I Swear

8. JAKE

When Jillian and I were little, before we could speak words you’d recognize, we spoke our own language. Dad told me about it one time when we were painting the new cabinets he’d put up in the garage.

“What would we say?” I asked him.

“Who knows?” he said with a chuckle. “But you were definitely communicating. The two of you would laugh and sing and jabber and talk yourselves to sleep. Sometimes it would take hours. But you never cried. You were happy as clams just being with each other.”

Dad paused while he poured paint from a five-gallon bucket into a roller tray. He put down the bucket and turned to wipe his hands on a rag, and glanced out toward the street.

“So funny . . . ,” he said softly. “Best one ever. Best moment of my life,” he said, smiling. “Your mom and I leaning over the counter with a cheap bottle of red, eating take-out stir fry, and listening to you and your sister giggling over that little baby monitor walkie-talkie. We would never have planned on twins. Sometimes life gives you what you need, not what you think you want.”

I caught a drip with the brush before it rolled off the cabinet door. “I wonder what we were saying?”

“Dunno,” he said, dipping a brush into the paint and edging out some inside shelves. “I always told your mom that you were giving Jillian NFL stats, but secretly I liked to think that you were telling her that you had her back—that everything was going to be okay.”

• • •

Today everything is not okay. Today nothing feels like it will ever be right again.

Mom called her assistant when she found me in the kitchen, and told him to clear her schedule for the morning. She kicked off her shoes and sat down on the rug at the kitchen sink and just held me for a minute. It felt so weird. I’ve been taller than she is since I was in eighth grade, but I just sat there and cried into her shoulder.

Then she got up and made me some hot chocolate. She didn’t ask me any questions. She didn’t tell me what to do. She just sat there with me. She listened when I talked. She was quiet when I didn’t.

Finally, I told her I had to go to school. I told her I had to find Jillian. She didn’t try to make me stay home. She didn’t say that it would be okay. She didn’t say anything at all except “I love you.” Then she dashed off a note to Principal Jenkins and slipped it to me along with a kiss as I walked out the door.

It was almost noon when I got in my car, and I had four texts from Brad asking where I was. I texted him on my way and drove to school.

• • •

Lunch was in full swing when I showed up. I checked in at the office and dropped off the note that Mom had written me, then headed to my locker. When I walked up to it, Brad saw me and was at my elbow almost immediately, as I watched Jillian, Macie, Krista, and Katherine head down the stairs to lunch in the cafeteria.

“Hey,” he said. “C’mon, let’s get some food.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said, following Brad toward the stairs where the girls had disappeared.

“Hold up, man,” Brad said. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I said, suddenly angry. “I’m not okay.”

Brad held up both hands as we walked into the mayhem of the cafeteria. “I’m not the enemy,” he said quietly. “And neither is Jillian.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped, a little too loudly. A couple of girls at the table near the door turned around, and Brad pulled me over by the bank of vending machines. Macie had led a charge in the student council last fall to dump the Doritos and Cokes. Now the glass of the shiny new machines gleamed over Caesar salads and fruit juices.

“C’mon, Jake,” Brad whispered. “Not here. I know you had a thing for Leslie, but it’s not Jillian’s fault that she’s dead. Or Macie’s, for that matter. It’s Leslie’s fault. Plain and simple.”

I leveled my gaze at the table across the room. Macie had seen us and was glancing over at us every few seconds—watching us but pretending not to.

“Besides, Jake. She just wasn’t that into you, man. She barely gave you the time of day for the last few months.”

I looked at Brad. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Jillian knows something about what happened last night. I’m guessing your girlfriend does, too. Leslie was supposed to go to her aunt’s in Portland.”

“How do you know?” Brad asked.

“Because I talked to her last night. She was supposed to call me when she got there. She never left her garage,” I said. I took a deep breath. I could feel a choking feeling in the back of my throat.

Brad put a hand on my shoulder. “Jake, there’s no way to explain this. It doesn’t make sense, because killing yourself is . . . senseless. It’s a crazy thing to do. Nothing about it is logical.”

“And you know what’s even less logical?” I asked. “Me leaving her house at eleven thirty last night with her set to drive to Portland, and Leslie being dead in her garage this morning. What happened between the time I left and the moment she decided to sit in her garage and breathe car exhaust until she didn’t wake up, Brad?”

“I don’t know, man,” Brad said.

“I’ll bet you and Jillian and Macie do,” I said.

“Now is not the time, Jake,” Brad said, grabbing my arm as I headed toward their table by the windows.

I shook free of his grip on my arm. “It’s as good a time as any.”