The Secrets We Keep (14 page)

“Alex whispered something to you when I walked in. I don't know what it was, but he seemed pissed. You had a fight later that night, but I don't know what it was about. Maybe about me being there,” she said as she took a step in my direction.

I didn't know what the fight had been about, but rather than admit that, I asked again, “Why were
you
crying? What happened?”

“Jenna. She was there being her usual self.”

Molly didn't need to explain that. I'd been on the receiving end of Jenna's nasty comments for years. I was well aware that she had probably taken Molly's tears and used them as a way to gain the upper hand, remind her that she was different. Damaged. Useless.

“Jenna's a self-serving wannabe. I don't get why you—” I paused for a second to correct myself. “I don't get why we hang out with her.”

“I don't anymore. You do.”

I shrugged, not knowing what to say. I guessed, at the end of the day, I would classify Jenna as my sister's best friend. I'd gladly go the next seven months, the next seven years, my entire life as Maddy, but there was no way I was putting up with Jenna in the process. “Yeah … well, I have a feeling that's gonna change.”

Molly smirked, no doubt understanding exactly what I meant. “I figured that much at the party.”

I cocked my head, pretended I was searching my mind for a lost piece of information. “I … uhh…”

The amusement faded from Molly's eyes, a pain I was familiar with replacing it. “You heard her prodding me and lost it, said you were done with her treating me that way. Done pretending that none of this was your fault.”

I didn't dare ask what “this” referred to. Besides, the look on Molly's face told me she wouldn't know the answer anyway, that she was as confused, as curious as me about what Maddy had been so upset about. Unfortunately, I didn't have the answer either.

“I'm sorry. There is a lot of stuff from that night I still can't remember.”

“Alex heard you yelling at Jenna and came in,” Molly said. “He grabbed you and told you to be quiet before you ruined everything. You screamed at him to let you go, to leave you alone. I went to help you, but he told me to stay out of it, that you were drunk and that he'd take care of it.”

“I wasn't drunk.” That was the one thing I was certain about. I'd seen Maddy drunk plenty of times, stumbling and giddy as I handed her ibuprofen and Gatorade at two in the morning, then lied to my parents about her having cramps the next day when she could barely move. That night, Maddy wasn't drunk. She was upset, maybe a little bit scared, but not drunk.

Plus, I had the hospital's blood test to prove it.

“I know you weren't drunk, but to Alex—”

“A drunk, rambling Maddy is easier to explain than the truth.” I finished the thought for her.

She tossed her hands out in agreement, and for a moment, I remembered that she knew these people, these so-called friends better than I did. Probably better than Maddy did. “You think if I ignore them, if I give it a little bit of time, things will go back to normal?” I asked.

“Umm, no.”

That was okay. After talking to Molly and seeing what my sister and her friends were capable of, I wasn't sure Maddy's normal was what I wanted.

 

21

I eased open the door to the school's back staircase. Hardly anybody used it. It was out of the way, the third-floor entrance to it tucked between the art room and the janitor's closet. Most of the school preferred to use the main stairwell, whose wide steps dumped you within feet of the cafeteria, the front office, or the exit to the student parking lot. This narrow back staircase dumped you nowhere but into the dark corners of each floor.

It was quiet, the echo of my own thoughts keeping me company, and that was what I wanted—an out-of-the-way space to think and regroup.

There was a large window midway up the stairs with a ledge big enough to sit on. There was fifteen minutes left of study hall and walking in this late would draw more attention to myself. Attention I didn't want or need. Not yet anyway.

I loved it here: the cold cinder blocks at my back, the heat vent below roasting my feet. I spent hours each week in this very spot, with my sketchpad, watching the world outside, trying to replicate in my drawings every movement, every dropped leaf, every parked car.

I reached down and grabbed a notebook out of Maddy's bag. It was lined, so I flipped to the only blank space I could find—the back cover—and dug around in the bag again until I found a pencil. It was nothing but a standard number 2 pencil, but it would do.

