Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls (15 page)

Chapter 31

June

“I’m sorry he turned out
to be such a shit,” Delia says to me in the kitchen. And when she notices the confused look on my face, she laughs one of those big round laughs that always made me feel so proud of whatever I’d done, even if all I’d done was stand there not understanding something.

“Over it already then, huh?” she says. “Poor, forgettable Meatface.”

And then I know she’s talking about Ryan, even though she hasn’t called him that since before everything happened, before he was anything to me while she was still everything. She called him Meatface and the name felt right somehow at the time, before I knew him and what he was actually like, but it stuck and so that’s what we called him when the we
of us was the primary thing, miles and miles ahead of the we of him and I.

I want to tell myself I’ve forgotten about him now, because this all matters so much more than he ever did. And it’s true that it does. But also, on some level, I’ve squished all my feelings about him way, way down. Sometimes being able to ignore things I desperately wish weren’t true, at least for a while, is maybe a skill I have . . . if you could indeed call that a skill.

“Good riddance, Meat,” I say. I force the words out. I’m trying so hard to sound casual like she does. But now that we’re talking about him, I feel a snake uncoiling in my chest, choking my heart. Fuck Ryan.

She leans back, looking at me, and puts a warm hand on either side of my face, so gently. “I should have told you earlier what a shit he was.”

I think about the Ryan I believed I knew. I think about our relationship. I worried about it, a lot maybe. I told myself it was my own baggage making me worry. And it was comforting to think that; it meant I didn’t have to take my own concerns so seriously. But maybe I should have. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t . . . ,” I start to say.

Then I stop. I shake my head. I know the answer. I chose him. I didn’t deserve to know.

“When I knew I was leaving and it was my last chance, I tried,” she says.

I nod.

And I feel both ashamed and grateful. Then I think about Ryan and his handsome face. The way I felt when his arms were
around me. I am struck by the sudden jarring realization that everything I thought I had with him, maybe none of it was real at all. I look up at Delia. She is staring at me so intensely, her eyes bright and beautiful.

“He doesn’t deserve that,” she says. She takes her thumbs and gently pulls up the corners of my mouth. “Don’t frown for that meatshit.”

But something is still gnawing at me. I feel the words slipping out before I can stop them. “That night when things got . . . weird,” I say. “At his house, with that game and all that . . .” I shake my head. After everything that happened, how can I even ask this? It all feels like a thousand years ago, like a story about other people who are not us. “Sorry,” I say. “Forget it.”

“No, it’s okay,” Delia says. “You want to know what happened when you left the room.”

I feel myself nodding. I’ve thought about it so many times, pictured it so many times, when I didn’t want to. Sometimes when I missed her, sometimes when I missed him. I thought about it because I couldn’t
not
think about it. I assumed I wouldn’t ever know the truth.

There’s something in Delia’s eyes that I’ve never seen before. “This is it,” she says. “The whole thing.” She looks—I’m not even sure what—maybe she looks scared. Her hands are on my cheeks again. I think I can feel her pulse, or maybe that is my own. Her pupils are enormous in the dim kitchen light. And
then she is leaning forward, slowly toward me. She is leaning forward to tell me what happened, what Ryan did, what she did back.

And then, Delia’s lips are on mine.

This has never happened before. Or has it happened a million times, a billion times, over and over since we met. But no, this is the first. And she holds me there, our lips together, hers so warm and so, so soft. Our hearts are pounding and I can’t tell whose is whose, her palms on my face, her lips on mine, her heart inside my chest.

“I was Ryan there,” she says, her voice low. “And you were me.” And then she leans back. “So you see”—her eyes are still locked on mine—“no big deal.” I can’t speak, can’t move. She smirks then, just slightly. And then her smirk spreads into a smile. She leans forward again and gives me a peck on the cheek. Whispers, “Really no big deal, Junie.”

Then she turns and slowly walks back into the living room. And I stand there, legs shaking, heart hammering, and it is a few full minutes before I can breathe, before I can move at all.

