Tease Page 19

“Where’s Emma?” I ask Dylan, but quietly, so the other two can’t hear me. I keep my expression blank, or I try to—but just in case, I lift the beer can and take a long drink. It’s cold and sharp and I instantly feel a rush of warmth all the way to my knees. Beer and Dylan’s smile, his body next to mine on the couch . . . dangerous combo.

  He frowns and shakes his head a little. “She’s . . . I don’t know. She said she’s grounded or something.”

  I hesitate, wondering if she’s grounded because of what Brielle and I did, what we said to her mom. With a jolt I realize that Dylan might know everything already—didn’t Emma’s parents call Jacob’s? But why would he still invite us over? God, Brielle didn’t explain anything to me. I have to just play it cool.

  “Don’t you believe her?” I ask, taking a big gulp of beer.

  “Sure, I guess. But she wouldn’t tell me why.”

  I nod sympathetically, relief flooding me even faster than the buzz from the beer does.

  Dylan’s frown deepens. “Come on, you don’t care about me and Emma,” he says. “You hate her.”

  For some reason, his words slice right through me. If I were trying to act like a wounded puppy, I couldn’t come close—but there are tears in my eyes suddenly, and I have to clear my throat before I can say, “She stole my boyfriend.”

  Dylan just looks at me for a second. He looks at me like he never really saw me before, but then he turns back to his beer, taking a long gulp. He stands up, and I think he’s going to walk away, but when he’s on his feet he turns back to me and holds out a hand.

  “You want to get out of here?”

  Holy crap. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.

  We’re in the back of Dylan’s car and it’s old times again, it’s like it should be. It’s better than old times too, because I’m not scared. I know him, I trust him. He needs me.

  I’m the one moving things along—I take off my own shirt, and I don’t go limp when he starts tugging at the waist of my jeans. I don’t care that we didn’t even move the car off the street near Jacob’s house. The other houses are far apart and there are so many trees, it feels all wooded and private. And I want to be here so badly—I want to be close to him more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Before, I don’t know—I think I just wanted to have a boyfriend or feel like he liked me. But now that I know what it’s like to have him and lose him, I can’t let go. I won’t let go.

  But Dylan pushes away. I’m lying across the backseat and he lifts himself up, looking down at me.

  “This isn’t—I don’t think we—”

  “It’s okay,” I say in a rush. “I’m okay.”

  A look crosses his face that I can’t really read. I don’t want to read it—if it’s second thoughts, I don’t want to hear them.

  I pull him back to me and we keep kissing. And then I’m having sex again, for the second time in my life, with this perfect, perfect guy. He’s perfect and he likes me. He didn’t really leave. He’s back. We’re back.

  When it’s over, he doesn’t move right away, and I wrap my arms around him. He’s still wearing his sweater but I don’t mind. It’s cute. It’s warm. Then when we both sit up and rearrange ourselves. I feel like laughing. I feel better than I have in a hundred years.

  But when I look over at Dylan, his eyes are down. And he goes, “I’m sorry. I guess I just . . . I don’t know.”

  I open my mouth to say something, but I’m stuck again. What’s happening? What does he want to hear?

  “It’s . . . okay,” I finally manage, though I don’t even know what I mean. Why is he apologizing?

  He shakes his head. “Emma really is a nice person,” he tells me. The sound of her name feels like a punch to the gut, but I sit silently and wait for him to say more. “It’s just so hard . . . She’s had such a hard time. Not just at Elmwood or with you guys or whatever.”

  I want to point out that Dylan wasn’t a big Emma defender himself, back before Valentine’s Day, but I guess he wasn’t as mean as Jacob or Tyler. He didn’t really do anything at all.

  I clear my throat. If we have to talk about this, fine. He’s going to break up with her, obviously. So maybe I can feel a little sorry for Emma Putnam, just this once.

  “I heard she sees a therapist,” I say.

  “Yeah, she does. But not like that,” he adds, and now he’s looking at me, his eyes pleading for me to understand, even though I obviously don’t. “At her old school there was a lot of drama, and her parents thought it would be good to move to Elmwood. Or her mom did, I mean—I don’t know, it seems like her stepdad is really a jerk.”

