We Are the Ants (19 page)

“No.”

Audrey and I hadn't talked much since the fair. “Looking for something in particular?”

I shook my head. “I just needed . . . Forget it.”

“What?”

“I wanted to feel close to Jesse.” I stared at my feet. “It's stupid.”

“Not really.”

“Whatever,” I said. “I'll see you later.”

Audrey stood aside to let me pass, but before I turned the corner, she said, “Wanna get a cookie?”

I stopped, turned around. “What?”

“A cookie. I can drive us across the street to the mall. If we time it right, we can get some fresh from the oven.”

“I don't know.”

“You can't hate me forever, Henry.”

“I can try.”

“But if you come with me, you can hate me
and
eat cookies. Win-win.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”

Audrey grinned. “It's a date.”

“It's a cookie.”

“It's a cookie date.”

  •  •  •  

“So we were making out, and my nose was running a little, but I had it in my mind that if I stopped kissing Jesse, he'd realize I was a loser and never want to kiss me again, so I ignored it and snogged on. I'm pretty sure we made out for hours, but when we turned on the lights, I screamed because Jesse's face was covered in blood.”

“Gross!” Audrey ate her cookie as we sat outside the entrance of the mall.

“Turns out I'd had a bloody nose. It was smeared over both of our faces.” We'd gotten six cookies to split, and they'd been gooey and delicious at first, but all the sugar was beginning to sour my stomach.

Audrey laughed, and if I closed my eyes, I could imagine Jesse was with us, swapping stories and cracking up at our lame jokes. “Jesse never told me about that.”

“I swore him to secrecy. It's not the sort of thing I wanted getting around.”

“I won't tell a soul.” Silence fell, and we both turned our attention to our uneaten cookies. The conversation sputtered along in fits and starts; one second everything was good, the next uncomfortable as the past overwhelmed us. “I've missed you, Henry.”

The statement stopped me because I knew she was waiting for me to say it back. To tell her that I missed her, and I had, but it used to be me and Audrey and Jesse, and we were still incomplete.

“What was it like?” I asked.

“What was what like?”

“The hospital?”

Audrey stood and walked toward the parking lot, stopping when she reached the curb. Her shoes dragged on the ground like her feet were too heavy to lift properly. I brushed the crumbs off my lap and followed. I wasn't sure whether she was going to answer, but I gave her the space to decide. “It was lonely,” she said. “But it was like this whole other world where you didn't exist and my parents didn't exist and Jesse wasn't dead. Nothing seemed real there. Time was blurry, and maybe that was because of the meds they had me on, but I think it was just me. I needed a pocket of space to curl up in and wait out the pain of losing my best friend.”

I leaned to the side, bumped Audrey's shoulder with my arm to let her know I was there. “I thought you left because you blamed me.”

“I did,” Audrey said. “I mean, I didn't leave because of that, but I did blame you for a while.”

“Oh.”

Audrey looked at me. The golden hour of the setting sun cast Audrey's skin in bronze. “Jesse loved you so much, Henry, but he was terrified of never being good enough for you. You told him constantly how perfect he was, but Jesse wasn't perfect, and he was worried that if you ever saw his flaws, you'd leave him.”

Those words hurt more than being kicked in the testicles in the locker room. “I knew Jesse wasn't perfect. He exaggerated everything. If he were on the phone with someone for an hour, he'd say it'd been five. If he bought one shirt, he'd tell me he bought twenty. And he had terrible taste in books. He said his favorite book was
The
Catcher in the Rye
, but he had a copy of
Twilight
under his bed with pages so battered, he must've read it a hundred times.”

Audrey leaned her head against my arm, and I didn't move away. “I know, and I don't blame you now. I just . . . I had to leave.”

“You didn't have to leave me.”

“I know.”

“How come you never told me about Jesse hurting himself?”

Audrey sighed and sat on the brick wall of the decorative fountain near the bus stop. I sat beside her. The water gurgled behind us, and wishes glittered at the bottom of the pool. She looked fragile right then in a way I'd never seen her look before. I felt I had the power to break her in that moment, to destroy her utterly. A few months ago I might have done it, but it didn't seem important anymore. I think Audrey Dorn was punishing herself worse than I ever could.

