THE PUSH

“GET AWAY FROM HER!”

Mica turned to see who was behind him. “Ha! Stoner Boy to the rescue? This I have to see.” He let go of my shoulders and tossed his head back, chortling.

Caleb slowly walked toward me, his sober eyes solidly on Mica. “Cassidy, are you okay?”

I closed my eyes and sighed. Could this night get any worse? “I’m fine. Let’s go back to the bonfire and forget about it.” Caleb’s eyes darted to my right foot as I limped toward the distant sounds of the party.

He glared at Mica. “What did you do to her?”

I answered, “Nothing, I twisted my own stupid ankle on one of the splintered boards.” I wiped the smeared lip gloss off my mouth as I struggled to keep the adrenaline shake out of my voice.

“You twisted your freakishly muscular dancer ankle? By accident?” Caleb eyed me skeptically.

A tiny sprig of comfort that he knew me well enough to question an ankle injury sprouted in me. I stomped it flat. “Yes. Now let’s leave.”

“No,” Caleb insisted. “You’re hurt.” He couldn’t have picked a worse time to become chivalrous.

“I’m fine.”

Caleb stepped between me and Aimée’s yard and gently placed his hand on top of mine. “Cassidy, if you’re hurt”—he looked past me to Mica—“if he did something to you, I want to help. I’m still your friend, y’know.”

The tears I’d been holding back burst out with a loud gasp. I dropped my head onto Caleb’s shoulder and cried. I was so done with the lies and the mistakes and being forced to choose when no matter what I decided someone I cared about would get hurt.

My hair fell around my face as I shook my head. “I can’t. I can’t with you anymore—not even friends.”

“I know,” he said softly.

An enormous weight lifted from my chest, like I’d been trapped in a tank of water for days and had finally been given fresh air to breathe.

“Cassi?”

I tore away from Caleb and spun on my toes. “Ethan.” I couldn’t get anything else out. The words backed up into each other, clogging my throat.

“I thought you were … Why are they here?” Ethan pointed at Caleb and Mica, confused. “Cassi, are you crying? What’s wrong?” He took an automatic step toward me, but something stopped him. “What’s going on?”

I cringed when Mica’s deep voice sounded behind me. “Dude, I’m sorry you had to walk in on this.” I flicked my eyes at him as he moved past me, blocking my view of Ethan.

“On what?” Ethan asked.

I stepped away from Caleb and Mica, as if I could distance myself from the truth.

Mica glanced back at me with pitying eyes. It made me nauseated. “Cassidy was making out with this prick.” He threw the last word at Caleb.

“Right,” Ethan said, and laughed. In the quiet that followed, Ethan’s eyes ticked curiously between Caleb and me. Ethan pushed past Mica and took my hands in his. My cold hands burned as they thawed with the warmth from his gloves. “Cassi.” He waited until I met his gaze. “Just tell me the truth, like always.”

I chewed on my bottom lip. The truth would take away his best friend and his girlfriend and forever taint everything we had or might’ve had together if I hadn’t fallen for Madison’s little scheme. I couldn’t hurt him like that even if he asked for it.

“Is Mica right? Did you send me inside so you could”—his throat worked as he swallowed—“meet up with this guy?”

Tears pooled deep in my eyes until they were too heavy and spilled over. I couldn’t move, couldn’t blink or speak, but my answer was in my silence.

“You said you were going to get Drew, that you’d come back to me.” Ethan’s warm eyes turned to ice. “You … lied to me.”

“I—I didn’t mean to. There was so much going on at home. I needed someone who understood—but that’s not even it.” He dropped my hands and started to walk away. “Wait! Please give me a chance to explain.”

He stopped but didn’t turn to face me. “Why should I give you one second to explain?”

“Because this isn’t what it looks like. Caleb and I aren’t—”

Mica interrupted me, cocky and spitting threats, his chest puffed out. I’m sure he would’ve been happy to beat Caleb to a pulp so he wouldn’t talk, but now that Ethan was here and I could see the pain invading his perfect face, I knew the only way to stop his—and everyone else’s—hurting was to tell him the truth.

“Enough with the threats!” I yelled at Mica. I turned toward Ethan to plead with him, but with my weak ankle I slipped on a patch of ice, and I stumbled into him instead.

Right when I thought I felt Ethan’s arms tighten around me, Mica drove his hands between us and pushed me backward. “Hands off my boy, bitch.”

I recoiled at his harsh tone and sucked my raw lips into my mouth, tasting the slight remains of my watermelon lip gloss mixed with dried tears. I could see a sheen smeared under Mica’s bottom lip. Evidence.

