THAT NIGHT, I EXPECTED TO dream of Lacey. When it didn’t happen, I woke up convinced she was gone. Run away for real this time, or banished back into my imagination, like some fairy-tale creature who, once refused, spirits herself away.
I went to school, did my homework, answered my parents politely, didn’t think about Lacey, didn’t think about Lacey, didn’t think about Lacey.
Sunday, Nikki invited me to church. I sat stiffly at her side, examining the fine grain of the pew while the minister explained about hell, counting the bulbs in the track lighting and trying to remember when it was time to stand up for Jesus. The Lord was a lot less interesting without magic mushrooms. Ladies fanning their Sunday finery, husbands jockeying for usher spots so they could sneak a smoke, ribboned and bow-tied kids who took a sickening pleasure in good behavior dodging spitballs from brats who didn’t. The minister spoke on forgiveness, opening your heart to those who had wronged you, but he didn’t say how.
There was a time, I thought, when I descended on a place like this as a god.
“There’ll be wine at lunch after,” Nikki whispered. “We can snag some if we’re careful.”
I was always careful.
Days passed without sign of Lacey, until I started to think I really had imagined her return. Then, one Monday after school, the Buick pulled into the bus lane and honked, one unrelenting blare of the horn that didn’t let up until everyone on the lot had turned to stare.
Lacey poked her head out the window. “In.”
HER ROOM WAS DIFFERENT. THE giant poster of Kurt was gone. Everything was gone.
“Spring cleaning.” She shrugged. “I’m going for the monk thing.”
She’d painted the walls black.
“The Bastard had a fit,” she said.
Lacey sat on her bed. I sat on the floor, cross-legged, next to where she’d kept her tapes. They were gone, too. Everything she had left, she kept in her car. A handful of tapes in the glove compartment, everything else in the trunk. “You never know when you’ll need a quick getaway.”
I’d thought we would go on a drive; we always went on a drive. But Lacey wanted to show me something, she’d said. To tell me many things.
She smiled a fake Lacey smile. “So, how was the mall?”
“Fine. You know. The mall.”
“I know you went with Nikki Drummond,” she said.
“Are you following me?”
“I notice you’re not denying it.”
“No, I’m not.”
“So, what? You two are friends or something now?”
I shrugged.
“Well, not officially friends, I’m guessing. Not in public, not at school, where people could see.”
I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to. She put on a real smile once we both concluded she’d won. And then, very quickly, it went away again. “Sorry,” she said, and she never said that. “I heard some other crap, too. About that party last spring . . .”
“It’s bullshit,” I said quickly.
“You know I don’t care what you did, Dex.”
“I didn’t do anything. People are fucking liars.”
“Okay . . . but if someone did something to you, we can handle it. We’ll—”
I needed it to stop. “If someone did something to me, I don’t see how that’s your problem.”
“What is it? What did she say to you?” Lacey asked.
“Who?”
“You know who. The bitch. Nikki. She told you something about me. That’s what this is.”
“No, Lacey. There’s no conspiracy.”
“Whatever she told you, I can explain.”
It was the wrong thing to say; it was an admission.
“Go ahead. Explain.”
“First tell me what she said.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you think she said? Or, even better, the fucking truth.”
“Language, Dex.” She tried another smile. I didn’t. “It’s complicated.”
Fix this, I willed her. Before you can’t.
“She’s using you to get at me,” Lacey said. “Tell me you see that, at least.”
“Because someone like her would never actually want to be friends with someone like me.”
“It’s not you, it’s her! She uses everybody. It’s how people like Nikki operate.”
“Right. People like Nikki.”
“Believe whatever you want about me, Dex, but promise me you won’t believe her. She’ll do whatever she can to hurt me.”
“And why is that, Lacey? Why would she go to all that trouble?”
It took me a long time to understand that this expression on her face, the one that made her look like a stranger, was fear. “I can’t tell you.”
“Have you always thought I was this stupid?”
“Can’t you just trust me, Dex? Please?”
That would have been so much easier—and so I did it; I tried.
“I see,” she said, as if she did, and it hurt. “But you can trust her. If it’s between me and her, you pick her.”
I reminded myself it wasn’t her fault that she’d left. That she’d molded me from wet clay, and it was law to honor thy creator. We were Dex and Lacey; we should have been beyond ultimatums. I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t have to trust Nikki. That was the most appealing thing about her: She didn’t ask that of me. She didn’t ask anything.