“You’ve been acting weird lately,” she said. “Distant. Like you’ve got other stuff going on.”
“Oh, no, Marnie,” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of having a life outside of our time together.”
She picked up on my sarcasm and shot me an annoyed glance. Then she glanced at my work sheet and copied the answer I’d just written onto her own paper.
“Wait a second,” I said, moving my notebook out of her view. “How long have you been cheating off me?”
She ignored the question. “Kas said you ate lunch with Wyatt yesterday.”
“Yeah? Well, I did.”
Neither of us spoke for a minute.
“Do you have a problem with that?” I asked.
“A problem? No …” she said. “I expected more from you, that’s all. I mean, I warned you about him —”
“Marnie,” I said, careful to keep my voice even, “I think a lot of what you said about Wyatt was lies.”
“Lies?” She laughed humorlessly. “Okay, sure.”
Not exactly a denial, was it?
I sighed and faced her squarely. I guess if we were going to do this, now was as good a time as any. “I saw the photos; I looked up the blog. You guys were clearly an actual couple.”
She didn’t get angry. She gave me a blank smile. “When did I ever say we weren’t?”
I gaped at her for a second. “At your house, after the premiere.”
She shook her head. “Hm-mm. I don’t think so. You must have misunderstood me. You can be … a little obtuse sometimes. No offense.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t misunderstand. You said he thought you were going out and it was really awkward for you. But you guys did go out.”
“Of course we did!” she said, exasperated. “We were, like, the It Couple. Why do you think we had a blog?”
Okay. Deep breath. This was veering from uncomfortable to downright bizarre.
“And the balloons,” I said, even though I knew I should stop. “You said he came to your house with balloons, but you were the one who gave them to him.”
There was a moment when our eyes met and there was a laser connection between us, an unmistakable hyperloop of the serious, actual truth. And we both felt it.
But Marnie recovered and sat back, shaking her head. “I took a chance on you, Willa. When no one else in the entire school would talk to you, I invited you to sit with me. I introduced you to my friends. I even took you to an important Hollywood event, where you proceeded to lie to journalists about —”
“Okay, no,” I said. “Stop. Don’t even finish that sentence, please. We both know who invented Bernadette Middleton and sent that press release.”
“I thought we were friends,” she said, fixing a wide-eyed stare at me. “What are you accusing me of?”
I realized, all at once, that she actually didn’t get it. And then I realized that there was no point in continuing our conversation.
“Look,” she went on, “I realize now that you have a thing for Wyatt. Maybe you’re … I don’t know, threatened by me or something? But believe me, you’re welcome to him. He’s all yours. I’m sorry you got so many wrong ideas. I was only trying to look out for you.”
Staring at her, I felt almost nothing. No anger. No desire to make her admit her lying ways. Only a tiny hint of regret for the loss of the person I thought she had been.
Wyatt was right — Marnie was pathological. But she couldn’t be held accountable. She was a force of nature. A runaway train.
I knew I had a choice now. I could either accept it, and her, or I could spend a ton of energy agonizing over the situation. Spending tons of energy agonizing over things was pretty much my specialty, after all.
I shrugged. “All right,” I said. “Apology accepted.”
Her eyes sparkled and she shot me a brilliant, empty smile. “I knew I liked you. Hey, what do you have for number twenty-two?”
I tilted my work sheet so she could see the answer.
When the bell rang, she got to her feet. “So … I guess you’ll probably want to find somewhere else to stay this weekend.”
Oh, right. I forgot about that. “Of course,” I said, my stomach sinking at the thought of ruining my mother’s honeymoon.
“Cool.” She nodded. “I have big plans anyway. I mean, a thing I’m doing later this week. And then I might have really big news. I just might be too busy to … you know, babysit you.”
Okay, ouch. But I forced myself to ignore the barb. I knew she was being deliberately mysterious, trying to bait me into grilling her. “What kind of big news?” I asked.
“Can’t tell you. Top secret.” She pantomimed zipping her lip. “Anyway, you and Wyatt do whatever —”
“It’s not like that,” I said.
“Suuuure,” she said, in her driest voice. “You talk about him all the time and hang out with him and look up pictures of him online because you hate him so much, right?”
Her musical laugh filled the hallway.
“The world’s full of skeptics. I know — I’m one myself.” She gave me an odd smile. “Just watch out for Wyatt. He’s no gentleman, see?”
Then she walked off, leaving me speechless.
“You look different,” Wyatt said.
“Free?” I asked, setting my tray on the lunch table.
“No.” He studied me. “Annoyed.”
“It’s been an interesting morning.” I started to sit down.
“Wait, don’t get settled here,” Wyatt said, running a hand through his hair. “I have to tell you something. I was thinking we could go out to the courtyard.”
“But it’s raining,” I said.
“Even better,” he said. “More tables to choose from.”
“Why can’t we ever sit and talk like two normal people?”
He gazed at me evenly. “Because if someone hears what I’m about to say, I could go to jail.”
We ended up in a corner of the courtyard, sheltered by a slight overhang. The rain cooled the air, the clouds blocked the sun, and we sat side by side, shivering. I crossed my arms and buried my hands in my dark green Langhorn-issued cardigan, resisting the urge to huddle close to Wyatt for warmth.
“C-can you h-hurry?” I asked. “Before we f-freeze to death?”
“No one had seen Paige Pollan for four days before she was found,” Wyatt said, glancing down at his notebook for confirmation. “Her school assumed she was home sick, and her mother was in Vegas — she worked weekends as a blackjack dealer and sometimes just stayed the whole week there. She had no idea her daughter was missing. But when they found the body, the coroner estimated she’d been dead for less than twenty-four hours — not four days.”
I breathed on my hands and then tucked them inside my sleeves. “So she skipped school, hung out at home for a few days, and then killed herself?”
He shook his head. “She had a goldfish. It was dead when the police found her. People who are planning to kill themselves — I mean, people who don’t do it in a moment of passion — do it because they think the world will be better without them. They don’t let their pets die just because they feel depressed.”
I didn’t know exactly what Wyatt was hinting at, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like it. “Maybe the fish died accidentally — goldfish are pretty delicate, right?”
“All that,” he said, “I could rationalize away. If it were only that. But then I found this.”
He handed me his notebook, where he’d written out a paragraph.
I’M SORRY. I HAVE BEEN VERY LONELY AND STRUGGLED WITH A LOT OF THINGS. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS THE FEELINGS I’VE HAD. NO ONE IS ON MY SIDE. IT’S LIKE I’M COMPLETELY ALONE. I REALIZE THIS IS THE COWARDLY WAY OUT BUT I CAN’T STOP MYSELF FROM BEING A COWARD. MY WHOLE LIFE IS LIKE A BAD DREAM.
THE KIND OF DREAM YOU DON’T WAKE UP FROM.
PAIGE
I read the words over and over until they swam in front of my eyes.
“It’s her suicide note,” Wyatt said, a mite unnecessarily.