The Truth About Keeping Secrets(25)

‘Is it, Miles?’ Olivia said. ‘Why’s that?’

‘I don’t know. She just seems nice.’

‘She just seems hot.’

‘I didn’t say that!’

Olivia turned to me. ‘Miles thinks she’s hot.’

‘Liv!’

‘Go ahead, Sydney. The counsel is waiting for an answer.’

I probably should have thought this through. ‘I, uh, met her at the cemetery.’

‘What?’

‘She was a patient,’ I said. ‘And was visiting. And we just, I don’t know. Got to talking.’

Miles nodded solemnly. ‘That makes sense. You can’t be hot, smart and mentally stable. Gotta pick two.’

Olivia looked at him incredulously. ‘There are so many things wrong with what you just said. Which two am I, then?’

Miles blabbered something in defence, but I was already annoyed; he couldn’t talk about her like that. He didn’t know anything about her. ‘No. It’s not like that. She’s not like that.’

‘Oh my God,’ Olivia said.

‘What?’

‘Do you like her?’ she asked, with all the tact of a fucking nail gun.

I froze. ‘Are we eleven?’

‘Oh my God!’ Olivia leaned backwards, letting this realization settle into her, like it was important, for some reason, when it really wasn’t at all. ‘You do.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘This is a dangerous road to tread, little Sydney. A dangerous road.’

‘OK, but you’re not exactly an expert, are you?’

She stopped, looked at Miles and then back to me. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I’m just saying. You don’t know what’s best for me.’

‘Right.’

‘That’s all I was saying,’ I snapped. It really wasn’t any of her business. I spent the rest of lunch silently watching the clock, thinking about where June might’ve been, then wondering if I could be there too.

The November of my junior year became permanently etched into my mind as the first month of June.

She drove me to and from school every day without fail. Ten minutes there. Ten minutes back.

During those twenty minutes I seemed to exist on another plane entirely. Even if I had spent the night freaking out or half the day picking at toilet-cubicle graffiti, once I sat in the passenger seat it’d all evaporate. The driving became less frightening each time until I hardly thought about it at all. June was light, all yellows and oranges, and we quickly became something like friends.

Friends. Despite not seeing each other outside of those intervals the relationship grew into something the two of us could slip in and out of without too much hassle. A skin I grew and shed each day.

This may have been because I was too emotionally porous for some sense of closeness not to grow. Everything felt hugely impactful and important and June, at the time, seemed no exception. June convinced me that we were all open books if only we found the right person to read us.

She was touchy-feely from the beginning. Just little things like grabbing my bicep when she laughed, or pushing me gently when I teased her, or picking loose hairs off my clothes as if we were monkeys grooming each other. If I hadn’t known any better, some days, it seemed like she was just looking for excuses to touch me – but I did know better, of course. She was like this with everyone. This was why everyone liked her, and I was just as gullible as the rest of them. I was not special.

I fell for it anyway.

‘Girl, you have toothpaste on your face,’ she said, then licked her thumb and jammed it into the corner of my mouth.

I half-heartedly batted her away. ‘I put it there on purpose.’

‘And you missed a huge chunk of hair in your braid.’

I felt the back of my head. I had.

So we sat idling in my driveway while she undid my hair and wrapped it again, goosebumps flaring on my arms when she gathered the wispy bits at the nape of my neck. ‘You’re a mess,’ she said. She ended up doing perfect Dutch braids in barely a minute.

From then on I contemplated doing my hair badly every morning.

‘Whitaker,’ June said, ‘I have a question for you.’

‘OK. Hit me.’

‘What’s your favourite thing about yourself?’

God. I didn’t even know. I guessed I was smart, but June was smarter, and I guessed I was funny but June was funnier. Then, finally, I said, ‘My sense of self-preservation is pretty, uh, honed.’

She scoffed. ‘Yeah, all right. Not totally what I was looking for, but that works.’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I’m just wondering.’

‘What about you?’

She thought for a moment. ‘My empathy,’ she said. ‘Well, I don’t know. That used to be my favourite thing but now I’m not so sure.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘I think sometimes you can become, like, so focused on making sure everyone else is OK that you forget to make sure you’re OK,’ she said. ‘Like you’re spending time mowing someone else’s lawn when your house is on fire.’

Yikes. Was I the lawn? I made a mental note to be less needy. But where – what – was the fire?