Kane bailed on a ride home, and a ride into school the next day, so I now have this irrational feeling he’s avoiding me. Maybe it’s because of my talk with Luisa.
If you want to know who killed Declan, look in the mirror. She’s insane, of course. Jealous, because I had Declan and Kane.
Or at least I thought I did.
The next time I see Kane, it’s in the science hallway. He has his tongue down Luisa’s throat, which only makes me feel more alone. Guess the whole “breakup” isn’t really happening.
All yesterday and this morning, I’ve been replaying Luisa’s words in my head. She said that I hounded Declan. She thinks I failed him. That I’m responsible for his death. And I don’t even know what I did.
I have to know. Even if Kane thinks I won’t like what I find out. It can’t be worse than not knowing.
When I get back home after school, I can’t bother with my trig homework. I reach under my bed and pull out the box of stuff from Declan’s room. Since my parents are at work, I bring it downstairs, setting it on the coffee table, then open the flaps. This time, I dig through the entire box, pulling out ticket stubs from movies and concerts we’d gone to, napkins, matchbooks, toothpicks, all the junk that signified our life together. He’d piled them all in the top drawer of the dresser in his bedroom. I find the one for that cheesy horror movie. The last movie we’d seen in the theaters, and he hadn’t even really been with me. He’d sat next to Luisa and Kane, while I’d sat alone.
Then I notice a stub for another movie. It’s a romantic comedy, a movie I know I’ve never seen. My eyes scan the date. January 16 of last year. A midnight showing, one month before his death.
I stare at it. Declan liked romantic movies about as much as the next guy. Basically, he stomached them for me. But he’d gone to this movie…alone?
Declan often liked to be alone with his thoughts. Still, I couldn’t imagine him spending much contemplative time at a midnight showing of a Reese Witherspoon flick.
I check my phone. January 16 had been a Tuesday. Declan was usually one to cut things short on school nights so he could prepare for school and get a good night’s sleep for the next day. Nothing short of an emergency would’ve drawn him out of the house that late.
Unless…
My skin prickles. He went with someone else. To be alone with someone else.
I drop the stub into the box as if it’s a hot flame, and text Kane: Do you think Declan was seeing someone else?
No response. No three dancing dots. I stare at the phone, willing him to answer, then dig through the box again. I find a little stuffed bear but can’t figure out why Declan would have it. Did he have a history with someone else? Did he have mementos of a whole other life I knew nothing about? I feel sick, dizzy. Suddenly, everything inside that box is suspicious, even the most innocuous items, like the Holy Bible. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Oh God.
My phone buzzes with a message from Kane. I jump on it and read: Why?
I’m going to be sick. The room swims as I type. A movie ticket I found in the box his mom gave me.
I want him to say that I’m being ridiculous and paranoid, that Declan was too good to do such a thing. Instead, his next message is: Can I come over?
No. I sink down onto the couch and gather a blanket around me, hoping to ward off the chill that’s suddenly sunk into my bones. Because there is only one reason Kane would delay answering me. Why? Just tell me.
I don’t think you’ll like the answer.
I draw in a breath, my body trembling. It’s nearly impossible to get my fingers to spell out my next text, because I’m half-blind from the tears in my eyes: So he was.
I think so.
Who? But I already know the answer. Maybe I’d known it all along. Luisa, right?
Yeah.
Turns out, I was wrong. There is something worse than not knowing. And it’s knowing.
I’m not sure what happens after that. All I know is that I crash, my body collapsing in on itself, and every ounce of will that I’d been able to muster since I got out of Shady Harbor evaporates. All that’s left is pain. It’s so bad that I feel like I might die from it. Time speeds up and slows down at the same time, stretching and spiraling thoughts through my head. Declan, kissing me in the playhouse. Declan, the first time I met him, playing that guitar. Declan, singing that song to me on my sixteenth birthday. Declan, dead, his brains splayed out on the plywood wall of the shed. My world is ending. I wonder if this is how he felt before he ended his.
Before I know it, Kane is sitting on the edge of the couch, holding a tissue box, watching me. My face is covered in tears and snot, and I know there’s plenty more where that came from. My parents usually don’t get home until seven on weekdays, and despite the darkness, it’s probably not yet dinnertime. He holds out a tissue, but I don’t have the energy to take it.
“When?” My voice is choked.
“I don’t know when it started. I think after New Year’s, last year. But maybe it was before then, and we just never noticed.”
After New Year’s. After they saw Kane and me kissing. Was it revenge? Was that all it was? Declan didn’t strike me as someone to be vindictive. And I’d apologized, he’d accepted. It didn’t make sense. “Why?”
“I don’t…” He stops. “I have something to tell you,” he says.
Curled in a ball, I don’t say a word. I don’t like the tone of his voice. I don’t really want to know any more. It’s too much. My heart aches. Maybe it actually is broken. It feels heavy, swollen, on the verge of bursting.
“I told you Luisa suspected something was going on between us,” he says. “But she didn’t suspect. She knew. Because I told her.”
I don’t say anything. I was right. I can’t hurt worse. I only feel numb. “But nothing was going on between us.”
“Something was,” he goes on. “I guess you and I… We kissed at midnight. And it was more than a little kiss. It got out of hand, Hailey. Luisa started asking me question after question about whether I wanted you or thought of you in that way, and I…” He shakes his head. “I was sick of it. So I told her. I told her what we’d done when we were fifteen.”
It’s so ludicrous that neither of us can say it. Like it was so much of a mistake that we can’t admit that we had sex. I roll over on the couch, facing him. “And she told Declan.”
He nods.
“He hated me. He hated me after that. Everything I’d ever told him was a lie. And he…” I suck in a breath. All that time, he’d known. It would have been bad enough if he’d confronted me, but he never did…which was worse. He’d let the knowledge fester, stopped going to church, started seeing Luisa, and then…
“Hailey. I’m sorry. But Declan wasn’t unbalanced. He didn’t kill himself because of that.”
“He didn’t kill himself at all!” I fire back. I’m surer of that than I’ve ever been. Still, I know that sex was huge to him. All he ever did was talk about our first time. Our first time. And I never told him. I never admitted that everything he thought he knew about me was a lie.
I let out a choked sob.
“Hey,” Kane says, sitting me up and putting an arm around me. “Come on.”
“I’m the worst person ever,” I sob, my body racked with convulsions. “I lied to him through our whole relationship. He had every right to get back at me.”
“And then you got back at him,” Kane says quietly.
“What?”
He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a small bag. From it, he pulls a strawberry-colored Fujifilm Instax camera. I stare at it, two and two coming together in my mind. I remember sitting in front of the Christmas tree, unwrapping this gift as my parents snapped pictures, pretending I was six years old, and me indulging them since it was the first time since I’d gotten my car that they weren’t at each other’s throats. I’d kissed them both, then, since Declan wasn’t around, taken a bunch of pictures of the snowy outside before realizing I should have saved the film for New Year’s.
THIS ENDS HERE.
“This is your camera,” he says. “You took that picture of them. You showed it to me. You’re the one who gave that picture to Declan.”