The Secrets We Keep (19 page)

Josh took the paper from my hands and stared at it much the same way I had in the kitchen. I saw the slight tremor in his hands, knew that he was as anxious as I was to see what it said.

“This isn't your e-mail address,” he said.

I pushed it back in his direction when he tried to hand it to me. “I know. It's my mom's. She got it yesterday and printed it off.” I left out the part about my mom not sleeping, about the circles under her eyes, the messy house, and the fact that I was quite sure she hadn't showered or changed since yesterday. Josh liked my mom. He thought she was sweet, always cooking him food or asking to see his latest drawing. I didn't want that to change. For either of them.

“So ask her what it says if you're so curious.”

I took a step back at the harshness of his words. This was the plan. This was
always
the plan. We'd both dreamed about this since freshman year. We'd both applied early decision to the same school. We were going to open the replies together, each one reading the other's letter. That was the deal.

“I'm not asking my mom. I'm asking you.”

He grunted something incoherent and started reading. My eyes tracked from the paper to his face, seeking any indication of what it said. I got nothing.

“Well? What does it say?” I inched forward to read it myself. He tilted the paper out of my view.

“You still planning on being Maddy?”

“What? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Answer the question. Are you still playing Maddy?”

I stared at Josh, tried to decipher the hatred behind his words. Josh and I had fought before, but this was different. This was intense. “Yeah, why?”

Josh shook his head and walked past me, stopping in front of my old locker. He smoothed the e-mail out and shoved it between the thin slots at the top.

I could get it out, but I'd have to open the locker. That hadn't gone so well my first day back, and I wasn't looking for a repeat performance of that spectacle. “What did you do that for?”

“Because
Maddy
didn't get in.”

“Wait, you mean? Did they say no? They really said no?” I knew there was a chance, a strong possibility more likely, that I wouldn't get into RISD, but I had kind of refused to think about that, was banking on the yes until I had definitive proof otherwise. “Did you get in?”

I watched a smug grin play across his face. It made my stomach churn.

“Yeah, I did,” he said. “Ella did, too, but there is no chance of me seeing her at RISD this fall, is there? So much for our plans.”

Ella …
me
 … I had gotten in. And he had, too. A huge grin covered my face, and it took every ounce of control I had not to throw my arms around him and cheer.

“What are you smiling for? You buried that dream with your lie.”

No, I didn't. I never gave up on that dream. I put it on hold. For a little bit. Crap, he was right. “No. I'll fix this. I will.”

“Umm hmm.” Josh took a step closer, and I could see the challenge in his eyes, the challenge for me to come clean. “And how, exactly, do you plan to do that,
Maddy
?”

Josh's head snapped up at the exact same time I felt two arms come around my waist. “Everything good here?” Alex asked.

Josh shrugged. “I don't know. Ask your girlfriend.”

Alex's hands flexed on my stomach before he pulled me against his chest. I recognized it for what it was—a protective gesture. He dropped his head down to the crook of my neck and whispered, “You okay, baby?”

There was a threat in Alex's words, one not aimed at me, and for a brief second, I got a glimpse of what Maddy had seen in him. He always had her back. Always. I'd seen him toss a kid to the ground for looking at her funny, and I'd heard him chew out random girls in the cafeteria for commenting on something as ridiculous as her choice of shoes.

“I'm good,” I said, letting myself draw strength from the warmth of his arms. “Bad morning, that's all.”

“Yeah … bad morning,” Josh replied. “Nothing more going on here than a bad morning.”

Alex let me go and stepped out from behind me. I could see him struggling to stay calm as he spoke to Josh. “Did I miss something here?”

“Miss something? Yeah, you could say that,” Josh said, and Alex tossed his hands out, silently asking Josh to explain. “Why didn't you tell me she asked to see me when she woke up?”

“She was out of it, Josh. She was upset and scared. She was having a hard enough time as it was making sense out of everything. The last thing she needed was to field your questions. I wasn't trying to hurt you, Josh. I was trying to keep her safe.”

