Where It Began(73)

“How do you even know that?”

“Yearbook,” says Andie, just beaming away. “I love yearbook. Huey takes very good pictures of us, don’t you think? I love Halloween. Don’t you love dressing up?”

“Andie,” I say. “You have to go away.”

“Billy keeps reminding me you don’t want to talk to me, but I just wanted to give you—”

“What, a criminal record? Being cute doesn’t give you a free pass, Andrea! You might be cuter than Mrs. God but I know what you did and I don’t like you.”

“What?” I can see the catatonic cry face coming on. Andie scampers off to get Andy, and I watch as Andy gets up and comes toward her with a Dixie cup of vin du jour directly from his dad’s wine cellar while Billy collects his things and just leaves.

He sees me coming and he leaves basically for the rest of the day.

Because I am following Andie back into the garden with a look on my face that Billy Nash has never seen before. Yes, in pursuit of the salient point, I get up and I walk across the ordinary people’s lawn and into the Class of 1920 Garden, which is almost empty because it’s so early, and I stand there as Andie slurps down the contents of her Dixie cup.

“Do you want some?” Andy says, offering breakfast wine.

“Haven’t you heard? I have a drinking problem.”

“Right. Sorry,” Andy says. He rolls his head around as if his neck and shoulders were sore. “Sorry about everything.”

“Gabby doesn’t like me anymore,” Andie says, by way of explanation.

Andy looks horrified, maybe because Andie is sniffling and squinting and her face is getting splotchy, and maybe because the idea that a human being is walking the face of the Earth who doesn’t adore Andie is too much for him to take.

“What every thing would it be that you’re sorry about?” I say. “The one where you set me up and then you gave me PEZ?”

I so don’t want to be doing this.

I so want to just live through to the end of semester.

“What is she talking about?” Andie says, looking doe-eyed up at Andy as he stands there pouring himself wine out of his thermos.

They look completely baffled, although guilty as hell.

“I’m not saying I expected you to be my actual friends—”

“I am too your actual friend,” Andie says. “Tell her.”

And Andy runs his fingers through her hair and says, “What’s this about? It’s cool what you’re doing for Billy, but why are you mad at Andie all of a sudden?”

“Were you just going to let this keep on going and never tell me and just hope I never found out?”

“Okay, Gabby,” Andy says. “I feel really bad you’re the one who got caught, but what is this about?”

So I tell them.

“We thought you knew,” they chant over and over, like it is now the lyric of their special song.

Andy, seeing the look on my face, in a vain effort to prevent further drama, says, “Truthfully, at first we thought it was a misunderstanding, and then we thought you knew.”

“We thought you were like the coolest person on Earth throwing yourself on a land-mine-thingy to save Billy,” Andie says.

“And your sorry little butt,” I say.

Andie, dumb as Bambi, says. “What do you mean? Billy was driving.”

“We were in the car,” Andy says quietly.

“Do you mean we could get in trouble?” Andie asks, all googly-eyed.

“Let’s see,” I say. “You dragged me out of the car I wasn’t driving and stuck the keys I didn’t steal into my unconscious hand and you totally set me up. Maybe you could get in trouble. No wonder you kept your mouths shut.”

“What keys?” Andie says, looking up at Andy, who is staring at the ground. “What’s she talking about?”

Andy says, “I swear it wasn’t like that. We pulled you out of the car because you were passed out and we were afraid it would catch fire. You were passed out before he skidded and you got really banged up. We didn’t want the car to blow with you in it, but you started to heave so we put you down. That’s all it was.”

“Gross,” says Andie. Like she never heaved into a cardboard box in the back of the limo on the way back from semiformal.

“Don’t forget the part where you ran away and left me there,” I say.

“We just went to call Billy’s mom on his cell,” Andy says. “Because she’s a lawyer. And then we heard the sirens and we stayed out of sight. That’s all it was. It wasn’t personal. And I don’t know how the keys got into your hand because I didn’t put them there.”

He thinks for a minute until his face takes on this amazed and horrified frown, and this time I can tell it’s not about whether I like Andie. “That sucks,” he says almost to himself, twining his fingers in her curls.

They are so dumb and earnest and into themselves and slimy. Still, it is hard to picture the Andies exchanging looks and prying open my fingers and slipping the keys into the palm of my unconscious hand.

It is hard to see them sitting down over a nice joint and going, “Hey, I know, let’s tell Gabby she stole Billy’s car. That’ll keep her quiet while we go to Dartmouth.” (Or in their case, while he packs up his lacrosse gear and goes to Dartmouth and she goes to Hanover, New Hampshire College of Fun and Games or wherever girls like that go.)