“Jesse was mine.” Tears rolled down Audrey's cheeks, but I doubted she was aware of them. “He was mine before he was yours, but he'd never given me all of himself. Then you came along and got everything I ever wanted.”

“You didn't just love Jesse,” I said. “You were in love with him, weren't you?”

Audrey sniffled. She dug a tissue out of her purse and wiped her nose. “I hated when Jesse hurt, when he cried, and when he cut himself, but he only showed those parts of himself to me. Oh, I rationalized that I didn't tell you because Jesse made me swear not to or because I didn't seriously believe he'd really hurt himself, but deep down I knew it was because I wanted something of Jesse that belonged only to me.”

If Audrey had admitted that immediately after Jesse died, I never would have forgiven her. But the year between us had given me the distance I needed to understand. I even envied a little that she knew Jesse in a way I never did or would.

“Don't hate me,” she said.

“I think I would have done the same thing.”

“Jesse's parents hate me. They blame me.”

“I don't hate you, Audrey.”

Though we weren't touching, I still felt the tension she'd been holding all those months drain from her body, and I realized how difficult it was for Audrey to admit the truth to me without knowing if I'd ever forgive her. Only, there was nothing to forgive. Audrey may not have told me about Jesse's troubles, but I had willfully ignored their signs. I'd let myself believe the lies because it was easier than digging for the truth.

“I don't hate you either, Henry.”

I stood and put my hands in my pockets as the last of the day's light retreated below the horizon. “Then that makes one of us.”

Lunch raged around us, but I was too absorbed watching Diego and Audrey argue to notice anything outside of our bubble.

“Only an idiot could prefer Matt Smith to David Tennant.” Audrey was so worked up, her nostrils flared and her eyes had gone full-bore crazy.

Diego remained calm, which only seemed to infuriate Audrey more. “Then I'm an idiot.” He popped a chip into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed, while holding his free hand in the air to let Audrey know he wasn't done speaking. “I'll give you that Tennant brought a gravitas to the Doctor that grounded the insanity of the ludicrous situations he got himself into, but Matt Smith didn't
play
the Doctor, he
was
the Doctor.”

“You guys know I've got no clue what you're talking about, right?”

Audrey and Diego both turned to look at me like I'd climbed atop the table, dropped trou, and hosed them down.

“You've never seen
Doctor Who
?” Diego glanced at Audrey. “You have failed as a best friend.”

“Hey, I only got hooked last year,” Audrey said. “There was nothing to do at my grandma's house except watch a ton of  TV.”

“How'd you watch it, Diego?” I asked. “I thought you didn't have a television.”

Diego focused on eating his sandwich, chewing each bite deliberately. His smile and laughter vanished like he'd blown a fuse, and an impenetrable wall rose between us.

“Look.” Audrey pointed toward the door, where Marcus McCoy stood sweeping the cafeteria with his eyes. His forearm muscles bulged from clenching his fists, and his lips were twisted into a snarl. I'd spent enough time with Marcus to know that it took skill to make him seriously angry. He was rich and popular, which insulated him from the effects of most humiliation. He started walking and wound through the crowd until he reached a table occupied by Larry Owens, Shane Thorpe, Tania Lewis, Missi Lizneski, and Zac Newton. Everyone was watching Marcus—taking pictures and video with their phones—and I had to stand to see over their heads. He was yelling at Zac, but his words were lost in the excited murmuring of the lunch crowd. Zac's shorter than Marcus, but he's on the wrestling team and built like an inverted pyramid. He got in Marcus's face, using his weight to bully him backward.

Marcus sucker-punched Zac in the jaw and followed with a left to the nose that sent him reeling into the table. Zac's friends rushed to help him, but Marcus didn't even wait to see if Zac was going to retaliate before he stormed out of the cafeteria. Mrs. Francesco chased after him while Mr. Baker cleared a path to Zac.

“What the hell was that?” I asked. Zac's nose was gushing blood, and Mr. Baker was trying to stanch the flow with a handful of napkins. If I hadn't witnessed it, I wouldn't have believed Marcus capable of breaking Zac Newton's nose.

