I Swear

24. JAKE

When I went back to Scarecrow Video to return the DVDs Brad and I had rented, Andy was standing at the counter. He was tall and skinny and had an encyclopedic knowledge of every horror movie ever made. Scarecrow Video had been a Capitol Hill institution since before I was born, and Andy was only about twenty-four, but when I think of the owners naming the store, I can’t help but think they must’ve named it with him in mind. He was always wearing a baggy plaid flannel shirt and ripped jeans. It sort of looked like his clothes were wearing him. He was totally cool because he wasn’t interested in being cool at all.

“Hey, brother,” he said.

“Dude,” I said. “Evil Dead II rocked my world.”

He smiled, but there was something sad behind his eyes. “You doin’ okay, man?” he asked.

There was no one else in the store at the moment. It was pretty quiet. I knew what he was talking about.

“Just didn’t see you for a long time,” he said. “Next thing I know, I’m talking to a bunch of lawyers.”

I blinked at him, trying to understand. “Wait,” I said. “You got a subpoena?”

“Yeah. I had a deposition earlier this week. What about you?”

“Mine’s soon.” We stood there quietly for a moment.

“What happened, man?” I looked up, startled somehow by his question. He put up both hands and stepped back. “Sorry—if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.”

“No—it’s . . . fine.”

I took off my baseball cap and ran a hand through my hair, then put it back on.

“Andy?”

“Yeah, man?”

“What did they ask you about?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. Just if Leslie had friends. If I ever talked to her about what was going on with her, with school. If I’d noticed anything different or out of the ordinary. They kept calling her ‘Miss Gatlin.’ It was weird.”

“What did you tell them?”

He looked at me for a second, then bit his lip and looked out the window. “Just . . . what I saw.”

I waited. He kept looking at the window or down at his hands—anywhere but in my direction.

“I told ’em that I didn’t think she was having a great time at school, but that she didn’t really talk about it much. Not with me, at least. I knew that she liked a couple of the girls on her volleyball team. The only thing that changed really was you.” He looked me straight in the eyes, then back at the parking lot. “Where’d you go, man?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I just know that she really liked you. Liked hanging with you. Was always talking about playing the guitar with you. Right after Christmas you guys had that talk in the car. I remember it was raining. She ran out and got in your ride on her break. It was dark, but you had the dome light on and I could see you guys talking. You seemed upset when she came running back in. You followed her up to the door, and when she came in, you just stood there, watching her through the window. You were totally drenched, but you didn’t seem to notice.”

I looked down at my sneakers. At that moment, I wanted to be running through the neighborhood, away from my house, face full up to the sun and the blinding white light of the rays as they bounced off the snow that still blanketed the upper half of Mount Hood. I needed to feel the rhythm in my legs, the swell in my lungs, the burn in my chest.

Andy looked back at me. “What happened?”

My legs tensed as if they might carry me into a spring out the front door of Scarecrow Video and far away from . . . what? Andy? This conversation?

The voice in my head cut through the pounding in my ears with the answer:

The truth.

• • •

When I pulled up to Scarecrow, the rain was coming down so hard, my windshield wipers weren’t keeping up.

I texted Leslie: Here.

I could barely make out her figure in the window. The store was deserted. An old-fashioned movie rental place was no match for streaming Netflix when a Seattle thunderstorm was involved.

As I saw her approach the front door and pull up her hood, I smiled. Even in a raincoat she looked like dynamite. It had been so much fun watching her play volleyball this season. Brad kept giving me crap when I dragged him to her matches on Saturday mornings after we’d been up late partying after a Friday-night football game.

She was easily the best player on the team. The fact that she was easy on the eyes was just icing on the cake.

Suddenly she burst through the passenger-side door, all raindrops and umbrella, drenching my shirt as she leaned over the console for a hug.

“Oh my God. I’m so wet,” she said. “Can you believe this?” She gazed up through the windshield.

“No, I can’t,” I said, staring at the way her blond hair brushed her neck as she craned it upward to see the sheets of water pouring off the roof of the building.

She turned to look at me, and I met her lips with mine. She jumped a bit and pulled away. “Okay, wasn’t expecting that.”

I smiled at her. “There’s probably a lot you don’t expect about me. Or suspect.”

“Stop it, Jake.”

“What?” I smiled at her, but I was confused.

She ran a hand through her damp hair. “I have wet socks now because you just had to talk to me in the middle of my shift,” she said. “What’s so important?”

