The Secrets We Keep (21 page)

I pulled out another box, totally expecting to find an expensive pair of the-wrong-color heels wrapped in tissue paper. I opened the lid, reached in, and came up not with a shoe but a stack of paper. I recognized the first sheet—it was a picture I'd drawn a few years ago, back while we were in middle school. Nothing but a simple rose, its thorny stem weaving around the finger of an anonymous hand. Beneath that was a birthday card I'd given Maddy last year. She hadn't given me mine until three days later. She said she'd forgotten it at school or something like that. She had every test I'd ever taken for her, copies of the art awards I'd won, and twelve years' worth of school pictures tucked into that one shoe box.

For as many papers and pictures as I pulled out, I didn't find one thing that was hers. Not a note, a report card, a class picture, nothing that referenced her. This box was about me.

Wondering how long she had been keeping a box of my mementos, I dug through the papers, figuring the oldest things would be at the bottom of the pile. The last paper was thin, not enough weight to be a photo or another one of my drawings. Afraid that it would tear, I pulled it out and carefully unfolded it. It was an article from the local newspaper about Cranston High's field hockey team. It was dated the day after they lost divisionals. According to the article, the reason they lost was simple—Molly Crahan, one of the best goalies in the state, hadn't played.

Tossing the box aside, I continued reading. The article didn't say why she hadn't played. It made no mention of her testing positive for drugs the day before or the school suspending her from the team for the remainder of the season. The reporter did say, however, that had Molly played, Cranston High School would've won. A few lines down, the details got too real … too close to home. Maddy had highlighted her own name, underlined every reference to the three shoot-outs she had lost, but left any mention of her nine saves untouched.

I moved to the bed and dumped the rest of the box out, pushing aside everything that related to me until I was left with a pile of things related to Molly. There was a blurb from the newspaper's police log indicating that they had broken up a party at Alex's house two nights before divisionals, citing a noise violation, and a letter from the athletic director explaining the disciplinary actions taken against a member of the field hockey team for failing a random drug test. Behind that was a picture of my sister and Molly, one I think she had clipped out of a yearbook. It was them in their sophomore year, at the first field hockey game they'd played together at the varsity level.

I froze when I found a bag of pills, wondering why my sister had them. She had passed the drug test the day before divisionals. That one and every other one the school had randomly subjected them to since.

I emptied the bag of pills onto the bed, counting three. These didn't come out of a bottle you could get at any drugstore. They were different, powdery and white, not a single identifying mark on them. And they were hidden in Maddy's closet in the bottom of a shoe box.

I put them back in the bag and shoved them under the mattress. I should've flushed them. I wanted to flush them, but something forced me to hang on to them.

There were a few more pictures of Molly in the pile and a copy of this year's team roster. Molly was on it, but her name was at the end of the list. She'd made the team this year, but I doubted she'd play.

Near the bottom of the pile was an index card with an address for the Lighthouse Clinic and a room number.

That name sounded vaguely familiar, and I quickly Googled it on my phone. What came up had my eyes growing wide as my mind spun in circles. It was a hospital, a drug treatment center for teens, to be exact. In an instant, I knew why Maddy had it and who had been a patient there—Molly.

I remembered the day she went. I'd overheard my parents telling Maddy why Molly would be out of school for a few weeks. Molly was still claiming she hadn't taken anything, but the school had two positive test results showing otherwise. Mom wanted to know if anybody else on the team was using drugs. Dad wanted to know if Maddy had
ever
taken anything. I clearly remembered Maddy denying everything.
Everything.

I sifted through the scraps of paper on the bed, trying to figure out why my sister was keeping bits and pieces of information on a person she'd essentially shunned. There wasn't a personal note in there. Aside from the clinic's handwritten address, everything she had collected was official—letters from the school about the incident, newspaper clippings, photos. Nothing gave me a clue about why Maddy seemed to have been secretly obsessed with Molly.

Every shoe box in the closet got opened, every drawer in her desk was torn apart, each of her ten unused purses was searched, but I found nothing. Not a ribbon-tied stack of letters from Alex. Not a scrapbook of Maddy's own accomplishments. Nothing but that shoe box outlining my life and Molly's demise.

I tossed everything related to me back into the box and neatly stacked the papers referencing Molly into one pile, then shoved it under the mattress where the pills were. I no longer cared about the last two field hockey games of the season, or the dance, or how I was going to lie my way out of going to either. I was concerned with one thing—finding out what Maddy had done to Molly and why.

 

33

As far as I could tell, Dad hadn't come home last night. His car wasn't in the driveway, and the coffee cup he always used was still sitting in the cabinet. I let myself believe he was traveling; that was better than contemplating the obvious.

Before leaving, I turned the coffeepot on for Mom and laid out her cup. I didn't want her to think that nobody had come home, that nobody cared. I did, I just didn't know how to tell her.

I skipped my first period class and parked myself outside the door of Josh's AP Physics class. He was beyond upset with me, and I didn't deserve his help, but I didn't know who else to turn to. If anyone could help me figure out what was going on, it was him. And if he couldn't, then at least he'd listen to me.

I could hear Mr. Walden asking questions about potential energy, electric potential, and electric potential difference. I didn't know the answers. Less than a month of being Maddy, and I was already losing intellectual ground. Bonus was, I'd figured out how to curl my lashes. Who needed to understand what a joule was when you could do that?

The bell rang, and I stood up, watching and waiting for Josh to walk out.

“Hey,” I said, and reached out to stop him. He'd seen me and was planning on ignoring me. “I need to talk to you.”

“You get Alex's approval for that?” he asked.

“I don't need Alex's permission.”

Josh laughed and walked past me. I hurried to catch up with him. He was my best friend, and I deserved his anger for what I'd done, his hatred even, but I didn't want to lose him.

