The Secret Year (12 page)

chapter 22

On the surface, the trouble that spring started with
Mr. Barent, but I knew Michael was behind it.

Mr. Barent was the advisor for the student literary magazine,
Quill
. It came out twice a year, in winter and spring. I read some of it when I was a freshman, but it was full of stories about Black Mountain parties, and poems by Black Mountain kids about how miserable they were. After that, I never read it except when Julia showed me her poems in it. She was on the staff. Michael was, too.

The first issue after Julia’s death—the December issue—had had a photograph of Julia and an article about her, written by the editor. That seemed to wrap up Julia’s link with
Quill
. But somehow, that spring, Mr. Barent discovered a file of Julia’s work in the
Quill
cabinet, and he decided to publish it in a special section of the spring issue.

I figured that Michael either gave Barent the file or left it where he knew Barent would discover it. I was pretty sure Julia hadn’t left these poems sitting around in the
Quill
file cabinet; I thought Michael must’ve brought them from home. Because they were all poems she’d written to me.

I knew they were for me because she’d shown me some of them, and she’d copied others into the notebook. Lots of them described things we’d done together. Of course, I didn’t see this collection—I didn’t even know about it—until
Quill
came out at the end of April. It had an introduction written by Michael about how his sister had written these poems, and she’d died a few months ago, and her family wanted to share her art with the world. And by the way, the world might also like to know that she’d written these poems for her boyfriend, Austin. To top it off, there was a photo of Austin and a sickening paragraph written by him that ended, “I love you, Julia baby. Peace forever.”

I wanted to puke when I saw this thing. Literally: I felt the sourness creeping up the back of my throat. I saw the magazine in study hall. I’d picked up a copy after hearing people talk about it, but I didn’t believe it until I saw it.

The Black Mountain kids thought it was “so beautiful,” and some of the girls sighed for poor Austin, who must be having such a hard time. I read Austin’s paragraph again, wondering if he actually believed she’d been writing to him. After all, she described things he’d never done with her. One of the poems even referred to my brown hair, and Austin was blond. Didn’t Austin find that strange? Didn’t Barent? Didn’t everyone? Maybe they just saw what they wanted to see.

I couldn’t stop reading Austin’s stupid paragraph. I was sick of him. Julia’s notebook had been full of him; the school halls were full of him. He’d had her 90 percent of the time. Did he have to take my 10 percent, too? He might as well cross out my initials in her notebook, and replace them with his.

I flipped through the pages of
Quill
again, the pages full of scenes from my life that had now become scenes from Austin’s life. In the last poem, Julia called the river water liquid ebony. She wrote about us dissolving in it, melting into water where a patch of moon floated. Austin hadn’t been there but I had, and now he was swallowing every bit of her left in the world. With Michael’s help.

As much as it bothered me, I shouldn’t have chosen Kirby to complain to. Any idiot would’ve known that. All I can say is that anger must’ve drained the blood away from my brain. I muttered about
Quill
to Kirby at lunch. Everyone else at our table was talking about some party the weekend before, paying no attention to us. So I kept bitching.

“I don’t know why they didn’t notice Austin is blond,” Kirby said. “Give it a rest, Colt.”

“And all those lines about the Willis River. Austin never swam in the Willis River in his life.”

“So what? What does it matter?”

“Of course, he has so many drunken blackouts, maybe he believes he did swim in the river.”

“Shut
up
!” she said. Then everyone at our table looked at us. Everyone at the next table, too.

“I don’t want to hear any more about Julia Vernon!” She got up and started walking away from our table.

“Kirby, wait,” I said.

She spun around. “No. I’m sick of this shit. So Julia screwed around with you—that’s all it was to her! But you—you’re still in love with a dead girl. You can have her! I’m not taking this shit anymore.”

She stormed away. Everyone at our table stared at me. Behind us was a table of Black Mountain kids, and they stared, too. Four tables full of people were close enough to hear what Kirby had said. I figured it would take maybe an hour and a half for the story to get around the whole school.

“You screwed around with Julia Vernon?” Paul said.

“No shit, Colt?” Nick laughed. “So how was she?”

“Yeah, was she any good?”

“Wait’ll Chadwick hears this.”

“Oh, you know Colt,” Fred drawled. “He can’t keep his hands off other people’s girls.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know where to look. Then I noticed Syd. She wasn’t snickering with everyone else. Her eyes had widened at the news, and I could see the questions in her face, but she wouldn’t ask me anything now, here. I kept my eyes on hers until I was able to get up and walk away.

