The S-Word (17 page)

Of course, losing Lizzie might have derailed his desire to hurt children.

Or maybe it just worsened whatever was broken inside of him.

One thing’s for certain: if he did hurt Lizzie and Kennedy, I have to make sure he never hurts anybody again.

I’m heading toward the bathroom when I send Jesse a text asking if Kennedy can meet up in the next couple days. The last thing I want to do is tackle the toilet, but it beats thinking about child-molesting preachers.

Jesse answers almost immediately: “You don’t waste time.”

“We’re not getting any younger,” I reply, and pull back the shower curtain. The three-month layer of grime on the tub screams
Fill me with gasoline and light a match,
but since I’m no good with explosives I attack it with a rag.

Jesse doesn’t text back for a while. I imagine that means he’s getting ahold of Kennedy. Still, I wish he’d indulge me with a play-by-play. Anything to keep my mind from doing its own thing. It keeps dancing into darker places, shocking me every time I let it spin. I wish I could focus on Shelby’s Drama Queen antics or even Marvin’s artistic renderings. I’m pretty convinced he’s the one who made the Lizzie Hart playing card. But maybe it’s just easier to think there isn’t another guilty party out there, someone I haven’t even considered.

I really don’t think I can handle any more surprises.

Dad comes into the bathroom at half past five and tells me to get out. He fake-wrestles the dirty rag from my hand. “A man can clean his own john.”

“If he can, then he should.” I wash my hands, like, fourteen times and then I start dinner.

Dad says a prayer before devouring the steak. It’s a ritual he started when his leg failed to improve. Naturally, this just makes me think of Lizzie’s father. What kind of God would allow a man to do such things?

Dad smiles at me across the table. If he only knew what I was
thinking. I let him ramble on about some football game that, like, changed the history of sports. I smile and laugh when it’s necessary. To be honest, it’s nice to see him excited about something, even if that thing has no direct relevance to his life. If things are going to continue this way for him, it’s probably good that he has some distraction. When people focus too long on the emptiness in their lives, bad things happen.

I focus on the buttery taste of the rice, the burn of my soda, the way the zucchini just melts in my mouth. I think about what I would say if I were into praying. I’d probably just ask God to check up on Lizzie.

Maybe Dad does that for me.

He shoos me away when I try to do the dishes. Still, I manage to carry most of them to the sink before he’s able to get rid of me. Then I’m a lie about homework away from shutting myself up in my room; it’s so quiet in here it makes drying the dishes sound tempting.

The sound of my phone ringing is like a chorus of the gods.

Yeah. I’ve got religion on the brain.

God help me.

“Are you religious?” I say into the phone.

Jesse laughs. “Kind of,” he says after a minute. “Why, are you scared?”

“In what way are you religious?” For some reason, I feel like his answer will tell me a lot about him. As if people’s beliefs have anything to do with how they behave.

“My mom’s a hard-core Catholic,” he says. “But I’m kind of, um . . . spiritual, you know? I think the rituals are more about comforting people than actual divinity. Why? Does that offend you?”

“No.”

“Didn’t imagine so. You okay?”

“I’m great. I’m at my dad’s house,” I say, as if he’s supposed to know what that means. I’ve gone from the parent who doesn’t want me to the one who can’t support me. I’m sitting in a bedroom with one thin blanket and a bunch of half-full boxes I couldn’t bear to take to Mom’s.

“Where’s that?” Jesse asks.

“East Second, between Ellis and Harvey. You know, the real fancy part of town.” Yeah, right. We’re practically in the lap of the industrial district.

He whistles. “My own mansion’s not far from there.”

“But do you have the only brown house on the block?”

“That, I can’t claim,” he says.

“And does your bedroom face the power plant?”

“No, it does not. She said yes, by the way.”

“She?”

“Kennedy.”

“Oh. Oh, great,” I say, even though it’s pretty much the opposite.

It’s great that my investigation has extended to include childhood trauma. It’s super great that I get to hear my best friend’s deepest secret from someone who hated her.

Why did Kennedy hate Lizzie? Did she blame her for what happened?

