Damage Done (23 page)

So I sent Ryan on that disastrous date, and I let Liv fix me up with Aiden. I remember the first time Aiden and I kissed; we were in his car, me tucked against the passenger-side door, Aiden practically straddling the gearshift. “How was that?” he’d asked huskily, his hamburger breath gusting against my face.

It was all wrong. His teeth had knocked against mine. His nose had stuck me in the cheek. His lips were chapped and dry. “Great,” I said, my stomach roiling.

I met Ryan at the front door. “I can’t do it,” I said. “I can’t fake it. I can’t be with someone who isn’t you.”

“I can fix that,” he said.

Aiden and I went out a few more times. I cheered him on at soccer games, let him parade me around on his arm, endured his kisses, which always mysteriously tasted like various sorts of meat, even when the only thing I’d seen him eat all day was salad. But one day, as Aiden was driving me home from school, the brakes snapped. We crashed.

I sat in the passenger seat, bruised and reeling, my wrist screaming in pain, as Aiden bled to death two feet away. My ears rang so loudly I didn’t hear my brother wrenching open my door before he pulled me out. I sagged onto the ground. Shock waves rippled through me like I was the epicenter of an earthquake. “Did you do that?” I asked, dazed, steadily refusing to look over at Aiden.

“You weren’t supposed to be in the car,” Ryan said miserably. “Liv was supposed to drive you home today.”

I could hardly hear him over all the bells clanging in my head. “Liv was sick,” I said. “You almost
killed
me.”

I sank into his chest. He rested his chin on the crown of my head, staring over me into the car behind. “But I didn’t,” he said. “And now you’re all mine. For good.”

The rippling waves of shock turned into rippling waves of anger, fiery and hot in the pit of my stomach. I shoved him with my good arm; taken by surprise, he stumbled three steps back before catching himself. “You almost killed me,” I said. “I almost died. I don’t think you get that.”

He blinked. “Of course I get that,” he said. “But you didn’t die. You’re still here.”

I whirled around. “But I almost died,” I said. “And now I’m angry.” Neither Ryan nor I spared much thought for the boy actually dying in the car behind us. Neither of us was particularly concerned.

In revenge, I started dating Evan Wilde a few months after Aiden died. My big, dumb football player, the first to die in the band room.

The band room.

Now, that’s a subject I don’t want to go near.

But I promised Ryan I’d tell the whole truth, and so I
will
tell the whole truth. I owe him that, at least.

Evan and I dated for about four months. I let him slobber all over my chin in front of my brother, and in exchange, he boosted my image. Liv was beyond excited to go to all the football parties and hang out with the popular kids. We hadn’t ever been unpopular, as in nobody had ever actively made fun of us or ignored us, but we’d been off to the side. Invisible. But with Evan by my side, I walked under a perpetual spotlight. Some of the little band freshmen, flutes and clarinets, mostly, took to following me around, basking in my newfound glow, a rarity in band kids. I knew them in passing—thought two of their names were maybe Penelope and Sophie—but otherwise didn’t pay much attention. Most of my attention was dedicated to counting the times the muscle in my brother’s jaw throbbed or judging the shade of red to which his face deepened every time he saw me and Evan together.

We lived in the same house, sure, but I did all I could to avoid Ryan during the day: I’d come home and shut myself in my room, only emerging when my parents were around. He’d knock on my door, stick notes through the crack, but I wouldn’t budge. He’d almost killed me. He’d almost
killed
me. I wasn’t talking to him until he realized how big a deal that was and begged for my forgiveness.

So it wasn’t a shock when he cornered me at school that fateful afternoon, just as I was coming out of the band room, in the hallway behind the room lined with all the instrument closets. “Julia. We need to talk.”

He backed me against the wall next to the clarinet closet, pinning me in with his arms. I squirmed, trying to break free, but he pressed the length of his body against me. “Let me go.”

“No.” He searched me with his eyes, and when he spoke, his voice crackled with intensity. “What the hell are you doing with Evan Wilde?”

