The Secrets We Keep(22)

“I get that you’re upset, but you know how Jenna—”

I held up my hand to stop him. I didn’t want to talk about Jenna or how I was supposed to play nice with her. I was already freaked out about going to school tomorrow. Having him remind me that Jenna was going to be a constant fixture at my side was not helping. I needed to switch topics, and fast, before I changed my mind about everything.

“I don’t want to talk about Jenna,” I said. “I’ll see her tomorrow. I’ll see everybody tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Alex said as he stretched out next to me on the bed and reached for the remote. “But I don’t get why you’re avoiding her. She’s your best friend, maybe she can help.”

She was Maddy’s best friend, not mine. I’d left my best friend standing at my sister’s grave without so much as an apology. “I don’t need her help. I have you.”

“That you do.”

He inched closer, his breath mingling with mine. I closed my eyes. I knew this was coming, that eventually he’d make a move, but I still wasn’t prepared. I didn’t want to sleep with him. I didn’t even want to kiss him.

His lips had barely brushed mine before I pulled back, my heart pounding. I opened my eyes and stared down at my trembling hand pushing at his chest.

He saw it too and pressed his hand over mine, stilling the tremor. “Relax, Maddy.”

I nodded, unsure what else to do. I’d promised my dead sister I’d give her the life she didn’t get a chance to live, sacrifice my own dreams so that I could live hers. I loved her, would do anything for her, but not this. Not him.

Alex leaned in again, his careful approach exaggerated as I analyzed his every move.

“Relax,” he whispered again, and I willed myself to try, focused on counting to twenty in my head.

“I love you,” he murmured as his hands found their way to my back.

I tried to relax, to follow his lead, but I couldn’t. “Don’t,” I said, and shoved him away.

Alex didn’t have to say a thing. The disappointed way in which he unwound himself from me told me what I needed to know.

I knew what he was thinking and prayed my words would be enough. “Everything’s different now. I can’t … it’s not … just no,” I stammered out, completely incapable of coming up with a plausible excuse for why I suddenly wanted nothing to do with him.

Alex slid back on the bed, keeping one of my hands locked in his. “You and me … the way you feel about me … is that what you mean?”

“No.” I shook my head, hoping my weak smile was enough to reassure him. Then I spoke the same words I’d heard Maddy say to him a thousand times: “I love you. Always have.”

“Always will?” he asked, that spark of life returning to his face.

“Yes.” That was the one thing I was a hundred percent sure of. Maddy loved Alex. Always had, always would.

“Then what is it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s different now. I’m different now.” Different in that I wasn’t Maddy and had never loved Alex. Different in that all these things—this room, this bed, the pictures tucked into the mirror, the boyfriend sitting next to me—weren’t mine.

Alex tilted his head, the silent question How? reflected in his eyes. I took a deep breath and held it, searched for the courage to speak my greatest fears out loud. “I’m different now. I’m not the same girl I was before the accident. Not even close.”

Alex smiled, not the sarcastic grin I was expecting, but one of quiet understanding. “You’re nervous.”

It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway.

“We’ve done this hundreds of times, Maddy. Literally hundreds.”

“I know.” Maddy and Alex had spent the better part of our junior year with their lips locked together and served their fair share of time in detention for getting caught kissing in the hall. And if the accidental glimpse I’d got of Maddy’s diary was correct, then they’d spent most of their summer rolling around in bed, or in the backseat of his Jeep, or on the beach, or … “I’m sorry, but I can’t. Not yet.”

He flashed me a grin and settled into the bed next to me. “I’ll tell you what, we’ll take it slow. It’s Sunday, right?” I nodded, and he went on. “So, tonight we can hold hands. Next week we’ll give kissing another try, and by the week after that, you should be good to go. What do you say? Sound like a plan?”

I nodded. That gave me two weeks to try to figure something out. Two short weeks, but at least it got me off the hook for tonight.





14

I spent an hour standing inside my sister’s closet after Alex left and another twenty minutes this morning. It didn’t matter what I put on, nothing felt right. Sweatpants and T-shirts had been my outfit of choice for the past few weeks, but I couldn’t exactly wear those to school. Not if I was going to be Maddy.

My inspiration came not from my own wisdom, but from a picture Maddy had tucked in the corner of her mirror: her and Alex at the Fall Festival the week before the accident. She was beautiful, amazingly so, and I wondered why I’d never seen it until now.

I took that picture with me into the closet and went about assembling the exact same outfit—low-riding jeans and a wide brown belt that barely fit through the loops. Squinting at the picture, I tried to figure out which of three nearly identical gray hooded sweaters she had on. It was a closer peek at her hands that gave it away—the sleeves of the top had holes for her thumbs. I added a second long shirt, a pair of boots, an ugly scarf, and I was good to go. I was dying of heat, suffocating under the layers, but after one more quick scan of the picture, I was confident that I was dressed exactly like her.