Chapter 32

Delia

Nerve endings firing into brain
holes firing into space into time. Here. Here. Here. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. I take out my list, add her name to the end, tear it into a thousand pieces. Sometimes I even surprise myself.

Chapter 33

June

For a half second I
am nothing, no one, just a hot open mouth and fierce thirst. I am awake, face pressed against a thick pillow.

Everything comes rushing back—who I am and where I am, how I got here.
Who I am here with:
Delia, who was mine and then not and then dead and now alive, alive, alive. And I am on the couch in this place she brought me to. Where so much has happened, things I don’t know even how to think about.

I sit up.

I can see into the kitchen from my spot on the couch, lit by a small red lamp. I walk toward it. The house is silent. I search through the cabinets until I find a glass, turn on the faucet, and drink cold water, cup after cup of it until I am no longer thirsty. And now I’m fully awake.

And suddenly starving again, even though I’m not sure how
that’s possible. Last night, everything happened. And nothing did. I had so many questions but didn’t feel like I could ask any of them.

So we watched movies like it was normal, and we hung out.
Delia and I talked in the kitchen.
And
that
I could not, cannot even begin to process.

Later the friendly guy, Evan, made a giant pot of spaghetti. And I realized again how hungry I was.

So I sat with them at this big thick wood table. I ate like a ravenous beast. I couldn’t help it. At one point I looked up and the tall guy, whose name is Sebastian, was staring at me, this blank look on his face, because what I’ve learned is that his face is pretty much
always
blank. He never smiles at all. And I wondered what was under that nonsmile and felt embarrassed.

Around nine I texted my mom and told her I was going to stay over at Ryan’s house, since his is the only place I could possibly imagine telling her I’d be. Lying about staying at a guy’s house so I could be with my best friend . . . the irony wasn’t lost on me there. Nor about the fact that Delia was the one who told me that I would have to go to school in the morning. “People will notice if you go missing,” she said. “They’ll start to wonder, they’ll look for you . . .”

I said surely not after only a day. It’s not like my mom would even care.

But Delia shook her head. “It’s not just that. You need to dig up the seeds you planted and kill the roots . . .” She knew
that I’d been trying to figure out what happened to her, who might have done something to her. Ashling had been everywhere I’d been and some places I hadn’t. “People are suspicious now,” Delia said. “But they can’t be.”

So I promised I would fix it.

And now, here I am, standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night, hungry and awake. I go to the refrigerator, start to open it, then freeze because on the counter next to it is that bag they picked up from Tig’s.

I think of all the questions I didn’t ask, couldn’t ask.

Who are these people? What are they doing here? Where does their money come from? When they were all awake with me, when Delia was awake, it was easier to squish all the questions down. But now that I am alone, the blinding joy has faded into the background; I
need
answers.

And maybe this bag contains some. . . . I find myself reaching out, grasping it, lifting it. I know I should stop—from now on anything I find out about her should be because she wants me to know it, because she tells me herself—but I don’t stop. The bag is light; the paper crinkles like dry leaves as I unroll it. I peer inside at a pile of tiny plastic bags, dozens and dozens of them, pink cupcakes stamped on the front, yellowish crystals inside. My heart speeds up.

I know what this is.

I remember, near the end when our friendship was changing,
Delia would do this at parties sometimes, chop it up and snort it through two inches of drinking straw, stay awake for hours, wired, clenching her jaw. “It’s not even
fun
,” she’d say. Later she’d be exhausted, hard edged, miserable. So why do they have this now? And why so much of it?

I stand there, heart pounding, unsure what to do, what to think.

And that’s when I hear it—a low guttural sound, like the cry of an animal. At first I wonder if I’ve imagined it, so strange and soft. But a second later, there it is again—not animal, definitely human. I put the paper bag back where I found it, start walking down the hall toward the source of that sound. And I swear, at first, all I’m thinking is that someone might be hurt, someone might need my help.

It is only when I’m right in front of the bedrooms that I realize what I’m actually hearing. Not pain. Not just pain anyway. And not one person, but two—
Ashling and Delia.

I feel a stab of loneliness opening up a big sucking hole in the center of my chest. There is a door and I am outside of it. I am alone.

