They Wish They Were Us(19)
I pull out my phone and hand it to him, watching as he scrolls through the messages.
“This is so typical,” he says, shaking his head.
“It’s nothing, right? There’s no way she’s telling the truth. This is batshit.”
Adam slides my phone across the table and leans back against the booth. “Rachel is nuts.” His voice cuts the air between us like a knife. “I didn’t want to tell you this but she sent me a text like this over the summer.”
“Really?” I ask, stunned. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“I didn’t want you to get upset. I know how this stuff affects you. Shaila and everything.”
My eyes sting and I shake my head. Her ghost is everywhere, even between us at Diane’s Diner. Adam reaches out and puts his hand over mine. “Just don’t let her get to you, okay? She’s looking out for her brother, not you.”
I nod. “You’re right.”
“Gotta pee,” Adam says sheepishly. He slides out of the booth and disappears into the bathroom.
I blink back tears and spin my head to face Shaila. Her wide, freckled face smiles out from the frame. She had no idea what was coming, what we would be asked to do, or how it would all end. I didn’t know that would be her last night, that it would be marked by crashing waves and warm vodka. Flecks of sand settling on my lips. A crackling scream. Fists clenched around sheets. My frizzy hair, unruly and alive. Darkness. Absolute darkness.
“You okay?” Adam returns and rests a hand on my shoulder. I manage a nod. “It’s going to be okay, Jill. I promise.”
He’s never let me down before. He’s always saved me in the end.
“Let’s just leave it in the past, okay? You’ve got the best year of your life in front of you.”
“Okay.” I offer him a small smile.
I don’t want her to fade, but Adam is right. It is in the past. Shaila is gone. And a bunch of insane texts from her killer’s sister won’t bring her back.
* * *
—
The day Shaila died, the cops took us all to the station. They handed out stale crackers and Styrofoam cups of sugary orange juice before asking a few softball questions. Then they called everyone’s parents to come pick them up. First Marla, then Henry and Quentin, and finally Robert. Nikki’s parents were in Singapore, so Mom said she could stay with us. She didn’t yell at us for lying about where we’d gone. We had promised we were staying at Nikki’s. Instead, she was silent in the car.
When we got home, Mom made grilled cheese sandwiches, demanded we shower, and split a Xanax in two, placing half in my palm and half in Nikki’s. “Call your mom, dear,” she said.
“They’re staying over there for another week,” Nikki said to me when she hung up. “Slumber party until then?” She smiled weakly. We were sitting on the couch in my living room side by side, stiff and awkward. We had never had a sleepover just the two of us. Shaila was always there. I hugged my arms around my stomach.
“I haven’t cried yet,” I said, and closed my eyes. But then everything came rushing back. The shut door. The bewildering darkness. The moment we realized we were all on our own.
Bile formed in my throat and before I could cover my mouth, my hands were coated in a sticky, green sludge. Tears finally formed in my eyes and I smelled like how I thought poison tasted.
“Shit, Jill.” Nikki went and got a roll of paper towels, dropped to her knees, and started wiping the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice thick.
She looked up at me. Her eyes were no longer sparkly and rimmed in pink eyeshadow, like they had been the night before. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
I turned away from her on the couch and wondered if we were allowed to grieve what we had lost, or if that right was only reserved for everyone else. Were we being punished for what we had done, too? We were complicit after all, weren’t we? Nikki must have wondered, too, because she shivered and curled up next to me. Her bare feet pressed up against mine so our bodies formed the shape of a heart. We stayed that way all day.
Nikki was so different from Shaila, hard where Shay was soft, in her collarbones, her hips. She’d cower in fear at the times when Shay would laugh in hysterics, during horror movies and while she was stoned. But they had two similar traits. They were both stubborn and loyal like puppies.
Being with Nikki was like looking in a funhouse mirror where one minute she was me and the next she was Shaila, until she finally morphed back into her own self, no longer the Nikki I knew in the months before. It was jarring but tender, like a dog with only three legs. I was fascinated in a way that made me only want her presence more.
She was a constant presence in our house, and we got in the habit of sleeping like spoons, alternating at hourly intervals so that her knees were pressed into the backs of mine, and then mine would be against hers. I slept with my fists balled against her, and when we flipped, I could feel her little hands in the middle of my spine. Whoever woke first would retreat a few inches to her side of the bed until the other stirred and it was time to turn over and face each other.
In that first month without Shaila we spent the early mornings whispering while the summer fog rolled in, warm and weighty. We talked and talked until our voices grew hoarse, about how Nikki was desperate to apply to fashion school, which of Marla’s brothers was the hottest, and how to get the best possible tan by September. I traced the constellations on my skin, drawing imaginary lines from freckle to freckle until Nikki would say, “Do mine. Do mine.”