Lessons from a Dead Girl(13)

Leah gasps, and yet she doesn’t seem surprised by what she sees. She shakes her head.

I don’t say a word. I don’t move a muscle. I stand there, frozen, still clutching Leah’s soft robe.

Paige’s body is covered with bruises. Most of them are on her upper arms and shoulders. I swear I can make out the shape of the hand that made them. Yellow and deep purple, it’s clear they’re all in different stages of healing. That as soon as one started to disappear, another took its place.

Leah quickly tears her robe from my hands and gives it to Paige.

“Here, put this on,” she says.

Paige does. She looks at the ground.

The other girls squeal and splash in the distance. Mr. Greene kicks water at them from the shoreline, and Mrs. Greene jokingly hollers at him to stop.

We stand absolutely still, not looking at each other.

Leah puts her shorts back on. “I’m too cold to go swimming, anyway. I’m not in the mood.”

“Me, neither,” I say.

Paige gathers her things and goes back inside the clubhouse to dress in private.

Leah paces while Paige is gone, biting her lower lip.

“Leah,” I say, “we have to tell.”

She stops pacing and looks me in the eye. “No. I told her she could trust me.”

“But that was before she took the towel off. You mean you already knew?”

The door of the clubhouse opens, and Paige steps out.

“How did you know?” I whisper.

But Leah turns away from me and waves Paige over.

Paige returns, holding the suit, which Leah tosses through the open window of her dad’s truck. Then the three of us go down to the shoreline and join Mr. Greene, kicking water at the other girls.

Later, Leah, Paige, and I sit under a tree and make designs in the sand with our fingers.

When Paige leaves briefly to use the bathroom, I try again. “We have to tell,” I whisper. “Someone is hurting her.”

“No,” Leah says. She shakes her head and digs her heels into the sand. Her feet are already slightly tan, making her heels look whitish pink. Even her toes are graceful.

“But someone should know,” I say. “We have to do something.”

“We can’t,” she says.

“Why not?”

“Everyone has secrets. They aren’t ours to tell. Besides, telling could make it even worse for her. We can’t risk it. All we can do is be her friends.” She rubs out the lines in the sand she made with her foot. “Be glad you don’t have secrets like hers.”

I notice she said “you” and not “we.” I immediately think of Sam, but Leah’s expression tells me not to go there.

“But if we know someone’s being hurt, we should tell!” I say, thinking about both Paige and Leah. “Who cares about stupid secrets!”

“No.” She gives me one of her piercing looks.

I squirm, digging my own heels into the sand.

When Paige comes back, none of us say anything. I give Leah one last pleading look. She glares a silent no back at me.

I get up and leave the two of them sitting there.

When we get back to the house, Leah acts especially cheerful, urging everyone to have a second piece of birthday cake. She makes sure Paige has a seat next to her. Later we climb into our sleeping bags spread out on Leah’s bedroom floor. Leah puts Paige’s sleeping bag next to hers before I can spread mine there. This is it, I think. Paige is the new me. Maybe I should be relieved.

Leah reads scary stories from that same stupid book, even though she knows them all by heart. That thing is like a bible to her. The other girls listen closely, but all I do is watch Leah and Paige sitting in their sleeping bags as if they’re best friends. Best friends with a secret.

After the other girls fall asleep, I lie awake listening to them breathe around me. I wonder if Paige is awake, too, safely next to Leah and away from whoever it is that gives her those bruises. I pick my head up and look over at her sleeping peacefully in the soft moonlight coming through the window. Then I see Leah. Her eyes are open, watching the ceiling.

I quickly put my head back down, hoping she didn’t see me.

I wonder if she’s worrying about Paige’s secret, too. I wonder how she seemed to know about it before she saw the bruises.

I think about that night with Sam. How Leah stayed awake crying. How I should have asked if she was OK. How I was too afraid to learn the truth.

A week later, the yearbook comes out. All the graduating eighth-graders had to submit a favorite quote or poem or something to go next to their photos.

It doesn’t take long for everyone to find Paige’s letter to the class on page 32, just under the photo of her sad, closed-mouthed face.

To all the eighth-graders but one,

I won’t see any of you again because I am moving to Texas. You will never have to look at me again. I am glad I won’t have to go to the same school as you from now on. Leah Greene is the only nice person in this school.

— Paige Larson



I expect Leah to gloat when she reads Paige’s note, but she doesn’t. She closes the yearbook and stares at the cover. Even though the teachers who decided to print that letter now have Leah on an even higher pedestal than they already did, Leah seems sadder to me. I’ll never know if she was going to replace me with Paige or if she was only trying to be nice to a girl who needed a friend.