Josh took a step closer, tried his best to close the six-inch difference between him and his cousin. “That girl standing behind you took the one good thing I had. She took it without even thinking about what it would do to me, or her parents, or anyone else. And I want it back. I would've taken it that night if you'd done as she asked and called me.”

I'd never seen them fight. I'd seen the two of them hurl mean comments at each other at family gatherings, but never once had I heard them actually fight. I started to speak, to beg Josh to stop talking and walk away, but Alex waved me off.

“There is absolutely nothing she can do to change things. Nothing,” Alex said. “I've watched her cry herself to sleep trying to think of ways to make this better, Josh, but she can't. None of us can.”

“You keep thinking that, Alex, and eventually maybe she'll start believing it, too.”

Alex turned to look at me, confused as to what Josh was rattling on about. Josh had given me the perfect out, the perfect opportunity to come clean and walk away. I didn't take it. I pretended I had no idea what he was talking about.

Alex's entire demeanor softened. I don't know if he saw the fine tremor overtaking my body or if he realized exactly how broken Josh was, but he laid a gentle hand on Josh's shoulder and sighed. “I get what you have lost. I do. But she's already apologized, Josh. What more do you want from her?”

Josh shook his head, the anger I saw coursing through his eyes morphing into defeat. “I want nothing from her.” He took a step sideways so he was looking squarely at me, speaking only to me. “But just because you apologized, doesn't mean I have to forgive you.”

 

30

Alex waited until Josh was out of sight and our nosy classmates had gone back to their morning rituals before he grabbed my arm and towed me down the hall. There was a little alcove where an old water fountain used to be. He pushed me into it and scanned the hall to make sure no one was listening before he spoke.

“What's going on between you two?” There was no demand in his tone. It was nothing more than a simple question laced with confusion. I watched as his entire body went rigid, tense, almost like he didn't want me to answer, like he didn't want to know. In public, when our friends or Josh were listening, he'd be protective and kind, secure in where he stood with me. But here, in the relative privacy of this dark corner, he looked scared.

“Nothing is going on. He's upset about Ella. We both are. I was trying to help.”

“I know he's the reason you left school early yesterday. You were talking to him in the staircase between classes and you went to his house last night.”

“Are you following me?”

He actually looked offended that I would even suggest such a thing. “No, Maddy. I wasn't following you. I was here, fielding questions about your odd behavior, making up excuses about why you ran out of class and why you've decided to make Molly your new best friend. What I don't know is why you went to Josh's house instead of mine.”

“I don't need you to make excuses for me,” I said, irritated with myself for being too weak to handle one day in public as Maddy. “And Josh, well, I wouldn't worry about him, he's pretty much written me off.”

“So you say.” He was angry now, I could hear it in his tone as he struggled to keep his voice down and not make a scene. He leaned forward, and I felt his breath against my neck. “Because when my girlfriend leaves school without so much as a goodbye, doesn't answer her phone, and leaves another guy's house dressed in his clothes later that night … yeah, well, I kinda think I'm entitled to worry, wouldn't you say?”

How did he know I was wearing Josh's clothes? “Who told you that? Who told you where I was?”

He took a step back and braced his hand against the wall, giving himself enough space to calm down while keeping me from passing. “Doesn't matter who told me,” he answered quietly. “I just want to know why. Why did you go to him instead of me? Why do you trust him more than me lately?”

Oh, it
did
matter who had told him. I managed to duck out from underneath his arm and scan the hall. It didn't take me long to find her, standing there pretending she was reading the notices on the student activities board. She wasn't reading crap. Besides, it's not like she had a life outside of stalking Josh. Kim had told him. That crazy girlfriend of Josh's had told him.

I didn't know who I was more upset with—Kim for sticking her nose where it didn't belong or Alex for actually thinking for a second Maddy would cheat on him. “You believe Kim? After everything, you believe her over me?”

