their mismatched frames fitting together as they always had. She could smell Gabby’s signature vanilla body spray and breathed it in. They stood there for a while, hugging and sniffling.

Then Em pulled her into the living room and sat her on
the brushed-suede couch. The Winters didn’t use their living room very often—most of their limited family time happened in the den, on old and comfy beige sofas, in front of the TV. Em associated this room with holidays, with reciting poems for her grandma.

“Wait here,” she said, once Gabby was seated. She went into the kitchen, ripping into the cabinets for some Swiss Miss. The two minutes and thirty seconds that it took for the microwave to heat up the water felt like forever. “I’ll be right in, Gabby,” Em called, shifting her feet in front of the buzzing machine. She was so happy Gabby was here, in her living room, sitting on her couch, she felt like she could cry again. Part of her wanted to spill her guts about the fact that a freaky blond girl was skulking around in her yard, but she didn’t know how to say it. And Gabby clearly needed her.

Em thought about what Drea had said:
When you’re ready to talk, find me.
Oh, Em was ready. She was ready to find out what Drea knew, what the hell was going on, and how to stop it once and for all. But tomorrow was time enough to find Drea and figure out what the hell was going on. Tonight, it was Operation Win Gabby Back.

It had to be a good sign that she was here. If they could patch things up, maybe this would all be over.

On the way back into the living room, she checked to make sure the front door was still bolted. Then she settled onto the
couch with Gabby, setting both mugs of hot cocoa onto the coffee table.

“I broke your Cabo mug,” she said guiltily, as though Gabby would have noticed or cared that she was drinking from a plain white coffee cup.

Gabby didn’t respond, but picked up one of the cocoas and blew at it, staring at the floor.

“I . . . I brought back these special licorice candies from Spain”—her voice wavered as she spoke—“and I couldn’t share them with you,” Gabby said.

Em nodded. She knew what she meant. Gabby and Em both had an obsession with all types of licorice. But they never ate it alone. They always shared.

There was a noise outside, a rustling. Em stilled, listening hard. But then everything was silent again, except Gabby’s sniffing.

“Do you still have them?” Em asked.

“Yeah, there are some left. Zach doesn’t even like licorice, you know—” Gabby broke off, crying again. Em saw a teardrop fall into the steaming hot chocolate. “I was wrong about him,” Gabby said finally. “After I saw him with that—
whoever
she was—I went to his house and waited for him. When he showed up, I confronted him about it. Just blew up. And he told me—” Em could see, from the way Gabby couldn’t meet her eyes, that she felt mortified.

“He told you what?” Em prodded.

“He told me that yeah, he’s been with other girls. Who knows what else he’s done. He’s sorry. Bullshit. He said some stuff about not being able to choose. And then I threw my earrings at him—the ones he gave me for Christmas—and took off. And came here.” Her tone made it clear that she’d done so because she felt it was her only option.

“Gabs, I’m glad you came.” Em was.

“I don’t even know who to trust anymore.” Gabby put her head in her hands.

“You can trust me,” Em said, feeling the ache throbbing in her chest, the ache of missing Gabby.

Gabby looked Em straight in the eyes. “Can I?”

Em leaned forward, willing Gabby to believe her. “Yeah, you can trust me. I know it’s hard to believe right now, but you can. Gabs—”

Gabby interrupted: “I didn’t want to come here, you know. But . . .” She shuddered. “God, Em, you’re my best friend. Even after what happened. You’re still my best friend. No one else understands.” She quickly added, “But don’t think I’m not still, like, completely furious with you. Completely.”

Em’s mouth was dry. She shook her head. “I know. I don’t expect you to just forgive me out of the blue. But I want you to know my side. He screwed us both. I mean, not literally, of course,” she rushed to add. “But he’s an asshole. A manipulator.
He uses people, Gabs.” Em shivered, remembering when JD had told her just that.

“That doesn’t make it any better that you just
fell
for it. I know that you can, like, express this stuff so much better than I can, Em. You know what words to use. I don’t. All I know is that I feel like total shit.”

Em picked up her mug, then set it down again. “I know, Gabby. Believe me, I know.” She sighed. “I’m so sorry.”

