* * *
—
I’VE NEVER BEEN ONE OF THE GUYS. Not before my dad died. Not after. I’ve always known that.
Did I hate Daniel?
No. I loved the son of a bitch. I really did. I would have given anything for him to love me back. And what do you get with all that love and all that wanting love?
You get a powder keg. That’s what you get.
Part
Two
32
Evangeline scooted her tray next to Natalia’s. It was the second week of November, and a fine rain dotted the lunchroom windows. Natalia took a chocolate chip cookie off her plate and set it on Evangeline’s. “You need it more than I do.”
Natalia carried the force of two girls in her curves. These dimensions seemed right. They seemed Natalia. And Evangeline would always be grateful for that first day when Natalia saw her alone and sat down across from her. And for calling over Masie and Jillian to join them, two girls who, though trivial in their interests, were more bodies to buffer her in the lonely wasteland of the high-school cafeteria.
The four had eaten lunch together ever since, and Evangeline was happy enough with that. She and Isaac tussled over chores, curfews, and the tedious “courtesies” he was always going on about, like remembering to flush the toilet and close cabinet doors, but they’d hit a certain rhythm. As for classes, she was starting to catch up and teachers were still cutting her slack. It seemed the whole of her life had soft-landed.
“You eat like my mom,” Natalia said, “all those vegetables and shit.”
“I like them.”
“Like hell you do. You push them around like you’re trying to make them go away without actually putting them in your mouth.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Evangeline didn’t want to get into it. At least she had her appetite again.
Principal Thibodeau arrived at the cafeteria door. He hadn’t been back to the house since that day with the pastries, but a couple times a week she saw him lurking at the edges of the lunchroom. She wasn’t so paranoid as to think it was about her. At least not totally. He appeared to be checking out all the kids. If anything was off, it was that he never seemed to notice Evangeline at all. Sometimes, though, when she turned away, the hair on the back of her neck bristled, as if those eyes had landed on her.
Natalia twisted around. “Who are you staring at?”
“Nobody. It’s just the principal hanging around again.”
“Yeah,” said Natalia. “He does that sometimes. He wants to seem accessible.”
“Is he?”
“Is he what?”
“Accessible?”
“I guess. I haven’t ever needed to find out. He wouldn’t be the first person I’d go to.”
“Why not?”
“No reason. He just creeps me out,” Natalia said. “Not sure why. Most of the kids think he’s great.”
Masie came up, her long brown hair clinging to her skull like it hadn’t been washed in days, though if you really looked, you could see it was perfectly clean, only a little flat and thin. She set down her tray and leaned toward them, a giddy smile on her face.
“Hold up,” Jillian said, swinging into her seat. “I know that look.”
Jillian had two chocolate chip cookies on her tray, and Evangeline was certain she wouldn’t be offering them to anyone soon. She wondered why she had such judgment about Jillian’s weight when she didn’t have any about Natalia’s.
When everyone was sitting, Masie said, “Ben Grassley just asked Rebekah out.”
“Shit. What’d Ashley say?” said Jillian.
“That she couldn’t care less.”
Evangeline didn’t much like this kind of gossip. Sure, in part because she didn’t know who these people were and didn’t yet have her own grudges to pursue. But that distance helped her see how mean and gleeful it all was—these girls with their fathers and mothers and siblings at home. Masie often grumbled that her parents were divorced and she had to suffer two moms and two dads. All Evangeline could think was that she’d have given anything for one parent at all. She often had to contain an urge to shout over their lists of petty grievances and snarky asides, to ask if they’d ever gone hungry for days because they were alone without food.
“He just thinks he’ll get some,” Jillian was saying. “I mean, if she was into both Daniel and Jonah, she’s obviously flexible on her type.”
Evangeline, who’d been picking at overcooked beans, froze.
Masie added, “Ashley said if he wants to go out with that murdering slut, he’d better watch his back.”
“What are you talking about?” Evangeline asked.
“We told you about this,” Maisie said. “The murder-suicide that happened at the beginning of the year, remember? Everyone thinks there was a girl involved. Now someone claims to have seen Daniel with Rebekah right before the murder.”
“You mean Sammy?” Natalia had pointed out Samantha during Evangeline’s first week. She didn’t think Sammy was the beauty everyone made her out to be. If she were brunette, no one would have looked twice. But she had long blond hair and that stunned boys into awed submission.
“No. That’s the whole point. Daniel was with a different girl.”
“But did anyone see Rebekah with Jonah too?” she said. “Did they? Because if they didn’t—”
She stopped when she saw how the girls were staring at her. “I thought you hated shit like this,” Jillian said.
Evangeline realized how urgent her voice must have sounded, and she made an effort to slow down. “I just mean it doesn’t make any sense. So Daniel’s cheating on Sammy with Rebekah. Why would this Jonah guy kill Daniel over that?”
“You’d understand if you’d known him,” Masie said. “Rebekah probably flirted with him too. She’s a total cocktease. And Jonah . . . well, let’s just say he didn’t stand much chance of getting any if Daniel was around. Daniel made sure of that. Maybe Jonah thought he finally had something going with a girl, thought Daniel messed it up.”
Evangeline couldn’t breathe. Masie’s theory was precisely what she’d guessed about her own role in the boys’ deaths.
Natalia, who’d fallen quiet during all this, touched her arm. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Evangeline said, swallowing hard, as if something had gotten stuck. She cleared her throat, said, “Here’s what I don’t get: even if that’s all true, how does that make Rebekah a murdering slut?”
“She set them up,” Jillian said, scarfing down her second cookie, like they were discussing a plot point in a movie rather than the lives of two boys. “She wanted them fighting over her. She thinks it’s great two boys died over her.”
“She said that?”
“Yeah, right, like she’d say that straight out,” said Masie.
“Maybe she’s devastated,” Evangeline said, her words pressurized. “Maybe she cared about them or at least one of—”
“Right, that’s why she was screwing them both—”
“Whoa!” Natalia said. “His note didn’t even mention a girl. We all heard that. Now you’ve got Rebekah sleeping with them both? You’re getting played. You know that, don’t you?”