Already I’ve dropped the “allegedly” from my thought process. Already I’m starting to believe. Without allowing myself to consciously work through it, some part of me has realized that Kennedy’s story makes sense. Lizzie was always very protective of her body. Lizzie never touched anybody, before Drake.

Lizzie never wanted to.

Jesse says, “She’ll meet you at your bar on Monday.”

“Before school?”

“After. She’s taken a sudden interest in academics.”

“God bless finals week.”

“Exactly. Where’s ‘your bar’?”

I laugh a little. “It’s this hole-in-the-wall coffee place. She treats it like her own personal saloon.” I wait a beat. “Are you coming?”

“Do you need me there?”

Do you even have to ask?

“If you want,” I say casually.

He waits a second before answering. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on. You can keep me on track. You know, in case I start to bulldoze her.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Sure you did,” I say too flippantly. “You were right.”

Another pause. “I guess I could come by. Give me the address.”

“We can just meet up after school.”

“I got some stuff to do,” he says.

Oh no. He’s pulling away from me. He thinks I’m a psycho. He doesn’t want to be friends.

“That’s cool,” I say, like he needs my permission. I’m starting to feel like nothing I say will be right at this point. “It’s really close to school. On Emberson and Ivy.”

“Oh, that place? I heard Marvin Higgins bragging about you taking him there.”

My grip tightens on the phone. “Are you kidding me?”

“He wouldn’t shut up about it.”

“That little piece of—”

“Wait, so it’s not true?” He’s trying to stay serious but I can hear the amusement in his voice. “You guys aren’t dating?”

“I think he’s the one who drew that picture of Lizzie.”

Silence. Total, dead silence.

“You know, the one where she’s . . . undressed. Jesse?”

Great. I’ve done it again. If I could put my foot any farther in my mouth, it’d be coming out of my ass.

His voice is soft, broken. “I’m here.”

“Did you not know about that?”

“I knew about it.” He swallows. I can hear it. “Some of the guys forwarded it around.”

“Are you serious?” I can feel the rage building inside of me. “That’s so—”

“I know. It was from an address I didn’t recognize. I sent back a pretty nasty response.”

I sigh. “God, this just keeps getting worse. Every time I think I have a handle on things—”

“I know, I’m sorry. I need to stop telling you things.”

“No, I want to know.” My hand is starting to hurt. I realize I’m still clutching the phone. But I can’t loosen my grip. “If I know who’s guilty, I know who to expose.”

“Angie.”

“I know, I should just leave it alone. But doesn’t it make you angry? Doesn’t it make you enraged?”

“It makes me sad. I don’t like talking about it.”

And I need to talk about it. They call that a stalemate.

“I appreciate what you’re doing for me,” I say. I want to make him feel like he’s helping. But I think it only makes him feel responsible for the mess I’m making.

“It’s no problem. Have a good night, okay? Try to get some sleep.”

Yeah, right. The shit I see in my dreams is no better than what I hear during the day. But I don’t tell him that. I don’t want to alienate him any further. So I just say “You too,” like a sad little kitten, and I stare at the phone when he hangs up.

Why am I so attached to him?

That’s a mystery I can’t seem to crack. Maybe I’m just too tired
or maybe there’s no good reason for the intensity of my feelings. I keep glancing at the phone like he’s going to call me back.

It’s pathetic.

I’m just drifting off to sleep when the thought comes to me, an explanation I’ll have forgotten by morning: I’ve hardly had a moment to myself all week and still I’m lonelier than I’ve ever been in my life.

I
SPEND ALL DAY
Sunday cramming for finals. Most of mine fall at the beginning of the week. Wednesday’s the last official day of school, and by then I’ll only have two tests left: History and Drama. So I’ll worry about those last.

Monday morning I stroll into English and churn out an essay about overarching themes in American literature. I’m pretty sure I nail it. I’m great at making stuff up. After that, there’s my oral exam in French, followed by an “interpretive drawing” in Art class.

Seriously, they should just give me the As now.

After school, I get to the coffee shop just in time to find Kennedy dozing off. Maybe I’m not the only one who’s afraid to sleep at night. Her eyes are red, like she’s been crying. She looks like a child who has a monster under her bed.

She looks like she knows she’s about to wake it up.