Lost in my drawing, I startled when the bell rang. The few people who used this staircase were making their way through the doors. I ignored them, my focus on the notebook in front of me and the janitor emptying trash into the Dumpster outside. If he would stay still for more than half a second, I'd get his expression down right. But he kept moving, picking up stray bits of paper that had blown free of the container.

The halls went quiet. My next class had started—Physics, I think. It was Basic Physics, not Honors. I could miss two months of that class and still come out with a B. Missing one more day wasn't gonna kill me. I had lunch, four more classes, two hours of field hockey practice to watch—a sport I didn't know how to play—and a crapload of homework to make up, and yet I couldn't get myself to move from that spot.

I tried to hold it together, purposefully thought about random things like the small crack in the windowpane I was leaning against or the faded parking lines in the lot below. It didn't work; my body still trembled with unspent energy.

I closed my eyes and saw Maddy's face smiling at me through the darkness. I thought back to the last time I'd seen her happy. It was the morning of the accident. I was talking to myself, muttering about how the admissions board at RISD would have to be out of their minds to accept me. I'd balled up my fifth attempt at the same sketch and tossed it at the door, not even knowing Maddy was standing there, watching me, listening to me. She caught it and opened it, studied the drawing before tucking it into her back pocket.

“Perfection isn't everything,” she said as she turned and walked away. “I think the flaws are what make it perfect.”

Without opening my eyes, I started drawing her. The deep set of her eyes, the dimple in our left cheeks, that crazy strand of hair she was always fighting into place. Her image flowed through me onto the paper as if drawing her kept me connected to her, bringing a small piece of Maddy back to me.

The doors above me opened and I heard footsteps.

“Hey,” a familiar voice added.

I looked up and saw Josh standing there. He looked confused instead of angry at me. He was a little thinner and paler than usual, but it didn't matter because just seeing him brought the sense of calm I'd been sitting here struggling to regain.

God, I missed him.

I followed the line of his shoulder down his arm, then to his hand, intertwined with somebody else's. I didn't have to look up to know whose it was. Kim's.

Jealousy, as thick and tainting as bile, rose in me and I winced. I had to swallow it down and remind myself who I
really
was, how much more I meant to Josh than she did. I'd always liked Josh, figured eventually we'd become more than just friends. But I never had the courage to tell Josh how I really felt, and he never made a move, so I waited, comforted by the fact that even though Josh was technically dating Kim, he spent all of his time with me.

I'd watched Kim for the last few months, laughing as she tried to flirt her way into Josh's life. She had succeeded, or at least had gotten as close to Josh as she could. She came along when we went out for pizza and had been dragged to my house to watch movies or hang out. She even sat through our weekly anime meetings. The only difference I could see between her and me was that she had to share his popcorn and soda at the movies while I always had my own.

But I'd never felt threatened by her before. I'd watched her snuggle into him at the lunch table, thread her fingers through his hair on my couch, and giggle at his obviously lame jokes, and it had never bothered me. Until now. Now, when I had no claim to Josh in
any
capacity—not as a friend, not as a boyfriend—now I felt threatened.

“Hey,” I said back, my eyes still locked on their hands. Anything more and I was afraid I'd slip, say something or do something to crack the fragile control I was desperately clinging to.

Josh tugged his hand free of Kim's and dug it into his front pocket, then rocked back on his heels so he was farther away from her. Kim eased herself in to his side and looked up at him, her gaze darting between Josh and me as if trying to figure us out.

“Hi, Maddy.” There was a forced cheerfulness in Kim's voice. It was the same tone I'd heard her use on Josh when she was flirting, the same shy grin I'd seen her flash when she was trying to convince him to go to the movies alone, just the two of them.

“I'm sorry about your sister,” she said. “I used to hang out with her. She was nice.”

Kim reached her hand out to touch me, some fleeting gesture meant to show her condolences, but I flinched. She hadn't hung out with me; she hung out with Josh. She didn't know me, and I doubted she knew Josh. Not like I did anyway. And I sure didn't want her sympathy. I wanted her gone. Away from him. Away from us.