“Your boy?” I jabbed my finger at Mica. “Now who’s the liar? Ask him why he’s wearing lip gloss, Ethan.” Ethan’s eyes darted to Mica, who was wiping at his mouth. “Go ahead, lean in; he smells like watermelon.”

Mica held up his hands. “No shame in some game, right, E? I was with Carly earlier.”

“Can you tell he’s lying?” I asked Ethan. “He’s better at it than me.”

Ethan glanced at me and back at Caleb. He focused on Caleb’s lips, then my lips and Mica’s chin and their shared sheens.

“E, dude, she’s making this up to save her own tail. I saw her with Stoner Boy.”

Ethan brushed a finger at his chin and looked pointedly at Mica. “You’ve got something there, dude.”

Mica’s eyes burned into me.

“Ethan.” My voice cracked. The farther he backed away the harder it was to lift my feet. “Please.”

Tears filled his eyes, staining his beautiful, sad face. “Leave me alone.” His voice reverberated off the wooden walls closing in around me.

I watched him disappear through the watery curtain covering my eyes. Mica’s broad shoulders trailing after Ethan interrupted my view and anger boiled inside me, drying up the tears and lighting a fire under my skin. Caleb was apologizing now, but I didn’t want to hear it. He was the only person left to burn.

I whipped around to face him. “You are the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my entire life.” My words entwined in the wind as I stomped toward the park side of the bridge, ignoring my throbbing ankle, abandoning Caleb and the lies.

Above the sound of ice-crusted snow crunching under my Mary Janes I heard my name.

Strong hands clasped my wrists behind my back. Too strong for me to wriggle free from. Too strong to be Caleb’s. They hauled me away from the park, and I caught myself with a few staggering backward steps, barely managing to turn forward to see Mica.

“What was that back there?”

I opened my eyes as wide as I could to see past Mica, to call Caleb for help, but I couldn’t see him.

“We had a deal,” Mica added.

I threw knives at him with my eyes. “I didn’t agree to anything. And even if I had, you told Ethan—no, you lied to him. There is no ‘deal.’” I looked away and muttered, “At least this is over. Now let me go.” I yanked my hands, but he pinched my wrists tighter. “Mica, you’re hurting me.” My voice was high and uneven.

He glared at me for a moment, then ripped his hands away. The motion thrust me forward, and I barely caught myself on the snow-covered rail before my hands slipped and my stomach slammed into it. I wasn’t sure if it was the schnapps or the horror of what had happened, but I caught a woozy rush from leaning too far over the rail and had to close my hand over my mouth to hold in the bile rising up my throat.

“Whoa, Cassidy, I’m sorry. Are you okay?” Mica reached out to help me, but I didn’t want his help—I didn’t want anything from him except for him to leave. I knocked his arm away from me, then shoved him hard.

Caught off guard, he stumbled back into the railing. The old wooden support responded to the force of his hulking body with a sharp crack. He gaped at the splintered wood for a second, then turned to me so fast I didn’t have time to raise my arm to protect my face.

The sting in my cheek was so intense I thought for sure it was split open and raw. I touched the spot where the back of his hand had landed and drew my hand away. There was no blood, but the salty taste of it filled the inside of my mouth and dripped down my throat. I doubled over and gagged.

“Mica. Not smart, man.”

I lifted my head to see who’d spoken. “Drew.” I braced my hands on my knees, feeling an irrational surge of relief. Drew had already proved he wasn’t on my side, but at least he’d stopped Mica from taking another swing at me.

Drew walked to the center of the bridge where Mica and I were and bent down close to me. “I take it it didn’t go too well fessing up to the boyfriend,” he said in a low voice so Mica couldn’t hear. Any shred of relief that I’d grasped when he’d arrived evaporated.

I straightened, giving Drew a wary look. “I have to go.”

Mica took hold of my elbow, stopping me. He stammered, “Cassidy, wait. I—I didn’t mean to hit you—stupid reflexes. I’m sorry.”

I wrenched free. “Don’t touch me! I’m telling Ethan everything.”

Drew stepped forward when I started to leave again. “E left. And I wouldn’t advise going back to the party looking like that.”

I turned away, subtly wiping tears dry as I touched the tender skin of my cheek.

“Mica, why don’t you go get her some ice,” Drew suggested. “Least you can do, right?”

Mica murmured another apology before leaving Drew and me alone. I pressed my palm to my cheek, letting my cold skin relieve some of the lingering sting, and took a deep, ragged breath.

“You don’t cry much, do you?”

