We waited, me drinking in the car while Julia tapped her fingers against the steering wheel and sang along to a love song, shaking her head when I offered her the bottle.
“After I got drunk,” I said, “I told her we should go in.
And when we did, and she couldn’t find Kevin, I said I’d heard some girls talking about him going upstairs.”
He was upstairs, and he was with another girl, just like I knew he would be, and I waited for Julia to fi nally be 138
through with him. To realize he wasn’t going to change, toss off a few words that would turn him into nothing, slam the door, and move on.
But that’s not what happened. She saw everything and started to cry. I didn’t want her to cry. I wanted to help her. I wanted her to be free of Kevin, free of what she called love. I thought that if we left she’d feel better.
“So you told her that her boyfriend was upstairs, and you knew he was?” Mom said. “Amy—”
“I knew he’d be fucking someone else,” I told her, and wondered if the look on my face was as horrible as the way I knew my heart was, ruined and bitter and wrong. “I knew Julia would go up and see it. And that’s what happened. I did that. I made it happen. And when she got upset like I knew she would, I told her we should go.”
Let’s go, everything will be fine, school’s finally over and summer’s here. Screw Kevin and his freshman skank, you can do better and you will. It’ll be okay. We just need to get out of here.
I just wanted her to stop crying. I wanted her to be happy. I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to think about the fact that I’d made sure she’d seen her boyfriend cheating on her again.
I didn’t want to think about how I’d hurt her.
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I didn’t realize I’d hurt her even more.
“So you—?” Dad said, and his voice cracked a little.
“Yes,” I said. “I was the reason we left the party. I made it so we had to. And when we did leave, I had to tell her to get in the car twice because she was crying so hard. I told her to put on her seat belt, and then I buckled it for her. I had to—I even had to tell her to start the car.”
I could tell Mom was getting ready to say something, so I kept talking. “I told Julia to drive. She did and I didn’t care where we were going, only that I’d gotten her out of there. We were going fast, so fast it was like flying. . . .”
My throat felt tight and sticky. I looked over at Mom and Dad. They were still looking at me.
I could change that.
“Then the car—we went around a corner and spun out,” I said. “It happened so fast. There was so much noise, this weird ripping screech, and then it was like—
then it was like we were flying for real. I could feel it.
Everything was so quiet and the car was going round and round. I could see the sky. I still remember seeing all the stars turn. Then my head hit the window and I passed out. And Julia . . .” My voice trailed off, broken.
“Amy,” Dad said. He was holding my hand. I hadn’t even noticed him taking it. I pulled away so I wouldn’t have to feel him drop it.
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“When I woke up everything looked so strange. The ground was up in the sky, and the road was where the stars should be. I tried to look around and a branch hit my face. We were . . . the car had flipped, been thrown up into the sky, and we were caught in a bunch of trees.
There were huge holes in the windshield, places where it had broken when branches pushed through, and I . . .
I saw her. I saw what I’d done to her.”
Mom started to cry. I wanted to stop talking then but I couldn’t. It just kept coming out.
“I looked at Julia,” I said. “She—she was so quiet.
I said her name but she didn’t answer. She was . . .” I wanted to close my eyes, but I knew what I’d see if I did.
“She was looking at me. There was—she’d put this glitter stuff on her face and it had rubbed off, smudged around her eyes. I told her that because I knew she’d want to fix it and she didn’t—she didn’t move. She just kept looking at me. Her eyes were—they were wide-open but she didn’t see me.”
Mom started crying harder. Dad was crying too. I stopped talking. We sat there and they cried. I watched them. My eyes were totally dry.
Mom wiped at her eyes and reached for me. “You look so upset.”
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“All those years of paying attention to me are really paying off, huh?” I said, and pushed her hands away. She looked like I’d hit her. She started crying again. After a while she stopped. I rolled away and stared at the wall until she and Dad got up.
“It’s okay to be sad, you know,” she said. “Are you sad?”
I rolled back over. She was standing in my doorway, Dad holding her hand and right by her side.
The truth is, I feel beyond sad. I feel empty. Numb.
When I drank, this was always how I wanted to feel.
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T H I R T E E N
I SHOULD HAVE SAVED the whole skipping school thing for a better day. Like today. After yesterday, with the weirdness of hanging out with Caro, of all people, and then that horrible conversation with Mom and Dad, I could have used a day off from the forced-knowledge factory.
But of course I didn’t get one. Even worse, I had to face Giggles with Mom and Dad along. Apparently we’d all been summoned for a meeting.
The ride to school with them was quiet. Too quiet.
No one said anything about why we were all going to school. No one said anything about last night. I expected as much. I know what I’ve done and I hate myself for it, so why should they be any different?
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Still, I’d—I know what I did, but I guess I thought that maybe Mom and Dad would . . . not understand, not that. But I thought there might be more than the endless quiet.
When we got to school, we sat in the guidance offi ce and waited. It’s not like I haven’t done it before, except then it was Julia and me, and this time it was just me. And Mom and Dad.
I might as well have been alone, though, because while we waited Dad used one of the six million gadgets his company’s given him to check his e-mail. Mom wandered around for a while, then came back and flipped through college brochures, muttering things like “Emphasis on the arts? Since when?” Neither of them said anything to me.
I thought about the last time Julia and I were here.
It was late last May, and Giggles had grabbed us as soon as we’d come in, loudly pointing out that we were three minutes late and then dragged us to her office for her usual “you’ve got detention and don’t think I won’t be watching you” lecture.
Julia was wearing the dress she’d made out of an old-fashioned slip we’d picked up at the Methodist church thrift store, Lawrenceville’s answer to vintage. Her fi ngers were still stained purple from the dye she’d used to 144
color it. In the car, she had braided her hair while we sat waiting at a traffi c light, giving the drivers behind us the finger when they honked because the light had turned green, and then looped the braids into a bun knotted with purple ribbons.
She looked so amazing. All day long, people turned to watch Julia walk down the hall, and after third period Kevin apologized for his latest screwup. She laughed at him and then patted his head like he was a little kid or a dog, but forgave him at the end of the day, folding her arms across her chest the way she did when she wanted to look sure but was actually nervous.
“He loves me, I know he does, and it’ll be different now, won’t it?” she said afterward, and I knew the question wasn’t one she wanted answered. So I tugged a hair ribbon instead, pulling it free, and her braids slipped out.
She laughed, loud and strong like she always did, and then said, “I’m supposed to go meet him, but I’m feeling the need for a trip to Millertown and some ice cream.