I Swear (18 page)

“Okay. I’ve got fifteen minutes.”

“Look, I know I haven’t been around as much, but I’ve come to every volleyball game, and all week I look forward to that and playing guitar with you. All I think about is you. We’re more than friends, Les, and you know it.”

She looked out into the rain. “We are more than just friends, Jake, but—”

“No ‘buts’!” I smacked the steering wheel.

“Jake—what do you want from me?”

I blinked and looked her straight in the eyes. “I don’t want anything ‘from’ you, Leslie. I want you. Just you. I want you to be my girlfriend.”

She held my gaze and my right hand. There was something missing in her eyes, something that had been there once. She reached up and touched my face. Her hand was cool on my cheek and I realized how warm I was.

As her hand slipped off my cheek, she pulled out her phone.

“I want to show you something,” she said.

She tapped into her text messages and pulled up a number with an area code I didn’t recognize, and turned the screen to me so that I could read the texts:

Slut

Boy stealer

Bitch face

Man eater

Why are ur thighs so fat?

Nice rack. Still screwing the doc?

My cheeks burned. “What the hell is that?” I asked. “Whose number is that?”

“I don’t know for sure,” she said softly, slipping the phone back into the pocket of her jacket.

“Leslie, let me see that.”

“It doesn’t matter, Jake. Whoever is doing this uses a different Google Voice number every time. I’ve tried to report
it. I’ve told my mom about it. I’ve told the wireless company. We’ve emailed Google. The person just changes to a new one and the texts keep coming.”

“It’s Macie, isn’t it?”

Leslie stared out the window. “Probably,” she said quietly. “But there’s no way to prove it.”

“How long has this been going on?” Rage boiled up inside me like an explosion.

“For a while,” sighed Leslie.

“Macie is always at our house with Jillian, and vice versa. How do I not know about this?”

Leslie glanced my way and laughed a little, shaking her head.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re so sweet, Jake. You just move through the world assuming the best about people. Nobody tells you otherwise.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“You think they’d admit it to me? I’m sure the whole gang knows. I’m sure they keep it from you. I’m sure it isn’t hard.”

“That’s it!” I yelled, and pounded the steering wheel. Leslie jumped. I was already dialing my phone.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Calling Jillian. This has to stop.”

“
No!
Jake, don’t.” She grabbed my phone and tapped end call.

“Dammit, Leslie, give me my phone!”

“Jake, look at me,” she said. Then, when my eyes locked on hers, she said quietly, “You can’t bring this up. You cannot tell anyone, do you understand?”

“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to sit around while that bitch harasses you, and my sister and best friend follow her around like a puppy dog.”

“If you bring it up, it will just get worse.” She was desperate. Her eyes searched mine wildly for some sign that I wouldn’t talk about it.

“How can it get any worse?” I asked. “After that stunt in the park, Josh Phillips still crosses to the other side of the hall when he sees me.”

“And remember what happened?” Leslie asked, the fire back in her eyes. “You got called in and threatened with a suspension.”

“Josh is such an asshole.” I shook my head.

We sat quietly for a minute listening to the rain pound the roof of the car. The windows were fogged up because of our voices, my yelling, her sentences, soft but firm. Our breath had mixed—little particles of the moisture from deep inside our bodies had been showered out into this tiny space and mingled with one another, then clung to the cool glass in tiny beads. There we were; Leslie and I mixed up together on the windows, fogging our view of anything else but each other.

I wanted her so badly in that moment. I wanted us to be mixed up, our arms, our legs, our lips—not just our breath.
I reached over and smoothed her bangs away from her forehead. She closed her eyes and rested her cheek against my hand.

As I leaned in to kiss her, she opened her eyes and put a hand on my chest to stop me.

“If you go to Jillian or to Macie, this just gets worse.”

“And if you won’t be my girlfriend,
this
gets worse,” I said, thumping my fist against my chest. “This tightness in my lungs. This ache in my gut. Leslie, I can’t breathe.”

“Macie would flip her shit if you started going out with me. Jake, haven’t you been paying attention? This is what started the whole thing. You didn’t want to date her. This whole thing comes down to what Macie wants. She wants you.”

