Chapter One

 

At the reception after Haylee's funeral, I stood in the corner of Haylee's kitchen, wedged between the pantry door and the corner of the refrigerator, slurping Jell-O. Something about Jell-O's texture bothers me, the way you can't drink it, but you can't chew it, either. But Haylee's aunt had handed me a plateful of it, so I poked at it until I caught Nick's younger sister staring at me. Then I shoveled a sporkful into my mouth.

People filled Haylee's house, standing in the halls, sitting on couch arms and in fold-up chairs. I wondered what they would have been doing on a Sunday afternoon if they weren't here. They'd all come with only a few days notice. Friends had canceled plans; family had flown in from out of town. Mom displaced her grocery shopping; Haylee's mom canceled her weekly massage. If you'd asked me a week ago what I'd be doing today, I would have told you I'd be lounging on Haylee's bed, eating peach rings and making excuses not to go home.

When I'd finished all the Jell-O I could manage, I dragged the tines across the Styrofoam, raking little lines like the ones on Haylee's arms. Regardless of where we had meant to be, here we were, in an after-school special. This week, Kira loses her best friend. Tune in to see how she copes.

If this was the end of a movie, I'd give it failing marks for foreshadowing. Haylee knew everything about me—every fight I'd had with my mother, every reason I wished I was born into her family instead of mine. She knew every word Nick had spoken to me over the last seven years, every time he touched me, or nearly did, or just plain didn't. I didn't have to worry about her judging me; however crazy I was, Haylee was always crazier. I knew everything about her, and she knew everything about me, and we still liked each other, which was the real miracle.

But here I was, in a sea of people asking why, with no better answers than they had.

I tilted my plate, letting what remained of my Jell-O slide along the lip of my plate, trying to decide what I would put on the chemistry test if Mr. Ivers asked if it was a liquid or a solid. I'd probably put down solquid, and hope for partial credit.

I had my mouth full of solquid when Haylee's mom, Hazel, came up and put her arm around me. Her skin was pale, but she had on bright lipstick so she looked like Snow White, or maybe Snow White's mother. She had to press her butt against the refrigerator to stand that close to me, and a magnet Haylee had painted in fifth grade fell to the floor. It smiled up at me—a wooden sunshine wearing huge sunglasses.

"Thank you for coming," Hazel said to me. I'd heard her say that to fifteen people, at least. She had her mantra; I had my Jell-O.

"Where's Aaron?" I asked.

"I think he went upstairs for a minute," she said. "He's taking this hard."

That seemed like a stupid thing to say. Their daughter had died. How else was he supposed to take it? But I hadn't heard anyone say a helpful thing yet, so maybe stupid words were our only options. For my part, I chose the least stupid words I could think of.

"I miss her," I said. I'd gone more than a week without talking to her before. But I couldn't remember a time when I couldn't call her.

Hazel squeezed her arm around my waist. "I know you do," she said.

"I'm sorry," I said. Everyone seemed to be saying that, but it was true. There were so many things to be sorry for.

Hazel hesitated, chewing on her lip in the same way Haylee did—the way that meant she wanted to say something difficult, but didn't know how.

Hazel's lips were the same shape as Haylee's—full and soft—only Hazel's had sharp wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, from frowning, not from smiling. If she'd been Haylee, I would have badgered it out of her. Come on, I'd say. You know you're going to spill it eventually.

But Hazel wasn't Haylee.

I waited.

Hazel's arm squeezed me tighter, like a boa constrictor. "I've been looking for Haylee's journal," she said. "You know, the one her therapist asked her to keep."

The journal. With those things that Haylee wrote about me.

My hands went cold, and I disentangled myself from her and dropped my plate in the garbage, watching the Jell-O slide onto the black plastic bag.

"I don't know where it is," I said.

I half expected her to call me on the lie. Of course I knew where it was. I knew everything about Haylee.

Except we were standing in the middle of the evidence that I didn't.

"I'm only trying to understand what happened," she said. "If you have any idea where she kept it—"

"I don't," I said. "I'm sorry."

Then I looked Hazel in the eye for the first time that day. Under her makeup her eyelids were puffy. She looked like she had more wrinkles than usual, and her skin had gone gray. I hated myself for not helping her, but this was the way it had to be.