I glanced down at my thumbs mindlessly tapping out a beat on the steering wheel. “I know I haven’t been around a lot lately,” I began.

“Jake, I—”

“Look, don’t say anything right now,” I said, cutting her off. “Just hear me out on this.”

She looked down at her hands in her lap and let out a deep breath.

“Okay. I’ve got fifteen minutes.”

“Look, I know I haven’t been around as much, but I’ve come to every volleyball game, and all week I look forward to that and playing guitar with you. All I think about is you. We’re more than friends, Les, and you know it.”

She looked out into the rain. “We are more than just friends, Jake, but—”

“No ‘buts’!” I smacked the steering wheel.

“Jake—what do you want from me?”

I blinked and looked her straight in the eyes. “I don’t want anything ‘from’ you, Leslie. I want you. Just you. I want you to be my girlfriend.”

She held my gaze and my right hand. There was something missing in her eyes, something that had been there once. She reached up and touched my face. Her hand was cool on my cheek and I realized how warm I was.

As her hand slipped off my cheek, she pulled out her phone.

“I want to show you something,” she said.

She tapped into her text messages and pulled up a number with an area code I didn’t recognize, and turned the screen to me so that I could read the texts:

Slut

Boy stealer

Bitch face

Man eater

Why are ur thighs so fat?

Nice rack. Still screwing the doc?

My cheeks burned. “What the hell is that?” I asked. “Whose number is that?”

“I don’t know for sure,” she said softly, slipping the phone back into the pocket of her jacket.

“Leslie, let me see that.”

“It doesn’t matter, Jake. Whoever is doing this uses a different Google Voice number every time. I’ve tried to report it. I’ve told my mom about it. I’ve told the wireless company. We’ve emailed Google. The person just changes to a new one and the texts keep coming.”

“It’s Macie, isn’t it?”

Leslie stared out the window. “Probably,” she said quietly. “But there’s no way to prove it.”

“How long has this been going on?” Rage boiled up inside me like an explosion.

“For a while,” sighed Leslie.

“Macie is always at our house with Jillian, and vice versa. How do I not know about this?”

Leslie glanced my way and laughed a little, shaking her head.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re so sweet, Jake. You just move through the world assuming the best about people. Nobody tells you otherwise.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“You think they’d admit it to me? I’m sure the whole gang knows. I’m sure they keep it from you. I’m sure it isn’t hard.”

“That’s it!” I yelled, and pounded the steering wheel. Leslie jumped. I was already dialing my phone.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Calling Jillian. This has to stop.”

“No! Jake, don’t.” She grabbed my phone and tapped end call.

“Dammit, Leslie, give me my phone!”

“Jake, look at me,” she said. Then, when my eyes locked on hers, she said quietly, “You can’t bring this up. You cannot tell anyone, do you understand?”

“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to sit around while that bitch harasses you, and my sister and best friend follow her around like a puppy dog.”

“If you bring it up, it will just get worse.” She was desperate. Her eyes searched mine wildly for some sign that I wouldn’t talk about it.

“How can it get any worse?” I asked. “After that stunt in the park, Josh Phillips still crosses to the other side of the hall when he sees me.”

“And remember what happened?” Leslie asked, the fire back in her eyes. “You got called in and threatened with a suspension.”

“Josh is such an a*shole.” I shook my head.

We sat quietly for a minute listening to the rain pound the roof of the car. The windows were fogged up because of our voices, my yelling, her sentences, soft but firm. Our breath had mixed—little particles of the moisture from deep inside our bodies had been showered out into this tiny space and mingled with one another, then clung to the cool glass in tiny beads. There we were; Leslie and I mixed up together on the windows, fogging our view of anything else but each other.

I wanted her so badly in that moment. I wanted us to be mixed up, our arms, our legs, our lips—not just our breath. I reached over and smoothed her bangs away from her forehead. She closed her eyes and rested her cheek against my hand.

As I leaned in to kiss her, she opened her eyes and put a hand on my chest to stop me.

“If you go to Jillian or to Macie, this just gets worse.”

“And if you won’t be my girlfriend, this gets worse,” I said, thumping my fist against my chest. “This tightness in my lungs. This ache in my gut. Leslie, I can’t breathe.”

“Macie would flip her shit if you started going out with me. Jake, haven’t you been paying attention? This is what started the whole thing. You didn’t want to date her. This whole thing comes down to what Macie wants. She wants you.”

“I don’t care what Macie wants.” My voice was so low and so intense when it came out of me that I almost didn’t recognize myself.

