ROSALIE
SUNDAY, JANUARY 14
She knows I’m lying. When Carter and I didn’t actually break up at Eat’n Park, someone was listening. Either Private tipped her off, or Carter Shaw is a very bad liar.
Amanda has the photos and Private has the photos. It’s only a matter of time before everything rips to shreds. A thousand threads, snaaaap. In church, the shell of some other girl sings the hymns and recites the prayers while I sink into my chair and the long, cold fingers of my parents and the congregation and the Holy Spirit Himself squeeze tighter and tighter around my throat until there’s no air left.
Richard and Julia are fully absorbed in the service, but Lily sees me shrinking in my chair, body caught somewhere between suffocating and disappearing altogether. She reaches over and slips her hand into my hand. Our fingers weave.
“Jesus loves you,” she whispers. “His love is all around. Can’t you feel it?”
I smile weakly at my sister, and tears well up in my eyes. All I can feel is the pulsing bass, which reverberates through the church’s sound system. It pounds against my lungs, thud, thud, thud, until finally the tears spill over.
After service ends, I nibble cookies and try my best to make small talk with Ivan Brophy, one of the FOC kids I mind the least. From the seats behind us, I can feel Mom’s eyes fixed on my back. She’s deep in conversation with Mrs. Hagan, and their voices carry.
“You know he and Cecilia had a terrible go of it when he was growing up,” Mrs. Hagan is saying. “She let him run wild, and now look what’s happened.” They’re talking, it seems, about the Hagan’s next-door neighbors, Philip Ireland and his mother, Cecilia. Before service, I’d overheard Beth Clark murmuring to Emily Masters that Philip had “run off to Dayton, with a man.” He’s a grown adult. I’m not sure leaving home to move in with your boyfriend qualifies as “running off,” but this is the kind of occurrence that makes waves in Fellowship circles, even though the Irelands aren’t FOC. It’s gossip fueled by equal parts fear and disgust. The purity ring feels tight and hot around my finger.
“He was exposed to too many of the world’s sins,” Mom agrees. “And he doesn’t have Jesus in his heart. It’s people like that who ruin godly marriages.”
The words crash down across my back. I’m not sure if they’re for my benefit, or despite of me. I try to block them out, focus instead on Ivan Brophy’s mouth. He’s regaling me with an animated description of his volunteer plans for tomorrow’s day off from school. When he asks if I want to join the outreach day trip for Mission Driven, I politely decline.
And then finally coffee hour is over, and the Bells are going our separate ways: Dad and Lily take the car home, Mom stays for her shift in the church office, and I take off on my bike. The road stretches out like a wide gray ribbon. I can’t put enough distance between me and God’s Grace, the world passing in a blur of barbed wire, frost-tipped grass, dairy cows. It isn’t until I get to Bracken Hollow that I realize my jaw aches and my head is pounding from clenching my teeth all through service.
Inside, I hang my coat on an empty hook in the office and massage my temples. Our branch is small and the tech is about a decade short of modern, but I love it here. There’s exposed brick on the walls and big open windows. It always smells like the plastic they use for library bindings and vanilla carpet freshener. I say hello to Marge, the librarian on duty, and settle in at the info desk. Within minutes I have a patron with a question, a blissful distraction from the din inside my head.
By the time my shift ends at four, my headache is gone and I’ve almost forgotten I told Carter to pick me up. We’re supposed to be going to some coffee shop he found a few miles out, somewhere in a strip mall where he swears no one will spot us. The whole thing grates against my better judgment. I can’t get high at the library, and there will be no Bell family face time tonight. But I need to see Carter. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say, but we have to talk about Amanda.
Through the row of front-facing windows, I can see him drumming against the steering wheel. Marge makes her final “library closing” announcement, and a minute later I’m in the parking lot, phone to my ear, reminding Dad about my date. Check-in complete, I strap my bike to the back of Carter’s car and slide into the front seat.
He leans over to kiss my cheek, but freezes when I open my mouth. “Amanda knows we’re lying.”
“What?”
“I know you talked to her, but either she didn’t buy it, or someone’s been spying. And I think it might be the latter.”
“Spying?”
Just talking about this makes me jumpy. Unless there’s a bug in the Mercedes, no one could possibly be eavesdropping, but I lower my voice, just in case.
“Someone’s been following me. At school, and the other night they showed up at my house.”
“Oh my god.” Carter grabs my hand and squeezes. “Did you get a look at the guy? Did he say anything?”
I shake my head. “I think it might have been a woman, but I’m not sure. I just saw her shadow. Someone tipped Amanda off that we’re not really broken up. And someone’s been following me around. So, two plus two . . .”
“Okay.” Carter puts his other hand on top of mine and looks me straight in the eye. “We’re going to figure this out.”
“How? Amanda has . . . stuff on me. Stuff that can’t get out.”
“What kind of stuff?” Carter’s grip on my hand loosens, and the corners of his mouth drop down. A somber gloom settles across his face, making him look much older than his usually boyish seventeen years.
I turn toward the passenger’s side window and look out. Then I turn back to Carter and lie to his face. “Stuff about my family; I don’t want to talk about it. But Amanda could really do some damage, and she’s definitely pissed.” Because of course she is. Guilt balloons in my stomach, and I’m not sure what I want anymore. To keep myself safe, yes, but at what cost?
