Chapter Twenty

 

I got a ticket for breaking curfew, but that was nothing compared to the clinginess of my mother. It took a few days before Mom would let me leave the house for anything except for school. She hovered over me like a mother hen, making me breakfast, sitting across from me at the table and asking me to talk.

And so I did. I told her about the things Haylee used to say to me, about the parties I knew she went to, about the times she talked about making her exit.

"I should have told you this stuff before," I said, picking apart a bagel. "Maybe you could have helped her."

"Maybe," Mom said. "Or maybe I could have helped you."

I rolled a bit of bagel between my fingers until it squished as soft as dough. I knew she was right.

I floated through school, as if encapsulated in an invisible bubble. I heard the whispers and the lectures, but they all seemed distant. Each day, though, the protective layer grew thinner, and the outside world grew closer. Someday soon it was going to disappear entirely. The world would get in, and I'd have to feel it fully.

I was almost ready.

Catherine avoided me, though I was pretty sure that was mostly out of embarrassment, because I heard from one of the girls on our softball team that she'd been telling everyone what a monster Bradley was.

Bradley hadn't shown up at school. He was still saying that he and Haylee had consensual sex. And maybe they did. Haylee had idolized him for so long. He was her Angel, her last hold-out hope for love, just like Tess. Maybe the disappointment of seeing him up close was enough to send her over the edge.

But I'd seen the real Bradley when we were alone in the trees. Whatever happened, he had a hand in it.

Without Haylee to give us the details, there were no criminal charges, but accusations were enough to get him suspended from school sports pending investigation.

Word was, his parents were looking into private schools. Good riddance.

I spent lunches by the portables with Nick. Sometimes we talked and sometimes we didn't, but as the barrier between me and the rest of the world grew thinner, I could feel the bond between us growing stronger.

There was no funeral for Aaron, just a private, family burial. Nick was invited. His mom went, but he didn't. "I'll just be angry," he told me. "I don't want to be angry at anyone's funeral."

And I didn't try to change his mind. Instead, I held his hand.

The first weekend after the incident at the park, there was a knock on our door early in the morning. I was sitting in the kitchen, pouring myself juice, and I made it to the door before Mom did.

When I opened it, Hazel stood on our front steps. She looked up at me, her face gray. Sharp lines crossed her forehead and cheeks. I could swear they hadn't been there before.

Before either of us spoke, I heard footsteps behind me. "What are you doing here?" Mom asked. Her voice was cold.

"I'm sorry," Hazel said. "I'll go. I just came to bring you this." She pulled something out of her pocket. A package, wrapped in old newsprint.

A present from Haylee.

"She wrapped it before," Hazel said. "I put it in the closet with the others, because I didn't know what to do with it. But I thought . . . I thought you might want it."

I took it from her. "Thank you," I said.

I could feel Mom behind me, looming. I knew there were things she wanted to say, about how Hazel had endangered me, how Hazel not only failed to protect her own daughter, but sheltered a man who could have abused me, too.

But as I looked Hazel in the eye, I realized I didn't want Mom to say it. Hazel lost her daughter, and her husband, both in the same house. She'd been trying to save them, in her way. Now she had to live with her failure, just like I did. Only she knew the truth all along. She'd always know there was more she should have done.

Nothing Mom or I could say would be worse than living with that.

"Can I ask you a question?" I asked.

Hazel's lips pressed into a thin line. "Yes," she said.

I spoke slowly, softly, like I was coaxing a frightened animal. "Did it really just happen when Haylee was six?"

Tears welled up in Hazel's red-rimmed eyes. "Yes," she said. "That's what Haylee told her therapist."

"Then why?" I asked. "Why kill himself now?"

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "He thought Haylee would get better," she said. "We both did."

And now there was no hope of that. And therefore no hope for him. Their failure was devastating.

"Why didn't you leave him?" I asked. She knew I'd been in her house. There were no secrets now. "Why not file the divorce papers until now?"

Hazel's voice shook as she answered. "I just," she said, "I just wanted everything to be fine."

She looked at me, and I saw the wide pit gaping open before her. I wanted to say something to keep it from swallowing her whole, but I couldn't.

There was nothing I could do to save her from the consequences of her silence.

She turned to go, and I stood in the doorway, watching her get into her car and drive away.

"That was kind of you," Mom said, "not to tell her what a monster she is." I heard the part Mom didn't say: kinder than I would have been.

I leaned against the doorway. "I don't want to hurt her. There's enough of that going around." And as I walked up to my room with the package, I realized I meant what I said.

I sat on my bed and lifted the tape. I shook the package, and a framed photo slid out onto my bed.

Two faces grinned up at me—Haylee's and mine. It was a dressing-room photo from the day we went shopping for Winter Fling dresses for Haylee's date with Bradley. Haylee must have printed and wrapped it that same day. I had on this totally ridiculous lime green prom dress with a pink flounce—a dress that made me look huge and hideous and which I would never pay money for in a million years. Haylee was wearing a low-cut silver number that really showed off her curves.

Soon after, she'd be wearing a coffin. And she didn't even leave me a note to say goodbye.

And that's when I knew, even before I looked. I flipped the frame over and slid out the cardboard backing.

There, on the back of the photo, was Haylee's loopy handwriting. She'd written our names and the date—the same day we went shopping. And below that I found the two most important sentences in the world. Kira, I love you, she'd written. You are the very best friend in the world. Tears welled up in my eyes, mostly because I knew it wasn't true. The best friend would have saved her. The best friend would have seen what I couldn't, and known what to do about it.

But Haylee loved the friend that she had. At least I got to hear that piece of the truth from her.

 

The next day was Sunday, and Mom agreed to let me go to the cemetery with Nick. We parked at the entrance and walked the long paths to her grave, my hand in his.

Haylee's spot was still unmarked. I'd come to the graveyard to find Haylee's ghost, but as we sat down in the grass at the foot of her grave, I knew she wasn't here. There was nothing here but dirt and stones, and a body she'd left behind. I thought I'd accepted that she wasn't coming back. How long would it take me to stop looking everywhere for her?

I picked a clover and rolled it between my fingers. I plucked another, then another. I hadn't made clover chains in years, but my fingers remembered how. Haylee and I had made hundreds of them, maybe thousands. In elementary school, the most tragic day of the week was Wednesday, after the grass was mowed, when we'd find all our flowers cut to pieces. But it only took them a few days to grow back.

"You didn't bring her any flowers," I said.

"Not today," Nick said. "We can bring some tomorrow."

"It's okay," I said. "She only liked flowers because she wanted to wear them in her hair."

I couldn't braid my hair as well as Haylee could. But I pulled a tendril away from my face and braided my clover chain into it, the white flowers shedding their tiny bladed petals onto my shoulders as I went. When I reached the back I secured it with an elastic, and then started up the other side so the two braids would meet at the back.

When I finished, Nick brushed wild hairs from my face, tucking them behind my ear. Haylee wouldn't have left strands loose like that. Her braids would be perfectly smooth. And though it's a stupid thing, it's one of a million that are gone from the world along with Haylee. My shoulders bowed under the weight of that.

Haylee was gone. And a part of me would always be sad about that.

But now, as Nick leaned in to kiss me, there was no rush of panic or of need, just the quiet, slow brushing of the breeze against my skin.

I kept my eyes open. I wanted to see.