The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(89)

I felt safe. Out there in the woods, where a girl had killed herself, during the first snow of the season, sitting next to my big brother, who was doing his best to look out for me, I felt safe and content. For the first time in a long time, I felt like maybe, probably, everything was going to be OK.





Chapter 36


And Life Went On

Lizzie was dead, but life went on. That’s what I found out that winter.

Sometimes, it felt like Lizzie sucked all the magic out of the world when she died. Out of my world, at least. And sometimes, that made me think there wasn’t any point to anything. On those days, I would curl up in bed until one of my parents or Rush dragged me out. But even then, even on those bad days, I had no desire to join Lizzie. I was sad but not ready to give up.

Life went on at school, and life went on out of school. I studied for midterms and went Christmas shopping and wiped down tables at the café before I closed up. I did most of that stuff by myself, but that was OK. I was alone, but for once, I didn’t feel lonely.

My brother spent a lot of time trying to entertain me that winter. Every few days, he’d stick his head in my room and ask “What about seeing a movie tonight?” or “Some people are going sledding. You want to come?” When school let out for winter break, I finally told him he didn’t need to babysit me. He said he wasn’t—he just wanted to hang out. I didn’t know if he was telling the truth, but it made me feel good.

I tried not to care about Lizzie, but no one in the history of the world has ever gotten over Lizzie Lovett easily. Sometimes, late at night, I would look out the window at the icy road and bare trees and imagine Lizzie’s ghost walking into my yard. She’d be pale and wearing white, and her hair would blend in with the snow. She would stop under my window and look up at me and smile that knowing half smile, the one that looked haunted even when she was alive. And I would run outside to her, and I’d be shivering from the cold, and she wouldn’t be, and I would say, “Just tell me why.”

I only wanted one conversation. One hour. I wanted to ask why she did it, what about the world seemed so terrible that she had to leave it. I wanted to tell her there were so many people who would have tried to save her if she would have let them. I wanted to tell her how much I’d hated her and loved her, even though I never knew her at all—but that I would have done whatever I could to help her.

But Lizzie wasn’t ever coming back. I knew I had to learn to be OK with that.

I thought about Enzo sometimes too. Even if I wanted to forget him, Mychelle wouldn’t let me. All through first period, I had to listen to what they’d done the night before. One morning, she even slipped a photo of them kissing into my locker. It was a sloppy photo, way too close, with tongues and spit. My first instinct was to tear it up, but I submitted it for the yearbook instead.

Mychelle slowly started talking about Enzo less and less, until she stopped mentioning him at all. Then, the day of midterms, I saw her making out in the cafeteria with Noah Ridgeway, the freshman quarterback. I waited for her at her locker after school.

“A freshman, huh?” I said by way of greeting. “It’s only midterm, and you’ve already exhausted your options in the senior, junior, and sophomore classes?”

Mychelle brushed past me and opened her locker. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I guess Enzo was way too old for you. What is he, ten years older than Noah?”

Mychelle stopped rooting through her locker and looked at me coldly. “What do you want?”

“I want to know what it feels like.”

“What what feels like?”

“You gave yourself to Enzo to mess with me. You didn’t actually like him, right? How many people have you slept with just to get what you want? And how do you think those guys feel about you when they realize what a manipulative bitch you are?”

Mychelle slammed her locker shut and started to walk away.

“That’s what I wanted to know,” I called after her, not caring about the crowd that was starting to form. “What’s it feel like to be a regret?”

She didn’t answer, of course. But as I was leaving school, Ronna Barnes, who looked ready to go into labor at any second, told me she’d seen Mychelle crying in the bathroom, and that everyone was talking about what I’d said. It was the sort of thing you think will make you feel awesome but instead leaves you empty and as awful as the person you’re putting down.

That’s why I figured it was time for me to stop thinking about Mychelle Adler. Which I was mostly successful at. It wasn’t so easy with Enzo though. I felt sort of bad for him, even though the thing with Mychelle was his own fault. And for all I knew, he’d been the one to break it off with her, not the other way around. Maybe after Lizzie, Mychelle, and me, he’d had his share of crazy girls.

Either way, life went on.

But it didn’t go on for everyone. Christa called me two days after Christmas and told me about the obituary. I went to the computer and looked up the Layton newspaper. It was there, just like she said. Vernon Miles, age eighty-one, passed away from health complications.

I cried because he had died, and because the obituary mentioned how much he enjoyed doing puzzles, and because up until that point, I hadn’t even known his last name.

I thought for sure that by the day of his funeral, my tears would have all dried up, but they hadn’t. The service was in the little chapel adjacent to the cemetery, and only about a dozen people attended. Christa and I stood together, and she passed me tissues from a seemingly never-ending supply in her purse.