Where the Staircase Ends (22 page)

Even Logan somehow made me out to be the villain.

Me: U know it’s not true. How can you let everyone lie like that?

A moment later my phone pinged with his response.

Logan: Exactly how many guys were u screwing behind my back? F u Taylor.

That night I dreamed about Sunny, her face dancing in and out of my consciousness like a howling banshee. She scrawled my name over and over again onto the empty pages of her spiral notebook, filling hangman puzzles and origami cranes with words once reserved for the Tracey Allens and Alanas of the world. Justin stood behind her, his arms wrapped around her shoulders as he nuzzled her neck and pointed at the horrible words she wrote, laughing and calling out insults she had missed. Jenny, Amber, and even my own mother danced in the back of the room, twirling and skipping like synchronized swimmers choreographing my demise. Alana was there too, her chubby cheeks laughing as she sat in the corner and watched them all, mouthing,
what goes around comes around, what goes around comes around, what goes around comes around,
over and over and over again.

I tossed and turned until my joints ached from the movement, and when my mother touched my hot skin in the morning, she agreed that it was best for me to stay home another day.

The text messages started coming that afternoon. Some of them were single words like slut, skank
,
and other derogatory names, while others were preachy, chiding me for what I’d done to Logan. Someone got creative and made a fake email address, using it to email a picture of a scantily clad woman perching suggestively on the lap of an older man. My face was crudely pasted on top of the woman’s face and the words “
Teacher’s Pet”
were printed in bold font across the top of the page.

It lacked the finesse of Sunny’s pranks. She would have taken care to center my face over the other woman’s so it looked more realistic, and come up with a cleverer tag line than “Teacher’s Pet.” Knowing it wasn’t Sunny gave me some solace because at least she wasn’t driving the knife any deeper into my back than she already had. But it still stung, and I suddenly found myself on equal footing with Alana James, wondering if the whole charade happened to teach me a lesson for all the years I aided Sunny in her torment.

By Friday I had no fever to support my argument for staying home, and without sharing the sordid details of my reputation’s downfall, I had no ground to stand on. Not that my mother would have let me stay home anyway. She probably would have told me to work things out with Sunny, or worse —taken Sunny’s side.

“Oh my goodness,” my mother said when she pulled out of the driveway and saw the trees in our front yard. “Who would do such a thing on a school night?” I shrugged as I stared at the strands of toilet paper hanging from the branches, reaching their curling fingers toward the car like they wanted to squeeze the hope right out of me. This was my life now.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said when my mom had driven me the five blocks to school. I was able to score a ride by feigning weakness from the previous days’ fevers, but next week I’d have to suffer the walk alone. I wasn’t ready to think about that yet.

I hid behind a car in the teacher’s parking lot until the final bell rang, squatting next to a bumper sticker that read “Pets are people too!” until my thighs quivered. Then I slunk my way inside the school and into one of the lesser-used bathrooms where I wouldn’t have to worry about bumping in to Sunny. I wouldn’t be able to hide long without the school calling my mother to alert her of my truancy, but I at least wanted to miss first period so I could delay my encounter with Justin.

I was coming out of the bathroom just before the second period bell when he found me. It was like he knew I would be there, and my heart squeezed at the sight of his long body leaning against a row of lockers. For a moment he just watched me, his blue eyes wide and his grin-less mouth drawn like it was on the night of the party.

He believes her.
The look on his face was so weathered it didn’t seem possible for him to have dismissed Sunny’s propaganda. I waited for him to yell the words that must be coming, for him to echo the awful things my classmates had emailed me and texted me since the news broke a few days before.

Instead, he wrapped his arms around me and pressed his cheek against my hair, rocking me back and forth in a tight hug.

“I’m so sorry, Taylor. I know it’s not true, okay? I’ll tell everyone I know that it’s not true.”

“You do? You will?” The words squeaked their way out of my throat.

“Yes,” he said into my hair. “Brandon told me he was behind the house at The Fields. He told me what you and Logan were really fighting about.”

It felt so good to be in his arms again; it was almost too good to be true.

“When you didn’t text me back, I thought—”

“I know. I’m so sorry. I was processing. I should never have even considered that it was true. I’m so, so sorry.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as a fresh tear slid down my cheek. I was so sure Brandon would never tell. I thought I was stranded on an island. It didn’t even matter that the only person he confessed to was Justin—one person changed everything. Brandon Blakes saved me.

I swallowed the lump that had grown in my throat.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said as the tears I’d held back for the past two days leaked down my cheeks. “It’s too late. People already believe it. Sunny wins, as usual.”

“No, she doesn’t,” he said, pulling me away from him so that I had to look at his face. “She ruined her friendship with you. That’s not winning. You can’t let her get to you, okay?” He pulled up the bottom of his T-shirt and used the corner to wipe the tears from my cheeks, exposing a stripe of tanned, taut skin. Normally the sight of his exposed stomach would send a shiver up my spine, but I was too numb to feel anything at all.

“Come on,” he said, giving my hand an encouraging tug. “I want you to hold your head high and smile, and when I say
now
, you let out the longest, loudest laugh you can manage, okay?”

I nodded meekly, too defeated to argue or ask what he was up to. He closed his hand around mine and pulled me along the hallway, leaning close to my ear as we walked, whispering, “Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon,” over and over again. It was the same thing Sunny used to do in junior high choir to make it look like she was singing the words to the songs even though she wasn’t. To everyone watching, it looked like Justin was telling me a hilarious story even though he was only repeating the nonsensical name of a fruit over and over again.

He pulled me to the right, weaving in and out of the bodies packing the main corridor on their way between classes.

“Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon,
now
,” he whispered. I tipped my head back and laughed as loud as I could manage, which wasn’t hard because the whole thing felt so ridiculous it was funny. In that moment we passed by Sunny, Jenny, Amber, and the rest of my former crew, who watched with envious eyes as Justin and I held hands and laughed like we could give a rat’s ass what Sunny and the rest of the school said about me. And by that time I really was laughing, because the look on Sunny’s face was priceless. She hadn’t seen me with Justin yet. It was the perfect victory, and it must have pissed Sunny off royally to watch me walk down the hallway hand in hand with the guy she thought she won only a few nights before.

When history class came around, I slid into my seat wearing a triumphant grin and made it a point to look Sunny right in the eye. I tried not to think about how much it hurt to see the top of my desk empty of the normal notes and hangman puzzles. I tried not to think about the fact that there would never be another origami flower or paper crane waiting for me in class. Instead, I thought about the envious look she gave me and Justin when she saw us laughing together, hand in hand.

“What’s wrong, Sunny?” I whispered when I caught her glaring at me just before the bell rang. “Oh, that’s right. Justin doesn’t like you. He likes
me
. Apparently the only way you can get a guy to like you is to sleep with him.” I leaned in closer toward her desk so I could be sure she heard me. I wanted the words to swim out of my mouth and follow her around like a wake trailing a boat. I wanted them to
hurt
. “Maybe you can go to the spring formal with your dad.” I gave her the bitchiest smirk I could manage. Then I put my hand over my mouth, pretending the words had slipped out by accident before adding, “Oh, wait. He doesn’t like you either.
Sorry
.”

Her chair scraped against the floor when she stood up, grabbed her bag and stormed out of the classroom.

* * *

That Saturday it broke ninety degrees as an unusual spring heat wave swept across our suburb, a sure sign that we were in for a brutally hot summer. The sun beat down on the pavement so hard I could feel the heat boiling through the soles of my flip-flops. It was the kind of day I’d spend at Sunny’s house, splashing around her pool and sneaking beers from her father’s downstairs fridge. Jenny was probably there in my place, finally getting her chance to be Sunny’s best friend, the way she’d always wanted.

I only thought about it for a second as I left my house with my bathing suit peeking out from under my yellow sundress. No matter how much I missed her, I would not let thoughts of Sunny drag me down.

“Call if you’re going to be there any later than six,” my mom said as I left the house.

I showed her my phone as proof that I would call and waved goodbye. Popping my headphones into my ears, I scrolled through my iPod until I found a song with a beat that matched the rhythm of my steps.

On Friday, Justin had walked me home from school and stopped on my front porch to press his lips against mine. I wondered if I’d ever get used to the way it felt when he kissed me, or if I’d always get a nervous thrill when our lips touched.

“I was thinking,” he said as he pulled away from me. “Maybe we could hit up the dance next week?”

I wanted to hide my smile so I wouldn’t give away how happy I was, but it was impossible to do when I was around him. “Really? I thought you hated school dances.”

“Yeah, but you like them.” He reached his hand toward my face, the tips of his fingers tracing the edge of my jaw line. “And I like to see you happy. So do you wanna go with me?”

I nodded eagerly and threw my arms around his neck, fighting the urge to jump up and down and shriek with glee.

He laughed and kissed me one more time before he backed off the porch and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ll see you tomorrow at my place, right?”

I nodded and watched him walk backward down the front walkway, his eyes holding mine until he finally had to turn around and break our gaze.

Saturday morning I woke up early, trying on all of my swimsuits at least ten times before finally settling on the green-and-blue one that Sunny had picked out for me the summer before. I bounded down the street on my way to Justin’s house, my ponytail swinging to the beat of the music swelling from my headphones.

Across the street, a woman in a steely blue Beemer shifted her gaze back and forth from her phone to the road. With one hand on the wheel, she tapped out a text message and smiled at the wittiness of her response. When she finally looked up, I was halfway across the street.

There was no pain when her Beemer
thwacked
in to me. There was no tunnel of white light to follow or decision to make. No music, no screams, no crushing sound of metal on skin. Just the simple quiet of the afternoon air surrounding the stairs as the sky stretched up into a sea of unending blue before me.

Death was surprisingly quiet.

IN THE END

I’ve had dreams where I’m falling. My stomach dropped out from underneath me, and right before I woke up I swore I could feel the wind against my skin and the swooping sensation that only comes from freefalling.

My final run up the staircase felt like that.

I ran up the stairs faster than I had ever run in my life, and all I could feel were the steps against my bare feet and the wind in my hair. My lungs didn’t burn, my legs didn’t ache. Even the cut on my knee didn’t bother me. I felt like I had wings, soaring over the steps with so much speed that my feet barely made contact with the worn stone surface. I was in a constant freefall, only I was traveling up into the sky.

The stairs became more and more worn as I climbed. I didn’t need to look down to know that the hollowed-out sections of each step had become more pronounced; I could feel them against my feet. This is what gave me hope. If I was right and the stairs were worn down from other people walking on them, then it meant I had hit the part of the stairs that everyone eventually walks. It meant I had reached the end.

I imagined I was heading toward a golden wall, or pearly gates gleaming with heavenly light. I pictured a row of angels, their downy wings billowing behind them like fluffy white curtains as they strummed harps and opened their white-robed arms to me in welcome. Or maybe angels were a little more with it nowadays, and they would be strumming electric guitars and pounding on drums while someone belted out the lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven.” I didn’t really give a rat’s ass what they were doing, as long as there was something good waiting for me at the top of the stairs. I couldn’t have climbed all this way for nothing.