I know I need to tell him I’m the Lydia who is Tessie’s best friend, but not when he’s looking at me like that.
Next time.
Tessa, present day
2:24 A.M.
I’m whipping through the pages. They’re brutal. Nicking me, stabbing me, kicking me in the gut. Blowing me a few kisses. Love and resentment, all mixed up.
A whole other Lydia going on when I was sixteen years old. A picture behind a picture. I flash back to that night on the terrace when I thought we dredged up everything. Every unspoken pebble of anger. Every benign tumor that had been growing since our friendship began-the tumors that live under the skin of every relationship until the unforgivable moment that changes their chemistry forever.
I was wrong. There was so much more.
I’m trying to reconcile the girl in this notebook with the one who gave me back my breath with a brown paper bag. Who hugged me all night when my mother died, and braided my hair when I was blind. Who read me breathless poetry. Who wrote notes in Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite cipher, with invisible ink made from lemon juice, and stuck them in a crack in my tree house for me to find the next day. So I could hold her words up to the sun.
I feel sick.
The phone rings. I jump up, knocking over a bottle of water.
Lydia’s ink begins to blur.
I blot frantically at the pages.
The phone shrills again. Insistent.
I stare at the Caller ID.
Outler, Euphemia.
At least a quarter of the pages left. I don’t know how Lydia’s story ends. Or how quickly my time with the journal will be up. I have to figure, very, very soon.
I pick up the receiver.
“Sue? Sue?” Full-on Effie panic.
She lowers her voice.
I think the damn digger snatcher is here.
Lydia, age 17
2 DAYS AFTER THE TRIAL
Tessie is screaming at me.
You gave my diary to the doctor? You rifle through my things?
“I had to give jurors the full picture.” Good grief, she is freaking out. I thought she’d get it. “I gave him the diary to protect you. I testified to all that stuff to help convict Terrell.”
“Yeah, right. You had to tell them I didn’t bathe? That you found lice in my hair? That I stole painkillers out of Aunt Hilda’s medicine cabinet?”
“I’m sorry I said the boys call you Suzy Scarface. That was a very unfortunate headline.”
“Do they really call me that, Lydia?” Tessie looks like she’s about to cry. But I can’t give in. She always wants things both ways.
“You testified for you,” Tessie is saying. “So you could be a star.”
We’re standing on her grandfather’s terrace like we have a million times before. She’s shaking, she’s so freaking mad at me. But, like, I’m getting madder by the second, too. Doesn’t she understand everything I’ve done for her? She’s yelling, and I’m yelling right back, the catfight of the century. Finally, she doesn’t have a comeback. There’s just silence and black night and us, breathing hard.
“I saw you with the doctor.” Her tone creeps me out.
“What are you talking about?” Of course, I know what she’s talking about. But which time? How much does she know? I take a stab. “You mean the time I gave him your diary?”
“I guess. I was walking Oscar at the college. What did you think you were doing, Lydia? Get out.”
Her grandmother is suddenly at my back, clawing my shoulder, wheezing a little, because she had to climb all those stairs. She never liked me much. “Girls-”
“Get out, Lydia,” Tessie sobs. “Getoutgetoutgetout.”
Tessa, present day
2:29 A.M.
I’m crossing the yard, running. Barefoot. It feels like a dream. A starry night above my head. A sweet, drifting perfume, nauseating.
Shadows hang off every tree, ready to smother me. I focus on the light trickling out of Effie’s kitchen window. On the cold steel in my hand. On the idea of Effie, alone with a monster. The one eating her brain, the one who turned girls to bones, the one who used to brush my hair and secretly despise my weakness. Maybe all three.
Waiting for me. Using Effie as bait.
What is that on the ground? I bend and brush my fingers on the grass. Confetti. It litters a path between my house and Effie’s. I rub the bits of paper between my fingers. Watch the pieces tumble and float downward like brilliant abstract thoughts.
It isn’t confetti.
The grass is littered with black-eyed Susans.
Someone has ripped off their body parts and left me a trail.
I’m gasping, sucking at air that is evaporating.
Van Gogh’s sky is spinning above me.
My head is exploding with images, and settles on one.
He has finally wiped the mud off his face.
My monster. The Black-Eyed Susan killer.
He’s clean, and shaved. Smiling.
The Susans yip with joy. That’s him that’s him that’s him!
I can feel his arm trapped around my shoulder. Smell the cologne on his suit coat.
Hear his lazy, reassuring drawl.
If you had three wishes, Tessie, what would they be?
Lydia, age 17
3 DAYS AFTER THE TRIAL
We made love twice. He’s already on the edge of the bed.
“I’m going to take a shower, sweetheart,” he says. “Then I’m going to have to run. So pack up, OK?”
Sweetheart. Like I’m a 1940s thing on the side. How about getting a little more mythological? Calling me Eurydice? Or Isolde? I’m thinking that Lydia Frances Bell deserves better right now than scratchy sheets and pack up and sweetheart.
The shower is already running.
I slip naked out of bed, shivering. He always keeps it freezing in his apartment. He doesn’t like the noise of the furnace coming on and off. Whatever. I grab his shirt off the floor and slip my arms into it. Flap the long sleeves like a bird. It’s his last day at school before his China sabbatical. He says Tessie doesn’t ever need to know we slept together, which is, like, huge. I’m thinking she’ll get over the testimony stuff. I give her a month.
These packing boxes are freaking everywhere.
Maybe I’ll explore. Find a memento he won’t miss.
I stick my hands in the pockets of his old man suits. I wish he’d let me dress him. His shirts are way too starchy. They scratch my neck. I thumb through a stack of textbooks that would bore the crap out of me. I rove around in his boxer shorts drawer. Ordinary, ordinary, ordinary.
The shower’s still running.
I open and shut more empty drawers. Check out the freezer.
Thumb through a pile of mail. Geez, even Tessie leaves me better surprises.
I almost didn’t bother to open the cabinet under the kitchen sink.
That’s where I found them.
Straggly yellow flowers with black eyes, sitting in the dark.
Tessa, present day
2:34 A.M.
I’m kneeling. Staring at a petal stuck to my hand. Pulsing with rage.
At him. At myself, for knowing all along but being too afraid to see.
At Lydia.
I don’t know how much time has passed. Seconds? Minutes? The light still glows steadily from Effie’s kitchen.
You control your mind, Tessie. The doctor. In my head. Leering. Mocking.