NEVER FORGET WHOSE STORY THIS IS.
You’ve either been waiting to hear from me, or you don’t even care what I have to say, because you’ve already made up your mind about me. And if you’re in that second camp? Congratulations, you’re everybody who perpetuates what every girl already thinks about herself. That people look at us and judge before we can even open our mouths.
Let me just say this: the boys are still in my head. They’re shacked up in there, almost like they’re Ken dolls, playing house, except they’re boys, and nobody wants to cook or clean. They all expect someone else to clean up their messes.
If you’ve been waiting for me the whole time, well, that’s sweet. Except really, it’s not, because you’re expecting me to spill. You want me to unzip myself and take out all my secrets, one by one, polish them and put them on a shelf and explain them. Maybe Exhibit One would be the Nikes, the footprint left behind. Exhibit Two, the map. Exhibit Three, the rock-filled backpack, which nobody has really been able to explain very well, have they? And good old Exhibit Four, the fact that someone saw me packing a picnic basket full of rocks the day before it happened. I know people online are talking about all that, even urging the police to keep investigating, because there’s something they missed.
I mean, if you really want the whole story, you’ll buy my book, right? Did you know it’s always been a dream of mine to have a New York Times bestseller before I hit twenty? Why twenty, you ask? Well, because life puts girls in a pressure cooker, and everybody wants the teenage sensation. I always knew I could write. Well, now the world knows it, too. (Yes, Aria helped, but I did the heavy lifting. Like I said, never forget whose story this is.)
I’m going to assume you’ve already bought my book, or are going to buy it, so okay, I’ll give you some bonus content. I’ll tell you a story about a girl who loved not just one boy, but more than one. She liked how they looked at her, how they touched her, how powerful she felt when they worshipped her body. Is that so wrong? If you’re nodding your head, well, nobody’s making you keep reading.
But let’s say that something got in the way of every single boy. That the first one you really loved made you promises, then went back to his girlfriend, every time, then got drunk and crashed into a tree and blamed you when his football career was over, so everyone else did, too. That the next one found out about one thoughtless kiss that meant nothing and broke your heart. That the next one you trusted was just a glorified college playboy, and you trusted the one who came with him, who didn’t just throw you under the bus so much as tie you to the road and watch the bus run over you. Again and again.
I spent almost two months in juvie. Maybe you don’t think that’s a big deal, but have you been there? It’s a truly awful place, but it gave me time to think. My brain went to some dark places. Sometimes, when things were really bad, I turned on myself, the same way the rest of the world turned on me. I thought of myself as guilty, even though I had done nothing wrong except trust my heart with the wrong people. I plotted how I would have done it, if I were capable of that kind of thing.
Let’s get something straight. I never slept with Keegan Leach. But I trusted him in another way—with my mind. We were friends, or so I thought. I didn’t really tell anyone else about the friendship, because I knew what they’d think. Oh, there’s Tabby, screwing her boyfriend’s best friend. It was so not like that. We both missed Mark, and at first I think we were jealous of each other. I was Mark’s new shiny thing, and Keegan was Mark’s constant.
But Keegan has convinced some people otherwise. That I wanted to break up with Mark to be with him instead. Did you believe him? (If so, really?)
I don’t owe you the truth about what happened that day in the woods. But here, I’ll humor you a bit. I’ll mess with your head the same way everyone else tried to mess with mine and make me think the worst things about myself.
Maybe the hike was my idea. It was as simple as Mark saying something righteous like, Where is there to hike around here? And I told him I’d heard of this place called the Mayflower Trail, and that I’d wanted to check it out. With him, of course. Guys are suckers for being the protector. As if I need to be protected from anything.
Okay, okay, so let’s just say I already knew those woods well. I didn’t tell Mark I’d been there before. I didn’t tell him that I knew every single path. I didn’t tell him I knew where the ground was hard and where it was soft, that I knew how to practically dance over the roots to avoid a sprained ankle. I let him think it was all his idea. He got all macho, telling me I needed to get hiking boots and proper gear. I let him play the man role, knowing it would be the last time he ever played it.
Shh. This is all hypothetical, remember? It didn’t really happen this way, and you’ve made your mind up about me anyway.
