JANE. HELLO.”
“Hello, Mom.” Jane’s gaze didn’t waver from Kamala. What are you doing here? Why are you talking to my mom? All those questions wanted to burst forth from her. Instead she just stared, helpless and at a loss for words. She hated the way she always seemed to freeze around Kamala, stumble for her footing.
“Jane. How are you today? Better?” Again with the Kamala-smile that seemed to fool the world. Why couldn’t the world see what she saw?
Because you sound crazy when you talk about her this way. You do her work for her.
“I’m fine, Kamala, how are you?” Jane said. “Sorry, Mom, I guess I should have called first. I didn’t realize you were busy.”
“Kamala just wanted to talk to me about charity involvement with her sorority at UT. Doing a fund-raiser.”
“I know your mom is doing such good work and I just thought maybe we could be of help to her,” Kamala said.
“That’s generous. Mom, maybe call me later? I’ll be back at home,” she lied. She forced a civil smile on her face. She will not make me crack. “Nice to see you, Kamala. So kind of you to help my mom.”
“Well,” Kamala said, modestly, “someone has to.”
Jane nodded, her face burning, and she closed the door. She took a deep breath. Then she saw her mother’s purse behind Grant’s desk—she’d probably told him to dig the money out to pay for her and Kamala’s lattes—and she, without thought, knelt, grabbed the keys to her mother’s Volvo, and went out the door.
“Jane…” her mother called. Jane slid the keys into her pocket. Kamala followed Laurel out of the office.
“What?”
“Kamala and I will finish our meeting later. I can tell you’re upset.”
“Does everyone have to talk to me like I’m a toddler?”
“I’m not.”
Jane pulled the keys out and gave them to her mother. “I was going to borrow your car, but you’ll need it.” She glanced at Kamala. “Are you going back to campus?”
“Um, yes, I am.”
“Jane, let’s talk,” Laurel said.
“No, not right now.” She turned her own wavering smile onto Kamala and decided to dose her with her own medicine. “Would you be an absolute gem and give me a ride to UT? There’s someone there I need to see.”
For the barest moment Kamala stared as if Jane had spat on her. For just a millisecond Jane thought she saw behind the smiling armor. Then Kamala nodded and said, “It would be my pleasure.”
“Who are you going to see at UT?” Laurel said.
“I’ve had more memories returning,” Jane said. “Dr. Ngota suggested I talk to a researcher there.” The lie was easier than breathing.
“Isn’t that wonderful,” Kamala said. “Fingers crossed that soon you’ll be normal!” And she crossed her fingers and held them up and Jane thought, They look easier to break that way.
“Great. I’ll talk to you later, Mom. Thanks, Kamala.”
* * *
Kamala’s ride was an Audi, new, elegant, midnight black as her heart, Jane thought. Kamala drove along the winding length of Old Travis back toward Austin.
“Why are you really going to UT? Did you get chased off campus at Saint Mike’s?” Her voice thrummed like a wire, ready to break. The mask didn’t have to stay on so securely when it was just the two of them.
She’d heard. Jane thought maybe people in Lakehaven would have found new topics for gossip.
“I didn’t, but thanks for asking.”
“No, really, why are you going to UT?”
“Why were you meeting with my mother?”
“We told you.”
“Bull. There are any number of charities around town for you to impress. My mom’s too small for your network.”
“I just want to help people, Jane.”
“You’re an inspiration.” Jane looked heavenward. “If only I could be as good as you.”
“Jane, look. She sent out an e-mail to people you knew in high school”—Jane noted the word friends wasn’t used—“because she is worried about you. She is trying to help you, believe it or not.” And now, stopped at a red light, Kamala looked at her without pretense. The way she had when they had been friends, laughing, watching TV together, sharing books, doing math and writing papers and battling through Spanish. “Why don’t you let your poor, scared mom do something to actually help you?”
“Like you wanted to help me.”
“I’m not your mother. She’ll never see you for what you are. She’ll never believe you tried to kill yourself and you messed it up, so David died. She doesn’t know what you really are—the piece of trash I know you to be. She has nothing left but you, and that sucks for her, but maybe you should just let her help you. Instead of wandering around Lakehaven looking ridiculous, looking like a laughingstock.”
“What did I do to you?”
The world’s least-patient eye roll. “You killed David.”
“No. No. This is something between you and me. Has nothing to do with anyone else.”
“I didn’t realize amnesia sharpened intuition. It seems to dull everything else.” She steered onto MoPac, the main ribbon of highway that ran along Austin’s west side, and headed north, zooming over the bridge that spanned Lady Bird Lake.
