Every Single Secret(53)

I approached one group of squealing girls. They sobered when they saw me.

“Sorry you can’t go,” one of them said. Her name was Tiffany J. There were two other Tiffanys in her house, Tiffany L. and Tiffany B. The other girls all clucked sympathetically and said how unfair it was. How Omega and the other Super Tramps were mean and ruined everything for everybody. I nodded and glanced toward the pile of gear. Mr. Barry, Mrs. Vessa, and the rest of the adults were gathered at the rear of the vans, discussing something animatedly.

I moved to the pile. Chantal’s frayed backpack was toward the bottom. It had been red once, but was now bleached out to an uneven pink. On the back, with a black marker, Chantal had written *NSYNC in big block letters. Probably the same marker she’d used to write on Omega’s underwear, that jackrabbit. That Devil Eyes. That big bunch of Nothing with a capital N.

I scooped the omelet from my pocket, crouched, unzipped the pack. Inside, I felt clothing—a sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, and some underwear. A brush and a tube of toothpaste. I smeared the egg over it all, really smashing it in good. Then, at the bottom of the backpack, my fingers closed around a plastic bottle—the kind you got in a pharmacy. Ha! Chantal’s vitamins. I pulled it out and stuffed it in my pocket.

I looked furtively over one shoulder, then stood. The girls had migrated to the office porch and were pushing the porch swing and singing some song from the radio. Chantal had joined them and, as usual, was shouting over them, bossing them around. She hadn’t even noticed me yet or she’d be over here, running her stupid mouth. I squatted again, pulled Chantal’s sweatshirt out of her pack, then zipped it up and shoved the pack under the bottom of the pile.

I thought of Chantal shivering in her sleeping bag up at the falls, wondering if she’d dropped her sweatshirt on the way up the mountain. I grinned, then bit my lip. She’d wonder what happened to her vitamins too. I didn’t know how bad she’d feel without them—maybe she’d just get weak, feel sick or dizzy and have to sit out some of the activities. I hoped she’d feel miserable the whole weekend. That would teach her. And sometime later, after she’d been back for a while, I’d leave the medicine bottle on her bunk, for her to find. Then she’d know who was boss. She’d be sorry she messed with me.

I stood and fluffed out the sweater over the bottle in my pocket. The sweatshirt I tossed under the closest van, then shuffled over to the porch and retrieved Mrs. Bobbie’s box, feeling the gaze of the girls. As I walked away, I heard someone call out.

“Have a nice weekend, Daphne Doodle-Do.”

I turned. It was Chantal.

When I got back to the house, I dropped off the box outside Mrs. Bobbie’s bedroom door and ran to my room, where I put the pills on Chantal’s bed.

I hadn’t bothered to read the label on the bottle or to even consider that Chantal had not told me the truth about the pills or why she had to take them. Even if I had seen the word on the label—Depakote—it still wouldn’t have meant a thing to me.

I wouldn’t have known that it was not a vitamin at all, nor that it wasn’t prescribed for girls with malnutrition, but for people who suffered from epileptic seizures.



Chapter Nineteen

After I finished talking, Heath spoke. “What happened to her? To Chantal?”

We’d migrated to the bed and were lying on our sides—bodies aligned, heads propped on our arms, faces inches apart. Heath smoothed a lock of hair from my face. His breath smelled of mint and wine. His eyes were fastened on me. They hadn’t left my face the whole time I’d been talking.

“She got sick. Up on the mountain, on the camping trip, the first night. She had wandered away, they think maybe looking for Tré and Shellie. She had a seizure and fell off a cliff. There was a search party. They found her the next day. Her body.”

He just stared at me.

“Say it,” I said. “Say what you’re thinking. It was my fault.”

“You thought they were vitamins, Daphne. You didn’t realize what you were doing.”

“No. I knew. Somewhere . . . somewhere inside, I knew. And I wanted something terrible to happen to her.”

He was quiet. Still studying me with that look that cut through my very soul. But I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t want him looking at me that way—full of pity or judgment or whatever it was he was feeling. I turned so I couldn’t see his face.

“What happened then?”

I rolled onto my back and laced my hands over my chest. “The police questioned everyone who was there on the trip. The kids from Piney Woods and Maranatha. All the houseparents. Then they showed up at the house. They just talked to Mrs. Bobbie, though, I think just to find out if she knew where the pills were. No reason to talk to me and Omega, since we hadn’t been on the trip. It was an accident, they said. Chantal forgot her pills and she had a seizure, simple as that. It was terrible. But it was just an accident.”

“What did you do with the pills?” he asked.

I hesitated. To say the words aloud . . . what would that feel like? For the truth to finally come out of my mouth? Would it change things? Would I feel at peace with the fact that I was a monster who had hated a young girl? Who had wanted her dead? Wished her dead and made her die?

“Daphne?”

I had to force the words out of my mouth. “Mrs. Bobbie had given Chantal her pills to pack in her bag before the trip. I just pushed them up under the dresser, so it looked like they rolled there and she had forgotten them.”