Neither of us said anything after that. I’d gotten what I’d come for. I had the answers I had been seeking, but somehow that knowledge didn’t help. Having to carry the weight of my sister’s secret was something I wasn’t prepared to do. I hadn’t signed on for this. I could play Barbie doll, pretend I wasn’t smart, and fake interest in things I hated, but this … I didn’t know what to do with this.
Sitting here in the dark with Alex waiting for the rest of my world to crumble down wasn’t going to help either. “I don’t know what to say.” I didn’t look at him when I spoke, didn’t have the energy to dissect the emotions playing across his face.
“I don’t think there is anything else to say.”
Alex tore the newspaper clipping in two and shoved it in his coat pocket. He could destroy that one and the dozen others sitting in that shoe box if he wanted to. It wouldn’t change anything.
He opened the car door and got out. “Go home, Maddy, and forget about this. It wasn’t your fault, and there is nothing you can do to change what happened.”
I disagreed. An apology to Molly would be a good start.
“Take tomorrow off from school and get a handle on yourself. I’ll cover for you, tell everybody you have a doctor’s appointment or something. I’ll pick you up at three and take you to your field hockey game. And on Monday…”
Alex didn’t finish his thought, but I didn’t need him to. I knew what he meant. On Monday, I had to get up and do it over again. Pretend to be my sister, try to find a way to deal with the emptiness that filled me while making pointless conversation with her friends … with Jenna.
I waited until Alex had pulled out of the lot to start my car. Going home wasn’t an option. Mom was there and Dad was probably trying to coax her out of their room, away from the collection of my stuff she had surrounded herself with. I didn’t need another reminder of how I’d messed everything up.
I pulled out my phone and texted the one lie I was sure Dad would buy: Staying at Jenna’s.
It took a few minutes, but the phone finally chimed with a simple message: Have fun.
I drove around for hours that night, pulled into our driveway twice, then pulled back out. I would’ve gone to talk to Maddy, curled up on the ground beneath my own name, but the cemetery gates were locked at dusk, leaving me with nowhere to go.
It was past midnight when I pulled up across the street from Josh’s house. The house was dark, the streetlight at the end of his driveway broken and flickering to its death. That’s where I spent the night—in my car, parked across the street from Josh’s, watching, remembering, and dreaming about what I would’ve done differently had I known, as soon as I woke up in the hospital, that he loved me, too.
39
The sharp rap on the window jarred me awake. I snapped my head up, making contact with the back of my seat. My neck hurt, not from the sudden motion but from sleeping hunched over my steering wheel for the past few hours.
The knock was softer now but equally urgent. I cleared my eyes and looked toward the window. The thin layer of ice covering the glass made it difficult to see, but eventually I could make out a face. It was Josh. He had his hat and gloves on, his backpack slung over one shoulder. I turned on the car and jacked up the heat before rolling down the window.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
I looked past him to his driveway. Kim was standing there staring straight at me.
“I asked you what you are doing here,” Josh said again.
“Nothing.”
“Go home, Maddy.”
“But—” I started to argue, to tell him to stop calling me that, to give me a second chance, but he waved me off.
“You had your chance yesterday. There’s nothing here for you anymore.”