“I don’t remember what I did,” Jane said, “and you seem to take a sadistic delight in that.”
Kamala was silent.
“It’s just the two of us. No one else. You can take off the mask.”
Kamala glanced at her. “I don’t have a mask.”
It was, Jane thought, a sad confession. “You must be a little afraid of me, then.”
“I’m not. I’m the one driving and the cliffs are to our west.” She took the exit for Windsor, which would turn into Twenty-Fourth Street and take them straight to the Texas campus. “Fine. You were a real bitch after your father died.”
“I was grieving.”
“You don’t even remember it. I’m sorry your dad died. He was a sweet man. He was a second dad to me.” Here her voice trembled. “David and I and all your friends tried to do everything for you. Anything to help you. You wouldn’t take it. You shoved everyone away. You were horrible to me, and you can either believe that or not. Except David. You just used your father’s death to eclipse everything in David’s life. You just turned into this…huge sucking neediness and he thought he had to be the one to fix you.” She wouldn’t look at Jane. “Yeah, grief, whatever. Does it take over everyone else’s life? My parents told me I had to be such a friend to you. I spent all this time with you and you never got better. I get it, your dad, OK. But my grades suffered. I couldn’t sleep for worrying that you were going to hurt yourself. I’m not a therapist, I was a kid. Your mother was useless. It was the rest of us, trying to hold you up, and never once did you say thank you or I’ll try to be happy again or anything. That’s why David stepped back from you, finally.” She stopped, the words at an end like she’d run out of rope.
Jane’s throat felt like concrete. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You won’t believe me, fine. Whatever. It’s all done.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because you lost your dad. Because I’m not a total bitch. And because…it doesn’t matter. You took so much from me. I lost you, and I loved you then, and I lost David. I didn’t study, I spent so much time being your amateur therapist. I didn’t get into Stanford. Or Harvard. I slipped from valedictorian. My parents were so upset. I’m just a checklist to them. Accomplish this, win this…and I’m supposed to take over the world and yet I’m still supposed to be your crutch, I’m supposed to still fix you. Well, fix your damn self.” She stopped the car in the middle of the road. Horns honking behind her. “Fix yourself. Either put a gun to your head like your dad did or throw yourself off the cliff, but this time alone, or get off the stupid streets and make a life for yourself.”
Cars honking, voices raised in anger.
“OK,” Jane said, not knowing what else to say. Jane felt sick with rage, but Kamala was talking like she never had and Jane needed to press her. Kamala drove forward.
“You were trying to find us that night. I saw the text message Randy Franklin collected for his report. Did you find us?” Jane asked.
Kamala didn’t answer. She did, Jane thought. She did.
“You want me to stop being such a leech and move forward. I think knowing that might help.”
“Great. Let’s help. I found you,” she said, her voice like a dead thing. “Yep. Sure did.”
“Where?”
“I found you kissing him.”
“No. I don’t remember kissing him.”
“You took him from me and then you killed him. You screwed him when you knew, you knew, that I was in love with him and I’d dated him for two years and it doesn’t matter that he lived next door to you or that you knew him first. What kind of friend does what you did?” She stopped; they were on the campus now, and she eased close to the sidewalk. “You don’t remember what kind of person you are? That’s your blessing. You were horrible.”
“So why did you pretend to care? Why did you play so nice?”
“Helping you made for a good college essay. Get out of my car.”
Jane did, trembling. She walked away, setting the backpack on her shoulder. She stopped and glanced back toward Kamala, but she was gone.
Was it all a lie? It would be such pure Kamala to say all that, just to be horrible.
She and David. That Kamala wouldn’t lie about.
David and I were like brother and sister, she’d once said recently. To Trevor. And he’d said, Well, that’s not quite accurate.
Had he known as well? Is that why he’d been so uncomfortable with her? Was everyone afraid she was going to remember she was in love with the boy she’d killed? Why keep this secret from her? Or did only Kamala know, and Trevor just made a comment that she was misreading?
Was that why we were going to run off to Canada? To be together, and away from everyone? Like some stupid teenager fantasy?
What kind of person was I? Well, I got my answer. You cheated with your best friend’s boyfriend. She suddenly didn’t want to talk to Amari. She didn’t want to know more.
She hadn’t noticed the truck following her and Kamala from her mother’s office. She didn’t see the truck illegally park in the lot across from where she stood, or the man get out of it. He wasn’t tall but he was powerfully built. Shiloh Rooke watched Jane as she walked. He followed her. She walked to a big fountain with a sculpture of running mustangs, hewn in iron. Dozens of students milled about. He leaned against a wall and watched.