FEBRUARY 9
Nick’s Gratitude List
Why is it so hard to find five things to be thankful for? It’s only been a month and already keeping a gratitude journal might be the hardest New Year’s resolution I ever made, especially after our crap show of a Christmas. I can think of a billion things I’m not happy about. Like the fact that Dara’s not speaking to me ever since she caught me reading her journal. Or the fact that Mom spends all her time at work. Or the fact that Dad’s new girlfriend always has lipstick on her teeth, even first thing in the morning.
Okay, bad start. Here goes. For real this time:
1. I’m grateful that I don’t have lipstick on my teeth, ever, because I never wear any.
2. I’m grateful for the Toyota Dad got me! Okay, it’s like twenty years old and Parker says the upholstery smells like cat food, but it drives, and this way Dara and I don’t always have to fight over the keys.
3. I’m grateful for Perkins, my little walking ball of fluffy.
4. I’m grateful that Margot Lesalle started that stupid rumor about what Aaron and I were doing in the boiler room at the Founders’ Day Ball. Thank God for Margot. She always goes for the most obvious rumors.
And:
5. I’m super, extra, mega grateful that no one knows what really happened. That no one will ever know. They say that you’re supposed to tell the truth. Dr. Lichme says that, anyway.
But don’t they also say that what you don’t know can’t hurt you?
BEFORE
FEBRUARY 15
Nick
“Dara!” I paw through the pile of clean laundry on my bed, cursing under my breath. The stuffed cat Aaron gave me for Valentine’s Day—You’re puuurrfect, it says in a creepy high voice when you squeeze it—is perched between my pillows, watching me with glittering glass eyes. “Dara? Have you seen my blue sweater?”
No answer from above: no footsteps, no signs of life. Christ. It’s already after seven o’clock. No way can I be late to homeroom again, not after Mr. Arendale threatened me with detention.
From my closet, I grab a broom—or what was a broom, anyway, before Perkins clawed out most of the bristles—and thump the ceiling with the handle, a method of communication (I’ve found) far more effective than screaming or calling or even texting, which Dara has been known to do when she’s really hung over. (Can u bring up some water? Pleeeeeeease?)
“I know you can hear me!” I shout, punctuating every word with a thwack.
Still nothing. Cursing again—out loud, this time—I shove my phone in my pocket, grab my bag, and take the stairs up to the attic, two at a time. Dara pretends everything I own is too boring for her to borrow, but recently my favorite sweaters and T-shirts have been disappearing and reappearing strangely altered, reeking of cigarettes and pot, sporting new stains and holes.
Dara hates that her door has no lock and militantly insists that we knock before entering, which is why I swing the door open with no warning, hoping it will annoy her.
“What the hell?” I say. She’s sitting up in bed, facing away from me, still wearing her sleep shirt, her hair ratty with knots. “I’ve been calling you for like twenty—”
Then she turns around and I can’t finish my sentence.
Her eyes are swollen and her skin is splotchy and bloated in places, like overripe fruit. Her bangs are plastered to her damp forehead. Her cheeks are streaked with mascara, as if she fell asleep without washing her face and has been crying all night long.
“Jesus.” As always, Dara’s room looks as if it’s been the recent victim of a small and concentrated tsunami. I almost trip three times moving toward the bed. The radiators are going overtime; her room is stifling hot, heavily scented with cinnamon and saline and clove smoke and, just faintly, sweat. “What happened?”
I sit down next to her and try to put an arm around her shoulder, but she pulls away. Even from a distance, I can feel heat radiating from her skin.
She takes a shuddering breath, but when she speaks her voice is dull, monotone. “Parker dumped me. Again.” She mashes a fist into her eye as if she’s trying to physically press back tears. “Happy fucking Valentine’s Day.”
I count to three in my head so I don’t say anything dumb. Since they started hooking up or going out or whatever they’re doing, Dara and Parker have broken up three times that I know about. And Dara always cries and freaks and tells me she’ll never talk to him again, and a week later I see her in school with her arms wrapped around his waist, stretching onto tiptoe to whisper something. “I’m really sorry, Dara,” I say carefully.
“Oh, please.” She whirls around to face me. “No, you’re not. You’re happy. You always told me it wouldn’t last.”
“I never said that,” I say, feeling a quick flare of anger. “I never said that.”
“But you thought it.” After crying, Dara’s eyes go from green to practically yellow. “You always thought it was a bad idea. You didn’t have to say so.”
I keep my mouth shut because she’s right, and there’s no point trying to deny it.
Dara draws her knees to her chest and puts her head between them. “I hate him,” she says, in a muffled voice. “I feel like such an idiot.” Then, even quieter: “Why doesn’t he think I’m good enough?”
“Come on, Dara.” I’m losing patience with her performance; I’ve heard the whole monologue before. “You know that’s not true.”
“It is true,” she says, her voice small now. There’s a beat of silence. Then she says, even quieter, “Why doesn’t anyone love me?”
That’s the essence of Dara: she’ll annoy the shit out of you and then break your heart a second later. I reach out to touch her and then think better of it. “D-bar, you know that’s not true,” I say. “I love you. Mom loves you. Dad loves you.”
“That doesn’t count,” she says. “You guys have to love me. It’s practically illegal not to. You probably just love me so you won’t go to jail.”
I can’t help it; I laugh. Dara lifts her head up just long enough to glare at me before retreating again, like an injured turtle. “Come on, Dara,” I say. I unsling my bag and set it down. No point in rushing now. There’s no way I’ll make it to homeroom at all, much less on time. “You have more friends than anyone I know.”
“Not real friends,” she says. “I just know people.”
I don’t know whether I want to hug or strangle her. “That’s ridiculous,” I say. “I can prove it.” I grab her phone from the bedside table, where it’s sitting next to a pile of crumpled tissues stained with lipstick and mascara. She’s never bothered to change her password: 0729. July 29. Her birthday, the only password she ever uses, the only password she can ever remember. I pull up her photos and start scrolling through them: Dara at house parties, keg parties, dance parties, pool parties. “If everyone hates you so much, who are all these people?”
I pull up a grainy picture of Dara and Ariana—at least I think it’s Ariana, although she’s wearing so much makeup and the picture quality is so bad, it’s hard to tell—surrounded by guys who must be in their early twenties at least. One of them has his arm around Dara; he’s wearing a cheesy leather jacket and would be hot except for his hair, which is thinning, and gelled into spikes. I wonder when this was taken, and whether poor, brokenhearted Dara was with Parker at the time.