I saw Michael in the hall just before last period. He cringed when he saw me—Michael, who’d kept a stone face through his sister’s funeral. I stared at him while the ripple of gossip that had followed me all afternoon rose to a rumble. He rubbed his lips together.

“Was it worth it?” I asked, low so nobody else could hear.

“Jesus, Morrissey. I didn’t mean for it to go down like this.” At least he didn’t try to pretend he had nothing to do with
Quill
. He glanced at the kids who hovered nearby, chewing over the news. “I never thought Kirby would have it out with you in the middle of the cafeteria. I didn’t plan for the whole school to know about Julia.”

“So much for plans,” I said.

That was a Friday. As soon as I got home from school, I called Barney’s and said I couldn’t work that weekend. I left a note for my parents and packed a bag. Before I left, I thought about calling Kirby, but I called Syd instead.

“Does everybody know?” I asked, roaming around my bedroom with the phone at my ear, the way I had the night Syd told me about the accident.

“Just about. Some of the Black Mountain kids say it’s a lie, but I think everyone knows it’s true. When you know what to look for, it’s right there in the poems. Plus, Michael Vernon isn’t denying it.”

“What is he saying?”

“Nothing. He won’t say anything. That makes people think it must be true.”

He wouldn’t deny it because I had the notebook. Evidence. Michael had no way of knowing I would never show that book to anyone else. I didn’t care what they thought of me, what they wanted me to prove.

Syd went on, “So, last fall, when you told me you were in love with somebody else, you meant Julia, right?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t think you even knew her.”

“That was the whole idea. Nobody thought we knew each other.”

“You sure know how to keep a secret. How did it happen, anyway?”

I stopped pacing and sat on my bed. “We ran into each other one night, down by the river. And then we started meeting there every week or so.”

She was quiet for a minute. “You could’ve told me. I wouldn’t have said anything.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I just—didn’t want to tell anyone.” How could I explain it? Yes, I could’ve trusted Syd; I knew her inside out. That was the trouble, that we knew everything about each other. Her feet were planted in the same muddy river soil as mine. With Syd I had nowhere to hide, no chance to be anything but a guy from the flats. And I loved the flats, but sometimes I wanted more than that.

Not that I wanted to be part of Black Mountain either. What would I do with country clubs and servants? I wanted an imaginary place, full of black water and heat and the feel of Julia’s skin. Without someone like Syd to anchor me to reality, I could pretend that place existed. I could even believe I belonged there with Julia. Apparently there was no end to the ways I could fool myself.

“It’s not like this never happened before,” Syd said. “I mean, someone from Black Mountain going out with someone from the flats. Remember Tristan Allen and Jessica Vitale? And Tim Granger and Emily Cavendish?”

“Yeah.”

“They didn’t try to keep it a secret, though.”

“I know.”

“Well,” Syd said. “It’s none of my business, but you could’ve told me.”

I checked the clock: almost time for me to leave. “Do you think Kirby’s going to forgive me?”

“For what, lying?”

“I didn’t lie to her. She’s known about Julia for a while.”

“Then what else is there?”

I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t know anymore if Kirby was wrong to be jealous of Julia, or if she was right that I was still hanging on to the past.

“Colt,” Syd said, “even after everything that’s happened this year . . . I’m still your friend.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I could use one.”

chapter 23

I took a bus to Tom’s school. Actually it was three buses,
two transfers. I got there around ten o’clock Friday night and found his dorm. People ran up and down the hall, squirting shaving cream at one another. Through open doors I could see kids studying, watching TV, hanging up wet laundry, and tearing into a pizza. My brother’s door was closed. I knocked, wondering what I was going to do if he wasn’t there. It looked like I could crash on one of the couches in the hall if I had to.

“Yeah,” someone, not Tom, yelled from inside.

“It’s Colt. I’m looking for Tom Morrissey.”

“Colt who?”

“It’s my brother!” Tom yelped. The next second he was there in the doorway facing me, a big grin on his face. “How did you get here?”

“Bus.”

“I’ll be damned.” He led me into the room. His roommate lay on the floor, watching TV and eating microwave popcorn out of a bag. “Hey, Doug, this is Colt.”

“Hi, Colt,” Doug said, still staring at the TV.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Tom said. “How long are you going to stay?”

“All weekend, if I can.”

“Great! Did you bring your sleeping bag?”

I showed it to him.

