I COULDN’T IMAGINE ASTRID would have dared come back. But I braced myself when I looked up, just in case. No Astrid, though. Just a small, scared-looking girl with short spiky hair.
Jess.
“Can I talk to you?” she asked. Her voice was high pitched and as quiet as I’d have expected from someone as shy and withdrawn as she seemed to be.
I stood up. I must have been a foot taller than her. “Sure,” I said, trying to sound like someone who had his composure, which I was not. “Do you mind if we go over by the bonfire, though? I’m freezing.” It was true; the air had gotten even colder as the sky darkened, and my sweatshirt wasn’t nearly warm enough. But really, I didn’t want to be able to see Astrid.
She looked up at me and gave a little nod. We walked closer to the fire, where it was warmer, and found a dry patch on the ground to sit.
“Are you okay?” Jess asked.
She must have seen everything, so she had to know I wasn’t. But I didn’t want to think about that; I wanted to know why she’d asked to talk to me. Now that we were right next to each other I had a chance to see her more clearly, to imagine how Hayden would have seen her. She wasn’t a particularly pretty girl; everything about her was tiny, almost too much so. Her eyes were small and set close together; her mouth so little that her lips were just two thin lines. Her hair was clipped short and I could see her miniscule ears, their lobes just barely large enough to contain her stud earrings. “I’ll be okay,” I said, and I wanted it to be true.
She looked back at me, and I became aware that I was staring. But then she gave me a shy smile, and I got it. I could see why Astrid had imagined them together, could see how she and Hayden fit, how her size would make him feel strong. And they’d fallen for each other without ever having met in person; I had no idea whether Jess had asked Astrid to point Hayden out, but if she had, clearly she’d found him appealing in some way. I’d always thought people who started relationships online were nuts, but now I wondered if they knew something I didn’t. There was something so pure about it, how Hayden and Jess had based everything they felt on who they were, on who they knew the other person to be, and maybe they’d been right.
“Astrid talks about you all the time,” Jess finally said, softly. “And he did too. I’m glad we have a chance to talk. I thought maybe if I explained things to you, you’d understand a little better.”
I understood why she didn’t want to say Hayden’s name out loud. She was dead wrong if she thought she was going to change my mind about what I’d just learned, though. But I didn’t want to stop her from telling her story. “I wasn’t sure you were real at first,” I admitted. “When Astrid told me about Athena, I thought maybe it was her.”
Jess laughed. “Hard to imagine,” she said. “It took Astrid a long time to get over Ryan. I think maybe it didn’t happen until Hayden told her about you.” She swallowed a little after saying “Hayden,” but it seemed to loosen her up.
“What do you mean?”
“She had a thing for you just based on what he’d told her, before you even met. I think she set me and Hayden up with the idea that someday it would be the four of us, together.”
I felt my throat close as she said that. Why couldn’t Astrid have found me sooner? Trusted me sooner? Maybe I could have stopped her from doing what she did. I don’t know that I could have stopped her from wanting to, though, and right now that was the real problem. But I wasn’t here to talk about Astrid. “Can you tell me what happened? At the party?”
“I figured that’s what you wanted to know,” Jess said. “Astrid told me you blame yourself for what happened. And I know she thinks she’s responsible, too. But it wasn’t either of your faults. It was mine.”
“I find that hard to believe,” I said.
“But I know what really happened. You only know what you saw at the party.”
“Please,” I said. “Tell me whatever you can.”
She spoke slowly and softly, and I had to lean in to hear her.
“I had this idea that when Hayden actually saw me he’d change his mind and take off, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it. I knew I had to meet him in public, so I could hide if something went wrong. Astrid said the party would be perfect. Hayden and I weren’t sure; we weren’t exactly party people. But Astrid assured me it would work—that girl’s house was huge, and there were all these rooms where we could go off and talk, and it would be less awkward than just the two of us alone somewhere. If we met in person and it didn’t feel the same, she would leave with me. Astrid and me spent the whole day together getting ready, and the plan was that Eric would pick us up and take us over there a little early, so we could get settled in. I’m not so great with crowds.”
