I Swear

20. JAKE

The upstairs bathroom in our house separates my bedroom from Jillian’s. We’ve both got a door and a sink. She usually uses the tub, I use the shower. It basically blows having to share. It just always takes her forever to get ready, and I know that sounds like a totally sexist comment, but I just don’t understand how somebody can take two hours to get dressed for a football game. It’s also jacked when I don’t wanna see her or talk to her, like tonight.

But there she was.

Washing her face.

And now it was too late, ’cause she’d seen me and she had soap in her eyes and she was trying to rinse and find the hand towel and turn off the water all at once, and frankly, it was funny, but I didn’t feel much like laughing.

As I turned to go, it was like she sensed the action in my legs, because in the split second it took for my brain to send my legs the signal, I heard her through the towel she was blotting across her face:

“Jake. Wait!”

And something in me froze. It was the desperation in her voice. The pleading in the word “wait.” It stopped me in the doorway that led to my room.

“Jake, you can’t just stop talking to me,” she said. She tossed the towel onto the sink counter. I stood there silently, watching her squirm.

Who are you?

I looked for some signal of recognition. Some flicker of the four-year-old girl with the pigtails who I used to protect when Kevin, Kathy, and Kyle, the triplets we lived next door to at the time, tried to coax her away from her Big Wheel. Kevin and Kyle would try to distract her, and then that little bitch Kathy would jump on her Big Wheel and cruise down the sidewalk. I’d take on both of Kathy’s brothers at once. I was ferocious when it came to Jillian.

I looked at her closely. Same reddish-brown hair; same light freckles across her nose, uncovered from the layer of powder that carefully blots them out each morning. The same eyes sparkled in the new halogen pin spots I’d helped Dad install after we moved in and remodeled the upstairs.

“See?” she said. “You’re doing it again. Just standing there pouting. You can’t even look me in the eye.”

That’s it.

It took two slo-mo steps to cross the bathroom. Jillian backed up into the doorjamb by her sink, her back pressed against the towel bar. I bent down so my nose was inches from hers, and stared directly into her eyes.

“Do you have something to say, Jillian?” I whispered. “’Cause I’m all ears.”

She stood there, shocked and scared, but not flinching. Her eyes flooded and she blinked but didn’t look away. Then she surprised me and threw her arms around me. I felt her bury her face in the space between my shoulder and my neck. I felt the heat of her tears on my shirt.

“Jake,” she choked into my neck, and then a single word: “Please.”

As I held her there in the bathroom and listened to her sob, something in me melted just enough to stay in the room.

After her sobs subsided, I pulled back from her and said, “Walk me through this, Jills, ’cause I just don’t understand it.”

“That’s just it, Jake,” she said. “There’s nothing to walk through. I keep feeling like you want me to explain how this isn’t my fault, but I shouldn’t have to.”

I let this sink in, and then said, “Still listening.”

“Jake.” She put both hands on my shoulders. “Not everybody fits in. Not everybody can be friends all the time. That doesn’t mean I wanted Leslie to die. None of us did. I know you’re sad, but, Jake, you know Leslie’s parents are a crapshoot at best. She was probably more unstable than any of us realized. I mean, look at her dad—he’s a nutcase, and her mom is a drunk. Mental illness obviously runs in that family.”

“Jillian, this is not about anyone’s mental illness except Macie Merrick’s,” I said softly.

“Jesus, Jake.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Macie is not the problem here.”

The melted part of me became an explosion. “Goddammit, Jillian! How long are you going to keep saying that? You’re going to cling to that leaky plank like it’s a life raft no matter how huge the tsunami of evidence is, aren’t you?”

“Jake! Listen!” She was crying.

“No, Jillian. I’ve heard enough. I don’t know what f*cking power Macie Merrick holds over all of you, but she never held it over me. Never. I am so sick of hearing you all make excuses for her bullshit. You, Brad, Katherine, everybody.”

Jillian slumped against the counter, then exploded back toward me. “Stop it. Stop it!”

“I can’t believe you,” I said. “Stop it? Stop telling you how horrible Macie is for you? If you were about to drink a glass of poison, I’d yell and scream and tell you exactly what was going on. I can’t wait to get you in front of those lawyers and lay out the shit you guys pulled with Leslie one day at a time for the last three years. I can’t wait to watch you squirm.”

“What are you talking about?” Jillian’s voice shook in a register so low I could barely hear her.

“Didn’t Mom tell you about our deposition?”

“She told me about my deposition,” she said. “When’s yours?”

“At the same time, Jillian. They want to question us together because we’re brother and sister.”

Jillian was finally quiet. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Beats me,” I said. “But if you so much as look like you might blink in a way that would mislead these lawyers, I will nail you to the wall.”

Jillian started sobbing again. “You don’t have any idea what it’s like for the girls in your life. You and Brad don’t have to play the game because you’re both good-looking and athletes. You’ve never been bad at anything in your life but Spanish sophomore year.”

“I’m done here,” I said.

“Well, I’m not done!” she yelled at me. “You think it’s just as easy for everybody else as it is for you. Well, it isn’t, and you don’t take two seconds to notice that. You’ve never had to defend yourself. I almost lost Macie last year when Katherine came along.” She held up her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “I am this close to being done with high school, and I am not letting things fall apart.”

Jillian was crying so hard when she fell to her hands and knees by the tub that I was afraid she might be sick. Something about her sitting there on the floor, crying, made a knot form in my chest. I felt like I was being pulled in two. I thought about us talking to each other in words no one could understand so many years ago. All this time, it had been me and her. That felt like it was falling apart now, too. I stood there watching her cry for what seemed like a very long time. Then, slowly, I knelt down by her and put my hand on her back.

“Jillian?” I said softly. “What is it? Tell me how we can keep it from falling apart.”

“I want to tell you, so bad, Jake, but I . . . I just . . .”

“Jillian, this is your chance,” I whispered. “Tell me now. If it comes out in the deposition, it’ll be worse because it’ll be evidence. If you tell me now, we can fix it.”

“It’s . . .” Jillian searched my eyes and took a deep breath, then dropped her gaze to the floor. “It’s Brad.”

“What about Brad?” I asked.

“We’ve been . . . we’re . . .”

“What, Jillian?”

“Together.”

I sat down next to her, my back against the cabinets under the sink. “You mean . . . like . . . dating?”

“Something . . . ,” she said. “I mean, he’s dating Macie, but . . . somebody knows.”

“How?” I asked.

“They emailed pictures of us kissing to Brad.”

“Oh . . . wow.” I started to laugh. “Brad?” I giggled. “Bradley Wyst?”

“Shut up.” Jillian slapped me on the leg. I rolled over onto my back on the floor and laughed harder.

“Jake! It’s not funny!”

“Kinda,” I gasped. “Kinda it is funny.”

“What am I gonna do?” Jillian was beside herself. “If Macie finds out, I’m dead.”

“Jills, don’t be so dramatic,” I said. “Obviously one of the girls sent you those pics.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

“Because nobody else gives a damn,” I said.

“Well, Macie will give a damn.”

“Don’t you get it yet? She was probably the one who sent them to you.”

Jillian wiped her cheeks. I stood and offered her my hand. Slowly she placed hers in mine, and I pulled her up.

“Jills?”

“Yeah?”

“Is that all?” I asked. “Is that everything?”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s everything.”

Maybe it was her tears. Or maybe a part of me really wanted my sister back. Maybe I’m just a moron.

Whatever the reason, I swear I believed her.