“Lex?”
She drew in a sharp breath and opened her eyes to see Zach standing in front of her. Behind them, down on the field, there was sound and color and movement, but here it was quiet and still. They were alone in an alcove beneath the bleachers. “H-how did you find me?”
“I knew you’d be here.”
She’d hoped for this moment, dreamed of it, thought of ways to make him understand how sorry she was, but she could see that he knew, that he understood. “I love you,” she said softly. It was the only thing that hadn’t changed.
“I love you, too, but…”
“But what?”
He shook his head, shrugged. She understood the gesture perfectly: it meant that nothing mattered anymore, their love least of all. His look was the saddest thing she’d ever seen.
“You’ll never forgive me, will you?” she said.
“It’s me I can’t forgive,” he said, and on that, his voice broke and he turned away from her. “I gotta go.”
“Wait.” She reached into her purse, burrowed past the polyester of her gown, and pulled out her worn, dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre. It was a stupid gift for a girl to give a boy, but it was all she had that mattered to her. “I want you to have this,” she said.
“It’s your favorite book. I can’t take—”
“Please. It has a happy ending.”
He reached out; for a second, they were both touching the book. “I gotta go.”
“I know. Good-bye, Zach,” she whispered, watching him walk away from her.
She pulled away from the wall and walked out beneath the bleachers. She didn’t bother to hunch her shoulders or avert her eyes. She didn’t care if people stared at her.
In the parking lot, she climbed into Eva’s old car and waited.
“Couldn’t do it, huh?” Eva said later, when she got behind the wheel.
Lexi shrugged. “Who cares? It’s just a dumb ceremony.”
“You cared.”
“Before,” Lexi said, realizing as she said it that her whole life would now be divided into two parts: before she’d killed her best friend, and after.
*
Graduation was more than Jude could handle. The day had been full of ghosts, missing faces, the wrong girls …
By the time the ceremony finally ended, she felt like crumbling into a heap. She’d tried to convince Zach to go to the grad-night party with his friends. You’ll always remember it, she’d said tiredly, although they both knew it was a lie. Intellectually, she knew she should make him go, pretend that his life was still going forward on the same old track, but she couldn’t really feel that.
So they’d driven home in silence. She sat slumped against the car window, cold to the bone even though the seat’s heater was set on high. In the seat behind her, Zach drummed his fingers on the seat rest, and when they got home, he bolted out of the car and ran up the stairs. No doubt he wanted to lose himself in video games.
“Lexi was there,” Miles said later, when he and Jude were alone in the kitchen.
Jude felt a rush of anger. Whole, healthy Lexi, with just a white arm cast to mark her place in the car that night.
“That takes nerve. I hope Zach didn’t see her.”
“He did,” Miles said, looking at her. “Don’t do that, Jude. You’ll make it worse.”
“Worse? Are you kidding me? How could this possibly get worse?”
“Don’t make Zach choose between you and Lexi. He loves you; you know that. He’s always done everything he could to make you proud of him. Don’t use that against him now. He and Lexi have things to work out.”
Jude sighed heavily and headed to her bedroom, closing the door behind her.
For the next forty-eight hours all she did was lie in bed, sometimes sleeping, sometimes crying. She lay there with her eyes closed for hours, thinking come to me, Mia, talking to her daughter, but nothing happened. Not a breeze across her face that felt like a breath, not a flickering of the bedside lamp. Nothing. And she didn’t really believe that Mia could hear her.
By the time she finally crawled out of bed, she looked like a ninety-year-old homeless woman who had found a designer dress on the street and worn it for weeks. She knew Miles didn’t understand. Last night he’d made that sound—that sigh of desperation or despair—when she couldn’t change into a nightgown. He didn’t understand how fragile she felt. If she lifted her arms, they might break off.
She changed into an old pair of sweats. Not bothering to shower or brush her teeth, she made her way out of the bedroom, drawn forward by the scent of Starbucks coffee.