“She does,” said Leslie quietly. “If she can’t have you, no one else can either.”

I was quiet for a long time. I felt the fight drain out of me, and with it, the hopelessness of the situation flooded into its place. Suddenly I was desperate. Desperate to keep her here with me, in the car, in this moment.

But all I could say was, “Please.”

“What?” she asked.

“Please don’t let Macie win.”

She shoved her hands into her raincoat pockets. “Break’s over,” she whispered.

Before I knew what was happening, she was running toward the front door of the video store, and somehow I was chasing her—no umbrella, no jacket. The rain was cold, like nails being driven into my cheeks and neck and shoulders. She got to the door ahead of me and slipped inside and behind the counter as a group of hipster college kids pushed out into the rain. I was blocked from entering by a barrage of fedoras and umbrellas. As the doors closed behind them, I looked up to see Leslie disappear into the romance section.

Is she crying? Or is there just rain still on her cheeks?

I couldn’t tell for sure through the glass of the doors. Andy turned around at the counter and saw me. Suddenly I realized I was crying. He raised his hand and started toward me. I watched him coming over like it was a cold, wet nightmare. He pushed open the door and yelled over the storm, “Hey, man! You okay?”

I shook my head in a silent no. No. No, I am not okay. Nothing is okay.

Then I slowly turned and walked into the parking lot, raising my arms and face up to the cold rain, letting the chill tear through me, wishing it would somehow put out the fire.

• • •

“So you pretty much stopped coming around at that point, I guess,” said Andy. “Makes sense now. I wouldn’t want to hang with the chick who broke my heart, either.”

“That’s what made it worse,” I said. “I wanted to be with her every minute. I just wanted her near me. I’d still go watch her volleyball games. Beth would show up and sit next to me on the bleachers. We didn’t even talk—really, we hardly spoke—just sat and watched Leslie. We’d both leave early.”

I paused to swallow the lump that had come up in my throat. “I wish we’d stuck around,” I said. “I’m not sure she ever knew we were there.”

“Did you see her before . . . ?” Andy’s question trailed off into the awful nothing that happens when the sentence becomes too terrible to continue to say out loud.

I nodded. “I was the last person who talked to her that I know of,” I said.

“Heavy,” Andy whispered. “Did she call you?”

I shook my head. The words were getting harder to find. Why was I telling Andy this? What was it? I realized that he was the only person I knew who knew Leslie but didn’t know the rest of the people involved in the story. Something about him was real, genuine. He’d gone to a deposition about Leslie’s death, not as the accused, but as a friend, a coworker, somebody willing to help out.

“I just showed up and knocked on her door,” I said.

“Just like that, huh? Right outta the blue?”

“No,” I said quietly.

“What made you go?” Andy asked.

“The necklace,” I said. “We bought these necklaces.” I pulled mine out of my shirt. “Me and Leslie and Jillian—when we were in Cape Cod the summer before ninth grade.”

Andy frowned. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You had Leslie’s necklace?”

“No,” I said. “Macie did.”

• • •

I’ll never forget walking up the stairs that night. I’d been at Brad’s playing video games. I’d seen all the cars out front, and I knew that Jillian had the girls over. I didn’t feel like talking to them, so I was as quiet as possible.

I walked into the bathroom between our rooms, and as I was turning the lock in the door that led to Jillian’s room, I realized that something had been strange when I’d passed through my bedroom. There was something on my pillow.

I stepped back out of the bathroom and walked over to the head of my bed. There was a pink three-by-five card that read, If I can’t have what I want, you can’t have what you want.

I frowned and reached down to pick up the card. Underneath it was a wad of silver chain. As I lifted it from the pillow, a tiny silver anchor fell against my palm.

I don’t remember ever seeing a color before. I’ve heard the expression “I saw red,” meaning “I was angry,” but there was more to this color—it was darker than red. It was crimson—so dark it was almost purple. It was six quick steps down the hall to Jillian’s bedroom.

When I threw open the door, it hit the wall so hard that the lamp fell off Jillian’s dresser, and Krista shrieked. Beth was sitting at the computer, and when Katherine asked what I was holding, I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs. I wanted to put my fist through the wall.

Before I could move, I heard Macie say that I was “so sexy” when I’m angry, and something about the glint in her eye confirmed what I already knew: M AAAacie put this necklace here.

I had so many questions, they were tripping over one another in my brain.

“Don’t ever speak to me again,” I said. “I want you out of my life.”

Then I raced down the stairs to my car and squealed away from the curb toward Leslie’s.