The Secrets We Keep (20 page)

“I know that.” I was mumbling, could hear the sad desperation in my voice. “But things are different now. I'm different now. The Maddy before the accident … it's like I don't know her anymore. I don't know what to say or how I am supposed to act.”

It felt good to finally admit it, to acknowledge that I was as confused as he was. “Everything was easier then,” I whispered. “I want to go back to that night and start over, trade places with her.”

“You mean you wish you had died instead of her?” Alex asked. I didn't expect the flash of pain I heard in Alex's voice, didn't expect him to shrink away from me.

“Yes. No. Maybe. I don't know anymore. I'm tired of pretending. I'm tired of trying to be someone I am not.” It was the first honest thing I'd said to him, and it felt good, fantastic even, for once, to be myself.

“You mean you want to be like her? Like Ella?” Alex asked as he pulled me into his arms and guided my head to his chest.

“Maybe I do. Maybe I want to be exactly like Ella,” I whispered.

“That's not who you are, Maddy.”

That's exactly who I am,
I said silently to myself.

“Remember when you first learned what happened to Molly? Remember how hard that was?”

I thought back to last year, tried to connect Maddy to Molly's social downfall, but I got nothing. If anything, Maddy was her normal, I-don't-have-time-for-you self. When she wasn't home or at school, she was wherever Alex was. But that wasn't unusual; since freshman year, since the day she first sat down at his table, they'd been inseparable.

“And?” I didn't know what else to say and that seemed like the vaguest way to keep him talking.

“It got better. After a few months, people stopped gossiping about her. You stopped worrying so much that people would figure out what you'd done and things went back to normal. In time, this will get better, too.”

“Time,” I repeated. It seemed like such a simple solution. Such an insanely logical and completely stupid solution.

Alex reached down and picked up the backpack I'd dropped and looped it over his own shoulder. “Just be yourself—the you of the last three years, and I promise you, everything will be fine.”

 

31

Being the old Maddy wasn't as hard as I thought. With Alex thinking I was two steps away from losing it, he made running interference his full-time job, deflecting any question that came my way. He opted out of lunch in the cafeteria and let me retreat to the library where no one would bother me. Although I think that was more about keeping me away from Molly and Josh than my mental stability. The reason didn't matter; it worked the same.

I kept my distance from Josh for the rest of the day. It helped that he and Maddy weren't in any of the same classes. I caught him glancing my way in the hall the following afternoon, but Alex quickly moved in, blocking my view and distracting me. I didn't catch what he was saying, just the words
Snow Ball
and
colors.

I quickly looked up at the posters covering the walls. Some were advertising ticket sales and others were promoting Jenna for Snow Ball queen. They all had some combination of pink and purple in them so it seemed like a safe guess. “Pink, I think, maybe purple,” I said, then went back to sorting books in my locker.

“You want me to wear a purple tie?”

“What?”

He took the few books I had in my hand and shoved them into my bag. “I asked if you expected me to wear a purple tie.”

I shook my head, trying uselessly to understand why the color of his tie mattered. He could wear a black-and-orange-striped one for all I cared. “Uh … no,” I said, hoping that was the correct response. “Wear a black one or a blue one. Either one is fine; I don't care.”

“Well, what color is your dress?”

“What dress?” The closest I'd come to wearing a dress in the last ten years was an overly long shirt, and even then, I threw on a pair of wool leggings.

“The one you bought with Jenna way back in September.”

I mentally shuffled through Maddy's closet. She had at least a dozen formal dresses in there. I'd gone through her entire closet the past three days, trying everything on in an attempt to make myself look exactly like her. But I hadn't seen any dresses with tags or still wrapped in plastic. “I don't know. Brown?”

“Really, brown?” Alex looked surprised and grunted in disgust.

I immediately understood my mistake. Outside of a pair of gloves and a scarf, Maddy didn't own a single article of clothing that was brown. Nothing even tan. Crap. “Doesn't matter, I wasn't planning on going.”

“Uh, yeah, you are.”