“I don’t care what Macie wants.” My voice was so low and so intense when it came out of me that I almost didn’t recognize myself.

“She does,” said Leslie quietly. “If she can’t have you, no one else can either.”

I was quiet for a long time. I felt the fight drain out of me, and with it, the hopelessness of the situation flooded into its place. Suddenly I was desperate. Desperate to keep her here with me, in the car, in this moment.

But all I could say was, “Please.”

“What?” she asked.

“Please don’t let Macie win.”

She shoved her hands into her raincoat pockets. “Break’s over,” she whispered.

Before I knew what was happening, she was running toward the front door of the video store, and somehow I was chasing her—no umbrella, no jacket. The rain was cold, like nails being driven into my cheeks and neck and shoulders. She got to the door ahead of me and slipped inside and behind the counter as a group of hipster college kids pushed out into the rain. I was blocked from entering by a barrage of fedoras and umbrellas. As the doors closed behind them, I looked up to see Leslie disappear into the romance section.

Is she crying? Or is there just rain still on her cheeks?

I couldn’t tell for sure through the glass of the doors. Andy turned around at the counter and saw me. Suddenly I realized I was crying. He raised his hand and started toward me. I watched him coming over like it was a cold, wet nightmare. He pushed open the door and yelled over the storm, “Hey, man! You okay?”

I shook my head in a silent no.
No. No, I am not okay. Nothing is okay.

Then I slowly turned and walked into the parking lot, raising my arms and face up to the cold rain, letting the chill tear through me, wishing it would somehow put out the fire.

•  •  •

“So you pretty much stopped coming around at that point, I guess,” said Andy. “Makes sense now. I wouldn’t want to
hang with the chick who broke my heart, either.”

“That’s what made it worse,” I said. “I wanted to be with her every minute. I just wanted her near me. I’d still go watch her volleyball games. Beth would show up and sit next to me on the bleachers. We didn’t even talk—really, we hardly spoke—just sat and watched Leslie. We’d both leave early.”

I paused to swallow the lump that had come up in my throat. “I wish we’d stuck around,” I said. “I’m not sure she ever knew we were there.”

“Did you see her before . . . ?” Andy’s question trailed off into the awful nothing that happens when the sentence becomes too terrible to continue to say out loud.

I nodded. “I was the last person who talked to her that I know of,” I said.

“Heavy,” Andy whispered. “Did she call you?”

I shook my head. The words were getting harder to find. Why was I telling Andy this? What was it? I realized that he was the only person I knew who knew Leslie but didn’t know the rest of the people involved in the story. Something about him was real, genuine. He’d gone to a deposition about Leslie’s death, not as the accused, but as a friend, a coworker, somebody willing to help out.

“I just showed up and knocked on her door,” I said.

“Just like that, huh? Right outta the blue?”

“No,” I said quietly.

“What made you go?” Andy asked.

“The necklace,” I said. “We bought these necklaces.” I pulled mine out of my shirt. “Me and Leslie and Jillian—when we were in Cape Cod the summer before ninth grade.”

Andy frowned. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You had Leslie’s necklace?”

“No,” I said. “Macie did.”

•  •  •

I’ll never forget walking up the stairs that night. I’d been at Brad’s playing video games. I’d seen all the cars out front, and I knew that Jillian had the girls over. I didn’t feel like talking to them, so I was as quiet as possible.

I walked into the bathroom between our rooms, and as I was turning the lock in the door that led to Jillian’s room, I realized that something had been strange when I’d passed through my bedroom. There was something on my pillow.

I stepped back out of the bathroom and walked over to the head of my bed. There was a pink three-by-five card that read,
If I can’t have what I want, you can’t have what you want.

I frowned and reached down to pick up the card. Underneath it was a wad of silver chain. As I lifted it from the pillow, a tiny silver anchor fell against my palm.

I don’t remember ever seeing a color before. I’ve heard the expression “I saw red,” meaning “I was angry,” but there was more to this color—it was darker than red. It was crimson—so dark it was almost purple. It was six quick steps down the hall to Jillian’s bedroom.

When I threw open the door, it hit the wall so hard that the lamp fell off Jillian’s dresser, and Krista shrieked. Beth was sitting at the computer, and when Katherine asked what I was holding, I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs. I wanted to put my fist through the wall.

