All the Rage(70)

when i open my eyes, the house is quiet and I blearily wonder why Mom let me sleep past my alarm when I remember they’re burying Penny today. Her ashes.

I get out of bed slowly and make my way downstairs. No sign of Mom or Todd, but there’s a note.

Errands in Ibis, back before dinner. XO, Mom Even though I just woke up, sleep is the only way I can think to turn myself off again, so I lay on the couch and between the inhalation of one breath and the exhalation of another, the sound of the car comes round but that almost seems too soon. But then I hear a knock.

“Anybody home?”

I open my eyes.

“Romy?”

I get off the couch and make my way into the hall, thinking I’ll just check, I’ll just peer through the front door and see if it’s really him, and if it is, I’ll walk away, but Mom and Todd left the door open, laid the view out for Leon through the screen, so I can’t hide. He sees me. He looks so together, and I’m—not.

“We have to talk,” he says.

“No.”

“You just quit,” he says. “You owe me an explanation…”

I don’t say anything.

“Please.”

I hear it, his need. It’s hard to shut myself off to it, when I said that same word to him yesterday and he answered. I do owe him something: I need to end this, I think.

I hesitate and then I open the door. He steps inside. I keep my eyes on the wall just behind him because I’m afraid to look him directly in the eyes. This already hurts. Like every time my heart beats, it makes a bruise.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asks. He sounds so uncomfortable. “Because all I know is one second, you’re there—we’re there—and then you’ve got this look on your face and then you’re pushing at me, like I’m—”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Then why can’t you look at me?”

The bitter urge to cry closes in on me.

“You didn’t do anything, Leon.”

“I think I triggered you.”

“What?” I let out a breath, something that wants to be a laugh, something to make him reconsider what he said enough to take it back. But it’s weak and it gives me away. I know what that word means, but he shouldn’t. “What, you think you know something because—”

“Because what?” he asks. “Why can’t I know something like that?”

“Because you don’t know anything.”

“Romy—”

“Stop. You don’t know anything.”

And he says, “Romy, I’m sorry.”

Anyone begins anything with I’m sorry after you’ve told them they didn’t do anything wrong—whatever follows won’t be good. I step back, instinctively distance myself from it.

“I—” He pauses. “I drove down here to see you last night. I was worried and I was … so tired of doing this runaround with you because I felt like we were just getting back to a good place after the search … I came here, but I didn’t have the guts to talk to you and on my way back, I got gas at Grebe Auto. There were a couple kids there, talking about Penny Young and the funeral, and they brought up this ‘wasted search’ on Romy Grey. I told them to go f*ck themselves and they told me—”

His voice. His voice is all over me. I want to rip it off my skin. And his face—the shame on Leon’s face for what he’s saying makes me want to rip it off his face and— Stop.

“Romy, they told me.”

They told him.

“I’m so sorry,” he says.

He’s so sorry.

I close my eyes.

“But I could see through it, I could see through all the bullshit. I don’t know the details—I don’t need to know them—but the way you were at the search, what you said about everyone here, your dad and how you fell out with Penny—everything just started to click into place…”

Click into place. This is how I make sense to him, when I’m a dead girl. He can’t even believe I’m a liar, the only thing that makes it barely tolerable at school—that they think I’m a liar before they think I’m a dead girl.

“I didn’t mean to find out that way,” he says.

I open my eyes. “But you did.”

“I’m so sorry that happened—”

“Don’t.” My heart thrums, more bruises. I look for exits, but this is my house and he’s standing in front of the door. “Don’t be. Just go.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again and he is. He sounds so sorry that he found out this way, so sorry that he had to tell me he did, sorry that I make more sense to him now. But it’s not enough that he’s sorry because now, when he looks at me— I’ll be her.

“You need to leave,” I say.

“Romy—”

“I don’t want you here if you know.”

He steps back, puts space between us and I swear the space makes every part of me I’m trying to hide more visible. He’s not going. I want him to go.

“Tell me what I can do.”

“There’s nothing you can do.”

“There has to be—”