“I wouldn't have two months ago. I wouldn't have two
days
ago. But since you came back to school—” He paused and shook his head. “
I
don't know you anymore, Maddy, and that scares the crap out of me.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I tried for angry, which wasn't a stretch considering I was fuming over Kim's meddling. “What are you trying to say?”

“First Molly, then Jenna, now Josh. Are you trying to lose everything?”

“So I am supposed to forget what happened, pretend I am happy, and go on like everything is perfect?”

“That's not what I meant, Maddy, and you know it. I'm the one person who actually gets what your sister meant to you. I remember every conversation we ever had about her, about how you wished you could be more confident like Ella and not care what people thought. How you wished you had half her talent. How you wished we had friends as loyal and honest as Josh.”

I shook my head at his words, tears rimming my eyes. Maddy never wanted to be me; she'd said as much that night in the car. How she was tired of covering for me, tired of making excuses for my lack of social skills.

“You have no idea how much she meant to me. You couldn't,” I said.

The anger and confusion I'd seen in Alex's eyes faded as he held out his hand to me. I took it and let him pull me in to his chest. “Josh may be able to tell you who your sister's favorite band was or how much salt she liked to dump on her pizza, but he can't remind you of the things you did when you were kids. He doesn't know about all the time you spent sitting on the hood of my car scanning the latest issue of the school's newspaper for her drawings.”

I didn't know Maddy did that, didn't know she cared. “And you can? You can remind me of that?”

“Every day if that's what you need. You have told me so much about her, I can guarantee I know her as well as Josh does, maybe better.”

“She applied to the Rhode Island School of Design, did you know that?”

Alex nodded. “Of course I did. You showed me the three drawings she was working on for her application.”

The look on my face must have told him I had no memory of that because he laughed before explaining. “The weekend before the accident we were at your house. We had stopped there on our way to Narragansett Beach because you wanted to change. Something about not having the right shoes on for the bonfire and sand. Ella was out with Josh. There was a modern art exhibit in Boston she wanted to see.”

I remembered that day like it was yesterday. The exhibit was fantastic, but the two-hour ride to Boston sucked. That, and Kim had called every ten minutes asking when Josh would be home.

“I was complaining that we didn't have time to stop by your house
and
pick up the beer, but you insisted I come in, said it would only take a minute.”

Nothing ever took Maddy a minute. “Sorry.”

“Don't be. I'm not.” Alex grinned, and I got the feeling they'd done a lot more than grab a different pair of shoes. “You went into her room to borrow her hairbrush and saw the application sitting on her desk with her sketches.”

I'd actually shoved the application underneath a bunch of homework to keep Mom and Dad from seeing it. Maddy must have had to move a lot of stuff around to find it, but whatever. “Which one was your favorite?”

Alex dropped his backpack and pulled out his wallet, then handed me a folded piece of paper he had tucked inside. It was a photocopy of a picture I drew of Maddy freshman year. We were about a month into school and the sting of her no longer wanting to be seen with me was still raw. I used to sit at the table and sketch while Josh and his friends talked. I'd draw everything from the trash can to the clock on the wall, but this one was of Maddy. It was crude—sucked, actually—but it was definitely her. And it wasn't one I even had in the pile of contenders for my art school portfolio.

“I know where she kept the real one,” I said. “You can have it if you want.”

“No. You keep it,” Alex said as he took his copy back.

“She got in to RISD. That's what I was talking to Josh about. They were planning on going together. That's why he was so upset.”

“Did you think she wouldn't get in?” Alex asked. “She was amazing, Maddy. Better than Josh.”

“I don't know what to think anymore. I don't know how to make any of this right.”

He shook his head, his words coming after a long sigh. “There is nothing to make right, Maddy. The roads were wet and you weren't going that fast. I was there when you woke up, when the police questioned you. You weren't drunk. They gave you two blood alcohol tests and both of them showed nothing. It's been ruled an accident. What happened to your sister
was
an accident.”