We Were Liars(33)

Now is when I can talk to him.

Now is when we can stop pretending to be normal.

I am looking for the right words, the best way to start.

Suddenly he climbs back to where I’m sitting in three big steps. “You are very, very beautiful, Cady,” he says.

“It’s the moonlight. Makes all the girls look pretty.”

“I think you’re beautiful always and forever.” He is silhouetted against the moon. “Have you got a boyfriend in Vermont?”

Of course I don’t. I have never had a boyfriend except for him. “My boyfriend is named Percocet,” I say. “We’re very close. I even went to Europe with him last summer.”

“God.” Gat is annoyed. Stands and walks back down to the edge of the roof.

“Joking.”

Gat’s back is to me. “You say we shouldn’t feel sorry you—”

“Yes.”

“—but then you come out with these statements. My boyfriend is named Percocet. Or, I stared at the base of the blue Italian toilet. And it’s clear you want everyone to feel sorry for you. And we would, I would, but you have no idea how lucky you are.”

My face flushes.

He is right.

I do want people to feel sorry for me. I do.

And then I don’t.

I do.

And then I don’t.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Harris sent you to Europe for eight weeks. You think he’ll ever send Johnny or Mirren? No. And he wouldn’t send me, no matter what. Just think before you complain about stuff other people would love to have.”

I flinch. “Granddad sent me to Europe?”

“Come on,” says Gat, bitter. “Did you really think your father paid for that trip?”

I know immediately that he is telling the truth.

Of course Dad didn’t pay for the trip. There’s no way he could have. College professors don’t fly first-class and stay in five-star hotels.

So used to summers on Beechwood, to endlessly stocked pantries and multiple motorboats and a staff quietly grilling steaks and washing linens—I didn’t even think about where that money might be coming from.

Granddad sent me to Europe. Why?

Why wouldn’t Mummy go with me, if the trip was a gift from Granddad? And why would Dad even take that money from my grandfather?

“You have a life stretching out in front of you with a million possibilities,” Gat says. “It—it grates on me when you ask for sympathy, that’s all.”

Gat, my Gat.

He is right. He is.

But he also doesn’t understand.

“I know no one’s beating me,” I say, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “I know I have plenty of money and a good education. Food on the table. I’m not dying of cancer. Lots of people have it much worse than I. And I do know I was lucky to go to Europe. I shouldn’t complain about it or be ungrateful.”

“Okay, then.”

“But listen. You have no idea what it feels like to have headaches like this. No idea. It hurts,” I say—and I realize tears are running down my face, though I’m not sobbing. “It makes it hard to be alive, some days. A lot of times I wish I were dead, I truly do, just to make the pain stop.”

“You do not,” he says harshly. “You do not wish you were dead. Don’t say that.”

“I just want the pain to be over,” I say. “On the days the pills don’t work. I want it to end and I would do anything—really, anything—if I knew for sure it would end the pain.”

There is a silence. He walks down to the bottom edge of the roof, facing away from me. “What do you do then? When it’s like that?”

“Nothing. I lie there and wait, and remind myself over and over that it doesn’t last forever. That there will be another day and after that, yet other day. One of those days, I’ll get up and eat breakfast and feel okay.”

“Another day.”

“Yes.”

Now he turns and bounds up the roof in a couple steps. Suddenly his arms are around me, and we are clinging to each other.

He is shivering slightly and he kisses my neck with cold lips. We stay like that, enfolded in each other’s arms, for a minute or two, and it feels like the universe is reorganizing itself,

and I know any anger we felt has disappeared.

Gat kisses me on the lips, and touches my cheek.

I love him.

I have always loved him.

We stay up there on the roof for a very, very long time. Forever.





50




Mirren has been getting ill more and more often. She gets up late, paints her nails, lies in the sun, and stares at pictures of African landscapes in a big coffee-table book. But she won’t snorkel. Won’t sail. Won’t play tennis or go to Edgartown.

I bring her jelly beans from New Clairmont. Mirren loves jelly beans.

Today, she and I lie out on the tiny beach. We read magazines I stole from the twins and eat baby carrots. Mirren has headphones on. She keeps listening to the same song over and over on my iPhone.

Our youth is wasted

We will not waste it

Remember my name

’Cause we made history

Na na na na, na na na