“He’s my boyfriend.” I wanted to cross my arms for emphasis, but there wasn’t enough space. “Now let me go.”

“No.” He leaned down and kissed me. I resisted, keeping my lips stubbornly still, but that only lasted until my insides erupted into flame. I threw my arms around him and drew him closer, closer, closer, until even the air molecules between us were squeezed out.

“The instrument closet,” I panted, and cracked the door behind me. We stumbled through.

We were so busy we didn’t even hear the footsteps outside. I drew back to take a breath and looked over his shoulder to see two pairs of eyes and two mouths, all round as Cheerios, staring through the small window in the door. Those two annoying freshmen, I realized—Penelope something, Sophie something.

By the time I’d composed myself and made it out the door, Penelope and Sophie were already running down the hall. “Wait!” I shouted after them. “Stop! Tell anyone and I’ll kill you both!”

But it was too late. They were deep in whispers with Elisabeth Wood, who would rush to tell Irene Papadakis and Nina Smith, who would eventually tell her boyfriend, Danny Steinberg, who would nudge his best friend, Erick Thorson, and snicker about it. About us.

Erick Thorson was on the football team with Eddie Meyer, who was starting quarterback beside Evan’s running back. Evan would rush to Liv’s ear, asking her if what he’d heard could possibly be true. All this would take place in approximately an hour.

Mr. Walrus was a mistake. Mr. Walrus shouldn’t have been there.

I turned to my brother. “I know how you can get me to forgive you for almost killing me in Aiden’s car,” I said, my voice deadly calm. “Run home and find my old backpack. The pink-and-purple one. Get Dad’s gun and put it inside. Run home, and bring it back to me.”

He nodded, already backing away. I know his mind was racing as frantically as mine, but he trusted me. He’d do anything I told him to.

“I’ll be in the band room,” I said. “Waiting.”

You have to understand—I didn’t want to kill anybody. Well, that’s not entirely true. I would think back to Joe Johnson, and smashing into him with my car, and the thrill that coursed through my veins. I wanted to kill people; I liked how it felt, but I knew enough to know it was wrong. That doing it again could get me locked away forever. I only did what I did to protect myself. I didn’t have any other options.

Most of it did depend on luck, of course. It was only a matter of luck that Penelope and Sophie and the others all had gym class last period, and their phones were tucked away in their gym lockers with their real clothes. If they hadn’t all been in the same gym period, and if Penelope and Sophie hadn’t been running late, without even time to stop and send a frantic mass text, it never would have been contained.

Luck. Good luck for me. Bad luck for them. It’s all a matter of perspective.

But it was preparation, too, of course. I forged assorted notes (which, when found later, were blamed on Ryan) and stuck them to their gym lockers—emergency notes from club advisors:
Don’t change into your school clothes, just go directly to the band room. You’ll have plenty of time to change and gather your stuff later. This is an emergency.
The roof of the instrument closet fell in, or there was a fire in the locker room out at the football field. Crises that had to be dealt with right away. And I glued the alternate exits shut before anyone showed up. Superglue did the trick just fine.

And then I made my dramatic entrance from the instrument closet and stood in front of the room, an empty music stand before me, surveying all the people on the risers. Everybody had their own distinct shade of horror on their face.

“You’re here because you heard a terrible rumor about me,” I said. It should have taken Ryan about fifteen minutes to get home, maybe ten to find my backpack and get the gun, then fifteen to get back. It had taken about that long, maybe even longer, to figure out the chain of gossip and gather everybody together. I was just glad they’d all come. “And I wanted to talk to you about it.”

“This isn’t French club,” Nina Smith said, still confused.

Evan’s face was glowing and red, a planet all its own, or a dying star. “Can we talk in private?”

“We don’t need to talk in private,” I said. Now that Ryan and I had been together again, I couldn’t face the thought of Evan’s hot-dog breath or clumsy fingers on me. I’d already given his varsity jacket back, stuffed it symbolically into his locker while he was in gym. “Not when—”

And that was when Ryan burst through the door. He already had the gun in his hand.

