chapter nineteen

then…

There was something about the heat that made everyone want to party. Jem loved it. He never said no. Any excuse to hook up with girls and stay away from the house.

To stay away from me?

If that’s what he wanted, it didn’t work. Everywhere Jem went, Ander went, and everywhere Ander went, he wanted me to come, too. I’d gone from being Jem’s Twin to being Ander’s Girlfriend.

“Wasn’t she always?” Amanda Allen asked, and people laughed and laughed.

I smiled like I found it just as funny, like my skin wasn’t crawling from their stares.

“Buck up, Graceful,” Jem said, and I tripped him, which made Jem swear and Finn laugh and the whole thing feel…worse.

My name was such a joke. I wasn’t graceful. I would never be a whiskey laugh or a clear glass giggle. I was a rock in your shoe, a crack in the sidewalk. I was apologies. Always sorry because I was always wrong, always off-footed.

Maybe I was graceful on leap days that didn’t happen, in the moments before I woke.

It wasn’t just waiting for Alton’s response that was getting to me. It was everything. Underneath my skin, I was a landslide. No matter how hard I smiled, I could still feel the cracking.

“You don’t have to come tonight,” Ander told me. We were on the red couch, listening to my mom shuffle bills in the kitchen and watching the afternoon sunlight turn gold. Jem wanted to go to some pasture party, and Ander had agreed to go with him.

“But if you do come,” he continued, smiling a smile that twisted heat up my throat, “we could spend time together with Jem and then hang out later…alone.”

I swallowed and dipped my eyes, noticing he had on the same T-shirt as yesterday. I recognized the smudge of white paint on the hem. “Did you go home last night?”

“No.”

He leaned back and I almost followed. If Ander didn’t go home, where had he gone? He hadn’t stayed with us, and I wanted to know why. He was always welcome. He always stayed. Why hadn’t he this time?

I opened my mouth…and closed it. My mom sometimes said we had to give her the space she needed. Maybe this was the same thing?

“Don’t you want to be with me?” he asked, and it was so soft it almost didn’t feel like an accusation.

Almost.

“You know parties aren’t my thing.”

“Maybe they could be our thing? I won’t leave you alone.”

I took a shaky breath. “Will there be a lot of people?”

He grimaced. “Yeah.”

We studied each other. I didn’t know what to say—actually, that was wrong. I did know. I was supposed to say, “I’d love to go.” I was supposed to want to go.

How are you going to go away to Alton when you can’t even manage a party with your boyfriend?

I gritted my teeth. Because I wasn’t planning to.

Ander stroked the backs of my fingers. “Are you going to hide forever?”

Could I? The idea tasted like hope and want and everything I was not supposed to have.

He tilted his head, sun-streaked hair falling in his eyes. “You remember when Mr. Davis made us read Doctor Faustus?”

I straightened. “Yeah. I wrote my paper and most of Jem’s on it for the final.”

“Remember that part when the fallen angel said something like ‘this is hell nor am I out of it’?”

I nodded.

“I think he’s right. We’re all living in hell,” Ander continued, and he was so close the words curled against my cheek. “It’s a matter of how you deal with it.” He paused. “Sometimes, I have to block it out. Most of the time, you hide. How are you going to make it at Alton if you can’t make it through a party here?”

My laugh sputtered. This was what ten years of friendship looked like: he knew all my flaws, my worries, my thoughts. I wished it also meant it didn’t hurt as much. Ander made me feel like my ugly underbelly was being exposed to sunlight.

“Is this how you want to live?” he whispered.

I hesitated and finally shook my head.

“You want to be with me?”

No hesitation. “Yes.”

“Then be with me.”

…

It was after nine when we finally turned off the main highway, taking the narrow lane toward the cemetery.
We’d had to pick up Finn at Farley’s and then go almost to the interstate to find a gas station that would take Ander’s fake ID.

In the end, I didn’t think the cashier actually believed Ander was twenty-one, he just didn’t care. It irritated Ander. He sat in silence, staring out the open window at the summer-scorched fields beyond us.

I rode in the middle, as usual. Jem drove, as usual. Finn rode in the back, which was increasingly usual.

I shifted and shifted and still couldn’t get comfortable. My nerves made the truck feel too small. Then again, maybe it was the storms rolling in. There was lightning on the horizon and pressure in my ears.

Jem turned off at the next right, eventually winding us closer to the river. He parked between an ancient Jeep and an equally ancient Ford truck. I hopped out behind Ander. Somewhere in the dark, people laughed—a lot of people—and my stomach turned sour.

“It’s like the beginning of a horror movie,” Finn said, pivoting in a small circle. Lightning bugs drifted past our heads, drawing closer and closer to the cemetery that lay beyond the fence line. “Who has pasture parties next to dead people?”

“We do.” Ander’s smile was a flash of white. “Hurry up.”

He was already striding toward the bonfire and the others. I had to run to catch up. Jem and Ander hauled the cases of beer toward the coolers, leaving me to slide into the group.

Or not, because I hovered just outside the firelight like the world’s most socially inept moron. The static in my ears turned into a roar.

