WE’RE SPLITTING UP, me and Tabby. We talked about going to the University of Denver together but she didn’t even apply—at first she said it was because she missed too much school, that she would never be able to catch up. But we both know that’s not true. She’s staying home, working on the book. Which I don’t really understand, since it’s the last place I’d want to be after everything.
After everything. After Keegan got sentenced, after Tabby stopped being infamous and started to become famous instead. The girl, misunderstood, whose life almost got taken away because she befriended a sad loner who wanted more than she was willing to give. Keegan still hasn’t admitted he did it—I can’t help but still follow everything happening with him. But the evidence says otherwise. More like, it screams otherwise.
Tabby is coming over to help me pack. We spent the summer together, just like old times, watching bad reality TV and taking long walks and eating all the snacks Mom tried to force on us. We never talked about Mark, or what Tabby had gone through. I waited for her to bring it up, but she never did. Maybe she had talked about it enough. Our friendship has somehow become more about me, like Tabby wants a way to step out of her spotlight.
I hear her ring the doorbell. In the distance, somebody is riding a motorcycle, which always makes me think of Beck. I haven’t seen him all summer, and I heard he’s staying in Coldcliff to work at a bike shop. I don’t care anyway. Dallas and I are back together—well, sort of. We’re figuring out what we are, if we can be anything. He’ll be in Coldcliff another year, so we’re not that far away. Maybe we have a chance.
“I’m glad you’re staying in town,” Mom says to Tabby. When I’m on the landing, I can see them downstairs, Mom’s arms wrapped around Tabby.
“Me too,” Tabby says. “All my memories are here. The good ones and bad ones. I don’t think I’m ready to leave it all behind yet.”
That Day in the Woods. That’s the name of her memoir, the one Tabby is writing with the help of some woman named Aria, an author from New York who she has long Skype calls with. Of course there was going to be a book. I’m just surprised Tabby is the one writing it. She says she needs to tell her whole story, not let somebody else do it and get it wrong. She wants people to understand her. She wants the media circus to end.
That is what she calls it. The circus. She’s still a regular on websites, even big ones, like People and the Enquirer. I wonder how they always know where she is. When we went shopping in Boulder a few weeks after her trial, there was a picture of the two of us with Starbucks cups, me a blurry figure beside her, half of my face cut out. Tabitha Cousins and Friend.
“I wish they’d just leave her alone,” Mom keeps saying. “That girl has been through so much already.”
There’s going to be a movie, too, about Tabby’s life and the case and everything she went through. I have no idea who’s going to play her, or if there’s going to be some actress playing me. I don’t like the idea of other people acting it all out, stepping into our skin. When I asked Tabby how she could let it happen, she just shrugged.
“People are going to talk about it regardless of whether I let them,” she said. “You don’t know what it’s like, for the entire world to be talking about you. It’s like you’re shaking a snow globe full of bullshit and the truth never lands.”
I don’t know what it’s like, and I doubt I ever will. Drama follows Tabby. Mom asked her last week if she was dating anyone, if there were any special boys. Tabby rolled her eyes and kind of smiled. She gets tons of “fan mail” from people around the world, people claiming they always knew she was innocent. Marriage proposals. Invitations to take a ride on their luxury yachts. She reads every single one, sometimes out loud to me.
“Hey,” she says now, thumping up the stairs. “College girl. We’d better get you packed.”
Tabby is merciless at dividing what she calls “the crap” from the stuff I should actually bring with me. She shakes her head when I stuff a pair of platform boots into my suitcase, calling them “ancient.” She starts pulling things out of my drawers, tossing them into piles. She and Mom read that Marie Kondo book about how decluttering is supposed to enhance your life, as if how much stuff you have in a room really matters.
“This is kind of exciting,” she says. “You can pick and choose your baggage. I kind of wish I was going with you.”
“I wish you were coming, too.” I sit on the edge of my bed. “We could have been roommates, like we talked about. It won’t be the same without you.”
It won’t be the same without her. But maybe that’s a good thing. We can finally stop dueling for the same sun, the same one that seems to perpetually shine down on Tabby. Maybe ours is a friendship that will get stronger with distance.
“I just need time,” Tabby says. “My publisher wants this draft done by the end of next month. I think I can have it finished by then, but I can’t imagine dealing with college at the same time. And there’s all this publicity stuff. Plus, they’re flying me out to LA to meet with the movie people in a few weeks. I keep telling myself that college will always be there.”
I nod, and I try to understand why she’s doing all this. It’s like everything that happened cleaved Tabby into two different versions of herself. The girl I knew, the one who walked around like a zombie in the days after Mark died, the one who screamed when she got arrested, teary when I visited her in juvie. I didn’t do it. She’s so much harder now, like a shell has formed around whatever soft underbelly she might have had. I have to say something especially sharp for her to even hear it.
“I guess we can probably say goodbye to this one,” Tabby says, holding up a blur of orange, and all the breath goes out of me when I realize what it is. Mark’s sweatshirt. The Princeton one that I wore to the clinic. She never asked for it back.
“I don’t want it,” I say. “I don’t need another memory of … that.”
Tabby lays the sweatshirt on my bed with its arms outstretched, as if it’s a person and it’s telling us to stop. “Same. I don’t need another memory either.”
I don’t know if she’s talking about my abortion and the rumors, or about Mark’s death, or her relationship with Mark, or all of it, a tangled mess. Despite the heat—our air conditioner is broken again, yet another thing Dad says he’ll fix—goose bumps cover my arms when she pulls me in for a hug.
“I’m going to miss you,” she says, her embrace hard, her arms like strong wires across my back. “Sometimes I think you’re the only person who knows who I really am.”
“I’ll Snap you every day,” I say. “Pictures of shitty cafeteria food and my dorm room.” Tabby has a new phone number now, because her old number was blowing up with calls and messages.
“You better,” she says. “But you’re not even far away. I’m gonna be up there visiting pretty much every weekend. You can’t get rid of me so easily.”
“I don’t want to.” I’m lucky to have Tabby. We’re lucky to have each other. I’m lucky my secrets haven’t surfaced and we can build over them without crushing our foundation.
Her phone goes off, and she smiles at it. “Look, I’ve gotta go. I think you’re good to finish this on your own, right?”
“Sure,” I say. “But I thought you were staying for dinner. My mom’s making beef Stroganoff.”
“I know,” she says. “But there’ll be plenty of days I can eat beef Stroganoff with Maggie. There’s just somewhere I need to be.”
“Okay,” I say. “I guess this is goodbye, then.”
“For now,” she says, pulling me in for another hug. “I love you, Elle, no matter what.”
“I love you, too.”
Then she’s gone, with Mark’s sweatshirt over her arm, and I realize she didn’t help me pack at all. She just took clothes out of drawers and tossed them into a pile of nos on the floor. I barely have anything she deemed worthy of taking.
That’s when I hear it. That sound. That motorcycle. I run across the hall into my parents’ room, which overlooks the street, and look down. Beck is in front of the house, just like I used to fantasize about. For a second—just the tiniest sliver of time—I think he’s here for me, and the old feelings bubble back up. He did feel the same way.
But then I see an orange blur hop on the back of the bike. He hands her a helmet. Before they speed away, I swear she looks up, even though she has no way of knowing I’m standing here.
I swear she looks up and smiles.