“Stop,” I yelled. Everyone in the hallway, including Josh, swung their heads in my direction. I gave them a mind-your-own-business stare, then quickly caught up to Josh. “I need your help.”

I could see the elation in his eyes as he took a step closer and bent down to whisper into my ear. He laced his fingers through mine and pulled me aside, at least giving us the appearance of privacy. “Okay, I think we should start with your parents. They can help us figure out how to tell Alex and everybody else. I know you're worried that they will—”

I pulled my hand free and took a step back. “Wait, what?”

“I mean, sure they're going to be surprised and confused, but I don't think they'll hate you if that's what you are worried about. They love you.”

“I'm not telling them who I am, Josh.”

“Okay, I get that. So we can tell somebody else first, maybe my mom. She can help us figure out what to say to your parents, probably be there when you tell them if that's what you want.”

“No, you don't get it. I'm not telling them. Ever. Maddy deserved to live. That's what I'm doing, making sure she does.”

He shrank back at my words as if he'd been slapped. “But you said you needed my help.”

“I do, but not with that. With something Maddy did … or something I think she did, anyway. I know why she hung out with Jenna now, why she put up with her crap.” And it had nothing to do with Maddy feeling bad for Jenna and her family situation. My guess was, Jenna knew exactly what had happened to Molly, that somehow my sister was involved and Jenna was holding it over Maddy's head, using it to slowly take everything important away from her.

I stood there and watched his faith in me disappear, his optimism deflating as my true intentions finally took form. “You're still going to be her? You still
want
to be her?”

What I wanted had nothing to do with it, but that didn't change my answer. “Yes.”

He shook his head and backed up, put what felt like miles of distance between us. “Then I can't help you. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, I don't know you anymore.”

He walked away from me. No
I understand.
No
If you change your mind, I'll be here
. Not even an
It will be okay, we'll figure it out.
Nothing more than a clearly delivered, soul-crushing
I don't want you in my life anymore
.

“Did you mean what you said last night? Before you left?” I called after him.

Slowly, Josh turned around, his anger still firmly in place. “Did I love Ella? Is that what you are asking me?”

I nodded, quite aware that every word I spoke was being uploaded to YouTube or texted across the entire school.

“I meant it. I have since the day I met her. Still do.”

“Then why didn't you ever tell her? You spent nearly every second of every day together and you never thought to tell her? Never thought she'd want to know or that perhaps she felt the same way?”

He took a step toward me, then stopped. His hands tensed at his sides, his tone low, guttural as if he was fighting to speak through his gritted teeth. “She was never,
ever
, on her own. And as for why I didn't tell her … well, she never seemed ready to hear it. Still doesn't.”

 

34

I couldn't move, couldn't even muster the resolve to look around me. It took an enormous amount of effort just to stay upright, not to dissolve in a pile of tears in the middle of the hall.

“Trouble with your sister's boyfriend?” I swung my head around at the sound of her voice, wondered exactly how long Jenna had been standing there and how much she'd heard.

“Piece of advice,” she said. “Try worrying less about your dead sister and more about yourself.”

It was no secret that Jenna had had no use for Ella. She'd made that clear at the party the night my sister died. Part of me hoped it was a façade, something she did in public to keep up her image. To hear her express it in private, to me, wounded me in a way I wouldn't have thought possible.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, please, Maddy. Are you blind? Have you looked in the mirror lately? You look like crap, and your behavior kind of reminds me a bit of Molly's. You want to be her? The fragile girl who everyone thinks is crazy?”

“Are you kidding me, Jenna? Do you have any idea what she—”

Jenna cut me off with a wave of her hand, the sarcastic grin spreading across her face too telling. “Oh, I know exactly what she went through. But they let her back on the team this year, so I guess all is forgiven.”

I was confused as to why Jenna found this amusing. Her reaction, frankly, was downright twisted. I didn't care about pretending to be Maddy in that moment, didn't care if I slipped up and she figured out who I really was. I wasn't going to spend the rest of the year being her friend. Forget Alex and his you-have-to-play-nice-with-Jenna attitude. I was done with her.

“I don't get you. For the life of me, I can't figure out why we are even friends.”

“Because we're exactly the same,” Jenna replied.

I shook my head. I refused to believe that. The Maddy I'd shared a room with for the first ten years of my life, the Maddy Mom and Dad adored, the one who still made cards for our grandmother at Christmas could never be as cruel and self-serving as Jenna.

“Deny it if you want,” Jenna continued. “You and I both know it's the truth.”

“No. It's not.” I don't know where my courage came from, but I didn't care. I had waited three long years to tell Jenna what I thought of her, and I wasn't going to stop myself now. “I am nothing like you. I don't use my family problems as an excuse to treat everybody like crap, and I would never go crying to my best friend's boyfriend about how mean my father is or how broke we are. You think crying to Alex is going to gain you sympathy points, gonna make him dump me to take care of you?”

Jenna reached over and grabbed my arm, towed me into the girls' bathroom across the hall. She kicked open each stall to make sure they were all empty before turning to the two girls staring at us from the sink. “Get out,” she yelled. “Now!”

She slammed the door shut behind them and put her ear to the wood—I presumed to make sure no one was eavesdropping. I didn't know how she could tell, but I guessed certain types of people, those who are well versed in gossipy behavior, had their ways.

“You have shut me out for nearly a month, letting Alex be your go-between. I don't know why, and, to be honest, I don't care because it's absolutely working in my favor.”

“In your favor? How is my accident working in your favor?”

“Alex loves you. I'll give you that. But he'll only put up with this”—arms fluttered in my direction—“for so long.”

I didn't try to keep the contempt from my voice. I embraced it and let my words come out in a low growl. “Put up with what?”