I look into Carter’s eyes. The gloom has lifted; he looks like a confused little boy.
“Maybe we should take a break,” I suggest. “A real one. Just for a week or two, until this blows over.”
“No!” Carter smashes his fist against the steering wheel, and the horn lets out a sharp blast. I gasp. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.” He slumps back against the headrest. “I’ll handle Amanda. Just don’t do this.”
I’d like to believe him, but Carter’s not going to convince Amanda of anything. I’m sure he did his best last week, but Private’s one step ahead of us.
“Just for a little while,” I repeat. At least until January 24 is here and gone and this whole mess with Private blows over, Lord willing. I can hold my parents off for ten days. I’ll tell them Carter’s family took him on a trip for his birthday; that’s something rich people do.
“I love you, Rosalie.”
For a moment, there’s a thin silence in the car. My stomach twists.
“I love you,” he repeats. As if I didn’t hear it the first time. As if destroying everything once wasn’t enough.
I let the words hang. I’m the girl with zero expectations, his no-strings-attached commercial break from the regularly scheduled programming of being golden boy Carter Shaw. The guilt-balloon in my stomach expands and expands. He’s not allowed to fall in love.
“I just need a little time,” he says, pressing through my silence. “Leaving Amanda, it’s not something I can just do. Amanda, me, our families, we’re all tangled up in each other.”
“I never asked you to leave her,” I choke out.
“I know. I think that’s why I fell so hard for you.” The guilt-balloon bursts with a bang only I can hear.
I’m shoving open the car door and running around to unhook my bike from the back before I even have time to think. Something inside me is just done. I’m done lying to Carter about what we are, done hurting Amanda, done hurting Pau too. No matter what it means. Broken strands of my carefully woven web flutter around me, useless.
“What are you doing?”
Carter’s out of the car, but I’ve already got my bike. I need to get out of here, now.
“Going home.” I snap my helmet strap under my chin and secure my messenger bag across my shoulders.
“Wait. I don’t get what just happened.”
Of course you don’t. I push off and bike out of the lot, onto the road.
“Rosalie! Shit.”
The car door slams, and I pedal faster. The wind stings my face, and my eyes fill with tears. It’s just the wind, I tell myself. I’m not really crying. I’ll figure it out. I always do.
“Rosalie.” Suddenly, Carter’s next to me in the road, window down. He’s driving halfway into the wrong lane, but there’s no traffic. “Let’s talk about this, please.”
“Leave me alone!” I shout, mean on purpose. “You’re crowding me.”
He pulls all the way into the left lane, the wrong lane. “Please, babe, get back in the car.”
Babe. He’s never called me that before.
“I want us to be together,” he shouts. “You and me.”
“You belong with Amanda,” I shout back. I pedal faster.
“What? I can barely hear you. Please get back in the car.”
There’s a red car coming toward Carter, driving too fast. He needs to slow down, drop behind me, get into the right lane. But he’s not paying attention, eyes still fixed on me. Shit.
“Get over, Carter!” I shout.
The car starts honking. I pull to the side of the road, panting. Carter swerves into the right lane, then pulls up along the guardrail as the car passes in a red blare of honking and cursing.
He gets out and grabs my elbow. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. You’re the one who almost got yourself killed.”
He grimaces but doesn’t argue.
“I don’t understand what’s happening, Rosalie. You have to talk to me.”
“We have to break up. Not a break, break up.”
“No. No way.”
“This isn’t a negotiation.”
Carter is quiet. A muscle twitches along his jaw, holding back tears. Then he leans forward and buries his face in my coat. I lift my arms and let them rest lightly around his shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he says after I’ve been silent too long. “I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry. Please let me drive you home?”
I swing my leg off my bike. Wordlessly, we strap it to the trunk, then I climb back into the passenger’s seat. For once, he doesn’t turn on any music. We’re silent for the rest of the drive to my house. When Carter pulls into the driveway, I know it’s the last time I’ll hear the crunch of his tires against gravel.
I slip out of the car before he can kiss me, then unhook my bike and wheel it up to the driver’s side window. He doesn’t get out of the car.
“Take care, Carter.”
He doesn’t say anything. I pretend I don’t see tears spill down his cheeks. Then, I wheel my bike back around to the shed and listen to him drive away.
I make an excuse to Dad about the change of plans, some emergency at Shaw Realty. He seems to buy it. When I’m alone in my room, I take out my phone and open the conversation with Private.
I did it.
Send me the recording.
Not that. I broke up with Carter. So our business is done.
That is not what I asked you to do.
Who do you bitches think you are?
I suck in my breath. I’m seething. I know I made the right choice today, but at the same time, I just jeopardized everything. After all this, I can’t risk Private leaking the photos too.
I thought this would make you happy. Carter’s crushed.
You need to stop thinking so much.
I wait, but they don’t text again. I sink onto my bed and close my eyes. With Carter out of my life, Private better leave me the hell alone. It’s not a lot of comfort. Now that I’ve broken up with Carter, it might not matter.
After a few minutes, Lily knocks on my door. “Rosalie?”
“Not now, Lily.” My voice is a little too sharp. “I’m not feeling well.”
I listen to her footsteps pad back to her room and hate myself just a little more. I should cherish every moment I have with my sister. I don’t know how many more we have left. In my head, I try to map out what comes next. I can buy myself a little time with my parents, maybe two weeks. Then it all goes dark.