Gabby drew the quilted throw blanket from the back of the couch down onto her lap. “How much of the other stuff did you know about?” Her voice had a tiny quiver in it. “The fact that Zach was . . . with other girls?”

Em told her everything. What Chase had said, how Zach’s own best friend had described him. What Zach had revealed himself, the night she confronted him. She kept tucking her hair behind her ears, watching as Gabby sank deeper and deeper into the couch.

“I tried to tell you, Gabs. I wanted to talk to you so badly.” Em cleared her throat. “He’s so good at making people feel like they’re special. Like what he feels for them is unique. That’s what he did to me. I really felt . . .” She sighed and let it spill out. “I really felt like we had something that was different. And I knew I was doing something terrible but at the same time I couldn’t fight it. It was like it was my only chance to have this earthshaking love that people talk about. That you had. That I
thought you had. Your perfect life. Your perfect relationship. I just wanted . . .”

Gabby was staring at her stonily. Em pushed ahead: “But it wasn’t earthshaking. It wasn’t anything other than him seeing how far he could go, how much he could get away with. And you have to know that I’m so sorry. Sorrier than I’ve ever been about anything.”

She meant it, too. She
was
sorry. In the back of her mind, as she spilled these secrets, she felt like she was putting her conscience through the car wash. If Gabby could understand, did that somehow wipe the slate clean?

“Oh my god.” Gabby again dropped her head in her hands. “This is just so
embarrassing
. How am I supposed to show my face at Ascension ever again? And the
pep
rally is tomorrow. . . . We were supposed to go together. . . .”

“It’s not about that, Gabs. This is bigger than that.
You
are bigger than that.” Em touched her best friend’s arm. “Gabby? Will you . . . will you ever forgive me?”

Gabby moved her arm away, but looked up at Em as she did. When she spoke, her voice was a whisper. “I don’t know, Em. I just . . . I need you.”

“I need you, too, Gabby.” Em was crying again, softly. “My parents have been all on my case—‘Where’s Gabby? Did you two have a fight?’”

“Oh my god, mine too. It’s almost easier to just be friends
again.” Gabby sat up straighter. She smoothed her hair down around her temples. “Jesus. What a jerk. What a complete and total idiot. I hate him. And you know what? I hate him as much for what he did to you as for what he did to me.”

That, Em realized, was why she loved Gabby so much. Because even as Gabby grappled with the crumbling of the perfect life she’d built, she still felt Em’s pain too. Maybe Gabby thought about what other people felt more than she let on. She got it. From now on, Em would be strong for Gabby—she owed her that.

But would Em be strong enough to save herself?

Gabby ended up sleeping over. Em’s parents came home around eleven o’clock, and even though it was a school night, they’d agreed (as Gabby’s had, when she texted them) to let the girls sleep downstairs in the basement. Em thought they were happy to see Gabby around again. Though from the look on her dad’s face, she’d have some explaining to do about why her car had to be towed—again.

They woke up in the morning and decided to stop at Gabby’s, so she could grab her books and change. If she wore Em’s jeans, she would have to pair them with stilts.

“Cool necklace,” Gabby said as they walked out to Gabby’s car, pointing to the serpent charm that dangled from Em’s neck.

She’d put it on at the last minute. She’d try anything at this point.

After Gabby ran into her house for her bag and a quick change, Em asked, with some trepidation, if Gabby wanted to stop at Dunkin’ Donuts.

“Um, of course!” Em could see that Gabby was in performance mode. Her makeup this morning was impeccable, and she’d woken up almost an hour before Em in order to take a long shower. She would come out on top of this Zach humiliation no matter what.

“You know what’s terrible?” Gabby sipped her hot drink and looked out the window. Ascension looked gray and brittle. The steam from the coffee–hot cocoa mixture fogged up a tiny section of the glass.

“What?”

“I know that this is an awful thing to say, and I would obviously only say it to you, but . . . at least there’s too much other awful stuff going on for people to even care about me and Zach. Like, petty gossip doesn’t really matter much right now. People are
dying
.”

“You’re right.” Em nodded. “Anyone who blabs about this must have some messed-up priorities.”

They agreed then, tacitly, that this was the strategy: Information lockdown. The fewer words said about the Gabby Dove–Zach McCord breakup, the better.