The Truth About Keeping Secrets(81)

She’d won.

Heath looked pleadingly at the audience. ‘Does anyone know what this is?’ he asked, like an idiot.

The district superintendent, who was standing on the stage ready to shake hands, touched Heath lightly on the shoulder and gestured towards the stage stairs.

‘No,’ Heath said, just close enough to the microphone for it to pick up his words. ‘I have a speech. This isn’t right.’

The audience jeered.

Dumb old Heath.

The principal made his way back to the microphone while the superintendent gingerly took Heath’s arm and led him offstage. ‘Listen, I think we’re just going to get on with things, I, uh – the next speaker? Who? Oh, yes, we have a Pleasant Hills alumnus here to, eh –’

Leo and I slipped out of the door. We’d seen enough.

‘We did it,’ he said, and wrapped me in a hug. ‘Done. How do you feel?’

The truth was I didn’t know how I felt. It absolutely sucked that this was pretty much all we could do, and the feeling that maybe I’d failed June hadn’t gone away.

I turned the question back to Leo; this was probably as important to him as it was to me.

He smiled, and that was when I realized his eyes had gone filmy. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I think we’ve done something here, my love. Something good.’

And honestly, I think that was all he wanted.

We really didn’t know if anything would come of it.

But we knew Heath sure as hell couldn’t show his face back here again.

It was the first really warm day of the year, leaving all of Pleasant Hills a sort of sweet-smelling oven of warm earth and concrete and sky. Heat distortion wobbled up from the parking lot, and the emerald oaks behind melted and trembled.

The cemetery glistened in the light.

June parked the car and looked over to me. ‘Alrighty,’ she said.

It was the second week of June. It had been nine months, I realized, as we stepped through the plots together, weeds and too-tall grass clawing at my exposed shins, making them itch. Nine months.

And we were here to say our goodbyes.

We’d decided it would be fitting, after everything that had happened.

I’d been found out following the graduation fiasco. Of course I had. The school had caught us on the camera inside the projection booth. They were trying to figure out who Leo was, and obviously I wouldn’t snitch, so they threatened to charge me with trespassing. Called me into some ‘disciplinary meeting’ and everything. But when I got there it’d been the same officer from the night of the crash. He’d just looked at me, shook his head, and let me leave without any questions.

But it had become one of the biggest scandals in town history. I’d been worried people wouldn’t really get it, or if they did they wouldn’t know what to do about it, but I was pleasantly surprised. There were Facebook posts. A petition to the local government. Granted, there were just as many posts in disagreement, calling Heath things like ‘responsible’ and ‘stand-up’ and berating people for potentially ruining the kid’s life over ‘one mistake’. The usual. Nobody was sure if anything would come of it – if anything could come of it – but generally, it seemed like people cared. The police definitely felt the pressure, I think. And because of it, Heath left for Connecticut two weeks earlier than he was supposed to. It was also rumoured that the big brick house on Longbrook was going to be put up for sale.

Now the two girls who had been trying to peel the shadow of what had happened from their lives were going to cleanse themselves for good.

I realized I had never actually said the words. Not when he died. Not at the funeral. But that was the thing – I wasn’t sure they were actually words. Goodbye was a feeling I’d been avoiding, band-aiding, trying to ignore. Now I was here to kiss Goodbye on the mouth and send it on its way.

June and I stood there for a moment, not really certain how to make that happen.

We just stared at the stone. The grass had grown back over his plot, which was difficult and welcome in equal measure. Difficult to see the Earth getting on without him. Welcome to see that something had grown.

Male shouting echoed in the distance. It wasn’t directed at us, it was just a sort of general happy commotion, but June’s head shot in that direction anyway. ‘Sorry. I thought …’

‘It’s OK.’ I didn’t really say what I meant. You’re OK.

Everything had changed in barely any time – although I should have been used to that by now. Weirdly, I’d been sleeping better since. Probably not what most people say after a near-death experience. I’d vowed never to go on the ToD again. But that wasn’t too hard; instead of thinking about June, I could just be with her instead.

She looked at me expectantly. ‘Do we say something?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

So we didn’t. We sat down by the headstone, which looked like a headboard, and I dug my fingernails into the earth, imagining that everything below was Dad and in a way this was like holding his hand. It was all like holding his hand. I could go on and live a life and the whole thing would be like holding his hand.

A warm breeze drifted past us. I thought of the mindfulness techniques Gerry had taught us at the last session: I’m here. I’m warm. I feel the sun on my shoulders, hear the robins, smell the sweat from her neck. I’m lucky. I’m alive. I am not alone.