People Like Us(72)
They both wait as if I’m leading up to a big revelation. I could do it. I could tell them right now.
Instead, I just say, “I don’t want to make things any worse.”
Mom shakes her head. “Don’t shut us out and you won’t,” she says.
Easier said than done.
* * *
? ? ?
I WAIT UNTIL the next day to visit Todd’s grave. I always get massive amounts of anxiety about these visits because I’m afraid the headstone is going to be covered with graffiti like my locker was, but it isn’t. It looks just like all the other headstones, indistinguishable but for the name and dates. Thanksgiving must be a popular day to visit the dead, because the cemetery is filled with flocks of extended families. I recognize some people I knew way back in the day. I hope none of them recognize me. I really don’t keep up any ties with my past in this town. It wasn’t a happy time in my life, not after Todd and Megan died, or really after the Todd-Megan scandal. That was the turning point. There was soccer after that, and some partying, but I couldn’t call that happy. Just busy. Throwing myself into the act of being alive.
The earth is dry and cracked and the grass matted and yellow, and it crunches under me when I sit. I run my hands over the face of Todd’s headstone, tracing the words with my fingertips. I can’t help thinking about Hunter’s body when we dug him up, about that pile of bones and tufts of fur. It’s been much longer since we buried Todd, although (and it grosses me out so much to think about it) he was pumped full of preserving chemicals before he went into the ground. Despite that, I still would guess he would mostly be a pile of bones by now. I am literally sitting on the earth above my brother’s bones. I think when I die, I will insist on one of those environmentally friendly burials where instead of a casket they bury you in a biodegradable sack and mark your grave with a tree. I like the idea of my earthly essence being absorbed into a tree to go through the seasonal cycle of life year after year, budding green and blooming wildly, and then bursting into autumn flame and dying all over again just to be reborn. Better than spending eternity as a box of bones.
I remember my last unspoken promise to Megan, that I would find the person who stole Todd’s phone and make him pay in blood. Todd had vowed to help me. But the morning Megan was found dead, Todd and I both sat in his room on the floor crying, and there was nothing left to fix. Nothing would make it right. Mom hovered over us, trying to force us to eat, and threatened to take us to the doctor. I threw up after choking down a piece of toast. Todd wouldn’t even look at food, wouldn’t leave his room for days. He was inconsolable. It wouldn’t be okay.
The fact is, he did lie to me. He sent the pictures to his four best friends: Connor Dash, Wes Lehman, Isaac Bohr, and Trey Eisen. Collectively, the four of them sent the pictures to twenty-seven more students, including Julie Hale, who sent them back to Megan. It didn’t stop there. No one is sure who posted them on the Rate My Girlfriend website. Or who wrote the hundreds of degrading comments.
I know this because, six weeks after Megan’s death, her brother, Rob, pulled his truck up beside my bike on the way to school and forced me inside. I was terrified I was about to be kidnapped or murdered, but instead he just silently handed me a folder of evidence from the civil case they’d been building against Todd before Megan died. He stared straight ahead, his fingers tightly gripping the wheel, as I read page after page proving everything Todd and I told the police to be false. Then there were pages and pages of little notes, scraps of torn, wrinkled paper with ugly words written on them. Slut. Skank. Whore. No one ever wrote on Megan’s locker. They just slipped anonymous notes inside. I never knew. At the end of the folder was a list of names on a legal pad. Todd. Connor. Wes. Isaac. Trey. A chain of people who destroyed Megan. And off to the side, one name with a circle around it, connected to Todd’s with a thick red line. Katie.
I don’t think Todd shared those pictures to hurt her. It was like them being broken up meant it was some random girl now and not his girlfriend. It was creepy and messed up. I think he thought they would stay between him and his crew and she’d never know. No one would. And not until they were forwarded did it really hit him that they weren’t going to stay between them. Nothing stays between friends. If any of this had occurred to me, in time, I would have told the police. Todd would have been arrested. And he wouldn’t be dead.
His headstone isn’t as smooth as it should be. Graves should always look new. Nola had said I talk about Todd like he’s not dead and maybe that’s because it still feels so recent. But it isn’t. He’s falling further into the past.
I kiss my fingers and press them to the cold granite and then stand, dusting myself off.
Good-bye again, Todd.
25
Mom asks me to stay the rest of the weekend, but I tell her I need to get back to study for my remaining exams. I do need to study, but I also need to put an end to this investigation once and for all. As I’m standing on the train platform, my phone rings and I glance down at it. Greg Yeun. I pick up cautiously.
“Hello?”
“You missed a lot.”
“Like?”
“Thanksgiving in a holding cell.”
A train passes and I can’t hear what he’s saying. “Hold on!” I shout, running down the platform to try to find a quiet spot. “Are you calling me from jail?” Just at that exact moment, the train passes and everyone on the platform turns and gawks at me. I flash a sarcastic smile and wave.