You'll Be the Death of Me(61)

I don’t want to know. I’m positive, with every atom in my body, that I don’t want to know what that idea was. So I don’t say anything, but Ivy keeps going.

“They had a pretty big audience at that point. I thought…I guess I thought it would be poetic justice if I could make Daniel look like an idiot in front of everyone. And I’d bought some baby oil at CVS for my mom earlier. So when the guys took a break to get pizza right before Daniel’s turn, I…” She’s literally shaking now, vibrating in her seat like somebody flipped her on switch and set it to high. “I spilled some of it, on the lane. So Daniel would fall on his ass while he was showing off. Except…”

“Ivy. Holy shit.” Cal speaks for the first time, which is good, because I can’t. “Except he didn’t. Patrick DeWitt did.”

    Hell yeah, Patrick DeWitt did. He went flying into the ball dispenser and dislocated his shoulder. The whole thing was captured on Instagram by half the lacrosse team, which turned out to be great news for Patrick’s parents when they decided to sue my mother. Fury pulses through me, hot and white, and it’s all I can do not to slam my fist through Cal’s window.

Ivy’s full-on crying now, and fuck that. Tears might be healthy, but she hasn’t earned these. Other people suffered—really suffered—for what she did, not her. “So what you’re telling me is, you set Patrick’s accident up,” I say in a low, deadly tone. “But instead of telling someone, you let my mother get sued for negligence.”

“I didn’t know!” Ivy says tearfully. “I mean, I knew about Patrick, of course I did, but everyone said he was going to be okay. I didn’t know about the lawsuit. I was out of the country with my mother when it happened, and it was summer, so people weren’t talking about it at home.” She’s still trembling like a terrified rabbit, but I don’t care. I can’t stand to look at her. I can’t believe I kissed her. “And I tried…when I realized what happened,” she goes on. “I tried to make up for it by asking my dad to give your mom a job—”

“Give her a job? To replace the one you took?” I’m yelling now, my voice too loud for the small car. It’s a good thing I’m not driving because if I was, we’d all be dead. I’d have lost control and smashed into whatever was closest, burying Ivy’s words in an explosion of glass and metal and shattered bodies. I’m angry enough for that to almost sound good. “My mother built that place up from the ground, Ivy. It was her life. It was all our lives. Now Autumn and I are working five jobs between us, and Ma can barely work, and all day you’ve been acting like none of that has anything to do with you. Just Oh, that’s too bad, sucks to be you guys.”

    Ivy swipes fiercely at her wet cheeks. “I didn’t mean—I feel horrible about it. It’s why I told you, even though—”

“Even though what? Even though you turned my cousin into a drug dealer?”

Ivy’s face crumples, and a corner of my raging brain knows that was too far. But all I can think about now is Ma’s expression when she got slapped with the DeWitts’ lawsuit. “Overwaxed lane,” she’d said numbly, dropping heavily into a chair. Her knees had already started to bother her then, but we didn’t know yet that it was going to be a permanent problem. “And the thing is—they’re right. It was slippery. But I don’t understand why. I didn’t do anything different that day. I don’t know what happened.”

Ma wasn’t mad about the lawsuit, even though Patrick’s shoulder healed fine and the DeWitts were overreacting assholes with their It’s important to take a stand against irresponsible businesses crap. She felt guilty. Like she deserved to lose everything.

Then she did, and my cousin got backed into a corner enough that she made the worst decision of her life. When I think about the domino effect of Ivy’s stupidity, I almost can’t breathe. My entire life would be different if she’d minded her damn business and kept that baby oil in her bag where it belonged.

Baby oil. Jesus. Of all the possible ways to get your world destroyed, that has to be the most pointless.

“I’ll make it up to you—” Ivy starts.

“Oh yeah? How’re you gonna do that? Build a time machine and go back a few months to keep yourself from being an asshole?” I rub a hand across my forehead, hard, wishing I could scrub the entire story from my brain. “You know what the worst thing is, Ivy? It’s not only that you basically ruined my mother and were too cowardly to admit it. It’s that you were so goddamn petty. That was your big idea, huh? Your brilliant plan for getting back at Daniel. Who wouldn’t even be a problem if you could’ve managed, just once, to get your head out of your ass and not treat a stupid joke like the end of the world.”

    The car falls silent. I can barely spare a thought for Cal, but the small part of me that’s not consumed with rage pities him for being trapped in this car. Then again, if it weren’t for Cal, none of us would be here, so fuck him, too.

“For what it’s worth,” Ivy finally says in a low voice, “I hate myself just as much as you hate me.”

“Not possible,” I spit out. “In case it’s not clear, Ivy—I’m done with you. You’re pathetic, and I don’t want to see or speak to you again for the rest of my life.”