“Well, the floor’s pretty hard. I’ll see if I can dig up an air mattress.” He sat on his bed and grinned at me. “Unbelievable! Colten has come to visit.” None of our family had come to see him before, even though he’d asked us to. Mom worked too much, and Dad couldn’t be bothered, even before Tom’s big Thanksgiving announcement. No wonder he was so happy to see me.

We watched TV with Doug for a while, had a pizza, and walked over to another dorm to get an air mattress from a friend of his. While we were walking back across the yard between the buildings, Tom said, “I get the feeling you didn’t come up here just for the fun of it.”

“Actually, there is something I want to talk to you about.”

“Let’s sit here awhile then. Doug will still be in his TV trance.” He set the crumpled mattress next to a bench and sat down. “Anything wrong back home? Are Mom and Dad okay?”

“They’re fine.” I sat down, too. “It’s me.”

“You?”

“Yeah.”

“So what is it? You’re flunking out of school? You lost your driver’s license and you’re scared to tell Mom? Or—wait—you got a girl pregnant?”

“God, no. What made you think of all that?”

“You’re giving me this lead-in like you’re in big trouble, so—”

“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s—do you remember Julia Vernon?”

“The girl who got killed on Black Mountain last year?”

“Yeah.”

“What about her?”

I told him the whole story. About Julia, and the river, and the notebook. About Michael, and Kirby, and the poems in
Quill
. He listened. Even when I was done, he didn’t talk. Which for Tom was some kind of miracle, because he
always
had something to say.

“Well?” I asked him. “What do you think?”

“That’s quite a story.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Are you okay? I can’t imagine. . . . If something happened to Derek, I’d lose my mind.”

“But it wasn’t like she was my girlfriend. She was Austin’s.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “You spent so much time lying and covering up while she was alive that you don’t know when to stop.”

“Well, she
wasn’t
my girlfriend.”

“Who cares about labels? You saw her for a year. Why pretend it didn’t affect you?”

“Tom—”

“Like I told you on Thanksgiving, pretending is a lousy way to get through life.”

There he went again, with the wise-older-brother routine. “So right after you announced your sexual orientation at the dinner table, I was supposed to jump in with, ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve been screwing around with this girl from Black Mountain, at least I was until she went flying through a windshield, but nobody knows about it because she was too ashamed to tell anyone—’”

“I don’t think she was ashamed of you,” Tom said. “She was ashamed of herself.”

“What for?”

“Lying to Austin. Cheating on him. And never being able to choose between the two of you.”

I thought about that. A couple of girls walked past our bench. People sat all over the yard, some of them drinking and smoking. You could smell the beer, see the cigarettes like sparks in the darkness. Tom went on. “And your girlfriend, Kirby, she’s right. You’re not over this. You’re still hanging on to Julia.”

“What am I supposed to do? I thought it would end when I finished the notebook. Then I thought it would end when I got that letter from Pam. I thought it was over when I started seeing Kirby. Now I wonder if it’s ever going to be over. When is Julia going to get out of my head?”

“I guess that’s up to you,” Tom said. “Not to sound like a cheesy TV psychologist here, but—”

“Screw that.
She’s
the one who won’t leave
me
alone. She always knew how to get to me. The last time I saw her—”

Tom waited. When I didn’t finish, he said, “What about it?”

I didn’t answer. I never liked to think about that night.

“Colt?”

I sucked in my breath. “She died on a Monday, Labor Day. The last time I saw her was the Friday before.”

“At the bridge?”

“Yeah, of course.” I swallowed.

“So what happened?”

We had sex in her car, as usual. Then she wanted to go wading in the river. All I wanted to do was lie in the backseat and relax, but she dragged me out of the car and into the water. I rolled up my pants. She was wearing shorts.

“School starts Wednesday,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be a senior!” She bent low enough to get her hands in the water, and splashed me. “I’ll still talk to you, though, even though you’re only a junior.”

She meant that to be funny, I knew, but it rubbed me the wrong way. “Hell, you don’t talk to me as it is; why should you start now?”

“I don’t talk to you? What do you think we’re doing now?”

“You know what I mean.”

She stood up straight and scowled, her hands dripping. “Oh, don’t pull this bullshit. You like things exactly the way they are.”

“You mean
you
like things the way they are.”

She shook water off her hands. Some of the drops hit me. “So what are you saying? You want me to bring you home to meet Mom and Stepdad? You want to come to the country club tomorrow, and go to Adam’s party Monday? Is that what you want?” When I didn’t say anything, she said, “See, I can call your bluff every time.”

