I’M NOT THE GOOD FRIEND everyone thinks I am.
Tabby and I are at the Forest Glen Mall today, shopping for new school clothes, which is a normal thing we do together, except nothing is normal after Mark. She says she needs to get on with her life and not think about death. “It’s what he would have wanted,” she says.
My stomach is flat again. Tabby comments on it when I try on a crop top. “You’re so skinny. You should definitely buy that. You’re going to have the best body at school this year.”
“Yeah, right,” I say. “That’ll be you.” As usual. Tabby’s body is the stuff of locker room legend, somehow both tight and soft.
“We’ll see,” she says. “So, have you talked to him yet?”
“Who?”
“Elle,” she says, putting her thumb against my chin like my mom does. “You know who I’m talking about. Have you honestly not talked to him?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Okay,” she says, drawing the word out. “But you pretending it never happened won’t make it go away.”
She’s wrong. I look the same as I did before—better now, actually. I’m fitter and tanned from the past couple weeks, from the time since Mark died, when Tabby and I have been going to Crest Beach almost every day. She claims that’s the only place she feels normal, staring at the water.
Tabby thinks she knows my whole story. And she knows most of it. But her version is missing a giant chapter, and I’ll make sure she never gets to read that chapter. Because it would destroy us.
When we’re in the food court having lunch—salad for me, no dressing—I can tell people are staring at us. No, not at us. At Tabby. That part isn’t unusual. She gets a lot of second looks—it’s her eyes, I think, how ridiculously blue they are. People stop and comment and ask if they’re real.
“Of course they’re real,” she always says. “They’re in my face, aren’t they?”
But this is different. Nobody comes up to us. They’re keeping their distance, whispering behind their hands. Judgmental, disapproving. I know that look well. I’ve been looked at like that myself very recently.
“Why is everyone staring?” I ask. “Is it because you’re the dead guy’s widow?”
You probably think that’s rude. Insensitive. Or maybe you just think I’m a bitch—that’s okay. People have thought worse about me. But I have nothing to hide. I wasn’t sad to see Mark go. I didn’t cry at his funeral. I went to his funeral only because Mom dragged me, and Mom dragged me only because she loves Tabby, thinks of her as a second daughter. Mom wanted us to be there for Tabby.
(I lied—I do have things to hide. But not about my feelings toward Mark. Everyone is mourning a guy who didn’t exist. I didn’t like the real version, and I’m really not sorry he’s gone.)
“Must be,” Tabby says between bites of her sandwich. Ever since Mark died, her appetite is back. When they were together, he was always on her about what she ate. Mark wants me to cut out junk food. Mark said I would tone up fast if I stopped eating sugar. Mark said hiking would be a great workout for my legs and ass.
Mark wanted. Mark said.
People keep staring the rest of the day. When Tabby drives us home, I give a gaggle of middle-aged women in cardigans the finger out the car window. They look familiar. They’ve judged me. Let them talk.
It’s when I log on to Facebook after dinner that I see it. A link to a Coldcliff Tribune article about Mark’s cause of death. Lou Chamberlain posted it. She hates Tabby.
Drowning. My chest constricts, like my skin is too small. Everyone assumed he was dead when he hit the rocks. There’s a horrible, twisted irony to it. Mark the Shark, felled by a shallow, muddy creek.
But it’s not the article that plucks at my skin, making goose bumps rise up. It’s the comments under it, the ones about Tabby.
Something isn’t adding up here—why wouldn’t she check if he was OK? That’s what Lou wrote.
They were fighting at Elle’s party—everyone saw it.
I bet she knew he was going to break up with her and she lost it. You know she has a temper right? She flipped off Mr. Mancini once.
They were arguing about their baby!!!
I stop reading. I don’t need to see any more. Maybe it was inevitable, and I knew this was going to happen. The world is choosing sides. Tabby was never just going to be Mark’s widow.
She would also be his executioner.
Excerpt from Tabby’s Diary
July 23, 2018
I met a boy, and I already love him. How is that even possible? I’m not even sure why I’m writing this down. I guess because I should be writing everything down if I want to become a writer someday. Most people don’t even know that about me—that I want to become a writer. It’s the kind of dream that’s too big to share.
Anyway, Mark Forrester. I know he loves me too. He might be the one. Elle told me it’s too soon to know, but she has never been in love, so she wouldn’t understand. Mark is everything the other boys weren’t. He’s not afraid to show me how much he cares. He actually brought me flowers on a date—these red roses. I’m going to dry one to show our kids one day.
I guess this is why I’m writing this down. Because it’s another dream that’s too big to share, and I need it to be real. I can’t describe it to anyone out loud. Nobody likes anyone this happy.