I looked up at Drew’s bizarre question. “Why are you out here?”

“Maddy asked me to give you this.” He handed me a piece of the floral notepad paper that sits next to the Coutiers’ landline phone in their kitchen, then continued like he’d already forgotten he’d passed along her message. “I can tell you don’t because your eyes are puffy—from crying, I mean. Do you have any idea how many times a day Maddy cries?”

My face scrunched up. “What?”

“Try ballparking it,” Drew added. I stared at him, thoroughly confused. “Twelve.” He let out a low cackle. “I thought that was an impossible number for anyone, even a psychiatrist’s daughter with body-image issues, but she sneaks in a cry, like, every half hour.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Madison doesn’t cry that much. I’m with her almost every day.”

“And she’s usually wearing those huge sunglasses or flipping her bangs down over her eyes, right? Especially when Ethan’s around?”

My heart sank at hearing Ethan’s name. “Look, he knows about Caleb now, okay? You win.”

“Y’know, when Maddy started hanging on me at parties and at school in front of everyone, I thought I’d won the hot-girl lotto. Then she started asking me if E was going to be at the places I invited her. I saw the way she looked at him, but every girl in school looks at him that way. You have to know that, right?”

I crushed Madison’s note in my fist.

He continued. “I thought if I pretended I didn’t notice, gave her everything she asked for, eventually she’d get over him and we’d be together, officially, but then she started obsessing over the piddly things you kept from him, the lies you told to keep him.”

“Wait.” I held my hands up. It was like he was having a conversation with himself suddenly. “Madison told you about me and Caleb? That’s how you found out?”

“Not exactly. See, when I told her you weren’t at the rink that weekend like you said you were, she got curious.” He tilted his head toward me. “You’re the one who said you’re with her every day. Did you honestly think she wouldn’t find out?”

His lips kept moving, and I’m sure words kept coming out, but I couldn’t hear them. I looked down at the wrinkled paper in my hand. Madison’s high voice filled my mind, as if she were reading her note to me: What I did was unforgivable. I want to go back in time and erase everything I did, but I know I can’t. This is the only way I can tell you I’m sorry because I am, so sorry in every sense of the word.

Madison got Drew to give me an ultimatum that would make Ethan hate me no matter how I responded, and, in case I didn’t take his threat seriously, she invited Caleb here to ensure I was forced into coming clean. Sorry didn’t even begin to cover it, and there was a definite theme here.

“Don’t you get it?” I interrupted Drew’s rant. “She used you to get with Ethan.”

“The only reason she wants him is because you have him—like everything else. Her hair, ballet, that terrible music she listens to; she does everything to be like you.” He scowled. “It’s pathetic.”

I didn’t want to believe him, but Madison did dye her hair to match mine, and she hated ballet. I always thought she kept going to appease her mom, but she had way too much fun ruffling Mrs. Scott’s perfectly primped feathers for that to be the reason. Plus, she always took my side over anyone else’s … except Ethan’s. A chill crawled down my arms. I started toward the Coutiers’ side of the bridge.

“Where are you going?” Drew asked.

“To find Ethan.”

“I told you, he left.”

“Then I’ll find Madison and tell her what a loyal little doppelgänger I think she is,” I responded sarcastically.

“No! You can’t tell her I told you.” He grabbed the sleeve of my coat and pulled me back before I reached the crescent of light at the end of the bridge. I glimpsed the wild desperation in his brown eyes.

Adrenaline shot through my veins, willing my legs to sprint as I tugged my arm free. My already-injured right ankle sabotaged my getaway, twisting painfully as I slipped on the ice. A strained shriek escaped my lips as I fell to my knees and grasped my ankle.

My heart quavered against my ribs as heavy footsteps approached me. “I can’t let you leave this bridge, Cassidy,” Drew said. The boards beneath me bent and creaked under the weight of his snow-smudged loafers as he strode closer. “You know this is your fault. Ethan’s never going to forgive you. So let it go.”

I refused to believe that.

As I hobbled away from him, I spotted a shaggy head of hair in the thicket of trees lining Dover Park.

“Caleb!” I meant to scream, but my throat was dry and suddenly hoarse. Drew appeared before me, and I turned to run in the opposite direction, toward the party.

He clamped his hands down on my arms, forcing me against the splintered railing; it cracked and bent under my back. “You can’t leave.”

My heels slipped like I was on a treadmill coated with ice as I struggled to regain my balance. “Is that what Madison told you? Drew, she’s using you—” The word caught in my throat as the fractured rail behind me gave out. I desperately clutched the collar of Drew’s jacket before the rail collapsed completely into jagged splinters floating down to the frozen river.