You know what happened from here. I carved my name into the music stand as it all went down, knowing this was the end of life as I knew it.

First went Evan. Then Liv. Then Eddie. Then Elisabeth Wood, Irene Papadakis, Nina Smith, Danny Steinberg, and Erick Thorson piled into stacks like firewood by the superglued doors. Then Mr. Walrus, then the trembling Sophie Grant and Penelope Wong, trapped under our teacher’s sweaty bulk.

When it was over, in our twelve minutes alone, Ryan dropped the gun to his side. The barrel released an acrid scent into the air. Somebody, Evan, maybe, or Eddie, had left pink spatters of brain on the blackboard. Distantly, somewhere outside, we heard shouting. People had clearly heard the shots and screams. It would only be a matter of time before the police showed up.

I think he knew then what I was going to ask him to do. I could see it in the way he searched my face. Like he knew he was never going to see it again. I was looking at him the same way, my eyes roving over the scar on his forehead from when I’d thrown that glass at him when he dared to have a crush on someone else, memorizing the slope of his nose, the golden shimmer of his hazel eyes. He was the only one. There would never be another. There
could
never be another. We were suitable only for each other. We were both born defective, lacking the same empathetic center in our brains. Or perhaps we were both born stronger. Maybe we’d gotten a glimpse in the womb of all we would need to do over the course of our lives, and had steeled ourselves, ripping those parts of our brains out right then.

“One last time,” he said. He didn’t have to specify. I rushed to him and we tangled together, desperately, as the blood of our classmates soaked into the carpet. His lips tasted like blood, though it might have been my imagination.

Time flew by. We pulled apart, panting, after eleven minutes that felt like eleven seconds. “Are you sure you can do it?” I asked.

You can tell me I’m a sociopath. You can tell me I feel nothing. But I promised my brother I’d tell the truth, and I’m telling the truth now when I say that I felt something then. Grief was tearing through me, a rip through the very core of my being. But he had to do it. There was no way for both of us to walk out of there, and I couldn’t bear to see him in jail. Better a sweet memory than that.

“I have to,” he said. “For you. For us.”

He always got me. I bowed my head. I didn’t want to see it happen, but I couldn’t avoid the sounds: the quick intake of breath—the last one—before pulling the trigger, the single, sharp gunshot, the nanosecond of silence that hung in the air before the thud of his lifeless body hitting the ground.

Or the thud of
him
hitting the ground. Not his body, because he didn’t die. I hadn’t checked; I hadn’t thought it necessary, and I couldn’t bear it. I’d simply squared my shoulders, taken several deep, shuddering breaths, and strode out the band room door into the waiting arms of the police. Everybody who knew about my brother and me was dead. I would be okay. I would start over.

And I
was
okay until I saw Spence lurking, telling me with his mere presence that things had changed. But now my brother is dead for good, and our secret is safe, and I’ll never have to worry again.

I was very studiously not looking at Michael as I finished my story, though I really should have been. I was pointing a gun at him, after all. What if he dove at me, or screamed and tried to run?

He wouldn’t. I knew he wouldn’t. Was that love? Knowing what someone would or wouldn’t do before they did it?

“Did you ever care about me?” Michael said flatly. “Or were you just using me to get to him?”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “He wanted to tell.” I remembered meeting my brother in the backyard the night Alane had slept over at my house to keep me safe. I’d wrapped my robe around myself, trying to shield my body from the chill of the night, but it didn’t work.

“I can’t do it anymore, Julia.” I could hardly believe the changes the past year had wrought in him: the stiff left side, the stumbling speech. “I can’t keep pretending. I won’t do it without you. Tell the truth with me.”

My breath caught in my throat. Tell the truth? I’d go to prison and be scorned and mocked as the incestuous twin. I’d be reviled by the entire country. My parents. Alane. Michael.

“I can’t,” I said. “Remember? We decided you would take the blame.”

