Interim (22 page)

Regan led him to the living room where Caroline sat watching TV. She looked up and smiled.

“Hi,” she said brightly.

“Hi,” Jeremy replied.

“This is my younger sister, Caroline,” Regan said. “Caroline, this is my friend, Jeremy.”

“The one you attacked this morning?” Caroline asked.

Regan sighed pleasantly. “The same.”

Caroline addressed Jeremy. “Do you have bruises? Or claw marks? Are you going to sue us? Will we have to leave our house? Is Regan going to prison?”

This girl watches waaay too much TV
, he thought.

“I’m not going to prison,” Regan said patiently, like she was repeating the statement for the hundredth time.

“Are you going to sue us?” Caroline asked again. “We’re not rich,” she clarified.

Jeremy shook his head, smiling.

“Why do you have a lip ring? Do you get food caught in it when you eat?”

“Caroline,” Regan chided.

Jeremy shrugged. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “I guess I liked the idea at the time.”

Caroline nodded.

“Can we have some privacy?” Regan asked, turning off the TV.

“Gaaaaahhh!” Caroline cried, grabbing the remote. She powered on the television once more.

“Caroline . . .”

“I just need to pause it,” she said.

“You’ve seen
High School Musical
a hundred times,” Regan pointed out.

“And?”

“And nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Regan replied.

Caroline screwed up her face, debating her next move.

“Well? Are you leaving?” Regan asked.

“Did Mom say you could have privacy?”

“Yes.”

Caroline frowned. “I figured she would. But why can’t I listen?”

“Because it doesn’t concern you. Remember those boundaries we talked about?”

Caroline thought a moment as she twirled her hair.

“Yes,” she said at last. Sulky reluctance.

Regan glanced at Jeremy and rolled her eyes. “I’ll come tell you all about it when we’re done,” she said to her sister, and Caroline lit up.

“Okay!” She tossed a quick “Nice to meet you” in Jeremy’s direction before darting to the kitchen.

They were alone again, but this time the air didn’t buzz with electric anger.

“I’m sorry,” Regan said. “And I mean it.”

Jeremy studied her worn and tired face. The freshness was gone. She looked like the half-eaten stale cracker left behind on an abandoned dinner plate. Obviously she’d been crying all day. Her red-rimmed eyes were the blatant giveaway.

“I believe you,” he replied.

Regan sank into the couch. Jeremy thought it safer to sit opposite her in the club chair.

“All my friends turned against me,” she said, staring at her lap.

“Why?”

“Because I broke up with Brandon.” She paused for a moment. “One of the best moments of my life, too—breaking up with him. I couldn’t wait to tell Casey . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Jeremy waited, trying to subdue the elation building like a bonfire inside his heart. She broke up with Brandon! He searched for a big, wet blanket to snuff out the flames, but even her bizarre attack on him this morning couldn’t tame the fire. It roared inside his chest.

“I couldn’t wait to tell her. It was so badass. You know how you always fantasize about saying exactly what you want to someone but it rarely comes out that way?”

Jeremy screwed up his face. “Maybe.”

“Like, you have it all planned out, but then when the moment arrives, you’re never as good with your words as you imagine you’d be? Never as sharp?”

He nodded.

“Well, I was good with my words. And I was sharp. It poured out of me like I’d memorized a speech or something. It was awesome. Bad. Ass.”

He smiled.

“I told him I’d flattened him if he ever came near me again,” she said, giggling.

“And I believe it,” Jeremy replied, rubbing his chest.

Regan laughed. “I bet you do! Again, sorry.”

“No worries,” Jeremy said.

“So, I get to school, right? And I practically run to Casey to tell her all about it. And everyone, including her, has shut me out,” she continued. “Because I suppose Brandon told them to. And everyone does what he says because he’s Brandon.”

Jeremy grunted.

“But Casey?” Her voice quivered, and she swallowed. “She’s my best friend, you know?”

“I know.”

“I mean, I looked right at her face, and I swear to God she looked through me.
Through
me!”

Silence.

“Regan?”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t wanna make this all about me or anything, but you attacked me this morning,” Jeremy began. “You said it was all my fault, and I don’t understand.”

Regan turned her face toward the window. Jeremy watched the light play on her cheek, shooting reflective sparks where her trail of tears had dried.

“It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have said it,” she replied.

“But why did you? Why did you believe it was my fault? What did I do?”

“It’s not important,” she muttered.

“It is to me. You hit me. You told Mr. Armstrong you wanted to kill me,” Jeremy said.

Regan buried her face in her hands. “Please don’t remind me.” Her words were muffled against her palms.

“You have to help me understand,” Jeremy persisted. He would not leave this house until she explained herself.

Regan breathed deeply and then looked at Jeremy once more.

“I was angry and looking for someone to take it out on. I thought about middle school and how you rejected me—how you didn’t want to be my friend when I asked you—and I guess I just wanted to use that incident as a way of making sense of my hurt.”

He froze in shock. What in God’s name was she talking about?

Regan grew slightly impatient when Jeremy didn’t respond.

“You didn’t want to be my friend. It hurt my feelings. I thought about how my life could have been so different had you just said yes. I know it sounds stupid, but maybe I would have never dated Brandon. I would have never been initiated into that disgusting group. I would have never turned my back on defending people, you know? Sticking up for the little guy? I would have stayed strong, stayed
me
. My whole life could have been different if I were your friend. But you said no. And I know, okay? I know it’s ridiculous to blame you for my choices, but I was angry this morning. I was angry and out of my mind and scared and alone. I needed someone to blame.”

