All the Rage(77)

“I’m not going to stand out here forever, Tina.” I say because I’ll make this as easy for her as she would for me. “You’re lucky I’m standing out here at all.”

“Look—” She pauses. “Whatever you think of me, I didn’t cover for Brock—for him.”

“It wasn’t for Penny.”

“Yes, it was,” she says shakily. “It was. He told me he took you to that road. That he knew Penny wasn’t there and they’d just be wasting time if they searched it. He said he couldn’t tell them what he’d done or he’d lose his place on the football team. I didn’t want anyone to waste any time. I just wanted them to find her. I—miss her.”

“You covered for him even though he wrote rape me on my stomach.”

“I didn’t know he did that to you before you said it in the locker room.”

“But you knew Alek took the pictures of me. You were there for that, weren’t you?” I ask and she doesn’t even have the good grace to look ashamed, just keeps her eyes on me, like she’s waiting for some kind of give. And it happens because I’m weak. “He said I let—” I stop. “Forget it. I don’t need to know.”

“I can tell you,” she says and when I don’t say anything—she does. “You said you were hot. Alek told you to take off your shirt and you said you wanted to go home and he said if you gave him your phone, he’d call your mom…”

I stare down the empty street. I was right. I didn’t need to know.

“Brock brought GHB to the party,” she says, like she’s saying something new. “I think maybe he gave you some and that’s how you got so messed up…”

“Oh. I thought that was just the best impersonation of my father you’d ever seen.” I look back in time to see her wince. There’s nothing satisfying about it. “Alek was going to send those pictures to the school. Penny stopped him. But you watched.”

“Yeah,” she says and she does, finally, look away at this. I stare at my nails, bare. She doesn’t move. I don’t know why, when this is so finished.

“I know Turner cut you out of this. My dad says I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

“Then stop talking about it,” I say. “And go home.”

“No,” she says. Then I’ll stop talking about it. I turn away from her and she says, “Romy, wait.”

I turn back. “Tina—”

“No, just listen. I don’t think Brock would just leave you on that road and leave it at that. I don’t think Penny died because she found you, I think she died because she stopped him—” Her voice breaks, and it breaks me, a little. “In the locker room, you said if she got raped, she’d be better off dead and you meant it. But you weren’t talking about her. You were talking about what happened to you with Kellan.”

His name winds itself tight around me.

“I’m so sorry,” she says.

“You should have believed me.”

It’s been inside me so long, I can barely choke it out. I carried it to the lake, when I thought I would say it to Penny, and I’ve buried those words since the lake with all the other things I’m never going to get to say to Penny. I bring a shaking hand to my eyes.

“I don’t know why you didn’t—” And then there are tears hot on my face before I can stop them. “Why—”

“Because it was easier.”

She stares at me. Her hands are so empty.

“You’re not better off dead,” she says. “I’m so sorry. I can’t … I know I can’t make it right but I just wanted to say that to you because—I don’t think anyone else here would—”

I can’t stay for it anymore. I leave her there because I don’t want sorry. It doesn’t bring dead girls back. I go to the kitchen and brace myself against the table, listening to myself breathing. Those voices on the radio.

“—we need to talk about how this is a very promising boy who is now facing second-degree murder charges. His life is ruined and I barely have a sense of who he is. I want to know his story—”

I reach out and turn the radio off so fast it clatters back. You’re not better off dead. It’s suffocating, it’s suffocating, hearing that when all this place has given me is the feeling that I should be, I would be, better off if I was one less girl …

You’re not better off dead. I close my eyes, a fury building inside me, starting in the center of me, bleeding its way out because even now, you’re not better off dead but I can’t make it right. The same words Penny said to me in the diner. I can’t make it right. But who could.

Where do you even start.

I open my eyes. I head back outside and Tina’s halfway down the walk now, a slow leaving, like she hopes I’ll call her back. I say, “Tina,” and she turns. My heart is heavy with the weight of my body and my body is so heavy with the weight of my heart.

“You want to help me find a girl in Godwit?”





before I tore the labels off, one was called Paradise and the other, Hit and Run. It doesn’t matter which is which. They’re both blood red.

Proper application of nail polish is a process. You can’t paint it on like it’s nothing and expect it to last. First, prep. I start with a four-way buffer. It gets rid of the ridges and gives the polish a smooth surface to adhere to. Next, I use a nail dehydrator and cleanser because it’s best to work with a nail plate that’s dry and clean. Once it’s evaporated, a thin layer of base coat goes on. The base coat protects the nails and prevents staining.