The Truth About Keeping Secrets(54)

But Leo insisted. Because we had to do something.

Doing something, though, wasn’t really the same thing as accomplishing anything, and I grew disillusioned with the activity quickly. We weren’t going to find anything. I continued looking just to appease him.

Eventually, he said what I’d been in equal parts anticipating and dreading: ‘June Copeland.’ Leo smirked at me.

I smiled, the way I did involuntarily when anyone so much as mentioned her name. ‘Yeah. She’s there.’

‘Let’s see what secrets I can uncover here.’

‘Good luck,’ I said. ‘I’ve tried.’

Leo snorted beside me. He took a long sip of black coffee, then smacked his lips. ‘Yeah, I’ve been there.’

Cole looked up from his DS. ‘Creep found my SoundCloud.’

Leo continued clicking every so often, then said eventually, ‘There is seriously nothing about this girl anywhere.’

‘Are you actually looking? I think she can be skipped.’

‘Can she?’ he said, turned to me and raised his eyebrows.

I leaned in to look at his screen; he’d found the pictures of her on the Pleasant Hills website. ‘I’ve already looked at all of this stuff. This is all you’ll find.’

‘So you certainly didn’t skip her.’

‘I was looking more for … leisure.’

‘You’re obsessed with her, aren’t you?’

‘Not obsessed,’ I said, lying.

Leo arrived at the picture of June and Heath being crowned king and queen at homecoming. ‘Oof. Who’s this fucking alpha male? Blond preppy fantasy. Take me to your parents’ charity function.’ He tilted his screen so Cole could see, but Cole just shrugged and said, ‘Eh.’

‘His name’s Heath.’

‘OK. What’s the story on Heath?’

I slumped down, my hand keeping up my head and squishing my cheek. ‘He’s loaded. His dad’s the city attorney, him and June are madly in love, blah blah. And he has a dead mom so I can’t even say that I’ve, like, felt more worldly hurt than him. Him and June have been dating for, uh, like three-and-a-half years.’

‘No. Weird. That’s weird. No one in high school who’s normal dates someone for that long.’

‘You think?’

‘Mm. What are they like together?’

‘They seem happy.’ I thought of Heath in the darkened car after New Year’s: She’s been happy.

‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Are you happy?’

‘I-I mean –’

‘Do you love her?’

I froze. Couldn’t even keep myself from smiling. Someone had said it and it wasn’t me. ‘That’s a jump …’

‘You do. You love her.’

I’d been pushing back the word so as not to even entertain the idea. I couldn’t love this girl. Not here. Not now. So I said something else that I knew was true, at least: ‘She makes me feel like all this is worth it.’

Leo and Cole looked at each other, then both at me at the same time, realizing, I think, that by ‘all this’ I meant living. I worried I’d said something wrong. Leo spoke. ‘If that’s not love, princess, then I don’t know what is.’

And if all of these things were a foundation, there was one pillar groaning under the weight: June had been growing distant.

Our car rides became quieter around that day with Leo, actually, as if speaking about her so freely had completely ruined everything. At first I just assumed it was a result of us being closer or more comfortable and not thinking of the silences as awkward – after all, she’d invited me to go to Spring Fling in a group with her and Heath – but then she was late for the first time one morning. She started to become harder to find after last period. And when I did spend time with her, she wasn’t laughing at the same things – at anything, really. I worried I’d cursed it, or done something wrong, or maybe she’d finally grown bored of me.

On the last Monday of March, Greg made a point of finding me during lunch, huddled in the computer lab.

‘Hey. I’ve been looking for you forever. What are you doing here?’

The truth was I’d been coming here during lunch period every day for three weeks now. The librarian didn’t even make me sign in any more. ‘I, uh, don’t worry. What’s up?’

He pulled out a chair beside me, sat on it the wrong way round with his arms draped over the back. ‘Oh, this is kind of out of the blue but honestly, I think you spend more time with her than any of us – has June seemed sort of off to you lately? Man, I don’t know. They’ve both been kind of weird.’

I didn’t know how to take this. Mainly, I felt a vague sort of flattery that I was the one he wanted to consult. Was I really who she spent most of her time with? I felt a sense of possession. Like I had been asked to speak for her.

But the truth was: no. I hadn’t. Mostly, I think, because I rarely saw them together – and June barely ever brought up Heath. This was a character trait of hers that I had appreciated so far, but now I was wondering why I hadn’t seen there was something strange about that.

I told Greg all of this.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘it’s just that, like, I haven’t seen much of June lately and … eh. I’m sure it’s fine, but, you know.’