Before I could move, I heard Macie say that I was “so sexy” when I’m angry, and something about the glint in her eye confirmed what I already knew: M AAAacie put this necklace here.

I had so many questions, they were tripping over one another in my brain.

“Don’t ever speak to me again,” I said. “I want you out of my life.”

Then I raced down the stairs to my car and squealed away from the curb toward Leslie’s.

25. JILLIAN

“What are we doing here?” Beth’s face was ashen as she stared out of the car at the Highline Performing Arts Center.

“We are here to support Katherine,” I said.

We both sat there looking blankly at the building for another minute in complete silence, watching parents and grandparents and friends and relatives and sisters, and older brothers who were excited for the swimsuit competition, and little brothers who were dragged there, as they filed from the parking lot into the building for the Miss Washington Teen USA Pageant.

“Do we have to go in there?” Beth asked. “Katherine will be onstage. She’ll have lights in her eyes. She’ll never know if we were here or not.”

“Macie will,” I said.

“I don’t care,” said Beth. “I don’t ever want to see her again.”

“Unfortunately, you will. Besides, we promised,” I said. “This is it. If Katherine wins Miss Washington Teen, she goes to Miss Teen USA. Besides, if we don’t show up after the last twenty-four hours, Macie wins.”

Beth sighed. “This used to be so fun. I love watching Katherine in these pageants. She’s so poised and pretty, and personable.”

“Nice alliteration.” I smiled.

“Perfect.”

I laughed. “C’mon. Let’s get in there.”

Macie and Krista were coming out of the bathroom when we walked into the lobby, and when we saw them, Beth and I stopped in our tracks. I could feel my stomach sweep up into the back of my throat and then free-fall into my toes in the one one-hundredth of a second that it took for my brain to get the signals from my eyes that it was Macie standing there with Krista at her side, staring in my direction—directly into my eyes.

Everything went silent behind a roar in my ears. It was like I was seeing Macie again for the first time, and I remembered kindergarten—Miss Keeler’s class. The Merricks had just moved to the school district so that Mr. Merrick could run for the city council seat there, but I didn’t know that yet. I was outside at recess on the first day of school, in the four-square lines with a kickball, getting ready to serve, when I saw her walk out onto the playground.

Macie stopped and looked across the blacktop, and when we locked eyes, we just stared at each other for a second. Then I smiled. I’m still not sure why. She smiled back and raised her hand, waved like she’d known me for years, and ran toward me. That afternoon, we waited for our moms on the curb together in the pick-up line, and she gave me a sticker and called Jake a “fart monster,” and that made me laugh so hard I cried. The rest just sort of happened.

We’d survived chicken pox in fifth grade together, and Robby Garret telling everybody he made out with us at his birthday party in sixth grade. We’d even made it through last year, when she decided to run for student council president with Katherine instead of me.

Now, here we were, seeing each other again—for the first time. She knew about Brad, and about Beth, and as we locked eyes, everything went silent and I felt this place inside me open up. Like an hourglass there were little particles rushing out of me—was it strength or courage or hope? All I knew was that I was desperate to stop it from draining away from me.

And in that moment—as we held each other’s gaze across the lobby—I felt my heart racing and my stomach dropping. I suddenly wondered how I’d gotten here to this place where the fear of losing my history made me risk my future. And in spite of it all, I took a deep breath.

Then I smiled.

I’m still not sure why.

She smiled back and raised her hand, waved like she’d known me for years, and ran toward me.

The rest just sort of happened.

•  •  •

Katherine was gorgeous and flawless until the interview portion of the evening gown competition—usually her strongest category.

Surrounded by girls in spangles and Mylar and bugle beads, Katherine entered the stage at the top of the staircase in a simple red organza sheath, the color of blood. Both the neck and back draped in a low swag, her mocha skin glowed, solitaire earrings sparkled in the spotlight, and a single strand of diamonds glittered at her neck. The dress clung to her lightly, all the way down to diamond-studded Jimmy Choo high-heel sandals that flashed with each step as they peeked out from beneath her hem. A slight flared train flirted with the floor behind her as she walked.