“No, I'm not.” The last dance I went to was our father-daughter dance in elementary school. Dad had to split his time between Maddy and me. Half an hour in, I gave up, let Maddy monopolize his time while I played mat ball with the boys in the gym. “Why does it matter if I go, anyway? You go.”

“I am going. With you.”

I shook my head. I wasn't budging on this one. It was one thing to be Maddy at school where I could escape to the bathroom or the library to regain my sanity. It was something completely different to be put on display, to have to walk in heels and make small talk about who was wearing what, or more accurately, who was doing who. It was only a matter of time before Jenna, Alex, and this entire school figured out what Josh already had—I was no Maddy Lawton.

“You are the one who told me to avoid Josh and Molly. I think
not
going is the perfect idea,” I told Alex.

He laughed and started walking away, then turned around when he was a few feet from me and held out his hand. Apparently, I was supposed to follow. “Last I checked, Josh wasn't going,” he said. “And I doubt Molly will go without a date, so you are good there, too.”

I couldn't help the sudden joy that filled me. I knew Kim wanted to go; she'd been talking about it since they started dating. How cool it was going to be to go to the Snow Ball with a senior. She went so far as to try to set me up with someone, figuring I could double with them. I didn't have to put a stop to that; Josh did it for me, warning her that setting me up was nearly as horrible an idea as him going to the dance in the first place. I'd assumed by now she had worn him down.

“Josh isn't going?”

Alex gave me a cursory glance, no doubt wondering why I cared. “Last I checked, he doesn't do much of anything. Since the night of the accident, I've seen him at school and at your sister's burial service but that's it. Outside of school, he is a virtual shut-in.”

I yanked Alex to a stop and pulled my hand free. “Wait. Him and Kim.”

Alex shook his head. “How should I know? And besides, why do you care?”

“I don't,” I said, hoping he'd believe me. “It would suck if he didn't go because of—”

“Don't worry about him. He needs some time, Maddy. Everyone does.”

*   *   *

Alex threaded his fingers through mine and tugged me the few remaining feet to the girls' locker room. He knocked once before opening the door a crack and yelled in to see if it was empty. School had ended over a half hour ago. Anybody still in there was going to get chewed out for being late for practice.

When no one answered, he pushed the door all the way open and peeked inside. Seeing nothing, he pulled me in. “I figured you hadn't seen this yet.”

With the exception of gym, which my broken wrist had blessedly excused me from, I never set foot in the girls' locker room. I didn't play a sport and saw no need to shower at school. But I knew exactly where Maddy's locker was. There was an entire block of them set aside for the field hockey team. Maddy's was smack in the middle, her name artfully etched into the metal.

Tucked in the corner of the locker room was a roll of paper, not unlike the ones Josh and I used when we were sketching out murals. Alex handed me the edge and motioned for me to lay it flat on the floor. I did, using one of the field hockey sticks sitting on the bench to anchor it.

It was huge, easily spanning the length of seven lockers.
WELCOME BACK, MADDY.
Names of people I didn't know covered the entire surface. Alex's was there, Jenna's, too. Keith, Molly, Hannah, and a couple of other kids I recognized from Maddy's lunch table. The rest …

I gave up trying to place faces with the names and started counting. Seventy-three total.

“They're planning on hanging this at the field hockey game this Friday,” Alex said as he held the other side down with his hand. “To celebrate your first week back at school.”

I read a few of the notes, glancing over most. Alex's message was tagged with an
I love you
, and Jenna had scribbled out a curt
Get well soon.
Molly's was the longest. She'd wished me well like the rest of them, but also written an offer of help, her pretty handwriting saying she'd be there to listen if I needed someone to talk to. Funny how the one person Alex had warned me to steer clear of was the one person who had offered to help.

“That's why you are going,” Alex said, cutting into my thoughts. “Jenna may be pushing hard for Snow Ball queen, but she won't win. I made sure of that. And, well, no one is running against me for king, so…”

I turned and stared at him. I'd pegged him completely wrong. I had expected him to be egocentric and obsessed with popularity. But at the end of the day, no matter how obsessed he seemed to be with his image, he cared more about Maddy.