“Me neither,” I said. I could hear the fire crackling.
“When Eric came to pick us up, he was a mess. Red eyes, mismatched clothes. He couldn’t talk—he just drove us to the party and then indicated that we should get out; it was clear he wasn’t coming. He held up his phone, like we should call him to pick us up. But Astrid wouldn’t get out of the car.”
“Yeah, he told me what happened,” I said.
“I bet he didn’t tell you how freaked out we were, though. You have to understand, Eric usually has it together. I’d never seen him like this, and I don’t think Astrid had, either. She kept asking him if he needed anything, if he wanted to talk, and he kept shaking his head, but it was pretty clear that he was about to start crying again. She asked me if I’d be okay for a little while and I told her of course I would, that she should go talk to him. He needed her more. I’d manage at the party by myself until she could come back. She didn’t want to go, but it was obvious that she had to.”
“That’s what she told me, but she made it sound like she ditched you.”
“See, that’s why she thinks it’s her fault, and that’s why she’s wrong.”
“Tell me the rest,” I said, and shifted a little to get closer to the fire. I was still cold, though I wasn’t sure how much of that was from the chill outside and how much was from how anxious I was to hear what had really happened.
“Eric dropped me off, and I thought I’d just go in and find a quiet place to hide until Hayden got there. Astrid had pointed him out to me at school, so I knew who he was even if he didn’t know me. I was so excited to finally meet him, to introduce myself properly. And scared, too, but kind of in a good way.”
“I get it,” I said, and I did. “But I’m kind of confused about one thing. Why didn’t you just meet him at school? I know you wanted to be somewhere public, and school’s pretty public.”
She looked down. “It’s embarrassing,” she said, and tugged on her earlobe. It reminded me of Astrid, pulling on her hair extensions. “It’s just—I’ve never been on a date before, let alone kissed someone. And I know I’m weird-looking and quiet—”
You’re not, I wanted to say, but she was, and we both knew it.
“—and I was scared. I was afraid Astrid had been wrong, that he wouldn’t like me, and I’d gotten so attached to who we were online, I didn’t want to mess it up. I knew it couldn’t go on like that forever, but if something bad was going to happen, if he took one look at me and decided it wasn’t going to work, I didn’t want to have to get through the rest of school. I wanted to be able to just go home.”
There were other, better ways, I thought, but then again, what did I know? “So why didn’t you stay until we got there?”
“Because Ryan and his buddies got there first.”
Of course.
“I don’t know what his problem is, but he really has it in for Hayden,” she said. “He’d found the chat logs—Hayden must have left the game open one day, and Ryan had gone in and read them.”
“Maybe he saw Hayden looking happy for once,” I said bitterly.
“Could be,” she said, her tone matching mine. “Anyway, he must have seen me looking around, or even just looking totally out of place at that party, both of which were true—he came right up to me. ‘You’re Jess, aren’t you?’ he asked. I told him I was. He looked me up and down and started laughing. ‘I’m Hayden’s brother,’ he said. ‘He asked me to give you a message.’
“I got kind of excited. I didn’t know much about Ryan, really; I knew he and Astrid had gone out but she didn’t like to talk about it. And I knew he and Hayden didn’t get along, but Hayden didn’t say much about it either, and I thought maybe things had changed. Maybe Hayden being happier was helping him deal with his family.” Her little mouth twisted. “Pretty presumptuous of me, right? To think I could make a difference to someone I hadn’t even met?”
“But you did,” I said.
Jess picked at a patch of dried grass from underneath her leg. “Well, I figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t understand things at all,” she said, with some bitterness. “Ryan’s message for me was that Hayden had looked for me at school, now that he knew my real name. And he was horrified to think that I was who he’d been talking to. He wasn’t coming.”
“That wasn’t true!” I yelled. “We were on our way!” I felt like I was watching one of those horror movies, where the viewer knows the killer is coming but the victim doesn’t. I knew what was happening, but I was powerless to stop it. I wished there were some kind of rewind button I could press.