Fingertips grazed the back of my arm. Ander.

No.

Finn.

The firelight turned his eyes to bullet holes. “You okay?”

Not at all. I buttoned on a smile. “Totally.”

He studied me, and I smiled harder, wider.

Finn tilted close enough so his words were only for me. “You’re never this shy around Jem and Ander.”

“I don’t have to worry with them.”

Finn pulled back. “You’re not shy around me.”

“I guess you get lumped in—lucky you.”

“Yeah. Lucky me. C’mon.” He urged me toward the semicircle of guys in baseball hats and girls in cowboy boots, white plastic lawn chairs and dented coolers turned into benches. I hesitated and then followed him. It was kind of the perfect cover. The girls went motionless when Finn was around; no one else noticed me edge in next to him.

Well, no one noticed until Hannah Benson turned and saw me.

“Hey.” Hannah had gorgeous blond-from-a-bottle hair and over-plucked eyebrows. It made her look surprised by everything, or maybe it was just that she was surprised by me. “I didn’t expect you to come,” she added.

That makes two of us. Finn watched me from the corner of his eye, and I pretended not to notice. I wouldn’t screw this up. I wouldn’t. I was trying to be better.

“Hi.” I swallowed, everything I should say and couldn’t say and couldn’t think to say jamming up in my head. “What’s up?”

“We’re playing Best Day Worst Day.”

“What?”

“You tell us your best day and then your worst day and then you take a drink.”

“Oh.” I took the closest spot on the grass, drawing my knees close when I realized I was crowding Hannah. She moved a little sideways, tugging her boots through the dirt like she couldn’t be bothered—which she probably couldn’t. These were Jem’s friends, Ander’s friends, not mine.

“You first.” Hannah passed me the bottle, and I almost dropped it. I wasn’t expecting the weight, and my hands were sweaty.

They want me to share stuff with them? To my left, someone shifted. Finn. Callie’s sister, Tisha, was sitting next to him, and when he opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, she tilted closer.

“C’mon,” Ander breathed. He dropped down next to my feet and leaned his shoulder against my legs. “Just play along.”

But that was the point: I didn’t want to.

Hannah looked at me like I was stupid, and maybe I was. I’d let Ander and Jem talk me into coming. I could barely hear anything past the humming in my head.

“My best day?” I shoved the words so hard, I sounded pissed, and that made me sweat even more. “Best day was when we checked out Vanderbilt.” It had been so pretty and felt comfortable, like I was supposed to be there.

Next to me, Ander stiffened and someone snorted and my neck went even hotter. I studied the toes of my tennis shoes until Ander nudged me—nudged me again—and I forced myself to look up.

“That’s too easy,” Mark said, mashing the brim of his camouflage baseball hat so it curved even tighter over his eyes. “Come up with something better or you’ll have to do two shots.”

I shook my head. “My best day was walking around Vanderbilt. It’s where I want to go to school.”

There. I sounded better—still a bit pissy, but at least I wasn’t backing down.

“Why?” Finn’s voice was so soft and yet everyone heard him. I could tell in the way they stiffened. “Just tell them why, and they’ll understand.”

They wouldn’t, though, and Finn of all people should’ve caught how Jem was staring at me like he was searching for my lie and how Ander wouldn’t look at me at all. He’d gone rigid. No one here wanted to leave Boone. It was enough for them, and it wasn’t enough for me.

Finn knew that.

“God, you’re such a Susie Sunshine.” Hannah’s mouth screwed into a knot. “Fine. Whatever. I don’t want to hear your worst day. It’s probably when you watched a kitten fall out of a tree.”

“Two shots,” Mark said, slapping a mosquito on his arm. I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear how he rolled his eyes.

I unscrewed the cap and lifted the bottle. I probably should’ve pretended to drink, just let the alcohol hit my lips, but I caved under their focus, and the bourbon blazed a trail down my throat. I coughed and coughed and coughed some more. Someone—Hannah?—muttered something I missed, and I was glad I did.

Ander slid his palm up my spine and drew circles between my shoulder blades. Somehow it made everything slow. I passed him the bottle, and the firelight flashed the amber alcohol into slit-wrist red.

“Best day?” Ander took a swallow, which I supposed was cheating. No one said anything, though. He twirled the bottle neck in his fingers. “Best day was yesterday…when I told my old man to piss off because we didn’t need him, and we all knew it was true.”

Ander’s eyes met mine, pinned me to the spot. He hadn’t said anything.

We always told each other everything.

Mark made a grunting noise of approval and tipped his baseball hat. There was a knowing in his expression I didn’t share, would never share, because there are some things words can only describe and those words will always fall short. Ander’s home life was a horror. Mine wasn’t. I could sympathize, but I could never know.

“And your worst day?” Mark asked.

“Yesterday,” Ander said. “When I told my old man to piss off because we didn’t need him, and we all knew it was true.”

Ander took a shot and then another, the skin along his neck sliding as he swallowed. He passed the bottle to Tisha. She grabbed it with both hands and wouldn’t look him in the eyes.

No one would look him in the eyes.

Except for Finn. He studied Ander like he was seeing something I couldn’t.