Regan turned away once more and looked out the window.

“Regan?” Jeremy croaked, then tried again. “Regan?”

She didn’t move.

“I never rejected you.”

She shook her head.

“I mean it,” he said. “I never rejected you in middle school. I have no idea what you’re talking about. You never asked me to be your friend.”

She whipped her head around and glared at him. “I wrote you a note!”

He was helplessly confused.

“I know it’s stupid, all right? A seventh grader writing a fu—” She glimpsed the doorway to the kitchen. “—freaking note! But I was embarrassed to ask you face-to-face!”

“I don’t understand.”

Regan sighed patiently. “I wrote you a note and gave it to Casey to give to you. She came back and told me you threw it away and said no.”

“Casey never gave me a note.”

“Are you seriously sitting there trying to tell me that you never had a conversation with Casey about being my friend? She told me the whole thing! You read the note and then tore it up and said to her that you didn’t ‘do friends,’” Regan explained, putting air quotes around her last words.

Jeremy burst out laughing.

“You think this is funny?” Regan demanded. She jumped up from the couch.

“Uh, yeah, considering I’d never use that phrase,” Jeremy replied.

“Okay, so maybe it wasn’t exactly that you said you didn’t do friends, but it was something like that.”

“I would have killed to have a friend!” he cried. Perhaps not the best choice of words, but whatever.

“You’re just all about killing people, aren’t you?” Regan hissed.

He wouldn’t dignify the question with a response.

“Your best friend never came to me with any note. If she had, you and I would have been friends,” he said bluntly.

“So what? You’re saying Casey’s a liar?” Regan challenged.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying because I never received any note from her. I had no idea you wanted to be my friend. I would have gladly been your friend and changed the course of your life’s history!”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

Jeremy exhaled slowly. He brought his finger to his scar and traced it absently as he thought.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was mean.”

“Why would Casey lie about something like that?”

“I guess she didn’t want you to be friends with me.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know, Regan. Look at her. She’s a popular girl now. Maybe she was already making plans back in seventh grade to become one.”

“That’s hard to believe. Those kids were awful to her,” Regan said.

“Easiest way to stop being harassed is to become one of them,” Jeremy explained.

Regan furrowed her brows, then shook her head slowly. “No, I don’t think so. It’s not easy to become one of them. You have to sacrifice a lot.”

“Well, apparently she was willing to do that.”

“But what’s that got to do with me?”

“She wanted to take you along for the ride. I suppose she thought I’d get in the way.”

Regan thought a moment. “You realize you just absolved me of everything, right?”

“Huh?”

“You said she wanted to take me along.” Regan threw up her hands. “I was forced! Not responsible!” she cried, trying for a joke.

Jeremy snorted. “Oh, you’re plenty responsible for the poor choices you’ve made.”

Regan bristled even as she conceded his point with a nod.

“Why didn’t you just come to me and ask? God, this all makes sense now! The dirty looks you gave me in middle school until high school when you completely ignored my existence.”

“I was embarrassed! I was rejected!”

“You threw yourself between me and a bunch of assholes to keep them from hitting me! How do you go from that to being too scared or humiliated to talk to me? The Regan I remember would have gotten all up in my face and been like, ‘You little jerkface! What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you wanna be my friend, huh? I’m amazing! I’m Regan Walters!’”

They stared at each other. And then Regan burst out laughing. Jeremy followed suit.

“People’s impressions of me are the worst!” she wheezed.

“Oh, I’m not the only one?”

“Not lately,” she said, thinking back to Hannah’s “Hello world! Hello losers!” impersonation.

“I’ll work on it,” Jeremy said, watching her carefully.

The revelation of her note back in middle school coupled with her recent breakup was almost too much for him. He wasn’t accustomed to feeling so much, having trained most of the emotions out of his heart with target practice. The fortuitous entangling of his life with Regan’s changed the way his mind worked, the way his heart operated. He was feeling, and feeling too much. He knew she was dangerous the moment he discovered she’d read his journal. She had all the power to destroy his plan. But now he was discovering a new danger to her—the power she wielded over him to feel. To desire love and acceptance and happiness.

“You’re right,” he heard her say. “I should have confronted you about it. I should have made you be my friend.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“That’s right,” she said, encouraged. “I should’ve just
made
you.” She laughed softly.

“You wouldn’t have had to,” he admitted. “Like I said, I would have been your friend.”

“But not because I felt sorry for you, right? Or because you thought you owed me?”

“For sticking up for me? I’ll always owe you for that.”

She blushed. Hard. A racking wave that started at her scalp and moved like rolling thunder down her body to her toenails.

“You don’t owe me for anything. I turned into an asshole.”

Jeremy shook his head. “You hung out with them. You made some questionable choices. But I never thought you turned mean.”

Regan scratched her cheek. “You think Casey did?”

“Do you?”

She nodded reluctantly.

“So why do you care that she doesn’t want to talk to you right now? Why hang out with a mean person?”

“She’s my best friend, Jeremy! Those feelings don’t just disappear like that.” She snapped her finger. “Plus, I can’t stop remembering Casey the way she used to be.”