I Swear

27. BETH

I suppose it was inevitable that I’d run into Jake at some point. I mean, we went to the same school and we were in the same class, and turned out Jillian was becoming the only friend I had left.

I guess I assumed it would be in class, or in the hallway outside the locker rooms, when I was getting ready for practice and he was leaving the weight room.

I never thought it would be at Leslie’s grave. I mean, really—doesn’t that seem a little on the nose?

But there we were, on a day so sunny, it defied description: the girl who wanted Leslie, and the boy who wanted Leslie—standing at the edge of the leveled patch of fresh soil, staring at the granite marker that had just been delivered that week:

Leslie Gatlin

1993–2011

I’d stopped at Trader Joe’s for some flowers on the way over, and had just laid a bouquet of daffodils at the foot of the stone when I heard him walking up behind me. He was wearing a Seahawks hoodie and carrying a single rose with a long green stem that exploded in deep crimson velvet. He stopped next to me and stood there for a moment staring at the tombstone. Then he bent down and placed the rose next to my daffodils, stood up again, and put his hands into the hoodie pocket.

The sun seemed to mock us, standing at the tombstone under a cloudless sky. The rays were warm, but the wind off the sound was just brisk enough that it made me glad I had worn a jacket. I pulled it a little closer, not so much for warmth as for the secure feeling that I get from the layers of fabric wrapped tightly around me. It’s a trick I learned when I was little at gymnastic meets in giant, drafty gymnasiums. I felt something even warmer across my shoulders, and I realized that it was Jake’s arm.

We stood there in silence for what seemed like a very long time. I looked out toward Mount Hood in the distance, and the bright sun glaring off the snow brought tears to my eyes. Or maybe it was hearing Jake sniff, and glancing up at him from behind my dark glasses and realizing that there were silent tears running down his cheeks. Slowly I brought my arm up around his waist, then leaned my face against his chest and sobbed.

When the tears had subsided, I took off my sunglasses and wiped at my eyes with my sleeve. Jake’s jaw was tight. He was angry. I’d seen this before, the night that Leslie died, when he’d burst into Jillian’s bedroom like a rocket, holding that necklace.

“Jake?” I reached out to touch his arm.

He turned away, raising his face to the sky and yelling out a long, slow cry. It wasn’t hurt. It was rage.

“I’m so angry,” he panted at me through his tears, his face flushed, his eyes rimmed with red. “I’m so angry and I’m so sad, and I’m angry at myself for being sad, and I’m sad that I feel so angry.”

I was quiet for a second. I looked back over my shoulder at the sound and the skyline and the ferry headed out to Bainbridge Island.

This is what it comes down to. You deserve this.

“Jake.” My voice was a whisper. “I’m so sorry. I know you should be angry at me, I just—”

“You?” He almost laughed. “Angry at you? I’m angry at her. I’m so mad at her for pulling this shit.”

He jammed his hands deeper into the hoodie as if he had to anchor himself to the ground and scrunched his eyes closed as if he could will himself into another moment in time, a moment already passed, a moment where he could do something, say something, to change what he was feeling here and now.

“You’re angry at Leslie?” I asked.

“How could she be so selfish?” His shoulders were shaking and his eyes were still closed. “How could she think that this would solve anything?”

He sat down on the grass at the edge of the dirt square and hugged his knees to his chest. “If I’d just paid attention. I keep thinking I could have figured this out. I could have somehow understood. She just kept sending me away. She just kept saying, ‘You don’t understand,’ but I could’ve understood if she’d given me a chance. I would’ve tried. I think of all the times I went running to get her off my mind. I should’ve run to her place. I should’ve gotten to the bottom of it. I’m so angry at myself, and I’m so angry at her for not telling me.”

I sank down on a spot of grass across from him.

“Jake, this isn’t your fault. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine.”

Jake looked directly at me. “You’re damn right it is,” he said. It was so low, I wasn’t sure that I had heard him. “It’s your fault, and Macie’s and Jillian’s and Katherine’s and Krista’s.” His voice cracked again. “And mine.”