For a relieved moment I clung to him, thankful I hadn’t fallen over with the rotted wood. Then he whispered against my ear, “She never would have wanted Mr. Perfect if you hadn’t dangled him in front of her. How’s it feel to be the one being dangled now?”

I gripped his jacket tighter, holding on for dear life. So tight, my fingers ached when we were wrenched apart, away from the edge. Someone told me, “Get out of here.”

“What?” I blinked, trying to comprehend who was there and what had nearly happened. Did I almost fall off the bridge?!

“Go!” Caleb shouted.

My mind clicked into awareness. Right. Get out of here. Find Ethan and apologize—go! I ran toward Aimée’s backyard, not even feeling the sprain I’m sure was stabbing at my ankle, but the thud of fists on flesh stopped me.

I looked over my shoulder and saw Drew putting years of hockey brawls to use on Caleb’s body, knowing that each shoulder jab and punch he threw was because of me. In the past three weeks, I’d made a career out of keeping my secrets so no one would get hurt and now everyone was hurt. I needed to stop this.

By the time I reached Drew and Caleb, they were staggering around each other near the broken rail. My eyes flicked to the exposed spot, and then to Caleb, who was ducking and dodging Drew’s wild arms with surprising agility.

“Drew, you’re mad at me,” I said in the most controlled voice I could muster. “Leave Caleb out of this.”

Drew’s eyes went flat as he landed a powerful elbow in Caleb’s ribs. Caleb collapsed into a heap of moans. Fear clenched my stomach at the change in Drew’s expression from desperate to eerily controlled.

“You can have her to yourself now,” Drew spat at Caleb. “You’re welcome.”

“That’s not what this is about,” Caleb groaned, holding his side and peering up at Drew. “Your girl set this up tonight. You think Madison’s not running after Ethan right now? You think it wasn’t part of her plan the whole time to occupy you so they could be alone?”

Drew grabbed Caleb by his hood and heaved him upright. “Take that back.”

“Cassidy never would’ve made a big scene of things like this. She’s too good for that, for me.”

“She’s a liar.”

Caleb laughed a low, rumbling laugh, smiling through a wince. “Every one of us is a liar. At least she has a conscience about it.” Caleb turned his head to look at me. “You are. You’re too good for this.”

My heart slid down my spine to the soles of my shoes. He was right. The boy that I had lost myself with was, impossibly, the person who had brought me back. The real me—the me me who would never in a thousand years end up on a dark, broken bridge fighting, and kissing a boy who wasn’t her boyfriend—was better than this. I picked my heart back up and stepped into my shoes.

“Drew, this is crazy. Let Caleb go.”

“Not until he takes it back.”

Caleb kept his eyes on me, not even acknowledging Drew’s demand. He’d gotten high after I yelled at him. I could tell by his hooded eyes. Why did he always have to be so out of it? The laid-back stoner act was only going to piss off Drew more.

Sure enough, Drew shook him. “Take it back now!” Caleb casually turned his head to face Drew and stared, defiantly speechless. Drew shook him harder and whipped him around so his back was to the new hole in the wall of the bridge. “Say it.” Drew shoved Caleb’s shoulder. “Take back what you said about Maddy.”

After everything, Drew being so infatuated with Madison that he was willing to beat the honesty out of Caleb over it, he still called her Maddy—a nickname she despised. He didn’t know anything about her. Each of us was doing terrible things for unbelievably misguided reasons. Everyone was so guilty that no one was to blame; our compounded guilts canceled each other out. This needed to end before someone did something that couldn’t be taken back.

I walked slowly toward Drew, careful not to spook him into a rash decision.

Caleb glanced over his shoulder down at the river. “Easy, easy. I—I’ll back off. Chill, okay?”

Drew kept jabbing with his fingers until Caleb was so close to the edge he had no room left to escape. “Say it.”

Caleb stole another nervous look over his shoulder. Drew raised his arm to push Caleb again, and I lunged between them, absorbing the force of Drew’s anger—it was for me anyway.

I didn’t think about the broken rail or how far the fall was or how hard the rocks and ice in the river would be. None of that crossed my mind until I was falling and it was too late, but in the split second before I crashed into the rocks and the river swallowed me in its burning cold water that wasn’t what I thought. The only thing I could focus on—the only thing I could see or hear or feel—was Ethan. I never got a chance to make things right with the only boy I would ever love.

I allowed myself this one last secret, a promise that even death couldn’t deny me: I would make things right with Ethan.