“Sure, I know that now,” she said. “But you have to understand—it was exactly what I was afraid of. I’m sure Ryan had figured that out from the chat logs. He knew just how to hurt me, and he knew it would hurt Hayden, too. Who would be that cruel?”
“Someone who would out someone so they could keep pretending his friend wasn’t gay,” I said, and shook my head.
“I didn’t want to believe it,” Jess said. “But Ryan was laughing, and his friends backed him up, even as they saw me starting to cry. I had to get out of there, so I left. And then I sent Hayden a text.”
Oh, no. “What did it say?”
She looked down, and even in the dark I could see a tear drop from her eye onto the ground. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. Then she showed me.
I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WOULD DO THIS TO ME. YOU ARE THE MEANEST PERSON I HAVE EVER KNOWN. I’M GLAD WE NEVER MET IN PERSON. DON’T EVER CONTACT ME AGAIN.
I could see, below it, the string of responses from Hayden. Text after text, question after question, assurance after assurance that he had no idea what she was talking about. All unanswered.
“I didn’t see them. I shut off my phone,” she said, after she could tell I’d finished reading. “I was angry, and I lashed out, and I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. I called a cab and went home alone. And it wasn’t until the next day that I finally talked to Astrid, and I realized that they were lying. But by then it was too late.”
She looked up at me. “You see it now? It’s all my fault.”
I felt such a mix of emotions. I felt terrible for Jess; I could see how sad she was, and I understood why she felt responsible, even though I could totally understand why she’d reacted as she did. But I also wished she’d done something, anything else, something that hadn’t left Hayden thinking that it hadn’t been real, because I was pretty sure that was what had broken him.
“Just look,” Ryan had said. I realized he’d probably been talking about the text message.
And with that, the last hope Hayden had of his life being different, better, had disappeared. Really, it was Ryan’s fault, more than anyone else’s, even if Hayden hadn’t known that. I was so angry I could feel the blood pumping through my veins. I wanted to kill him for taking my best friend away from me. And then I realized that this must have been exactly how Astrid felt.
But I didn’t want to be like her. Hurting him wouldn’t do me any good. Even just blaming him didn’t make me feel any better. Who was I to say who was any more responsible than anyone else? I took a minute and waited for my pulse to slow.
Jess was still sitting there, looking at me, waiting for me to speak. Her eyes were starting to fill with tears, and I knew I had to say something, even if there wasn’t much I could say that would help. After all, nothing anyone said to me had worked. “You know, if you’re convinced it was your fault, and Astrid’s convinced it’s hers, and I’m convinced it’s mine, maybe we all need to accept that none of us are going to be a hundred percent right. I don’t think I’ll ever stop blaming myself for my part, but in some ways it’s easier to blame myself than anyone else, and maybe someday that will make it possible for me to let myself off the hook a little bit. Because if none of us is a hundred percent responsible, then it’s probably just as likely that none of us could have stopped this from happening, even if we’d known what it was we should have been trying to do. And we probably need to accept that, just like we need to accept that he’s not coming back.”
I wasn’t sure I’d made any sense, but Jess was nodding. And I realized, even as I was saying it, that it was true, though I also knew it wasn’t going to make either of us feel better. Not for a long time. But I felt a small sense of community in my guilt and grief, with Jess, even with Astrid, even though I still couldn’t process what she’d done.
We stood up and looked at each other for a minute, neither of us knowing what else there was to say. Then, almost as if she hadn’t known she was going to do it, Jess reached out to hug me. I hugged her back, feeling her tiny collarbone against my ribcage. We stayed that way for so long it almost got awkward, but it didn’t, and I felt this moment of relief that she really, truly understood everything.
We finally let each other go and walked out of the woods together, still not talking, but in a way that seemed comfortable and right. By the time we got back everyone was at the starting line; Jess walked over to Astrid and whispered something to her, and I could see Astrid leaning down to listen and nodding. They were a funny pair, Astrid so tall and Jess so little. Kind of like Hayden and me. Astrid looked over at me, and we stood there for a minute, our eyes locked. I looked away first.
Instead, I went and found Rachel and Jimmy. “Race is about to start, kiddo,” Rachel said. “Let’s go.”