“
You
decided I would take the blame.” He crossed his arms. “We didn’t decide I would keep taking the blame. You made it look like I killed Dr. Spence. I liked Dr. Spence.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “I don’t want to tell them without your blessing, but I will. I’ll give you some time to think about it. I want us to do it together because we’ve done everything together, but I’ll do it myself if I have to.”

“No.” The word came out reflexively.

“Of course not,” he said. “Why would you sacrifice your new life and your precious new boyfriend?”

He knew about Michael. “Why should both of us go away when—”

“I’ve spent the last year in solitary, Julia, relearning how to talk and eat with a spoon and wipe my own ass.” A fine spray of spit settled over my face, and I flinched. “All alone. By myself. Not answering any of their questions. Protecting you. And you’ve spent the last year gallivanting around with your new friends and hooking up with some new boy. I don’t think that’s fair. I mean it, Julia. I’ll tell.” He stepped back, melting into the darkness. “I’ll give you some time to come around. I know you will. I have faith in you.”

He shouldn’t have. My voice shook as I spoke next. “Yes, you were very helpful. But I swear, I wasn’t using you.”

“But you want to keep this a secret. And you’ve told me.”

He’d picked up on it. My hand was shaking now, too, not just my voice. Because I’d killed so many people to protect my secrets. Evan. Liv. Eddie Meyer. Elisabeth Wood. Irene Papadakis. Nina Smith. Danny Steinberg. Erick Thorson. Mr. Walrus. Sophie Grant. Penelope Wong.

Dr. Spence.

Miranda.

My brother.

There was real fear in Michael’s eyes because he knew exactly what I was thinking. If I didn’t want everything getting out, he had to die.

“I could make it look like a battle,” I said, my voice deceptively calm. The way I framed Dr. Spence’s death as my brother’s doing. The way I’d crushed my mom’s pills into Miranda’s hot chocolate and left her there in the back of the parking lot—she wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon. “You snuck in for some thrills, to talk to the killer with me. Ryan got free, grabbed your gun, shot you. I wrestled the gun away and shot him. I’m traumatized, yet again. Nobody could prove otherwise.” I was very, very good at this.

“Julia,” Michael said. “Please.”

I looked at the gun. I looked at him. I looked back at the gun. I didn’t hear anyone coming; the room must indeed have been soundproofed. But eventually someone would come down to check in. I couldn’t stand here forever and keep us suspended in this nebulous state between action and inaction, no matter how much I wanted to.

I had to kill him. If I didn’t kill him, what was the point of everything I’d done so far? Why were the eleven dead? Why had I staged those deaths? And why, why, why had I killed my brother, my only? If I didn’t kill Michael, they would all have died in vain. All my secrets would get out. I would be hated. Hunted. Even if I made it away, started over as someone new, I would forever be looking over my shoulder.

And yet…and yet.

There was the determined set of his jaw when he told me he’d go with me to Elkton. There was the glow on his face when he stirred the sauce for his lasagna and poured me a cup of hot chocolate straight from his heart. There was the graze of stubble as he kissed me, and the catch in his voice when he told me he loved me, and the way my mom described the glow on my face when I realized I had his love held tight in my fist.

The epiphany struck me like a firework.
This
was love. Love was not shooting somebody even though you really should. Love was leaving someone free to destroy your life and stomp on the ruins because you couldn’t bear the thought of ending theirs. Love was putting somebody else’s needs over your own. I couldn’t shoot him, because I loved him.

I tucked the gun into my waistband. “Give me an hour to get away,” I said. “That’s all I ask.”

He said nothing. I avoided his eyes as I turned my back, exposing myself to him, and walked toward the door. I almost hoped he would stop me, but he didn’t. I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want the last expression I’d see on him to be one of horror and loathing.

I expected at any second to feel someone’s hand clamp around my shoulder and tell me I was under arrest. I had my gun just in case—I’d sooner shoot myself than fall victim to the same system that had held my brother. But nobody did. Nothing happened. I nodded goodbye to the cops in the office, still working through their mounds of paper, climbed into my mom’s car, and drove off into the figurative sunset.