I wake up on the morning of the anniversary of Jen’s death feeling different than I did last year. The numbness that I always feel is still there, but I can feel too.
I can cry, so I do, in the shower. Rachel texts me that she’s outside while I’m still dabbing concealer over my dark circles. I stick the wand back in the tube. Stare at myself in the mirror, watching the rise and fall of my chest as I exhale.
No one at school, aside from Rach and Alexa, is delicate with me today. They don’t know what today is, and that’s fine by me. I don’t want to be treated as if I’m breakable.
When I stop by my locker at the end of the day and find Jimmy Varney waiting for me, my breath gets caught in my throat. His older brother was in Jen’s grade; he must remember. He must be here to say how sorry he is, how he’s been thinking about my family and me today.
The last thing I’m expecting him to say is, “Do you want to go to Big Hero’s?”
“Now?”
“Well. Rumor has it you quit dance team, and seeing how I don’t have a cross-country coach anymore, I figured we’re both free this afternoon.”
He must sense how I stiffen at the mention of Brandon. “Monica,” he says softly. “I don’t care about that.”
I meet his eyes. “This is just a sandwich among friends?”
“A sandwich among friends. That’s it. As long as it’s a Louisiana Lightning.”
I smile. “Obviously.”
Jimmy doesn’t needle me at all for details about the events of the last few weeks. In fact, he seems to be going out of his way to prove that he doesn’t care about anything that happened between Brandon and me.
Once our sandwich is ready, he must be able to tell that I don’t want to eat in the busy deli, because he asks if I want to go somewhere quieter.
“What about Osprey’s Bluff?” I say.
He agrees, and we spend the ride talking about his college options. He’s being scouted by SUNY Binghamton, where Matt goes, but Jimmy doesn’t want to go there because Matt says it smells like cows.
Jimmy turns onto Osprey Road; on the other side of the street, I spot several wilted bouquets of flowers, including a hot-pink bunch of tiger lilies. Bethany’s favorite.
“Can you pull over here?”
Jimmy parks on the shoulder, a safe distance from the road and the sign reading IN MEMORY OF BETHANY STEIGER AND COLLEEN COUGHLIN. Jimmy stands, his back against the car, feet crossed at the ankles. Arms folded. He doesn’t ask what I’m doing as I cross the street to the side overlooking the lake.
The guardrail is weathered, but there’s the faintest trace of red paint on it. The steep embankment slopes all the way to the edge of Osprey Lake. It would be so easy for a speeding car to fly over that guardrail and roll down into the lake.
I think of Ginny’s visceral reaction to Mrs. Coughlin in the yearbook office that day. The way Ginny went out of her way to avoid Rachel that fall. I swallow, shoot one last look at the lake before rejoining Jimmy at his car.
“What’s the matter?” Jimmy says, seeing my face.
“Absolutely nothing at all.”
* * *
—
When I get home and search the mail, there’s no letter from Ethan McCready. There is no reason for him to write to Tom, asking if he cares about the truth. The truth is out there now.
But I text him anyway.
He responds right away, as if he was waiting to hear from me.
After a minute goes by without a response, I text him again.
I cover my mouth. Hold in a sob while a tear trickles down my face, over my hand. She knew she was going to die that day. Knowing it for sure doesn’t make it hurt less. I blink away my tears and read the message that’s just come through from Ethan.
He doesn’t reply for several minutes.
It sends a fresh wave of hope through me. Maybe Ethan is right, and now we can all move on. We can forget about the heinous act and what it did to us, and in the process, the burden of missing the girls might just become a little lighter.
I make a promise to myself to try to move on. To think about them a little less every day. I’ll never forget Bethany and Colleen and Juliana and Susan and Jen.
I can’t, because my story is tied up in theirs forever.
FIVE YEARS AGO
OCTOBER
She always loved the way the rain looked when it hit the windshield of her father’s truck. It was only a gentle mist, but the forecast called for a thunderstorm later.
“Where are we going?” Ginny asked, even though she knew the answer.
It was a Friday night and her mother was working at the hospital. The last time she came home at two in the morning and found Ginny on the couch, watching infomercials on Nickelodeon, Daddy nowhere to be found, Mom called and said she’d kill him if he ever left her daughter alone again.
He came home from the bar, stinking of cigarette smoke and cheap whiskey. Mom told Ginny to go to her room, to her closet that locked from the inside. In the morning, Mom’s eye was purple and swollen and when she got up from the kitchen table, her spine went stiff and her face pinched like she was trying not to cry.
This time, she went to the emergency room for a broken wrist, taking Ginny with her. This time, when the hospital social worker asked if she should call the police, Ginny’s mother nodded through the tears, her body limp as if all the fight had left her.
Mom tried to shield Ginny from everything that came after—talk of bail, a court date, the seriousness of the charges her dad was facing, and murmurings about him staying at a motel in Beaverton. Earlier that night, Mom had had no choice but to drop her off at Grandma Cordero’s, since no one else could watch Ginny.
When her father showed up to his mother’s house, he screamed at Grandma Cordero until she let him take Ginny with him. She’s my daughter. I’m allowed to see my goddamn daughter.
“We’re going to get ice cream,” Daddy grunted, his yellowed, calloused fingers tapping against the steering wheel of the truck. “I just have to make a quick stop first.”
Ginny wondered what kind of ice cream place was open at ten-thirty at night, but she knew better than to question it. Her father had never touched her, but she wasn’t sure if someday that would change.
Daddy pulled up outside the 7-Eleven and thrust the truck into park. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Ginny knew better than to ask him how long he’d be inside. Was it enough time to make it to the pay phone? She wasn’t sure her dad was allowed to pick her up and bring her anywhere and he’d obviously already had a lot to drink. “Okay.”
He left the engine running and swung himself out the driver’s side, wincing. As he walked up to the store, past the boys with skateboards who were always smoking in the parking lot, Ginny noticed that his lopsided gait was getting worse. That fact, coupled with how foul her father’s mood had been, made her suspect that his orthopedist wasn’t prescribing him as many pain pills as he needed.
Ginny looked in the side mirror, craning her neck to see behind her, at Jessie’s Gym across the street. When she was four, her mother signed her up for “toddler tumbling,” and she’d liked it so much she wound up going to class three nights a week, once she was old enough. She would have signed Ginny up for every class Jessie had to offer, if they could’ve afforded it. Ginny knew she wanted to get her out of the house, away from her father.
Ginny closed her eyes and smelled sweat and rosin. Heard her father squealing up to the curb outside Jessie’s Gym in his truck, nearly taking down the sign listing a sandwich special for the deli next door.
When Jennifer Rayburn saw and marched off to tell Jessie what she’d seen, hair flying out behind her, all Ginny could think was that Jen was an angel. A blond-haired, green-eyed angel.
But then Ginny would get embarrassed, worrying about everyone else at the gym thinking she was a loser whose parents never picked her up on time or who showed up drunk.
Her father had managed to ruin gymnastics too.