The Truth About Keeping Secrets(19)

Anniversary reactions are common for ten years or longer.

I wanted to rip out my hair.

I got the hell out of that chapter and flicked idly through the rest of the book until I got caught on a dog-eared page with a passage highlighted in yellow.

The functioning level of the surviving parent was the most powerful predictor of a child’s adjustment to the death of a parent.

The rest of the section was about how parents should best behave to ensure their kids don’t fall off the deep end, basically. It was all highlighted; at first, I thought by Dad, but as I read, I realized they were all things that Mom had been attempting to do.

I tried to swallow the guilt, but it wouldn’t budge.

And then came the knocks. Three of them, on the window.

I turned to look. June Copeland grinned through the glass.





Chapter 6


She waved, beaming, like she wasn’t trespassing.

For a moment I thought I might be dreaming. Not because what was happening was especially nice, but because it was so intensely unbelievable that it couldn’t have actually been happening, like all your teeth snapping out of your mouth or inexplicably forgetting that one must wear clothes to school.

My stomach rolled. I clicked my phone to life to check the time – it was just past midnight.

June knocked again and gestured towards the patient entrance, the door that led outside, or, conversely, inside, like this whole time I’d simply been confused as to what to do next. Yes. The door. How novel. But in her defence, I was just sort of staring at her, unblinking, probably drooling, not because I wasn’t sure what the logical course of action was but because opening the door would make this real and I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to participate in whatever sort of late-night debauchery this was. Maybe if I pretended this wasn’t happening then it would just go away.

But then I realized how hypocritical that was and got up to let her the hell in.

The cold hit me straight away; a frigid gust of wind whipped June’s hair across her face. ‘Evening,’ she said, casual, over the buffeting air.

‘Hi, uh, what’s –’

She shouldered her way past me, which I thought was just to get out of the cold, but then she collapsed into the shallow indent in the patient couch like she owned the place, and stretched her arms so high above her head that a sliver of taut stomach emerged from underneath her jacket.

Not that I noticed.

I shut the door and with the howling muffled, the main sounds were fabric rustling on fabric and the perpetual chaotic screeching in my brain. ‘Uh,’ I said, lamely, ‘yeah, just get comfortable, I guess.’

Meanwhile, June’s frown was almost childlike, like she’d opened all her presents but was expecting more, and her forehead creased. She eyed me up, then looked down beside her, to where Dad’s copy of Grief Counselling and Grief Therapy lay, then looked around all at once like she’d unexpectedly arrived by teleportation. She exhaled through her nose. ‘I’m sorry.’

I wasn’t totally sure what she was apologizing for. ‘It’s OK, I guess, but –’

She popped the smaller knuckles on her left hand. ‘Apparently, I –’ click – ‘get sort of hyper –’ click – ‘or something –’ click – ‘when I’m nervous.’ Click. The last one practically echoed, bouncing off the bookshelves and the picture of the ghosts at Niagara Falls and Dad’s desk and my chest. I doubted every word and movement, worried that my sleepy frontal lobe had created them for me. ‘And I think that makes me seem rude. I’m really not rude, I don’t think, but if I seem rude then I guess that’s the same thing as being rude. Shit. I’m so sorry. If I –’

‘No, that’s fine, I just … why are you here?’ I lowered myself into Dad’s leather chair, opposite June.

She shifted, and threw her legs over the arm of the couch. I straightened my spine. ‘I was just bored, I guess. Wanted someone to talk to.’

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you have, like, friends?’ It sounded meaner than intended, so I doubled back. ‘Heath?’

‘Honestly, I thought you might like some company too. We hadn’t talked in like, what, a month? I wanted to see how you were doing.’

I shifted. Felt like I was being dissected.

‘I didn’t know if you’d even be here,’ she continued, ‘but I remembered that you mentioned not, like, sleeping, and I had a hunch.’

It wasn’t really the unexpected visit that cemented my belief that something was strange about June Copeland, it was this. Her replies. I wondered if she did it on purpose – a bunch of little mysteries, protecting her like armour.

‘You couldn’t have just come up to me at school, or something? Like a normal person?’ I said this next part under my breath, aware there wouldn’t be much truth to it but driven by curiosity as to what she’d say. ‘I guess you wouldn’t want to be seen with me.’

June searched for words, then scoffed, seeming to struggle to find them. ‘I swear to God, I’m not, like, whatever Regina George piece of trash you think I am. I promise. OK?’ I hadn’t seen Mean Girls. But I knew what she was implying. I folded in on myself, embarrassed I had even had the nerve to say that. Maybe that was what I’d thought before. Not now.