  I can’t help but snort at that. “Yeah, okay. I’ll take a jerky stepdad who buys me a freaking Audi any day,” I say. And I would. I don’t understand how half the kids at Elmwood walk around like they’re suffering so much. I haven’t even seen my real dad since the world’s crappiest day-after-Christmas visit last year. He brought the boys some sports equipment and then he handed me an unwrapped Taylor Swift CD. I just stared at it, unable to even begin explaining what a ridiculous excuse for a “gift” it was.

  Dylan runs his hands through his hair and I wonder if I’m messing things up right now. Emma’s the emotional mess—I’m the easy one, the one who doesn’t have problems. I’m the drama-free girlfriend, the girl he wants to be with.

  I scoot over on the seat and lean my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to deal with all that,” I say, reaching for his hand. “But I’m glad things are better now.”

  His whole body tenses up under me, his shoulder flinching out from under my cheek. “Uh, Sara, this—”

  I lean back and smile at him, letting him see how happy I am. Somewhere in the pit of my stomach I can feel something bad coming, like when you first realize you have to puke, that glimmer of nausea before the retching starts. But I’m ignoring it. I’m fine. This is fine.

  “This was a mistake,” he says. Whispers. “I’m really sorry.”

  His voice is so soft and low, but it echoes in my head like he’s screaming. The nausea starts to rise.

  “Are you—” I start to say, and then I have to stop. My voice is scratchy and there’s so much in my throat—vomit and tears and, like, a whole pile of giant, painful lumps—that I can’t get any other words out. I swallow and swallow again and he’s not looking me in the eye. By the time I open my mouth my voice is barely a squeak, because I can’t get any air, but I sort of croak, “What are you saying?”

  “I’m really sorry.” He’s still whispering. He’s sad. But he’s saying it anyway. “This can’t happen again. I’m sorry.”

  I can’t move. I can’t feel my arms or legs or anything inside, either—I’m not frozen, because that would feel like something, that would feel solid. I’m heavy and limp. I’m speechless. I’m never going to be okay again.

  “Hey, listen, do you need a ride home? Let me take you home.” Dylan fumbles in his pocket for a minute before smacking his palm to his forehead and going, “Duh, obviously my keys are in the car!” He makes a sound kind of like a laugh and looks over at me, but I’m still not moving. I am too humiliated to blink, much less look at him and laugh about his car keys.

  “So . . . okay,” he says uncertainly. “You just . . . you can just stay back here if you want. I’ll . . . um . . . I’ll just . . .” He doesn’t try to explain anymore, he just gets out of the backseat and into the front. When the doors are open big gusts of cold air sweep into the car, and suddenly it smells damp and earthy, that early spring smell that tells you all the snow and ice is melting and someday the sun will come out again.

  And maybe it will, for some other girl. Maybe for some girl who isn’t being driven home chauffeur-style by the boy who doesn’t love her, who doesn’t need her. The drama-free girl who isn’t exciting enough for anybody. The girl who tries to be a good friend and a good girlfriend and just isn’t quite good enough.

  I guess the sun will shine on Emma Putnam’s pretty hair, and her life that’s so freakin
g difficult will be happy again. Dylan will make it happy.

  But I’m the girl in the backseat, in the dark, with the tears coming down her face, crying about nothing, to no one.

  September

  “I WANT YOU to start cooking dinner one night a week.”

  “What? Why? I have a million things to do! And I don’t know how to—”

  “One night, Sara. Come on. And you do know how, you help me with the mushroom chicken all the time. Or you could make chili, or mac and cheese out of a box.”

  “How nutritious.”

  My mom stops chopping the onion on the cutting board and points the knife tip at me. “I’m serious. You come home, you disappear into your room. We don’t see you. I get that you’ve been upset by all of . . . what’s going on.” She waves the knife in a circle, then seems to realize she’s pointing a weapon at her only daughter and sets it down carefully on the counter.

  “I have a lot to do,” I insist.

