The Secrets We Keep(24)

Not wanting to listen to her reply, I slammed the car door closed. I didn’t want to see the anguish in her eyes, hear the concern lacing her voice. And I didn’t want her to see me cry. I couldn’t pull this off if everybody was coddling me, asking me how I was, and reminding me it wasn’t my fault. None of that, no matter how well intentioned it was, was going to help.

And none of it was true.

It was my fault, all of it, and I had every intention of fixing it. I was going to give them back Maddy, become Maddy. But in order for me to do that, I needed them to stop making me miss myself.

I jammed the key into the ignition, my entire body vibrating with so much anger that I could barely get my hands to move. After three tries and one silent plea for strength, I finally got the key to turn a notch, far enough to get the radio and heat going. I wasn’t going to cry. I refused to cry. But my hands shook, and tears I hadn’t let fall in days came pouring out. I cursed each one, tried to banish them all to the tightly locked box I held inside my mind.

This was a brand-new car. It smelled like leather and new carpet. Different make. Different model. The car I’d totaled was a pale blue Honda. This was a Ford Explorer. It was a different color—black—and there wasn’t a lip gloss tube stuck to the floor or cleats shoved under the backseat. There were no pictures of Alex taped to the glove box, no discarded bra stuffed under the floor mat. So how was it possible that no matter where I looked, all I saw was her?

I didn’t want to do this. I couldn’t. The simple task of putting the car in reverse, tapping the gas, and driving the same route I had to school for years suddenly seemed impossible. My hands shook, my knuckles going white as I grasped the steering wheel. My mind was racing along the street and I could feel every turn, every catch of the tire as I struggled to stay on the road. It was so real, so present, and yet only in my mind.

The tree I’d hit had been cut down, the cement curb replaced, or so Alex had said. The only remnant left from that night was a wooden cross with Ella’s name … my name etched into it. And to get to school, to get anywhere, I’d have to drive by it.

I swore and let my head fall to the steering wheel. Maddy wouldn’t be sitting here in the driveway frozen in panic. She would’ve driven away by now, swallowed down her fear and simply done it. She was that confident, that determined. And if I had any hope of truly becoming my sister, then I needed to be as well.

“Maddy,” Mom called as she knocked on the window. I rolled it down. She reached for me, and I flinched. I didn’t want to be soothed. I didn’t deserve it.

“Why don’t you let me drive you today? We’ll get some breakfast on the way and then I’ll drop you off later. Nobody expects you to—”

I shook my head and held my hand up for her to stop. That was where she was wrong. “Everybody expects me to,” I fired back, remembering my last conversation with Maddy. Everybody expected something from her, wasn’t that what she said? That it would be easier to be like me, to have nobody expect anything from you? “I expect myself to.”

It took more effort than I ever would have imagined to turn the key that last notch. I heard the ignition catch, felt it waver as if it were in tune with me. I picked my head up and swiped at my tears. “I gotta go,” I said as I put the car into gear.

There was no point in looking back as I pulled out of the driveway. I knew Mom would be standing there, watching, hoping that I’d let her help.





15

I was a senior and hadn’t missed more than a week of school ever. I knew every hallway and how to make my way from the gym to the parking lot without having to pass by the office or cafeteria. I knew the exact number of steps it took to get from Josh’s locker to mine and could navigate his combination as easily as my own. I knew the gym floor had been replaced last year and that there was a small hole above the mirror in the boys’ locker room, one that looked directly into the girls’ showers. There wasn’t a thing about this school that should have surprised me, and yet, today, standing in the parking lot, staring up at the front doors, it seemed foreign.

I reached out, my hand falling short of the door handle. I felt like a freshman—not knowing who I’d meet or what I was walking into, hoping people would accept me, terrified that they wouldn’t. But unlike that first day of school our freshman year, I didn’t have my sister as a buffer. Today, I was truly on my own.

You can do this, I said to myself as I willed my hand to rise and demanded that my feet shuffle those few paces into the school. I had friends here. Maddy had friends here. And Maddy had Alex. I wasn’t on my own. I just wasn’t me.

Who knows what I expected to be waiting for me inside, but silence wasn’t it. Quiet, hushed whispers followed me down the hall. My eyes caught the pitiful stares of two girls waiting outside the front office. I nodded and gave them a small wave. They quickly looked away, pretending to be interested in the notices hanging on the student info board. I think I preferred the hushed whispers to the pity I could feel pouring off them.

I picked up the pace and kept my eyes trained straight ahead as I tried to pretend they didn’t exist. It was no use trying to insulate myself. No matter what way I looked, regardless of which hallway I turned down, they were still there—hundreds of eyes watching me, waiting for me to crack.

With my head down I shuffled along faster, but that didn’t stop the sickening feeling from overtaking me. There was nowhere to hide. Ignoring my classmates didn’t mean they weren’t there, whispering about how I was doing.