The Truth About Keeping Secrets(46)

‘Oh, sorry. Olivia. She was talking about it in student council. She wanted to run some kind of bullying initiative, and mentioned … yeah.’

I slumped in my seat and clicked my phone dead, now bemoaning the fact that I’d left the party at all. Damn it, Olivia. Was it too late to ask him to turn round? ‘Oh. What about them?’

‘So … hm. So, sorry, you probably don’t want to talk about this right now, but, when my mom died …’ He seemed to choke on the word. Took a breath. ‘I felt so alone. It’s the main thing I remember from the time. Just feeling completely, utterly alone. It felt like people were looking at me, but not really, you know? Like they were looking through me, almost. Past me. And I would have done anything to get them to really, really look. Anything. To the point where I had some really dark thoughts. As in, maybe I wanted them to look at me even if I wasn’t around to know about it. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I guess. Sorry, maybe I – what does that have to do with –’

He sighed, like it was painful to say whatever he was thinking out loud. ‘Just that I understand if maybe the messages are … as in, maybe the attention …’

We were both quiet for a moment. Vivaldi’s second movement flourished to an anxiety-inducing climax. ‘You think I’m making it up?’

‘No! No. That’s not it. It wasn’t right for me to bring that up. Attention was not the right word. Ah. I can’t – I’m not articulating myself correctly. It wasn’t right to do this now.’

I sat quietly, juddering slightly whenever we hit a bump.

‘Am I still going the right way?’ Heath asked, awkward. ‘June mentioned you lived on the way to hers. I’ve just been going that way.’

I swallowed twice before answering. Crossed my legs. Recrossed them the other way. ‘Yeah, no, you’re good. It’s the next left.’

‘Oh. Really?’

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘She’s the next right.’

A couple more minutes crept past. Eventually, he pulled on to the cul-de-sac and I pointed towards the house with the green shutters. I went to leave. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. Truthfully. I’m still here if you ever need to talk.’ His eyes suggested he meant it. I was struck by a wave of acceptance, looking into this harmless-ass kid’s eyes, really, for the first time, with his dead mom and beautiful girlfriend and big house and I was so jealous of everything, everything. The emotions were so annoyingly conflicting; I wanted to hate him. But he gave me nothing to hate. Maybe he was purposely being careful around me. Who knew? But honestly, at least this boy was looking after her. If I couldn’t have her I was glad he could.

‘No worries,’ I said finally. ‘Thanks for the ride.’

‘Happy New Year,’ he said.

‘Thanks, man. You too.’

I slammed the door shut and the sound of it rang in my ears, muffling the beginning of Autumn’s first movement.

Olivia wouldn’t pick up the phone. I knocked on her door in a last-ditch effort to get some closure, at least, but Mrs Good answered. She said Olivia was asleep, despite her bedroom light being on.

I sat in bed, not feeling particularly awake but not particularly tired, either. In a weird liminal state, it occurred to me I was completely sober again now and my mind ticked along clearly, running through the events of the night in no linear fashion. Just snapshots.

I did feel bad about Olivia. But who the hell did she think she was, telling people about the texts? We used to spend every waking moment together, the dog days of the summer sprawled out on the asphalt. Everything that happened to me became Olivia’s concern. I told her everything. The thought of her exhausted me now, and I didn’t know why, or what had changed. Dad had something to do with it, sure, but even before then the niggling feeling had been crawling under the surface: the thought that we’d both been growing, but in two entirely different directions.

Bea. I wasn’t sure how good a jury I was, but I did believe that it wasn’t her. Her emotion felt genuine, despite my impaired perceptions, and the person sending the texts would be the sort of sick fuck who would want me to know they were behind it all. I felt like they would have wanted me to know it was them. Or at least they didn’t seem particularly bothered about getting in trouble for it. Getting in trouble. That phrase seemed too juvenile, now, for whatever this was.

With Bea acquitted, it could have been anyone. But who else was there? There was no pool of suspects. It was me, and everyone else. Me against everyone else.

And then a flash of clarity, like a lightning bolt: that this had to do with what happened to Dad.

No. It couldn’t have been.

But it could have been.

Maybe Dad was killed. Maybe Dad was killed and the person behind all this killed him. Cut the brakes. Slashed the tyres. Maybe, maybe –

Breathe.

June.

June. June at the River Styx. June in a beanie. June on the roof.

June. She was impossible to place. She was a mess of extremes and I was a monotonous hum. Why had she taken me there, of all places? I mean, I had understood her reasoning. That she thought it would help. But why did she even want to help? And why did it always feel like for every word she said, there were three others she wouldn’t?

I could practically feel her folder pulsating all the way from Dad’s office. I contemplated opening it, the allure of knowing almost too powerful to ignore. I also contemplated bricking it up into the wall so it could slowly starve to death and I’d never have to think of it ever again.