The Truth About Keeping Secrets(39)

To my surprise, she wasn’t horrified. She actually smirked a little. ‘Where’d you find those?’

‘Oh. You know. The internet.’

‘Do you think that’s healthy?’ she asked.

Oh, I adored her. She didn’t ask why I did it, because she already knew. That you need to see it to understand, need to really see it – but no. No. Of course it wasn’t healthy, but I wasn’t sure I could admit it. ‘I don’t know.’

She didn’t say anything else, so I kept talking.

‘I’m so scared,’ I said, ‘that all of this, that this is it, this is all there is, and I’m worried all of this isn’t even that good in the first place.’

‘Well, like, listen. The way I see it … it’s, like, I think we’re lucky to even be here at all. To be, like, conscious? I think it’s crazy. And the only reason you’re bummed out about dying is because you’re conscious in the first place. And a certain amount of conscious. Like, birds don’t fly around worried they’re gonna die one day.’

‘So maybe I wish I wasn’t able to think of that at all. Maybe this is stupid. Right? Like maybe I don’t even want to have lived.’

‘Whitaker. That’s the most, like, universally contested viewpoint of all time. Better to have loved and lost, and all that. Well. Better to have lived and lost. Like, look how beautiful this is.’ She said it with conviction, but her face sort of folded in on itself. ‘Look how lucky you are to be here at all.’ I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was saying that to herself more than she was saying it to me.

I was looking. I told her so. I was looking, and all I could see were the cracks, Dad’s blood rolling and clotting in the water, everything I’d ever seen and everything I’d never get to see coalescing into something ugly and awful and I hated it, I hated it, it was horrible, it was dying, it was rusting and falling apart – the branches broke, shattered like glass, dropped into the river, everything collapsed, everything, everything, everything, everything dead, everything dead, goodbye, Earth! The sun crashes into Pleasant Hills and we all burn. Goodbye, me! ‘I don’t want it.’

‘No. Look.’

‘I am.’

‘Look.’

So I did. I looked at her. Square in the face.

And there was something else.

Just past all the rot, something glittered, bounced off in fractals of light; the river shimmered.

It was her, all lights, all glowing in the bitter cold, her cheeks and nose rouged and her chapped lips and the dark spots on her jeans where the snow had soaked through.

It occurred to me: I was using her. I knew I was. ‘Why are you sad?’ I asked her.

June took a breath and spoke, totally devoid of emotion, like she was reading off a grocery list. ‘I don’t like myself very much.’

How? I said that out loud too. ‘How?’ It wasn’t patronizing, but it wasn’t really meant to be encouraging, either; it just didn’t compute. How could a girl like that not like herself? And then after, without thinking, I told her. ‘You’re everything.’

June pretended not to have heard. ‘I just don’t.’

We sat there for a while, as the sun set. I made some joke about throwing ourselves into the water. The mood lightened after that. She ruffled my hair. We ended up finishing the trail, and wrapping back round past the frozen expanses of quicksand. We ran, jumped and dumped snowballs down the backs of the other’s collars. I think we needed to let off some steam. Things were different. They had to be.

On the way back, we passed the aspen I’d carved. I didn’t look at it again.

And back in the car, I clicked my phone to life.

Them: Partying tonight, are we? Doesn’t sound like you’re all that upset.

They would not ruin this.

June asked if everything was OK. I said yes.





Chapter 10


Heath lived on the good side of town. Realistically, the sprawling developments of middle-class houses meant all of Pleasant Hills was the ‘good side’, but towards the north the driveways grew longer and lawns grew wider and house fronts were concealed behind veils of intentionally positioned trees.

‘I’m glad you came,’ June said as we turned on to Longbrook: Heath’s street. ‘I was really worried you’d say no. You don’t strike me as someone who likes this sort of thing.’

I scoffed. ‘Why did you invite me, then?’

June thought for a second. ‘I wanted to see you,’ she decided, even though her hesitancy suggested she had wanted to say something different. Regardless, my neck tingled. I couldn’t help it. Even though I was kind of still recovering from the heaviness of our earlier conversation, any insistence that she wanted to be near me was enough to set my veins on fire.

The line of cars parked up against the kerb implied the party had already started.

‘Shit,’ June breathed.

‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘I didn’t realize it was so late already.’

‘That’s fine, right? We’re – I don’t know. Fashionably late.’ I didn’t want to let on how much I loved the idea of it: emerging into an already crowded room with June next to me.

She crushed her knuckles against the steering wheel until they cracked. ‘Yeah,’ she said, then parked. ‘OK. After you.’