The Fever (26 page)

“But Deenie, I
did
feel bad. It was like it was meant to happen. The bad thing you're waiting for, the thing you might do someday. And then you've done the thing, and there's no going back.”

Once, after Deenie said something unbelievably awful to her mom, using a word she'd never even said aloud, shouting it so loud her throat hurt, her mom looked at her and said,
Deenie, someday it's going to happen to you. You're going to do something you never thought you would. And then you'll see, and then you'll know.

I hope,
she'd added,
it's not for a long time.

“But at the school concert,” Deenie said suddenly, remembering Gabby, her cello bow pitching, face scarlet. “Was that all fake?”

“No! I can't make my jaw stop,” Gabby said, her voice cracking and a long, low sob. “I can't make my head right. It's like it's everything about me now. It's inside me and everywhere. It was always in me. I couldn't stop myself.”

There was a long pause. Then Gabby whispered, “Deenie, I couldn't stop myself. I had to do it. Can you understand?”

Deenie felt her mouth go dry, her head throbbing. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

The clicks started again, and an awful rattle, and Deenie felt the phone hot on her face, beep-beep-beep, her cheek pressed against the keyboard.

Then, suddenly, Gabby's voice came again, low and strange.

“And now he'll never love me,” Gabby said. “Now it'll never be me.”

Deenie slowly lowered the phone from her ear.

“Deenie, did Eli read my letter? Did he say anything about me?”

At first Eli couldn't see her past the wires tentacled over her, the room blue and lonely.

There was just a swoop of a girl's cheek, and a flossy pile of hair, everything blue in the blue light.

And there was something resting in the middle of Lise's head. Something dark. Like in a fairy tale, a black cat perched, a swirl of smoke.

But then he remembered something Deenie had said, about a fall.

She made it sound gruesome, but it wasn't so bad.

Maybe it was because Lise's eyes were so pretty, shining and looking directly at him.

Following him as he walked toward the bed.

Gentle and soft, like Lise. And the light from the open door falling on her, giving her a funny kind of radiance.

Her mouth slightly opening, lips pale but full.

Eyes seeming to smile, at him.

“Do you see?” came the softest of whispers.

And it was Mrs. Daniels behind him, and she was smiling, like watching Lise play “Für Elise” on her flute.

“Do you see?” Mrs. Daniels whispered, her hand gentle on Eli's back. “She came back.”

Alone in the waiting room, Deenie sat, her phone gripped in her hand.

Everything that day at the lake, just a week ago, started to look different.

The way Gabby looked at Lise, her long legs, like milk glass, thighs so narrow you could see between, like a keyhole.

How Gabby and Skye had stood next to each other, their ankles flecked green from the lake's creamy surface, and Gabby whispered something in Skye's ear, and Deenie had that feeling that she'd had so often in recent months: They are sharing something without me, they are talking about me, Gabby doesn't love me anymore.

And then Gabby wanted to leave suddenly, even though Lise was driving.

I can take you
, Lise promised, but they were already walking away, their legs greened, never looking back.

And Skye said the lake had bad energy, arms folded, eyes on Lise.

Was that when Skye got the idea? Or had she and Gabby already decided by then?

It felt now like they had. Like it had already been too late.

Deenie wondered how it had felt for Lise, sharing her secret about Sean. Waiting for Skye and Gabby to leave to tell her. Wanting it be theirs. A thing together. She couldn't know what might happen. How different it might have been had she told all of them.

Deenie thought about what Skye had said, that the whole time, Gabby was so angry she couldn't even look at Lise. Couldn't bear Lise showing off her body in the water. And whispering to Skye,
She stole him from me.

That day, Lise had been more beautiful than she'd ever been before, her lashes iridescent and her face with an almost unearthly glow. Her body, Deenie guessed, felt her own in a way it only can when you've made it yourself.

Lise did give off a strong energy that day, but not like Skye meant.

And Deenie,
she'd said,
Don't tell Gabby. Gabby's weird about this stuff.

Deenie, you're my best friend.

Deenie, I didn't do anything wrong, right?

Deenie, am I bad?

Deenie, I hope you get to feel it. I hope it feels like that for you.

It was something powerful and everyone wanted it.

Lise

It felt great,
her hands on the wheel.

Lise almost never got to drive, but that day she got lucky and her mom let her drive the Dodge because she was at the ophthalmologist, getting drops in her eyes.

Gabby had been sad all day, like she was a lot. You would only find out later it was because her dad had called or it was the anniversary of something bad with Tyler Nagy.

“She won't even talk,” Deenie whispered to her. “Let's try to cheer her up.”

So they went for a drive, windows down and Gabby's favorite music and Big Gulps it took two hands to hold.

They saw Deenie's brother in the parking lot and Lise beeped her horn at him. Sometimes she wondered if Deenie knew how good-looking Eli was, if sisters could tell. Lise liked to watch him on the practice rink, his hair flying and the faraway look in his eyes. Her mom always said teenage boys only cared about one thing, but watching Eli, you just knew it wasn't true.