In this scenario—where I’m guilty—I used Keegan, the sad loner who was not-so-secretly in love with me.
We researched everything together—on his computer, of course. He thought we were going on a hike to the Split. He said Mark was afraid of heights and would need a good shove to make it up there. I joked that the shove would be better at the top, because that way I wouldn’t have to break up with him and endure the aftermath.
“Anything for you,” Keegan said. It had been pitifully easy to get him to fall for me. He was so desperate for human contact. “I’ll do it, you know.”
But we don’t actually need boys, do we? We’re capable of doing things on our own.
Mark put up a fight. Well, technically, we fought the entire way up to the Split. We argued about last year, about now, about what was going to happen next year. He accused me of being jealous and overbearing. I called him an asshole. I stared at his back—of course I was behind him, exactly where he wanted me—and the backpack there. He’d bitched when I asked him to carry it, of course—don’t believe everything you read, folks, because Mark was no gentleman, just your average horny frat bro minus the actual frat house.
Anyway, when Mark asked what was in the backpack, I just said “Stuff we might need. Why, can you not handle it?” And he scowled and put it on his back, because of course the great Mark the Shark, (former) swimming champion, could handle a goddamn backpack.
Mark got way ahead of me, because he was six inches taller and probably also because he was pissed off and wanted to show that he could do that. He could leave me there if he wanted to. The Split loomed in front of us, this big dark mass, and I was basically one giant heartbeat.
When we stood at the top, I realized I was terrified of heights. Mark sensed it, softened toward me. He liked me weak.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Nothing will happen to you.”
I put the picnic basket down. I stared at the view—we had earned it, right? The trees were everywhere, a green and brown swirl, some of the leaves orange and red at the very tops, like they were getting a sunburn.
Mark sat down. Started to shrug out of the backpack, which wasn’t part of the plan. The backpack would make him drop fast, pull him under, kill him quickly. It would be okay, though. When he stood up and put it back on—then I’d do it.
But instead, he opened it. My mouth became an O of shock when I saw his eyebrows come together like they did when he was confused.
“What the—” he said, launching to his feet. “Why are there rocks in here?”
Oh, Mark. Dense to the very end.
I had thought a lot about what my last words to Mark would be, but in that moment, I forgot them all. He still hadn’t put it together, and time was slipping past. Any second he would really figure it out, and any second he would move, because he was standing so close to the edge.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I held my arms out. His went out instinctively, too—he thought I was going to hug him, maybe. But instead, my palms made contact with his chest, and he went over the edge, with the backpack slung around one arm.
My scream was louder than his.
I don’t know how long it took me to get down—maybe an hour, maybe more—but I ran, I fell, my legs bled. I was a mess, dirty and sweaty, and I realized I had left the picnic basket behind, and that it didn’t have any food in it—the sandwiches I’d made were still in the fridge. I would get rid of them when I got home. The key to getting away with it was not being sloppy.
I didn’t see Mark at first. It was dark out and I panicked, thinking he managed to get out, that he was staggering through the woods and I would have to hunt him down like a wounded animal. I had to get right up close to the creek—ta-da, the footprint!—and that was when I practically bumped into his body, bobbing there, arms outstretched, like a starfish.
You’re wondering if he was dead by then, or if I had to finish him off. And that’s one secret I’ll never tell. Maybe I only stuck around long enough to see if he would surface. I knew from all his bragging that Mark could hold his breath for just shy of five minutes. I waited ten.
The backpack, though—it was nowhere to be found. I thrashed around for a few minutes, digging under the water for it, before realizing the creek was a lot deeper than I thought. I wasn’t going to find it, and I needed to get home.
But not before I planted something of Keegan’s where nobody would ever find it, unless they really knew where to look. The Gatorade! That was another brilliant touch. Mark and Keegan both chugged the stuff nonstop. It was so easy to slip some vodka into Mark’s bottle, and if he noticed, he didn’t say anything. I wanted him just a bit disoriented. Just a bit slow, so that I could pounce right.
