They Wish They Were Us(90)

TWENTY-FIVE





THE LAST TIME I saw Shaila—the real last time, the one that I choose to remember—was at Quentin’s house just before initiation. His mom was away, giving a lecture at some university in Norway or Wales, or maybe Finland, and he had gathered us all together for one final night before we actually became Players. “A goodbye to our youth,” he joked. We were still so young.

No one had any beer stashed away, so we were all sober. A relief, I thought.

Nikki ordered a stack of pizzas on her parents’ AmEx and Quentin queued up a bunch of old eighties movies. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The Breakfast Club. Say Anything.

Henry hadn’t seen any of them and was cackling the entire time.

“You’ve been holding out on me, Q!” he yelled when Cameron crashed his dad’s car. “Stop letting me watch Spotlight over and over, dude.” He grabbed Quentin in a headlock and gave him a little noogie.

Graham and Shaila sat curled together at the end of the couch. She had tucked her bare feet under his butt and his arm slinked around her shoulder, tickling the skin underneath her cotton T-shirt.

Robert sprawled across the floor, and tried to convince someone, anyone, to wrestle. Henry obliged every now and then, before tapping Marla in for a final go. She pinned him to the floor with ease and Robert finally relented.

“She has brothers!” he whined. “No fair!”

“If you break that coffee table, I will destroy you!” Quentin yelled from the kitchen. He and Nikki had taken on the roles of hosts. They refreshed popcorn bowls, retrieved plates, and sopped up pizza grease from the carpet. They even turned one of those store-bought cake mixes into a chocolate work of art while we all fought about which member of the Brat Pack spoke to us most.

When they presented their creation, a mess of frosting and sprinkles and candles lit for no reason, Marla squealed. “Ina Garten could never.”

Quentin blushed but Nikki looked delighted. “The things we do for you guys,” she said.

“Hell yeah!” Graham stood to grab a fork and dug right into the middle of the sheet cake, leaving Shaila alone in the corner of the couch.

“C’mere,” she whispered.

I scooted over to her so that our toes touched. She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me to her, so we were both lying back just watching our friends, our people.

Her hands were clammy and warm on my shoulders. She reminded me of a sticky little kid. When my eyes met hers, she looked like she was crying.

“You okay?” I whispered.

She nodded and turned her head back to the group, all huddled around the coffee table, eating spoonfuls of cake straight from the pan.

“I love this so much,” she said softly. “I want to stay like this forever.”



* * *



—

I hear some machinery beep first. Then the rustling of paper, the hushed whispers of worry. Feeling returns to my toes and then my fingertips. The throbbing starts next, on the left side of my head just above my ear. It continues down my face and through my eye socket, inside my mouth, dry like a desert. Everything aches.

When I find the strength to open my eyes, I land in a sea of white. White walls. White cotton. White wires. Gold Coast Medical Center. It must be.

“She’s up.” Jared’s next to the bed. I hear him before I see him. His voice is anxious and high, choked just a bit.

“What . . .” I start to garble.

“Shh,” he says.

He’s right. Speaking hurts my throat and burns the roof of my mouth. I want to sleep for hours, for days.

“She’ll be a little out of it for quite some time,” someone says with authority. A doctor maybe. “She just needs rest right now.”

But I shake my head. So hard, I think it’s going to split in two. They need to know. “Adam,” I whisper.

“It’s okay, sweetie.” It’s Mom now. She grabs my hand and holds each of my fingers in hers. Dad rests an open hand on my shoulder. “We know.”

I relent. I give way to the pain and the wretched feeling inside, and succumb to sleep.



* * *



—

It was all Rachel’s plan. After I told her about the earrings, she put everything into place. Even if Adam didn’t do it, we had to know for sure. He was the last question mark.

She told me to avoid Adam as much as I could, planting seeds of doubt in his head so that when I finally called he would come no questions asked.

“Boys like that hate the word no,” she said. “But they despise being ignored.”

She was right.

Then I had to recruit Nikki. I caught her after physics and asked her to meet me at her house after school, where I explained everything about Adam and Shaila, and what we needed to find out the truth for certain.

Her face went pale and she held my sweaty hand in her cold one for a long, long time as we sat on her deck, watching the water lap against the shore.

“My parents are gone until graduation,” she said. “Do it here.”

I flung my arms around her neck and breathed a thank you into her hair.

She bit her lip and nodded. “Let’s just get this fucker.” Rachel came out from the city later that week with two digital recorders. Her assuredness calmed me, but all I wanted to do was run.