The next morning, Joni’s waiting for me when I pull my car into the Whole Foods employee lot. Great.
“I wanted to say,” she says as I get out of the car and clip my name tag to my shirt, “that I like you.”
I groan. “I know, Joni, but—”
“No, wait. I mean, I like you as a person, above anything else. I like you the way I like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and anything made from colored sugar and watching the roller bladers in Washington Square Park. And okay, yes, I thought I liked you the way the Bahamas Bikers ‘like’ their biker babes, and maybe you liked me that way too. But you’re still not over the girl in the picture. And that’s fine. Really. But I don’t want to not be your friend, okay?” She holds out a Tupperware.
“What’s this?” I ask, taking it.
“Chocolate pudding. One of Dad’s specialties.”
I sigh. I don’t know if I can be friends with Joni after what happened last night. But I don’t have the energy to actively avoid her either. “Thanks,” I say.
“So we’re good?” she asks, hopeful.
“You mean it? Just friends? Nothing else? You’re okay with that?”
She nods.
“Then we’re good.”
“Woohoo!” She does a cartwheel, right there in the parking lot.
• • •
During my break, I eat chocolate pudding and open to the next entry in Meg’s journal. I didn’t read any yesterday because I was pretty sure I couldn’t handle it after everything.
January 19.
I have a feeling Hope will be born soon. I know I’m not due for a couple more months, but I don’t think she’s going to wait that long. Theoretically, the longer she stays inside me, the healthier she’ll be. But does that count for a pregnancy like this one too? Where the baby is trapped inside a rotting body? What if I’m poisoning her? I know I’m going to die, but what if I die before she can get out safely? What if she dies too and all of this will have been for nothing?
My heart is in my throat.
Meg knew she was going to die? She never once told me that. The only thing she ever said was that she hoped Hope would be okay—when it came to herself, her confidence never wavered.
Everything is going to be fine. That was her go-to line. She was so sure.
But now it seems she wasn’t. She wasn’t sure at all. And I never would have known that if Mabel hadn’t given me this journal.
What changed for Meg between that day in August when she sat us all down and said she was keeping the baby and January 19, the day she wrote this entry? When did it change?
And what the hell else was she lying to me about?