“First things first.” She sets some pages on the table. She’s wearing her Verity High sweatshirt and jeans. Nothing flashy. “Someone was passing them around in Cara’s third period. I told the girls to give me any they can find.”

“Thanks,” I say without emotion. I already know the pages are from Lizzie’s diary. And if I’m supposed to show gratitude toward the people who wrote SLUT on her car, well . . . maybe they
should
hold their breath.

“They are sorry, you know,” she says.

“I’m sure they are.” I sip my latte. It tastes like nothing. A lot of things do lately.

“If they’d had any idea—”

“I didn’t come here to talk about this.” The last thing I want is to hear about the innocence of her friends. Of course they knew their attack would hurt Lizzie.

That’s why they did it.

“Okay,” Kennedy says. “I guess that’s fair.” She dumps some fake sugar into her coffee. Her flask is nowhere to be seen. Maybe she’s started thinking about the reason she drinks so much.

Maybe I need to stop reading
Psychology Today.

“I have some ground rules,” she says.

“I heard.” My eyes stray to the empty space beside her. Jesse’s late or else he’s not coming. Not that it matters, I tell myself. It’s better for everyone if I don’t care.

Kennedy nods slowly. “You have to understand I’ve never told anyone about this. Not the details.” She takes a sip. “But if you need to know about Lizzie . . .” She trails off.

“I do,” I say. Then, not to appear greedy, I add, “I feel like I do.”

“Okay.” She nods again. Her hair has fallen into her coffee. I wait a minute, contemplating moving it, when she finally notices. She squeezes the excess liquid with her fingertips. “I was so mad at her for so long. Then she killed herself and I . . . I wanted to feel relieved, you know?”

“Why would you feel relieved?” I lean back. I’m trying to
distance myself from her confession. But I can’t separate from it; those words wrap themselves around me. The idea that anyone could be relieved by Lizzie’s death is suffocating, and I find myself gripping the edges of the table, struggling for breath.

“I didn’t say I was,” Kennedy snaps. “I said I wanted to be.”

“Why?”

“Think about it, Angie.” She catches my eye. “Lizzie was the only one who knew what he did. So when she died . . .”

The secret died with her.

She doesn’t say it. Neither of us says it. Still, those words hover between us, staining the air. Making it hard to see.

“Is that why you hated her?” I ask, wiping my eyes. “You thought she might tell somebody?”

Kennedy shakes her head. “I knew she wouldn’t, even though I feared it. I know when I’m being irrational.”

“That makes one of us.”

She smiles. It strikes me, in that moment, that I’ve always been able to say anything around her. I don’t censor my craziness like I do with Jesse.

But does that say something about her, or him, or me?

“I blamed her,” Kennedy says. “I know that wasn’t fair of me. But she knew what he was and she still asked me to stay.” Her voice is flat like she’s working out a math problem. Or maybe she’s just had this conversation a lot in her own head. “She asked me to sleep over knowing what would happen.”

“Maybe she thought it wouldn’t, if you were there.”

“I’ve thought of that. More so lately.”

“Okay.”

“I can’t explain it, Angie. I can’t explain to you why my four-year-old mentality stayed with me all these years. But I hated her for it. Maybe because I couldn’t hate him.”

“
Why?
” My voice is angrier than I planned.

“Because then I’d have to do something. I’d have to tell someone about him.”

“And you felt you couldn’t?”

“I can’t explain it,” she says again. “I can’t explain how it makes you feel.” She puts her hands around her mug, warming them. “How embarrassed and ashamed. You take on a lot of blame.”

“You were kids.”

“It doesn’t matter. That stuff happens to adults too. I mean, that kind of thing. It fucks with your head so badly, you feel like if anyone knew about it, you’d be going through it all over again. And the way they’d look at you, wondering if you were telling the truth. Wondering what you did to invite it . . . I couldn’t. I won’t, still.”

I don’t point out that she’s telling me right now. In a way, I know I trapped her into it. And I do feel bad about that. I’ll feel worse when I finish what I’ve started, and I have the time to feel all the things I haven’t allowed myself to really process. Guilt. Sadness. Immeasurable loss.

Where is Jesse?

“There’s something I don’t understand,” I say. “After you stopped hanging out with Lizzie, I was with her a lot. I was with her all the time.”