“You always say I’d have to turn into Austin. But why should I, since you never stop bitching about him?” Then I said something I’d never said before. “Maybe you should think about coming down to the flats instead.”

She stared at me. After a minute, she said, “Don’t spoil it, okay? Let’s keep things the way they are.”

“Fine.” I didn’t know why I’d started this stupid argument in the first place. I paced circles through the water.

She watched me. I could tell, I could feel her eyes, though I wouldn’t look at her. “Colt. Did you tell your friends about us?”

“What? No.”

“Come on, did you tell them?”

I glanced over at her. She was frowning. It was the only time I’d ever seen her look the slightest bit afraid. At first I thought it was funny, that such a small thing could scare her, but then it started to piss me off. Would it be so horrible if people did find out about us? Would it kill her to be seen with me? I said, “I told you, no. Why are you even asking?”

“I thought maybe you bragged about us and your friends didn’t believe you. Maybe that’s why you want to go public all of a sudden.”

“Didn’t we just agree to forget this whole thing?”

“Okay.” She watched me walk around in the river. “I don’t know what you want,” she said. “Sometimes you act like you love me, and sometimes you act like you couldn’t care less.”

I turned my back on her. I wasn’t in the mood to give her anything right then, to joke with her, to play our usual game. “Then I guess you’ll always have to wonder,” I said over my shoulder.

She shoved me, hard, in the back, so hard I took two steps forward. I turned on her and grabbed her arms.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” she said. “Don’t you
ever
act like you’re hot shit just because I let you fuck me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it means? You’re trash and you know it.” Her arms trembled. She tried to wrench them free. “Go ahead, tell your friends, tell the whole world. You think they’d believe I touched you?”

My blood burned, sent scorching waves through every part of me. It wasn’t just the worst thing she’d ever said to me . . . it was the worst thing anyone had ever said to me. Not because of the words. Anyone from Black Mountain could’ve called me trash, and it would’ve bounced off me. What got me was the way she said it, the venom and the total confidence in her voice. The way she made me believe it, because
she
was saying it, Julia, the girl who knew me better and deeper than anyone. She sliced right into me, fed every doubt I’d ever had about myself.

I pushed her away and walked out of the river. She ran after me.

“Colt, I’m sorry.”

I kept walking, back toward the car, her shiny perfect car. How did she keep it so shiny?

“I was pissed,” she said. “I didn’t mean it.”

No, she didn’t mean it. It was always a game to her. She baited me, and usually I played along. But the whole routine, Rich Girl/Poor Guy, had finally bottomed out. This time she’d hacked deep enough to crack bone.

I stared at that car for another minute. Then I picked up a rock and dragged it down the passenger side. The noise made my teeth ache, but I didn’t care. She didn’t stop me, either, just stood there with her mouth open while I scratched that gorgeous finish on her gorgeous car. When I got to the rear bumper, I tossed the rock away.

“Colt,” she said, as if she needed to say my name to make sure it was still me. As if she didn’t recognize the guy who’d just mutilated her car.

We stood there looking at each other. I waited for her to pull Black Mountain rank on me, to tell me she’d call the cops, sue me for the paint job. Instead she took two steps toward me and threw her arms around me. She smelled of perfume and the river, wet hair and sex. She kissed my ear, my neck.

Then I was kissing her, too. She clawed at my clothes and my skin—later I found a few drops of blood on my shirt. And then we were in the backseat again, pushing into each other so hard I thought we’d roll the car over.

When we were done, when we could breathe again, she said, “I’m going to break up with Austin this weekend. I mean it.”

I didn’t believe her, but she’d wrung me out and I let it pass. “What are you going to tell people about the car?”

“That I scraped against a post, parking.”

That’s why she didn’t take her own car to Adam Hancock’s party: hers was in the shop, being painted. She was free to get as drunk as she wanted because she didn’t have to drive. That’s why Austin drove her to the party and Pam drove her home.

“Holy shit,” Tom said, when I’d finished.

“Yeah,” I said, suddenly tired enough to sleep right there on that bench.

He tilted his head back and looked up at the stars. “It’s funny. I lived right down the hall from you last year, and I never knew this was going on.”

“That was the point. Nobody was supposed to know.”

“Yeah, I can see you got off on the secrecy. So, how’d that work out for you, Colt?”

I started to laugh. “Great. Can’t you tell?”

I guess he knew I couldn’t talk about it anymore, because he scooped up the mattress. “We’d better get this thing back to the dorm and start blowing it up. I hope it doesn’t take all night.”