Real Bad Things(42)
“Do you think she’ll stay quiet?” Another loose thread, along with Jason.
Jane spoke without hesitation. “Of course.” Georgia Lee had been jealous of their friendship. Their secrets. Their utter trust in one another.
“You should find her. Just to be sure. If she deviates from the story, we all go down.”
Jane nodded at the words she’d told them years ago parroted back to her. Their pact broken a week later by Jane.
Without anything else to offer and with nothing more from Jane, Georgia Lee continued on the road that circled the trailer park until it curved and she came to the place that had brought her equal amounts of joy and heartache. She hesitated and let the engine idle in the empty parking spot in front of Diane’s trailer. The last time she’d stepped inside the trailer, the local reporters had moved on to the next story because Warren had not turned up and Jane had left town after the police let her go for lack of evidence.
Georgia Lee’s parents had barely unlocked her door before she headed to Jane’s house. At that point, the media had stopped swirling. Trailer park neighbors had stopped contacting the local news with “inside scoops” and visions of becoming minor celebrities within their social circles. Everyone had stopped coming by with sympathy cards or casseroles. Everyone finally accepted the rumor that maybe Warren had actually run off because, remarkably, there was no blood, no evidence of a crime. At least that’s what she gleaned from a drunken Diane after she answered the door. Jason slumped on the couch, watching TV. With her entrance, he sat up straight, eyed her in a way she couldn’t decipher.
Georgia Lee pushed past Diane and her objections, opened Jane and Jason’s shared bedroom door. If someone hadn’t spent a lot of time memorizing everything about Jane and the world she built around her, the little trinkets and notes and drawings, then they wouldn’t have realized anything had changed. An uncanny feeling slunk under her skin, like the earth slipped half an inch off its axis.
When she turned, Jason stood behind her. Diane listened from down the hall with a peculiar look on her face.
“She’s gone,” Jason said. “She’s not coming back.”
Georgia Lee didn’t cry. She didn’t fall apart at the sight of a mostly empty closet and photos of them shoved into the edges of the dresser mirror, friends having fun at the mall. Or any of the innocuous items Georgia Lee had left on Jane’s side of the room as reminders, to let her know not to forget Georgia Lee in the hours they were apart: a pair of cheap red sunglasses; a bottle of glitter nail polish; the overnight skate ticket, where when everyone was sleeping, Jane had propped Georgia Lee against an arcade game and kissed her hard. And those socks with black and brown cats that crawled up the yellow fabric. Jane didn’t even like cats. She thought they were annoying and loud. But she had worn those socks. The faces of those cats looked up at Georgia Lee from the drawer, along with everything else Jane didn’t prize. But the other photo booth pictures. The ones they were nervous about people seeing. They were gone.
That means something, right? Georgia Lee had thought it meant something.
But maybe that was what happened when you fell in love. You forgot that people might not feel the things you thought they should.
Georgia Lee had left the trailer that day and never gone back. She’d never seen Jason again either, not even at school. It was as if they had both vanished. As if the previous months hadn’t happened at all. A beautiful dream and terrible nightmare.
Jane fiddled with the car’s door handle, running her hand over it but stopping short of pulling. Maybe she didn’t know how to say goodbye either. More likely, she didn’t want to go inside.
“Maybe we could have a proper dinner sometime,” Georgia Lee said. “Really catch up.”
Jane dramatically rolled her head to the side and faced her. “Pretty sure that was our last opportunity for a proper dinner. Everything’s gonna get turned upside down soon.” She let out a long, quiet sigh. “Thanks for the ride.” She cracked the door open, and the smell of the nearby river, the dirt and trees along its banks, greeted them.
“Wait,” Georgia Lee said. Words brimmed on her tongue but refused to surface.
Now. The word startled her. Locked in her bedroom with “mono,” Georgia Lee had considered that maybe God had put Warren in her way to take Jane out of her life. But Georgia Lee couldn’t figure why God would let someone like Warren run around the way he did, hurting Jane and Jason, hurting Diane—even though Diane seemed to dish it out as much as she took it.
What did it mean that Warren had returned, as had Jane? What plan could God possibly have for her now?
A head rush, like when she came up too quickly after a handstand in the water, knocked her equilibrium. Faces. Flashes of that night, but not in order. Memories that didn’t feel accurate. But memories that didn’t feel wrong. She felt all kinds of strange in her body and uncertain in her mind.
“If they arrest you—”
“I don’t think it’s if but when,” Jane interrupted.
“If.” There could be another way. There could be a gift from the universe, some beautiful legal loophole, some fantastic technicality that would keep Jane out of prison. If it existed, Georgia Lee would find it.
“If what?” Jane asked. “If they arrest me? What were you going to say?”
She paused, swallowed down saliva, tried to work up the courage to say the words. “Could I come see you?” Georgia Lee could practically feel the heat from hell work its way up her toes and through her body.