On the drive, Gabby and Skye didn't say a word the whole time, but she and Deenie sang loudly to the radio. It was fun.

As they drove past the lake, Skye started telling them this thing that had happened last week. She saw two guys wading in the lake, drinking beers, their car doors open and speakers gushing wild music that made her want to dance.

“They were sexy,” Skye said. “One had a tattoo of a gold panther. It went down his whole body, from his neck down below his waist, into his jeans. I wonder where it ended.”

Lise could picture the tattoo and the guy. In her head, his shirt was worn denim and he had aviator sunglasses and a wicked smile. And the panther, its gleaming haunches stretched along his torso, the panther's teeth disappearing below his golden hip bone.

“Maybe they're there now,” Deenie said, laughing.

And Lise wondered about it, her stomach doing that funny kind of thing, like when Ryan Denning helped her with her fetal-pig dissection, seated on high stools and him reaching for the blunt probe, his hand brushing her lap.

“Let's stop and go in,” she suggested, jumping forward in her seat, pressing against the steering wheel. “Let's go now.”

So they did, hopping the orange safety fences. The guys with the car and the tattoo were not there, except it almost felt like they were, the lake glittering with borrowed glamour.

“Maybe they'll show up later,” Lise said, running down the bank, nearly sliding on the mud, which spattered up her legs. “Maybe they'll see us from the road.”

Gabby and Skye were so quiet. Skye lit a clove cigarette and squinted down at Lise. She was saying something to Gabby, but Lise couldn't hear. They were always whispering to each other.

They were no fun and Lise felt high on all the sugar and soda and was trying to rouse Gabby and she tugged off her tights.

The water looked eerily lovely, like the kind of sparkling lake you'd see in a picture book, unicorns dipping their heads and cloudbursts overhead.

Waving up at the others lined up on the shore, she promised the water felt almost warm and like velvet under your feet and they had to come. It was true.

She pulled her skirt higher and spun.

“What's that?” Skye asked, pointing her cigarette at Lise, at her legs.

“Nothing,” Lise said and felt her face go hot.

She knew what Skye meant, the mark on her thigh, a pink crescent. It was from losing all that weight, a tiny stretch mark she put cocoa butter on it every night, wishing it away.

“You're just stalling,” Deenie shouted at Skye, and Lise smiled. “You're scared.”

Deenie hated Skye.

And soon enough Deenie was yanking her jeans up to her knees and wading in too. And Lise was so grateful. Deenie was still hers.

“C'mon, Gabby,” Deenie shouted, her jeans already soaked to the thigh. “It only hurts for a second.”

And finally Gabby reached down and pulled off her tights, and then of course Skye did too, cigarette somehow still between her fingers, thin as a burned match.

The water felt soft and globby, like sherbet, but smelled strongly of something Lise had never smelled before.

It was only a minute before Gabby said she was cold and the lake was dirty and was making her head hurt. And then Skye said her head hurt too and the lake had a bad aura and you were asking for trouble being in it.

The boy who drowned here
, she said,
can't you feel him? He was in the water for days. Do you know what happens? Your body turns to soap.

And they all looked down in the water as if they would see the boy.

But Deenie said that was kid's stuff, and she scooped up a handful, foam bubbling, and flicked it toward them. That was when Lise knew Deenie was annoyed, or even mad, like she always was when Gabby was being secretive with Skye, which was all the time lately.

It never mattered much to Lise because she'd never felt as close to Gabby as Deenie did. Deenie, who'd never really gotten over the surprise that someone as cool as Gabby Bishop wanted to be her friend. For her part, Lise had realized a long time ago that the way to keep Deenie would be to let her love Gabby just this much.

Skye was the weirdest girl Lise had ever known. Once, a long time ago, in middle school, they'd been to the same sleepaway camp and Skye had the bunk above her. One night she came down the ladder, her legs snaking around it, and asked Lise if she wanted to see something.

Taking a deep breath, she lifted her nightshirt and showed Lise all these marks, like rosy ridges, on her arms all the way up to her shoulder. She said she'd made them herself, with a Bic lighter, and it had taken a long time. And now they were like the husk, the hard shell. Like finding a beetle or a mollusk shell at the lake, the rattle pods in Binnorie Woods. You shake and it's hollow. The thing inside died. You couldn't do anything to it anymore.

The cabin quiet and dark and Skye breathing hard, her arms outstretched, Lise hadn't known what to say, barely knew this girl. What did you say to something like that? And the next day, Skye wouldn't look at her, and then after that they never talked about it again.

She wondered if Skye remembered it.

“I can't do this,” Gabby said suddenly. Her face looked green from the water.

Nodding to Skye, she began walking back to shore, her sweater heavy with water, trailing behind her.

“Come on, Gabby,” Deenie said, calling out after her.

Lise bent over and lifted a long stretch of seaweed, draping it around Deenie's neck, like a mermaid's boa.