I hear whispering—I can’t make out the words.

Then the animal sounds come back, louder now. I feel my face growing hot. I try to move. I can’t. I am frozen, melting, then on fire. I close my eyes, feel the blood in my cheeks, and everywhere else.

For a moment it is as though I’m in that room with them. I see mouths together, skin sliding skin, Ashling’s hair held in a clenched fist, Delia’s darting tongue.

I press my fingers to my lips. Close my eyes. Remember what it felt like.

Stop.

There is silence. The burst of a giggle I don’t recognize. Then one that I do. Hard and fast, loud.
Pop-pop-pop
. Wild, reckless, scattering like shrapnel. Voices, muffled. Then the sound of footsteps coming toward the door. The door I am standing right in front of.

I race back down the hall, fling myself onto the couch, and pull the covers around me. Turn. Twist. Close my eyes.

And then Delia comes into the room. I know the soft padding of her bare feet on the floor, like the beating of my heart, which I hope she can’t hear.

I try to stay perfectly still. A cabinet opens, there’s the clink of a glass, the faucet turning on. I hear gulping, imagine the water sliding down her throat. I hear the refrigerator door opening and shutting. Then footsteps again, getting closer. She is standing right over me. For a moment there is silence. My eyelids twitch.

Delia leans in, her breath smells sharp, like gin, maybe. “You could have just asked,” she says, so gently. My face is on fire again. Asked what? To listen in on her and Ashling? She
knows I was standing there. And I have no idea how to explain it, how to begin. “And stop fake sleeping.” She pokes me in the ribs. I open my eyes. Her nose is inches from my own.

“Whatever you think this is for,” she says, “you’re wrong.”

And I realize that I have no idea what she’s talking about. Until I look down and see what she’s holding—the bag from Tig’s.

“If you’re going to snoop, at least fold the bag the same way, Junie.”

“I’m sorry,” I start to say. “I shouldn’t . . .”

She reaches out and puts a finger to my lips.
Shhh.
“People say that everyone gets what they deserve. But the thing is, that isn’t
true
. The world isn’t fair”—she is so close now—“unless you make it. You need to trust me. I think after everything, I’ve earned at least that. We’re going to right the wrong things.
That’s
why we have this. And you can help.” She pauses and leans back, looking at me.
“You in, J?”

I have so many questions. But as they pop into my brain one by one, I realize, one by one, that none of them are important.

Outside is alone, alone, alone, floating in space with nothing to hold on to.

In is here in this house.

You in, J?

Outside is dark and nothing is real. Outside doesn’t even exist.

And in is with Delia.

Delia, who is staring at my face, her bottom lip bit. I think she’s holding her breath.

You in, J?

She asks as if it’s even a choice.

I feel my head moving almost beyond my control. Up. Down. Up. Down. Whatever comes, whatever happens, after this moment, whatever it is.

I’m in.

Chapter 34

Delia

Dear fucking Lord is the
sun beautiful this morning, these bright hot beams of it coming through the sheer curtains here. It’s been waking me up every day since I arrived; it shines in at that weird winter slant, directly into my eyes. I felt angry at it, at first, like that sunny beast was trying to fuck me right in the face. Now I am solar powered, charged up by the light.
Go go go go go.

I spring out of bed. I open the window. The air is fresh and clear. “Get up,” I whisper into Ashling’s ear. “Get up, get up, get up.” And then, even though I know she is still asleep and hates waking up alone, I race out into the hall.

June is sitting at the kitchen counter, drinking a cup of juice. She hasn’t seen me yet. I stand there and watch her.

She seems nervous, and I know it’s because of what she has
to do when she gets to school. It’s not even because of later, because I haven’t explained later to her yet. No, for now there is just school. There is doing what I told her she needs to do to keep all of us, all of this, safe.

She finishes the juice, looks around. Her eyes meet mine and she smiles. And I swear it’s like the whole goddamn sun is beaming right out of it.

I remember what it was like, before, when getting through each day was such an effort, a struggle, a slog. Now they just fucking fly.