I'd never kept a journal. I couldn't be honest in one and then leave it lying around for Mom to nose through. Besides, I had Haylee. But Haylee's shrink made her keep one. Write down everything, she said. You can sort out what's important later.

I didn't want anyone reading the things I told to Haylee. But worse—far worse—were the things that weren't true, the ones that existed only in Haylee's mind. It wasn't her fault, really. She had a knack for telling lies and then believing them. Once she did, no one could talk her out of them. Not even me. Usually the lies were about herself. She got a B on a pop quiz; obviously she was stupid. She got picked last for volleyball when I got picked first; obviously everyone hated her. Her dad spent an afternoon helping me perfect my dropball; obviously he didn't love her.

But sometimes. Sometimes the lies she made up were about me. And if someone read those, they'd have no way to sort the truth from the lies. There was a sort of a weight to words that were written down—it was so much easier to believe them. Haylee's therapist, her mother, my mother . . . they'd think every word was true.

Hazel was still talking. "If you remember anything," she said, "even if it's just an idea, please let me know."

"Okay," I said. The journal was hidden, but not that well. They'd have to clean out Haylee's room. They'd find it eventually. "I need to go to the bathroom." I turned and pushed my way to the hall, and Hazel didn't stop me.

The downstairs bathroom was occupied, which gave me the perfect excuse to sneak upstairs. Frames lined the hallway, filled with pictures of Haylee and her cousins. I stopped in front of a photo of the two of us outside a theater in San Francisco—the only picture of me in the hall. We were wearing these matching skirts that were stupidly short, but it was okay because we were nine years old with twiggy thighs and no hips. Haylee hit puberty the next year. It took me another four years to catch up in the hip department, and to this day I was flat as could be.

I paused outside the upstairs bathroom. I could just use it like I said I would, and go back downstairs. If Hazel didn't know where the journal was, it might take her a while to find it.

But she would find it eventually. And I couldn't risk the questions that would follow.

I pushed open the door to Haylee's room, which was shut but not locked. The room seemed like it was holding its breath, waiting for her to return. Old play programs littered her desk from the shows we'd gone to last summer at the classical Greek theater in Santa Cruz. On top of them lay a clean, printed copy of Haylee's essay on Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the one that was due before Christmas break.

Her purple bedspread lay smooth across her sheets, tucked in at the edges. That was wrong. I shut the door behind me and tugged on the blanket, wadding it up and stuffing it at the end of the bed, the way Haylee would have left it.

It smelled of detergent, and that was wrong, too. Hazel had washed the bedding. Everything else in Hazel's house was always newly-laundered, but Haylee made a stand for her room. It should be messy, just like her mind.

Besides, who washed their dead daughter's bedding days after she died?

I froze. Was that where her body had been? I stood with both feet planted on the floor, and imagined slipping out of my body and drifting away. What happened to her body, once Haylee was gone? Did it go limp, or stiff? Did her spirit escape, or was she trapped inside as we locked her in cold storage, put her on display, and then dumped her in the ground?

Mom wouldn't tell me how Haylee did it. I was sure Haylee's death would be in the news, but the only thing I could find online was an obituary. I guess a teen suicide wasn't a big enough deal to be reported. One day Haylee was there, the next she was gone. Not much of a story, really. That meant I knew nothing except what my mother would tell me. And she was too busy reading books about how to help your teen through a death to notice me.

I didn't know much about killing yourself, but I couldn't imagine it was easy. Maybe if you had a gun, but Haylee's parents weren't gun people. When we were little, her mom wouldn't even let us play with squirt guns, unless they were the useless kind shaped like spitting frogs or dolphins instead of firearms.

If Haylee died a bloody death in her bed, the bedding wouldn't have washed easily, if at all.

My stomach turned.

Don't think. Get the journal.

I opened the closet. It looked even more a wreck than usual. Hazel must have been in here, looking. Or maybe Haylee had torn it apart in her last minutes, consumed by one of her fits, blind to everything but her pain. Once, years ago, I'd watched her destroy her math textbook, tearing and tearing until no page was left intact.

"I don't get it," she said. "I just don't get it."

I should have realized then she wasn't talking about math.

At the bottom of the closet, sparkles shimmered. I pulled out Haylee's Winter Fling dress, smoothing out the wrinkles in the black fabric. Silver glitter dusted the floor.