“Jake, I’m so sorry. I can’t say enough that I’m sorry. I’ll never be able to say it enough to bring her back. I was just so scared. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You should have loved her!” Jake shouted, and looked away from me. “You should’ve loved her. How could that have been so hard?”

“I did. I did, Jake.”

He looked back at me with a sneer. “Coulda fooled me,” he scoffed. “You could’ve been her friend. Instead you turned on her for not loving you the way you wanted.”

Suddenly I was up on my feet, hands clenched, shouting, “You don’t understand. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to be . . . like that. I couldn’t risk her telling . . .” I stopped short and dropped my head.

“Macie?” Jake asked. “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? Goddamn that Macie Merrick. What kind of f*cking evil witchcraft does that girl hold over you and my sister? What did she ever do for you?”

“Yes!” I yelled back. “Fine. Yes, I didn’t know how to go up to Macie and say, ‘Stop picking on Leslie. I love her.’ My God, Jake. Look what Macie did to Leslie. All I could think is what she’d do to me.”

Jake hid his face with his hand and sat quietly for a minute. Then he sniffed and spit and wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm.

“I just knew that what was going on inside me was all wrong,” I said.

Jake’s face snapped toward mine and exploded. “There is nothing wrong with what’s going on inside you,” he shouted. “It was what you let go on outside you that mattered. Lying about it was wrong. Not being who you are was wrong. Caring more about what Macie Merrick thought than about what you felt was wrong.”

“Shut up!” I was frantic. My voice was shrill and terrified. “Jake, you don’t know what she can do. You don’t know what Macie is capable of. I knew that there was no way I could stand up for Leslie and risk her telling anyone what had happened. Not now. Not here. It was just too . . .”

“Hard?” Jake’s eyes narrowed when he said it.

He stood up and grabbed the bouquet of daffodils I’d brought and shook them at me. “Harder than this, Beth? Harder than this?”

He threw the flowers back at the base of the granite marker. They sprayed apart in a wild flash of green and gold.

“Nothing could be harder than this,” he said. His voice was eerie and quiet. I looked up, and as he stared at the dates etched forever in the stone, the tension seemed to drain out of him, like someone had pulled the stopper on an air mattress. Right before my eyes, he deflated. He was a little boy in a grown-up body—a little boy who felt lost and alone, scared at the depth of his feelings.

Just like me.

He sat on the grass next to me, then lay down on his back and stared up at the sky.

“Macie’s right, you know,” he said quietly.

“About what?” I asked.

“There’s nothing that’s going to come of these depositions. There’s nothing to pin on Macie. She had everyone else do her dirty work.”

I thought about this, and it made my stomach hurt. I suddenly wished that I could push a fast-forward button—that I could make the rest of senior year just speed toward the end, right past graduation, and the summer, and packing. All I wanted was to be a freshman in college someplace, anyplace, where all I had to do was take Comp I and work on a new floor routine.

Jake sat up and looked at me. “I tried to tell her once that it wouldn’t matter in ten years,” he said.

I had to look away from his gaze. His eyes were too deep with sadness.

“It’s not just my fault, or your fault, or even Macie’s fault,” he said slowly. “It’s Leslie’s fault too. She could have trusted us to love her.”

He looked at me for a moment, then kicked at the loose dirt on top of Leslie’s grave. “Do me a favor, Beth.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“The next time you meet a beautiful girl, and she turns you down, will you please be her friend? Leslie Gatlin deserved better. She deserved to be more important to you than Macie Merrick. She deserved—”

His voice cracked, and he bit his lip.

“Someone like you,” I said softly. “She deserved someone like you.”

“I don’t know which is worse,” he said. “Feeling guilty or feeling angry for feeling guilty. I’m just not sure which feeling is right.”

“Maybe they’re both right,” I said. “Maybe we’re just supposed to feel everything as it comes.”

“I’d rather feel happy,” said Jake. “I’d rather have Leslie alive.”

He looked at his watch and turned toward the parking lot.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’ve got a deposition,” he said.