I knew I’d end up arrested, but that was okay, because I also knew they didn’t have enough to convict me in the end. The diary—did I really believe what I wrote in it, or was it a whole bunch of bullshit, because I knew they’d find it? You decide. Maybe it was my best work, the most brilliant fiction I’ll ever create. Maybe it was the truth, from a girl who didn’t know any better.
I gambled with my own future, and they say the house always wins. But the house is no match for the teenage girl living in it.
If you were to look at my junior high yearbook, you’d see my hopeful little face, my boobs pushed up to my chin even then, because I had them before everyone else and figured I might as well use them. You’d see my nickname—Tabby Cat, which nobody ever called me, but I was embarrassed to not have an actual nickname. Kennedy just called me “Hottie,” but she called everyone “Hottie,” probably because she thought it made her sound cool. You’d see my favorite quote—“a prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages”—which I told anyone who asked that it was from my favorite Tennessee Williams play, but it was really stolen from one of Angelina Jolie’s tattoos.
You’d see my ambition, the heart of that girl, out there on the page for everyone to see. Become a best-selling author by age twenty.
I’m sure they laughed at me behind my back. It was ridiculous, putting so much of myself out there. I should have put something generic like everyone else did. Get rich or be happy. But if you’ve followed along, you know I’m not generic, now, am I? Plus, I read somewhere that your chances of achieving something are at least fifty percent higher if you write it down.
I don’t know what became of everyone else in that class, if they Got Rich or Became Happy. But me—I’m a girl, nineteen now, and my little life story is about to hit the New York Times bestseller list. I guess you could say I got what I wanted, even though I had to do something wild to get there.
Okay, did you actually believe all that?
Because I made it all up. I’m supposed to be modest, but you believe it, because I’m a damn good writer. (Or because you want a reason to hate me, in which case, you’re part of the problem.)
I spent so much time in juvie with nothing to do that I’ve made up a lot of stories in my head. Imaginary friends are great company when you’re alone in the dark, and imaginary enemies are even better. I’ve thought about that day in the woods, all the days leading up to it, so many times that I’ve been able to construct endless versions of the same thing. I’ve been able to consider how I would have done it, if I did it at all. I’ve cast myself as a victim and a villain, but can you honestly tell me you haven’t been both in your own life?
Here’s what really happened. But I’ll warn you, it’s not nearly as exciting. Mark’s fingers were gripping my arm, tight enough to hurt. We’re going on a hike this weekend. Eight miles. I know you’re out of shape, but you can handle it. (Really nice, right?) I went along with it because I loved him, and maybe because I wanted to prove something to him. That I could do it.
He bitched and complained the farther we got into the woods. He hated that I brought a picnic basket. He chastised me for wearing shorts instead of long pants. He laughed because I had lipstick on. (Excuse me for wanting to look nice!) And when we made it up to the Split (him a few minutes ahead of me, because he was sick of waiting around), I felt this sense of pride in myself that I had done it. Do you know what he said? He turned around and said, “It took you long enough.”
Then he took a drink of Gatorade and laid into me about coming on to Keegan. I started to cry, because that’s what I do when someone yells at me. Then he lunged, like he wanted to hurt me. That’s when he lost his balance. I’ll never forget the look on his face—a mixture of revulsion and shock. I wake up with it burned into my brain, along with a question nobody will ever be able to answer. Would he have hurt me, if he hadn’t slipped? Would I have been the one underwater in the creek? Or would he have realized he was being an asshole, apologized, and let me tell my version of the story?
I tried to find my way down, to see if he was okay. But the whole time, I swear, I heard breathing, and the occasional laugh. I know I wasn’t alone in those woods. When I told the cops, they told me I had gone through a trauma. They convinced me I was hearing things. I knew they didn’t believe me, and wouldn’t believe another word I said.
Now, be honest. Ask yourself if you really think I did it. And if the answer is yes, ask yourself why. Why you assumed I was guilty. The answers might be very telling.
I’ve pretty much said everything I have to say. You can love me or hate me, victimize me or demonize me, but after all this, you’re going to remember me, and that goddamn counts for something.
Maybe I’m just a girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Maybe I’m just a girl who has had to live with all of your eyes on me for too long.
Maybe I’m just a girl.