We Were Liars(26)

“No.” Gat is decisive. “It is better to fight evil.”

“Don’t eat yellow snow,” says Johnny. “That’s another good motto.”

“Always do what you are afraid to do,” I say. “That’s mine.”

“Oh, please. Who the hell says that?” barks Mirren.

“Emerson,” I answer. “I think.” I reach for a pen and write it on the backs of my hands.

Left: Always do what. Right: you are afraid to do. The handwriting is skewed on the right.

“Emerson is so boring,” says Johnny. He grabs the pen from me and writes on his own left hand: NO YELLOW SNOW. “There,” he says, holding the result up for display. “That should help.”

“Cady, I’m serious. We should not always do what we are afraid to do,” says Mirren heatedly. “We never should.”

“Why not?”

“You could die. You could get hurt. If you are terrified, there’s probably a good reason. You should trust your impulses.”

“So what’s your philosophy, then?” Johnny asks her. “Be a giant chickenhead?”

“Yes,” says Mirren. “That and the kindness thing I said before.”





39




I follow Gat when he goes upstairs. I chase after him down the long hall, grab his hand and pull his lips to mine.

It is what I am afraid to do, and I do it.

He kisses me back. His fingers twine in mine and I’m dizzy and he’s holding me up and everything is clear and everything is grand, again. Our kiss turns the world to dust. There is only us and nothing else matters.

Then Gat pulls away. “I shouldn’t do this.”

“Why not?” His hand still holds mine.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s—”

“I thought we started over. Isn’t this the starting over?”

“I’m a mess.” Gat steps back and leans against the wall. “This is such a cliché conversation. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Explain.”

A pause. And then: “You don’t know me.”

“Explain,” I say again.

Gat puts his head in his hands. We stand there, both leaning against the wall in the dark. “Okay. Here’s part of it,” he finally whispers. “You’ve never met my mom. You’ve never been to my apartment.”

That’s true. I’ve never seen Gat anywhere but Beechwood.

“You feel like you know me, Cady, but you only know the me who comes here,” he says. “It’s—it’s just not the whole picture. You don’t know my bedroom with the window onto the airshaft, my mom’s curry, the guys from school, the way we celebrate holidays. You only know the me on this island, where everyone’s rich except me and the staff. Where everyone’s white except me, Ginny, and Paulo.”

“Who are Ginny and Paulo?”

Gat hits his fist into his palm. “Ginny is the housekeeper. Paulo is the gardener. You don’t know their names and they’ve worked here summer after summer. That’s part of my point.”

My face heats with shame. “I’m sorry.”

“But do you even want to see the whole picture?” Gat asks. “Could you even understand it?”

“You won’t know unless you try me,” I say. “I haven’t heard from you in forever.”

“You know what I am to your grandfather? What I’ve always been?”

“What?”

“Heathcliff. In Wuthering Heights. Have you read it?”

I shake my head.

“Heathcliff is a gypsy boy taken in and raised by this pristine family, the Earnshaws. Heathcliff falls in love with the girl, Catherine. She loves him, too—but she also thinks he’s dirt, because of his background. And the rest of the family agrees.”

“That’s not how I feel.”

“There’s nothing Heathcliff can ever do to make these Earnshaws think he’s good enough. And he tries. He goes away, educates himself, becomes a gentleman. Still, they think he’s an animal.”

“And?”

“Then, because the book is a tragedy, Heathcliff becomes what they think of him, you know? He becomes a brute. The evil in him comes out.”

“I heard it was a romance.”

Gat shakes his head. “Those people are awful to each other.”

“You’re saying Granddad thinks you’re Heathcliff?”

“I promise you, he does,” says Gat. “A brute beneath a pleasant surface, betraying his kindness in letting me come to his sheltered island every year—I’ve betrayed him by seducing his Catherine, his Cadence. And my penance is to become the monster he always saw in me.”

I am silent.

Gat is silent.

I reach out and touch him. Just the feel of his forearm beneath the thin cotton of his shirt makes me ache to kiss him again.

“You know what’s terrifying?” Gat says, not looking at me. “What’s terrifying is he’s turned out to be right.”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“Oh yes, he has.”

“Gat, wait.”

But he has gone into his room and shut the door.