The Secrets We Keep(48)

“I don’t need you to make excuses for me,” I said, irritated with myself for being too weak to handle one day in public as Maddy. “And Josh, well, I wouldn’t worry about him, he’s pretty much written me off.”

“So you say.” He was angry now, I could hear it in his tone as he struggled to keep his voice down and not make a scene. He leaned forward, and I felt his breath against my neck. “Because when my girlfriend leaves school without so much as a goodbye, doesn’t answer her phone, and leaves another guy’s house dressed in his clothes later that night … yeah, well, I kinda think I’m entitled to worry, wouldn’t you say?”

How did he know I was wearing Josh’s clothes? “Who told you that? Who told you where I was?”

He took a step back and braced his hand against the wall, giving himself enough space to calm down while keeping me from passing. “Doesn’t matter who told me,” he answered quietly. “I just want to know why. Why did you go to him instead of me? Why do you trust him more than me lately?”

Oh, it did matter who had told him. I managed to duck out from underneath his arm and scan the hall. It didn’t take me long to find her, standing there pretending she was reading the notices on the student activities board. She wasn’t reading crap. Besides, it’s not like she had a life outside of stalking Josh. Kim had told him. That crazy girlfriend of Josh’s had told him.

I didn’t know who I was more upset with—Kim for sticking her nose where it didn’t belong or Alex for actually thinking for a second Maddy would cheat on him. “You believe Kim? After everything, you believe her over me?”

“I wouldn’t have two months ago. I wouldn’t have two days ago. But since you came back to school—” He paused and shook his head. “I don’t know you anymore, Maddy, and that scares the crap out of me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I tried for angry, which wasn’t a stretch considering I was fuming over Kim’s meddling. “What are you trying to say?”

“First Molly, then Jenna, now Josh. Are you trying to lose everything?”

“So I am supposed to forget what happened, pretend I am happy, and go on like everything is perfect?”

“That’s not what I meant, Maddy, and you know it. I’m the one person who actually gets what your sister meant to you. I remember every conversation we ever had about her, about how you wished you could be more confident like Ella and not care what people thought. How you wished you had half her talent. How you wished we had friends as loyal and honest as Josh.”

I shook my head at his words, tears rimming my eyes. Maddy never wanted to be me; she’d said as much that night in the car. How she was tired of covering for me, tired of making excuses for my lack of social skills.

“You have no idea how much she meant to me. You couldn’t,” I said.

The anger and confusion I’d seen in Alex’s eyes faded as he held out his hand to me. I took it and let him pull me in to his chest. “Josh may be able to tell you who your sister’s favorite band was or how much salt she liked to dump on her pizza, but he can’t remind you of the things you did when you were kids. He doesn’t know about all the time you spent sitting on the hood of my car scanning the latest issue of the school’s newspaper for her drawings.”

I didn’t know Maddy did that, didn’t know she cared. “And you can? You can remind me of that?”

“Every day if that’s what you need. You have told me so much about her, I can guarantee I know her as well as Josh does, maybe better.”

“She applied to the Rhode Island School of Design, did you know that?”

Alex nodded. “Of course I did. You showed me the three drawings she was working on for her application.”

The look on my face must have told him I had no memory of that because he laughed before explaining. “The weekend before the accident we were at your house. We had stopped there on our way to Narragansett Beach because you wanted to change. Something about not having the right shoes on for the bonfire and sand. Ella was out with Josh. There was a modern art exhibit in Boston she wanted to see.”

I remembered that day like it was yesterday. The exhibit was fantastic, but the two-hour ride to Boston sucked. That, and Kim had called every ten minutes asking when Josh would be home.

“I was complaining that we didn’t have time to stop by your house and pick up the beer, but you insisted I come in, said it would only take a minute.”

Nothing ever took Maddy a minute. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not.” Alex grinned, and I got the feeling they’d done a lot more than grab a different pair of shoes. “You went into her room to borrow her hairbrush and saw the application sitting on her desk with her sketches.”

I’d actually shoved the application underneath a bunch of homework to keep Mom and Dad from seeing it. Maddy must have had to move a lot of stuff around to find it, but whatever. “Which one was your favorite?”

Alex dropped his backpack and pulled out his wallet, then handed me a folded piece of paper he had tucked inside. It was a photocopy of a picture I drew of Maddy freshman year. We were about a month into school and the sting of her no longer wanting to be seen with me was still raw. I used to sit at the table and sketch while Josh and his friends talked. I’d draw everything from the trash can to the clock on the wall, but this one was of Maddy. It was crude—sucked, actually—but it was definitely her. And it wasn’t one I even had in the pile of contenders for my art school portfolio.