And Deenie smiled and flicked its edges up and pushed Lise, but when they both turned around again, Gabby and Skye were walking up the bank, their legs stained green.

“Are they going?” Lise asked, looking at Deenie.

Her long sweater sleeves weeping lake water, Skye offered a slow wave.

Gabby didn't even turn around, walking slowly up the slope, the damp edges of her skirt in her hands like petticoats.

“But Lise drove us,” Deenie called out.

Except they kept walking, their heavy hair and long-legged elegance, and it was hard not to feel five years old.

So she said, “Swim with me, Deenie,” backing up so the frigid water reached the bottom of her pelvis, the green water swimming between her thighs. “Let's do it, huh?”

After a moment, Deenie stopped looking back for Gabby and they stripped off their sweaters and swam in their tank tops and bras, Lise's skirt billowing like a white flower and Deenie's jeans accordioned on the shore.

And then Deenie even put her head under, came up with her hair black and inky.

At first, Lise wouldn't do it. She didn't want to and kept picturing that drowned boy, under the pearling water.
Was he there now? Would he curl his tiny fingers around her toe?

But then Deenie grabbed her neck from behind and dunked her, and the water came so fast she almost couldn't breathe.

Under the surface, her ears hurt so bad she felt like someone had punched an iron rod in them.

But then the pressure broke and it was incredible, her head rushing with the feeling.

And while she was under, she knew it was time to tell Deenie, her best friend.

About the boy, almost as handsome as Eli Nash himself, but without the faraway eyes. The boy who'd looked right at her, rolling her tights down over her legs.

To whisper in Deenie's ear the wonderful thing that was happening and how it felt. She wanted to share it with her.

Monday

Sitting in his car
in the school parking lot, Tom couldn't quite bring himself to go inside.

His gaze fixed on the breezeway beyond. All the hedges had been torn away, shorn stumps remaining, a stray evidence bag, a twirl of police tape. The orange streaks of herbicide dye.

He'd spent the day before driving Deenie the three hours to Merrivale, then turning around and driving home. It was the first time he'd seen Georgia's place, which was cozy and filled with light and fresh air. Deenie insisted on staying only two days, had a history test on Wednesday, had forgotten to bring her books. In fact, maybe she'd stay just overnight.

Eli had come too, had helped with the driving. Deenie kept watching him from the corner of her eye.

At the hospital, they'd tested his blood, even his hair, used enormous machines and tested the electrical activity of his heart. But whatever Eli had smoked with Skye Osbourne, they couldn't find anything dangerous in his body.

“There's nothing inside him,” the doctor said. “Whatever it was, it's gone.”

Eli told them the smoke had been for something called lucid dreaming.

“Did it work?” Tom asked.

Eli had paused, then said no.

The sharp bark of an engine stirred him to life. Looking out his car window, he saw the French teacher hopping off her Vespa and smiling at him, red-lipped.

“Open that window,” she said. “Or invite me in.”

He clicked the power locks and watched her glide around the car and climb inside.

Rubbing her gloves together, she told him she couldn't take her eyes off the news.

“Gabby Bishop, Jesus,” she said. “I never even had her in a class, but I knew about her. The way she'd walk down the hall, girls circling her like little magpies. All that hair and drama.”

“Yeah,” he said, just to say something.

Her hands dropping to her lap, she sighed. “It's all so freaky. All the other ones who got sick—I sent two to the nurse myself. So they must have gotten some of that jimson stuff, right? They must have smoked it too, like at a party?”

“I don't think so,” Tom said. “I don't think they took anything.”

She nodded and they sat silently for a moment.

“I remember when I was a sophomore in high school,” she said. “There was this girl, the coolest girl in school. Laia Noone. Even her name was cool. She had a tattoo on her stomach:
I've seen love die
. In tenth grade!” She laughed. “All I wanted was to be like her.”

“And now you're the coolest girl in school.”

“You don't know the half of it,” she said. Then she lowered her jacket zipper and, using two fingers, separated the space between a pair of blouse buttons, baring the smallest triangle of flesh. He could see only the middle words—
seen
love
—but was sure the rest was there too.

“And so,” Tom said, “marked for life.”

“That's what high school does.”

“And everything else,” he said, smiling.

She smiled back, like he knew she would.

“It's funny the things you think of now,” she said, yanking the zipper back up. “I remember last year once, Jaymie Hurwich crying in my classroom after school. She said there was something wrong with her mom's brain and it'd started when her mom was sixteen and now
she
was sixteen and what if something happened to her. She said her dad was always looking at her, like he was watching for signs.”

Tom was surprised, but then everything surprised him now.

A hundred thoughts started floating in and out of his head, but none cohered.

“It's going to be hard for all of them,” she said. “Everyone'll be looking at them. Like they're these damaged girls.”

They sat for a minute.

“But not Deenie,” she said, smiling. “Thank goodness. No one will be looking at her.”

Tom looked at her. Nodded.