  “Next week this will finally all be over,” she says. “We can go back to normal. But you need to help us go back to normal.”

  “I didn’t normally cook before.”

  “Tommy!” Mom yells over her shoulder, ignoring me. “Enough! Get your brother for dinner!”

  “Why don’t they have to make dinner?” I ask. Now I’m just whining and I know it, but I can’t stop. I was just about to disappear into my room, exactly like she said, and I swear I’m going to go insane if I don’t get out of this kitchen in two seconds.

  “They do. They will. That’s part of the plan,” Mom says, and she throws the onion bits into a hot, buttered pan, where they start to steam and sizzle. “Tom! I don’t hear you!”

  Thump. Thump. Thump. “Okay, okay,” we hear Tommy saying. We don’t see him, but we hear his footsteps continue from the basement stairs around through the front of the house and up to the second floor.

  “God, what did the stairs ever do to him?” my mom says. Her face breaks into a smile and for a second I don’t know why it looks so weird. And then I realize—she doesn’t smile anymore. Ever.

  “I’m just gonna—” I say, starting to move away, but she stops me.

  “You’re just gonna set the table. In the dining room.”

  Sigh. “Right, exactly,” I say. Back to normal. Whatever that means.

  I’m sitting on my bed, staring at the notepad from Teresa’s office, when there’s a quick knock and then my door is being pushed open.

  “What the—” I start to say, expecting one of my brothers. But instead I see my mom.

  “Can I come in?” she asks, hovering in the open door. She’s changed into her night clothes, yoga pants and the old Huskers sweatshirt. Her hair is up and she’s wearing her glasses, which always make her look younger. She used to come into my room every night around this time, just to talk, just to spend a little “girl time” at the end of the day. Obviously that never happens anymore. And obviously this must be about something else—I mean, who has time for “girl time”? Not us. Not the girl who killed Emma Putnam and that girl’s mom.

  “Yeah, okay,” I say. I shove the notepad behind me, under a pillow, and pull one of my textbooks closer, as if I’d been working on . . . right, European history. I don’t think I’ve even opened this book more than once. And in fact, it snaps when I flip it to a random page now, that obvious new-book sound making me flinch. The pages slap open in the middle of a chapter about the Holocaust. A gruesome black-and-white photo of three emaciated men with giant eyes stares at me. I shut the book again.

  Mom is at my desk, looking at my corkboard, just like Tommy did the other day. “Did Carmichael make that for you?” she asks, pointing at one of the CDs. Of course it’s the one with Carmichael Is Awesome Sharpied onto it. It was supposed to be a joke, back when I thought we were the kind of friends who made jokes. Or any kind of friends at all.

  “No,” I say, hoping she’ll drop it. Luckily she just nods.

  “Listen,” she says, finally turning around and walking closer to my bed. For a second she hesitates, since the whole mattress is covered in my books and backpack. I reach out an arm, knocking my English and science books onto the floor. I see her roll her eyes, but she sits on the part of the duvet I’ve cleared and goes on. “Natalie and I spoke about the statement you’re writing.”

  I don’t respond or nod or anything. I know all this, or anyway I figured.

  “She said you’re going to let her read it?”

  “Yeah, I think I have to. She’s the lawyer and everything.”

  “Sure,” Mom says. “Do you think—I mean, would you mind if I read it too?”

  I blink. She—what? “Why?” I ask, too startled to make more words.

  She shrugs a little, that one-shoulder shrug that she and Alex do exactly the same way. One of those weird, random family traits. Like, after the zombie apocalypse, I’ll know who I’m related to because of how they shrug.

  “I’ve spent the last six months wondering . . . I just want to know how you are,” she says quietly. “You don’t talk to me.”

  I can see there are tears in her eyes now, and I take a breath to say . . . I don’t know, but I need to say something, don’t I? But she reaches over and grabs my hand quickly, holding it in her soft, lotioned hand, the hand that wears a curled sterling silver ring instead of a wedding band.