“I have been back at school for three days, Alex. Three short days. I'm not ready yet.” And seeing well wishes sprawled across the banner didn't help. If anything, it made it worse, kicked the expectations up a notch.

“I know,” he said. “But it's only November. You have a couple more weeks to figure things out. Besides, it's not like you have a choice, and it's not like you'll be alone. I'll be there to help you. Our friends will, too.”

 

32

It was past six when I got home. I expected Mom to be worried, maybe angry. I hadn't talked to her since Monday when I ran out and left her crying on her bedroom floor.

The house was dark and the driveway was empty except for Mom's SUV. I opened the front door and was greeted by the dog. No smell of dinner cooking, no TV blaring the news. Only darkness surrounded by silence.

I flipped on a light and dropped my backpack to the floor. The kitchen looked exactly the same as this morning—coffeepot still filled with sludge, dishes still in the sink, dog still covered with day-old soup. I turned off the coffee, dumped the grounds into the trash, and gave Bailey a quick paper towel and water bath. I thought about doing the dishes, but the dishwasher was full
and
clean. That meant I'd have to empty it first, which I didn't want to do.

“Mom,” I called, but I got no answer. I wondered if she was out with Dad. Maybe she had gone with him to pick up dinner or something.

Turning on lights as I went, I made my way upstairs. Bailey had made it up ahead of me and was lying on my old bed. I stopped and stared at him, waited for him to jump down and come to me. He didn't budge, didn't so much as lift his head to acknowledge my presence. My own dog was turning on me.

With a silent vow to feed him nothing more than dry food until he changed his attitude, I turned around and headed for Maddy's room. I had to find a brown dress somewhere in her closet or find the time to buy one in the next few weeks. Alex wasn't letting me out of going to the dance, and until I came up with an amazing reason why I couldn't go, I had to play along.

There was a flicker of light coming from underneath my parents' door. I listened for a moment before pushing it open. Mom was there, sound asleep in the overstuffed chair in the corner. The TV was muted. She'd showered—her hair was damp, her face free of makeup, and she was already in her pajamas. I watched her for a minute. I hadn't seen her this quiet or this peaceful in weeks, and I wondered if it was sheer exhaustion or the help of a few sleeping pills that had stilled her mind.

She had my old baby blanket tucked around her, and I couldn't help but walk over and touch it, let the tattered softness calm me as well. I saw a cell phone in her hand. I quickly pulled mine out of my pocket and searched through the call list. Alex, Dad, and Alex again. Nothing from Mom. Nothing from Josh.

I carefully took the phone from her hand and dialed the last number she called. It was mine … Ella's. It went to voice mail, my less-than-enthusiastic directions telling whoever was looking for me to leave a message. From the call log on Mom's phone, she'd dialed my number fifteen times in the last day, probably so she could hear the distant echo of my voice.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered before I laid the phone on the floor beside her and left the room. Waking her now was pointless. I wasn't ready to deal with her tears.

I was pretty familiar with Maddy's closet by now, knew she kept shirts on the left-hand side, organized by season, then color. Jeans hung in the middle followed by skirts and dresses. Her shoes and boots were in their original boxes stacked neatly in the back. And on the far right, tucked behind her jackets, were her formal gowns.

I started there, sorted through three short black dresses, one long shiny-looking red thing, and a top that I would barely classify as a shirt before I found something that would work. It was a dark cream, not brown or tan, but I figured muddy cream was in the same color spectrum so I could talk my way out of that minor discrepancy.

Shoes were a different story. The dress wasn't new, so I figured whatever shoes she'd bought to go with it would be at the back of the stack. Maddy was never one for recycling clothing. I sat down cross-legged in front of her closet and started sorting through boxes. Red heels, black sparkly flats, some sort of wedge-sandal-type thing. None of them would work. I needed cream shoes, or so I thought. Honestly, I would be fine wearing flip-flops.