The Secrets We Keep(60)

Sitting here in the dark with Alex waiting for the rest of my world to crumble down wasn’t going to help either. “I don’t know what to say.” I didn’t look at him when I spoke, didn’t have the energy to dissect the emotions playing across his face.

“I don’t think there is anything else to say.”

Alex tore the newspaper clipping in two and shoved it in his coat pocket. He could destroy that one and the dozen others sitting in that shoe box if he wanted to. It wouldn’t change anything.

He opened the car door and got out. “Go home, Maddy, and forget about this. It wasn’t your fault, and there is nothing you can do to change what happened.”

I disagreed. An apology to Molly would be a good start.

“Take tomorrow off from school and get a handle on yourself. I’ll cover for you, tell everybody you have a doctor’s appointment or something. I’ll pick you up at three and take you to your field hockey game. And on Monday…”

Alex didn’t finish his thought, but I didn’t need him to. I knew what he meant. On Monday, I had to get up and do it over again. Pretend to be my sister, try to find a way to deal with the emptiness that filled me while making pointless conversation with her friends … with Jenna.

I waited until Alex had pulled out of the lot to start my car. Going home wasn’t an option. Mom was there and Dad was probably trying to coax her out of their room, away from the collection of my stuff she had surrounded herself with. I didn’t need another reminder of how I’d messed everything up.

I pulled out my phone and texted the one lie I was sure Dad would buy: Staying at Jenna’s.

It took a few minutes, but the phone finally chimed with a simple message: Have fun.

I drove around for hours that night, pulled into our driveway twice, then pulled back out. I would’ve gone to talk to Maddy, curled up on the ground beneath my own name, but the cemetery gates were locked at dusk, leaving me with nowhere to go.

It was past midnight when I pulled up across the street from Josh’s house. The house was dark, the streetlight at the end of his driveway broken and flickering to its death. That’s where I spent the night—in my car, parked across the street from Josh’s, watching, remembering, and dreaming about what I would’ve done differently had I known, as soon as I woke up in the hospital, that he loved me, too.





39

The sharp rap on the window jarred me awake. I snapped my head up, making contact with the back of my seat. My neck hurt, not from the sudden motion but from sleeping hunched over my steering wheel for the past few hours.

The knock was softer now but equally urgent. I cleared my eyes and looked toward the window. The thin layer of ice covering the glass made it difficult to see, but eventually I could make out a face. It was Josh. He had his hat and gloves on, his backpack slung over one shoulder. I turned on the car and jacked up the heat before rolling down the window.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I looked past him to his driveway. Kim was standing there staring straight at me.

“I asked you what you are doing here,” Josh said again.

“Nothing.”

“Go home, Maddy.”

“But—” I started to argue, to tell him to stop calling me that, to give me a second chance, but he waved me off.

“You had your chance yesterday. There’s nothing here for you anymore.”

I didn’t wait for him to walk away this time, couldn’t stomach watching him get in the car with Kim. I put my car in gear and left, driving until I hit the town line. I sat there for hours, parked in the breakdown lane with my flashers on, literally feet away from a new town … a new life.

Nobody stopped to help me. Not one cop or Good Samaritan pulled over to see if I needed help. Funny how I could sit here for two hours and seventeen minutes and not one of the hundreds of people who drove by thought to stop. Yet spend two seconds acting weird in the high school cafeteria and you were suddenly the object of everybody’s attention.

A thousand thoughts flew through my mind about Molly and what my sister had unintentionally set into motion. I knew Maddy was sorry for what she’d done. I could feel it in my heart, saw it in the tears she’d tried to hide the night of Alex’s party. And I’d taken away her chance to apologize to Molly.

The emptiness I’d been struggling to overcome settled around me like a dark, unwavering cloud. My sister, my best friend, the one who shared my birthday, was gone. Forever. And it was there on the side of the road, as I raged in my car, screamed and cried and cursed my sister for leaving me, that I finally embraced the pain and made my decision.

I turned the car around in the middle of the road and drove, without thinking, back to school, back to the two people I wanted to apologize to first.

The school parking lot was full. I could either wedge my car between the Dumpster and the buses-only zone in front of the school or park way over on the other side of the fields. The Dumpster-buses-only spot worked; I wasn’t planning on being here long anyway.

I didn’t bother to sign myself in. The front office had probably already marked me absent. By the time the school secretary got around to calling my parents this afternoon, it’d be too late. By then, they would know the truth.

It was noon, and the hallways were crowded with kids at their lockers swapping out books for their next class or going to lunch. The fact that I was wearing the same clothes as yesterday didn’t go unnoticed. I could see people pointing as clearly as I heard their hushed comments. My hair was pulled into a messy ponytail, and what little was left of yesterday’s makeup was smudged. I didn’t care. I was done pretending. I was done trying to fit in. I was … done.