The Secrets We Keep(28)

I let it go, didn’t bother to stay and listen to what that meant. Maddy had a way of being theatrical and was probably flying off the handle about something as unimportant as a chipped nail.

I shook off the memory and stopped listening to the girls in the bathroom, more concerned about what I was going to do if Maddy … if I actually won the title of Snow Ball queen. That would mean wearing a dress and heels, having my hair and nails done, dancing with Alex, and a crapload of smiling and kissing up to people I didn’t like. None of which I had any desire to do. All of which Maddy would have done without a second thought.

Someone tried to yank open the stall door, then knocked and bent down to peer underneath. I inched farther back on the seat and tried to make myself invisible, but she saw me anyway—it’s not like there was a huge amount of space for hiding in a three-by-three-foot cage. Molly’s face came into view, and I waved my hands frantically at her. I wordlessly begged her not to say anything, not to reveal to the few girls still in the bathroom that I was camped out in the last stall, hiding.

She nodded, her small, sad smile reminding me that she’d been here herself not long ago.

“You okay?” she mouthed.

“Yes,” I whispered back.

“The door is broken again,” she said to some random girls as she straightened up. “Go use the one next to it.”

The bathroom cleared, and the noise in the hall quieted down. The next class had started, the entire school going on with their day without me. Slowly I dropped my feet to the floor and opened the stall door. I half-expected somebody to be waiting for me. Maybe Molly. Maybe Jenna. But the bathroom was empty, not even the radiator was making noise anymore.

A long, scratched-up mirror covered the entire wall, making it impossible not to catch a glimpse of myself. I looked hollow and pathetic. Maddy wouldn’t look like this. Maddy wouldn’t hide in a bathroom stall afraid of what people were thinking or saying about her. She’d listen, then twist their words so that she came out on top. I’d seen her do it enough times. I’d even ended up on the twisted side myself more than once.

I fixed my hair, did what I’d seen Maddy do a thousand times—flipped my head upside down and shook it. I didn’t stop until my world spun, which, incidentally, was three shakes in. One last look in the mirror and I opened the door.





18

Alex pushed off from the wall across from the bathroom when he saw me come out. He must have been standing there waiting for me for at least ten minutes. He had my backpack in one hand, his cell phone in the other. He looked up at me briefly, then back to his phone to finish whatever he was texting.

“Hey,” I said as I took my backpack from his outstretched hand.

I don’t know what I expected. Perhaps that he’d hold me or offer to skip his next class and sit with me. Maybe make an attempt to talk me down off the crazy ledge I was teetering on, but what I got was a confusing glare and a nod.

“I saw Molly come out of the bathroom before you,” Alex said as he shoved his phone into his pocket. “She looked … I don’t know, better.”

I wasn’t aware she looked like crap to begin with. “Better than what?”

“Better than she has since she came back. You say something to her?”

I winced, unable to hide the surprise in my face. I’d said hi to her in class and silently begged her not to tell the other girls in the bathroom that I was crouched up on a toilet hiding out, but that was it. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing remotely helpful or sympathetic.

“No, I didn’t say anything to her, but why would it matter if I did?”

“We talked about this at the party, Maddy. It’s safer if we keep her on the outside.”

Alex took a step forward, his body suddenly within inches of mine. I could smell his cologne, see the smooth lines of his jaw and the tiny spot he’d missed when shaving this morning. “You have to trust me on this. You need to keep your distance from her, at least until things settle down and you’re feeling more like yourself.”

The pain in his voice stabbed at my heart and I shook my head. There was a fear behind his words, a fear that I would change my mind and reveal a secret I didn’t even know. My reply was easy, I wouldn’t tell Molly anything—not because I was trying to protect him or my sister, but because I had no clue what he was talking about.

“I wasn’t planning on telling Molly anything,” I said.

I felt his relief and offered him my hand. He took it and laced his fingers through mine. “What happened with Molly is in the past, Maddy, and it needs to stay there.”

Every part of me was begging to ask him what he was talking about. I searched his expression for a clue as to what was going on between Alex and Maddy, and what Molly had to do with it. I got nothing.

I tried to think of a time when something seemed off between them. I remembered the muffled conversation in the bathroom the week before Maddy died—the one about some plan of Maddy’s going wrong—and I remembered the tears streaming down Maddy’s face at the party. But other than that, everything between Maddy and Alex had seemed fine. Perfect, actually.

Alex took my silence for indecision and reached out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “I made sure everything went away. Made certain you got to be co-captain of the field hockey team, prom queen in junior year, the girl everybody wants to be, didn’t I?”