“You didn't hear?”

“Hear what?” A small knot of students had gathered around Zac and Mr. Baker, offering ice and towels. It took the combined strength of Larry, Shane, and Mr. Brown to keep Zac from running after Marcus.

“Someone smashed the windows of Marcus's car,” Audrey said. “Obviously, he thinks it was Zac.”

“Do you think it was Zac?” I asked. Audrey's only answer was a shrug. “Why the hell would he have busted Marcus's windows?”

Audrey's voice rang with a note of satisfaction. “Because he's dating Natalie Carter—
was
dating Natalie. I'm not too clear on the current status of Zac and Natalie's rocky romance.”

“That's no reason to take it out on the car.”

Mr. Baker led Zac out of the cafeteria, and I sat back down. Audrey was gathering her trash and babbling about how Zac learned Natalie and Marcus had hooked up because someone posted pictures from Marcus's party on their SnowFlake page, and when Zac confronted her about it in the quad before classes, she hadn't denied it, reducing Zac to tears.

Diego hadn't spoken since the beginning of the afternoon show. I kicked him under the table, gave him a smile. He barely returned it.

“You have econ with Zac, don't you, Diego?” I asked. “Do you think he did it?”

“Don't know. Don't care. I'm just glad Marcus got what he deserved.” Diego picked up his tray, dumped his trash, and returned to his seat. He didn't say another word until lunch ended.

  •  •  •  

“Everything all right?” I asked Diego as we walked to study hall. He seemed preoccupied. “Diego?”

“What?”

“I asked if you were okay.”

Diego shrugged. “Sure. Why wouldn't I be?”

“You've been somewhere else since lunch.”

He shifted his backpack from his left to his right shoulder. He smiled, but there was something off about it, like milk that was about to turn. “Really, I'm good.”

I had no reason not to believe him, but my gut told me something was wrong. Maybe he wasn't lying, but he wasn't being entirely truthful, either. It reminded me too much of the way Jesse had deflected my questions and pretended that life was wonderful even when it wasn't. “If something's wrong, you can talk to me.”

“It's nothing. Drop it, okay?”

“Sorry.” We got to my class and stopped by the door. “You don't need to walk me to class every day.”

“It's not a problem.”

“I can't believe Zac trashed Marcus's car. Pretty ballsy move.”

Diego glanced at his watch. “I guess. Listen, I can't give you a ride home today.”

“It's cool.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“See you later then.” He took off down the hall and disappeared into the crowd, leaving me to wonder what the hell I'd done.

  •  •  •  

Audrey's dog yapped at the waves and skittered backward as the water rushed toward it. The tiny terror was barely the size of a football, and answered to the name Plath.

“Aren't you afraid she's going to drown or be eaten by a shark?” I asked as we walked, the setting sun burning up the sky behind us. The daytime crowds had disappeared, leaving behind a few strays desperate to soak up what little light remained.

“I wish.” Audrey glared at Plath with derision. “Come on, stupid mutt!”

Plath ignored her and barked at the water as if she thought she could annoy it into submission.

“My mom only adopted her because the Becketts have one.” She rolled her eyes. “They got a Mercedes, Mom got a better Mercedes. They rented a house in Colorado for the winter, Mom bought a summer house in Martha's Vineyard. It's like she doesn't know what to do with the money, so she buys whatever the neighbors buy.”

“But you got that sweet ride.”

“Only because Stella Beckett got one for her sweet sixteen.”

I laughed at the thought of Mrs. Dorn keeping a tally of everything her neighbors purchased, and tried not to be jealous that Audrey got a car because of a game of wealthy one-upmanship. “Is she working on anything?”

Audrey shook her head. “She's decided she's going to write a book. Only, instead of actually writing, she spends her time buying things she hopes will turn her into a writer. First it was the expensive laptop, then she needed to redecorate the study, and now she's convinced that real writers do it longhand and with a fountain pen. And Dad's so bored, he joined the homeowner's association so he can harass people whose bushes need trimming or roofs need reshingling. I don't know who they are anymore.”