The Secrets We Keep(33)

A brief flash of confusion crossed Molly’s face at my question, her eyes quickly softening. I knew in that instant what the look meant, the mistake I had made. Maddy would know why she was crying. She would have made it her business to know.

“You don’t remember?” Molly asked.

I shuffled my feet as I tried uselessly to come up with something to say, an excuse or a lie that would keep everything intact. But I came up empty. I could do nothing but stare blankly at her.

“I get it,” Molly said. “I had a hard time remembering ever taking any drugs. But then again, everybody said it was because I didn’t want to remember, that I was denying it to save myself. At least you have the accident to blame for not remembering stuff.”

My hand automatically went to my head, to the scar where my stitches once were. I rubbed it, thinking how much easier it would be if what she said were true, if in fact my mind had stayed as empty as it was when I first woke up, and I didn’t know a thing.

I remembered the rumor that had circulated about Molly last year. People said she’d been taking pills for months, that that was why she was so good on the field, why she had an insane amount of energy. When she denied it, carrying on about the drug test results being wrong or about being set up, people said she was crazy and that she was paranoid and delusional. I guess she was. She used to sit in the cafeteria and zone out, not talk to anybody. One time I saw Alex try to talk to her, and she’d lashed out at him, jumping up from her seat and staring at him like he was a psycho. He’d done nothing but gently shake her arm to get her attention, and she freaked, accused him of somehow being involved.

The same thing happened the next weekend at the state championship. She went to watch. The coach let her sit on the bench, but she wasn’t allowed to wear her uniform or even her practice shirt. She stared off into space as the game was played around her, never once acknowledging the players sitting next to her. They lost; with Cranston High’s best player benched, they didn’t stand a chance.

Molly wasn’t at school that next week. None of us knew where she went, but we had our assumptions. Six weeks later she showed up, quiet and withdrawn. Everyone avoided her. My sister, Jenna, Alex—they let her sit at their table in the cafeteria, but they stopped including her in their conversations, stopped caring enough to ask what she thought. Maddy claimed that was the way Molly wanted it, that whenever anybody tried to talk to her she’d tell them to go away and leave her alone. I refused to believe that. My guess was that they didn’t know what to say to her, how to make things go back to normal, so it was easier for Maddy and the rest of them to shut her out.

“I won’t tell anybody that things are still hazy for you if that’s what you’re worried about,” Molly said. “I get what it’s like not knowing exactly what happened, trying to solve a puzzle when you’re not even sure what the pieces are.”

I wasn’t worried about figuring things out. With the exception of Alex, I think everybody already assumed I was one step away from losing it.

“Thanks,” I said, and waited to see if she would tell me about the party. Tell me why she was crying. Why Maddy was sitting alone in the backyard. Why Jenna was in a particularly nasty mood. But she said nothing, let the awkward silence between us grow to a suffocating level.

Searching for something to say and coming up empty, I did the one thing I could. I started to walk away.

“You asked me to go to that party, said it wasn’t fair what had happened to me and that these were my friends and you were going to make it right.”

I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around.

“Alex whispered something to you when I walked in. I don’t know what it was, but he seemed pissed. You had a fight later that night, but I don’t know what it was about. Maybe about me being there,” she said as she took a step in my direction.

I didn’t know what the fight had been about, but rather than admit that, I asked again, “Why were you crying? What happened?”

“Jenna. She was there being her usual self.”

Molly didn’t need to explain that. I’d been on the receiving end of Jenna’s nasty comments for years. I was well aware that she had probably taken Molly’s tears and used them as a way to gain the upper hand, remind her that she was different. Damaged. Useless.

“Jenna’s a self-serving wannabe. I don’t get why you—” I paused for a second to correct myself. “I don’t get why we hang out with her.”

“I don’t anymore. You do.”


I shrugged, not knowing what to say. I guessed, at the end of the day, I would classify Jenna as my sister’s best friend. I’d gladly go the next seven months, the next seven years, my entire life as Maddy, but there was no way I was putting up with Jenna in the process. “Yeah … well, I have a feeling that’s gonna change.”

Molly smirked, no doubt understanding exactly what I meant. “I figured that much at the party.”

I cocked my head, pretended I was searching my mind for a lost piece of information. “I … uhh…”

The amusement faded from Molly’s eyes, a pain I was familiar with replacing it. “You heard her prodding me and lost it, said you were done with her treating me that way. Done pretending that none of this was your fault.”

I didn’t dare ask what “this” referred to. Besides, the look on Molly’s face told me she wouldn’t know the answer anyway, that she was as confused, as curious as me about what Maddy had been so upset about. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the answer either.