“What are you doing here?” I say in a voice that is decidedly irritable.
Kenzie reaches out to wipe a few soggy strands of hair from her face. “I need to talk to you. Can I please come in?”
Part of me is tempted to tell her no. She is the last person I want to deal with right now. But there is something in her blue eyes that keeps me from slamming the door in her face. So I nod and step aside to let her in.
Kenzie is dripping wet. A little puddle forms beneath her in our foyer, and I’m hesitant to invite her further inside. My mother quietly goes over to our hall closet and pulls out a towel, which she brings to Kenzie.
“I’m Addie’s mom,” she says. “How can I help you?”
Kenzie looks between me and my mother. She reaches out and gnaws on her thumbnail, which is a bad habit I’m shocked she would have, but now for the first time, I notice that all her fingernails are chewed to bits.
“Can I talk to you alone, Addie?” she says. “Please?”
I look over at my mother. She seems reluctant to leave, but finally, she nods and heads up the stairs. There’s, like, a fifty-fifty chance she’s going to be listening at the top of the stairs, but there’s not much I can do about that. The walls in this house are thin anyway.
Once my mother is out of sight, Kenzie and I go into the living room and sit down on the couch. I sit at one end, and she sits all the way at the other end. I don’t trust Kenzie. She has put me through hell this semester. I can only imagine she’s here to mess with me some more, and I am really, really not in the mood.
“What is it?” I say.
“Look.” Kenzie flips a few wet strands of her hair behind one shoulder. “I want to apologize for everything I did to you this year. I was a bitch, and I’m sorry.”
That’s not what I expected her to say at all. Why is she apologizing? And why now?
And yet there’s something in her face that looks like she means it. She doesn’t have her usual smirk. There are purple circles under her pretty eyes, and one of her nails is bitten so badly, a drop of blood is oozing from the cuticle.
“Okay…” I’m still not sure I trust her, but I’m not going to throw her apology in her face. “Fine.”
“Also…” She lowers her voice several notches and glances up the stairs, making sure my mother isn’t listening. “I just wanted to tell you that…I know.”
My stomach does a little flip. “Know what?”
“I know…about you and Mr. Bennett.”
Oh no. Of all the people who could find out, she is the worst possible person. If Kenzie knows, soon the whole school will know. And of course, the police. It will be horrible. There’s only one thing to do.
Deny everything.
I squirm on the sofa. “There’s nothing to know.”
“Yes, there is.” She levels her blue eyes at me. “You were sleeping with him.”
I can see in her eyes that she really does know. She’s not asking, she’s not digging, she knows. She must have seen us sneaking into the darkroom together or… I don’t know. Oh my God, this is the worst thing ever. The worst possible person has found out about the worst thing I’ve ever done—well, the second worst. I wonder how she found out.
“I saw the poem,” she says.
That is the last thing I expected her to say. “What?”
“When we were in the cafeteria and you spilled your lunch tray,” she reminds me. That’s a nice way of describing the day when she threw my lunch on the ground. “There was that poem in your notebook. He wrote that and gave it to you. You know… ‘Life nearly passed me by, then she, young and alive—’”
“Stop it!”
I hold up my hand to get her to stop talking before she ruins my favorite poem forever. I will never forget the verses that Nathaniel wrote just for me. I have every word memorized.
Life nearly passed me by
Then she
Young and alive
With smooth hands
And pink cheeks
Showed me myself
Took away my breath
With cherry-red lips
Gave me life once again
I narrow my eyes at Kenzie. “How do you know he wrote me that poem?”
She starts chewing on her fingernail again. “Because he didn’t write it for you.”
“Yes, he did. Trust me.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “He wrote it for me.”
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Chapter Seventy-Four
ADDIE
MY WHOLE WORLD feels like it has just turned upside down. What? What is going on? What is Kenzie talking about?