Last time I'd seen Haylee, she'd modeled the dress for me at the store before she bought it. The top fit tight, straps criss-crossing over her shoulder blades. The skirt cascaded over her hips and billowed out, so it swished when she turned, just wide enough to be classy, just tight enough to be sexy. Her hands ran over the skirt like each thread was precious. Haylee had worn that dress to go out with Bradley Johansen. The one, true Bradley Johansen. And then she'd never called me again.

I'd tried to call him the day I found out about Haylee. I'd called twice more since then, but he hadn't answered. I was sure that I'd see him at school, or at the funeral. But I'd skipped school on Monday, and he'd been out the rest of the week. I hadn't seen him at the service, or the burial, or the reception.

He should be here—if he liked her enough to take her to the dance, he should care enough to suffer along with the rest of us.

Focus, I told myself, hanging Haylee's dress over an open dresser drawer. He had to come back to school eventually. For now, I had to deal with the journal.

I lifted the shoe rack that had been below the dress. Beneath it, the carpet lay loose against the wall. I reached under it; my fingers met paper and I pulled.

The journal slid free. I held it tight. The front cover had a picture of a willow tree, and a quote from William Shakespeare:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

I wanted to take a permanent marker over the third line, especially that word: exit.

Stairs creaked at the end of the hallway. Footsteps drew closer. I stepped behind the closet door, holding absolutely still, squeezing shut the pages of the journal in my hand. If Hazel came in now, where would I stash the journal? I wouldn't be able to jam it back beneath the carpet in time, and I hadn't brought a purse.

The feet paused outside Haylee's door. My heart pounded as the seconds ticked by. Had my breathing always been this noisy? I tried to take shallower breaths, but my lungs began to ache, demanding more air.

Then the door to the bathroom clicked closed, and I heard the sound of the toilet cover being lifted. From the volume of the sound of urine hitting the toilet, the person had to be standing up.

I couldn't move, for fear it was someone else inclined to investigate, but at least if it was a man, it wasn't Hazel.

I let out a long breath and took another one in, trying to calm my heart. My fingers twitched over a bent corner of a journal page. Mom said there'd been no suicide note, but certainly this is where it would be—Haylee's last words, where only I could find them.

I flipped the book open, sifting quietly through the blank pages at the back.

The toilet flushed across the hall, and I heard the bathroom door open again just as I came to the last written page. There was no date, only a single sentence: The stairs creak in the night, and interrupt my dreams.

What kind of a note was that? That could have been written anytime—even before the dance.

The footsteps came back into the hall, and I waited, holding my breath, for them to walk back down the stairs. But they paused outside Haylee's door again. Waiting.

In all likelihood, listening.

There was no more time for reading now. I couldn't get caught with the journal in my hands—not when I'd just lied about it. Shoving it under the carpet would take too long, and make too much noise. I leaned toward the window. Could I drop it out into the bushes below?

But the blinds behind the curtains would clank, and the sound of the window dragging open would be unmistakable. Plus, the house was crawling with people, new guests arriving all the time. Someone would see.

The hallway was silent. Had whoever it was wandered away? I moved slowly to Haylee's door, easing each footfall onto the carpet. I turned the lock on Haylee's door, slowly, quietly.

I still couldn't read the journal here. If someone found the door locked, they might knock. I couldn't exactly cower in here. Hazel would know instantly what I'd been doing. What I needed was a place to hide the journal—somewhere Hazel wouldn't immediately look.

My eyes settled on the crawlspace—a hatch in the closet ceiling that led to a space under the roof, filled with insulation.

Another floorboard creaked in the hall, and I made a split-second decision. I grabbed Haylee's chair from her desk, lifting it as quietly as I could and setting the legs down on the clothes in the bottom of the closet. I stepped up onto the chair and reached for the crawlspace, pushing the hatch door up a few inches and shoving the journal underneath the layers of insulation.

Dust drifted down into my eyes, and I fought the urge to sneeze. I took an involuntary sharp breath, and dropped both my hands to plug my nose and cover my mouth.

The hatch banged back into place.

I cringed, and my whole body hunched. If someone was in the hall, they'd definitely heard.

A heartbeat later, Haylee's doorknob rattled.