“You didn't hang out with Ella. You didn't know anything about her.”

She paled at my words. “What?”

I shook my head, wondering why I was considering explaining myself. I was Maddy now, and I knew for a fact
she
didn't care about Kim or Josh, where they went on their date last Friday, or how far they'd gone last time they made out. To Maddy, they were insignificant people who weren't worthy of her time.

“You and Josh…” My voice slipped on his name, my own more casual tone seeping in. I slammed my mouth shut, shocked that I'd done it. I'd never let my voice slip when I was playing Maddy. Never. Not when we were kids pretending to be each other for fun, not during the countless times I took her tests, and not once since the accident. Why now, why here when I had so much to lose?

Kim looked at Josh, fluttered her hand between us in a futile attempt to get him to say something, to call me out for being rude to her. He didn't. He stood there, his fists bunching in his jeans pockets as he watched me, studied me. He'd heard the slip in my voice; I knew he had.

“Kim,” he said, his eyes still totally focused on me, “can you give me and … uh—can you give us a minute alone?”

She hesitated, then opened her mouth to protest. Josh held up his hand, cutting her off. “Please, I'll meet you in the cafeteria in a few.”

She whispered something into his ear before giving him a kiss. He turned his head, and she caught his cheek. I laughed. I couldn't help it. For once today it was nice to see somebody else getting the short end of the stick.

Josh gave me that same irritated glare I'd seen a thousand times. One that told me to knock it off. I did, settled into the window seat, and watched as Kim walked away.

 

22

Josh waited until Kim was gone, then waited a bit longer before he spoke. “You okay?”

“Yeah … sorry about that,” I said, waving in the direction of the door Kim had sulked through. “I shouldn't have been mean to her. It was wrong.”

“That's not what I meant.” He took a step closer and repeated his question slowly. “Are. You. Okay?”

“Yes … no … I mean…” I wavered, unsure of how to answer. My shoulder no longer ached, and most of my bruises had faded to a pale yellow. My left wrist was still in a cast, and I had a red line above my right eye where they'd stitched my skin together. But other than that, I was fine.

Physically anyway.

“I'm good.”

Josh nodded but didn't move, rather, shifted the weight of his backpack to his other shoulder and continued to watch me.

“What do you want?” I asked him.

“Your sister … Ella used to sit here,” he said as he dropped his backpack to the floor and nudged my feet so he could climb up onto the sill next to me. He picked up the notebook I'd been drawing in, instinctively flipping to the back cover as he took in my drawing and compared it to the living, breathing version sitting next to him.

“Not bad,” he said as he tucked it into his own bag. “The shading is a bit off, but my guess is, you're out of practice.”

Jerk! The shading was nearly perfect. I went to call him out but stopped myself short and played along. “Yup, about four years. I haven't picked up a drawing pencil since junior high. That was Ella's thing, not mine.”

He shook his head as if daring me to continue. “I know. Trust me, I know.”

“You think you know everything about Ella?”

“I know I do. In fact, whenever she was upset about something or was trying to hide, this is where she'd go.”

I cursed silently to myself. I'd known that. That was probably why I was sitting here. It was safe. Familiar.

“So what?” I said, aiming for indifference. “My sister and I had a lot in common. We were twins. Identical twins.”

Josh chuckled at that, the who-are-you-trying-to-kid sound that used to make me smile. Now it irritated the crap out of me. “Not since I've known you. Different friends. Different classes. Different everything. Same DNA, I guess, but that's about it.”

He pulled me away from the wall I was leaning against, his eyes staring at the beige cinder block behind me. I followed his line of sight, knowing what I'd find.

“She drew that, you know,” he said as he inched closer to me to get a better look at the drawing I'd sketched on the wall our freshman year. “The first day I met her, the day you introduced me to her, I found her sitting here drawing on the wall after school. I think she'd been crying, although she insisted she wasn't. Blamed her red eyes on allergies, I think.”