  “You don’t have to talk to me, Sara. You’re growing up so fast, I know. I know you have a life outside this house. I know things are . . . complicated.” She stares at our hands and so do I, the shapes of our fingers so similar and so completely different at the same time. My nails with their chipped gray paint and hers with their almost unnoticeable pink at-home manicure. My wrist wrapped in a rubber band from the school binder that’s already falling apart, hers still wearing her slim gold-and-silver watch. The watch her mom gave her for her high school graduation. I think I’m supposed to get it for mine. I’d totally forgotten about that. When I was little I thought I’d be so happy the day I finally got that watch. I thought I’d be so grown-up. Pretty and confident. With hands like my mother’s.

  “I thought it might be easier to tell me, you know, how you feel, if it was in writing, that’s all.” She looks up again and smiles, the tears gone. “I remember how much I hated talking to my mom when I was seventeen, eighteen. She didn’t know anything.” Mom laughs, and I find myself smiling too. Grandma is pretty cool, though we don’t see her much since she moved to New Mexico a few years ago. Mom obviously doesn’t have a problem talking to her anymore—they spend like three hours a week on the phone now—but I always like hearing stories like this.

  But I guess it’s not a story night. Mom lets go of my hand and sits back, glancing at my books on the floor. As she picks them up she says, “So anyway, if you want to show it to me, I’d like to read it. But of course I’ll be there on Tuesday, too, when you read it.”

  She stacks the books back on the foot of my bed and gets up to leave. I still haven’t said anything. My hand is warm from where she was holding it. I didn’t even realize how little I’ve said to her all summer, all year—I thought she was the one not talking to me. But maybe it was the other way around? Maybe I’ve had everything wrong, mixed up, the whole time?

  She’s at my door now, but she stops and looks back, like she can hear what I’m thinking. “You know, baby—you know I love you, right?”

  I nod.

  “And I’m proud of you for doing this. I’m not—I don’t like what happened, you know. I don’t like everything I’ve heard about in Natalie’s office. I remember high school, I know how brutal it is. And I know Brielle. She’s got a strong personality. She’s exciting to be around. I know how you can get pulled into all that . . .”

  I swallow. Mom’s said all this stuff before, though not often since, like, ninth grade. For a while she wanted me to not hang out with Brielle so much, but after a year or so I think she finally gave up. At the time I was just happy she wasn’t bitching about Brielle’s “influence” o
n me anymore.

  But I don’t remember her ever saying what she says next.

  “I’m on your side. I’m your mom, I’ll always be on your side. The idea of you ever wanting to kil—of ever doing something like what Emma did . . . I just don’t know how I’d be able to go on. I’m just—I’m just so glad it wasn’t you.”

  I feel numb, but she’s looking at me so intently, I nod.

  “And I’m glad you agreed to do this, to talk in court. Because no matter how hard this has been on us, I can’t imagine how much worse it is for them. I think if I were Emma’s mom, it would mean a lot to me.”

  She presses her lips together, pursing them to the side a little, like she’s wondering whether to say something else. But she doesn’t. She just smiles, kind of sadly, and quietly closes my door behind her.

  And I sit there, the corner of the notepad digging into my back from under the pillow. Waiting.

  Overnight, everyone at school figured out what’s happening next week. They even all know the word allocute suddenly, like it was on a test or something. Many of them have loudly declared their opinions on the subject. Unfavorable would be the word. “You should go to jail for the rest of your life” is the longer-winded version that most people seem to prefer.

  By lunchtime I still haven’t seen Carmichael, though I’ve been looking everywhere. I’m afraid he’s skipped the whole day, but when I walk out the back doors to eat my sandwich in my car—I haven’t set foot in the cafeteria all year—I finally spot him with his bike. I take a deep breath and go over to him.

  “Hi, it’s me again,” I say, ignoring the fact that I sound like a moron. “Can we talk?”

  He looks like he was just about to take his bike lock off the rack, but he stands up and turns to me and puts his hands in his jeans pockets. “Sure,” he says.

  “I acted like an asshole,” I say. I push my shoulders back slightly, trying to be taller, braver. More confident. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Okay,” he says. He’s looking at me like he doesn’t really know what to think, or hasn’t decided yet at least.