Rachel, hardly bothered, plopped herself down between me and Bert. "God," she said, tipping her head back and laughing, "remember how much fun we used to have at meets? And you, shit, you were fast. Weren't you?"
"Not really," I said, instinctively reaching to smooth my hair before realizing it wasn't even parted. I could feel Kristy watching me, listening to this.
"You were!" she poked Bert in the arm. "You should have seen her. She was so fast, like she could…"
There was an awkward silence as we all waited for whatever verb was coming.
"… fly," Rachel finished, and I heard Kristy snort. "Like she had freaking wings, you know? She won everything. You know, the only way anyone else ever got to win anything was when you quit."
"Well," I said, willing her to get up and move on, before she said anything else. Whatever anonymity I'd enjoyed so far this summer had been based on everyone from Wish not being from my school and therefore not knowing anything about me. I had been a clean slate, and now here was Rachel Newcomb, scribbling out my secrets for everyone to see.
"We were the Running Rovers," Rachel was saying to Monica now, slurring slightly. "I always thought that name was so dumb, you know? It made us sound like dogs. Go Rovers! Woof! Woof!"
"Good God," Kristy said, to no one in particular. Still, I felt my face burn, and that was even before I glanced up to see Wes looking at me.
"Look," Rachel said, slapping a hand on my knee. "I want you to know something, okay?"
Even though I knew what was coming—how, I have no idea—I could think of no way to stop her. All I could do was stand off to the side and watch everything fall apart.
"And what I want you to know is," she said earnestly, as if this was private and we didn't have an audience, "that I don't care what anyone says, I don't think you're all weird since that thing happened with your dad. I mean, that was messed up that you were there. Most people couldn't handle that, you know? Seeing someone die like that."
I just sat there, looking at her: at her flushed face, the sloshy cup of beer in her hand, the white of her tan line that was visible, just barely, beneath the straps of her halter top. I could not bring myself to look at the others. So much for my fairy tale, however brief, my luxury of scars that didn't show. Somewhere, I was sure I could hear a clock chiming.
"Rachel!" someone yelled from the next car over. "Get over here or we're leaving you!"
"Oh, gotta go!" Rachel stood up, flipping her long hair over her shoulder. "I'm going," she said, redundantly. "But I meant what I said, okay? Remember that. Remember what I said. Okay?"
I couldn't even nod or say a word. Rachel stumbled off to the jeep, where she was greeted with more laughter and a few bicycling jokes. Then someone turned up the radio, some Van Morrison song, and they all started singing along, off-key.
It was one of those moments that you wish you could just disappear, every particle in you shrinking. But that, I knew, was impossible. There was always an After. So I lifted my head, and looked at Kristy, seeing Bert watching me, Wes and Monica's faces in my peripheral vision. Then I took a breath, to say what, I didn't know. But before I could, Kristy had walked over and sat down beside me.
"That girl," she said, wrapping her hand around mine, "is as dumb as a bag of hammers."
"No kidding," Bert said softly, and when I looked at him I saw not The Face, but instead a good-humored sort of disgust, not directed at me, not about me at all.
Kristy leaned across me, saying, "Wasn't she the one you had to explain the concept of odd numbers to during that summer math tutoring thing you did?"
Bert nodded. "Twice," he said.
"Moron."
"Mmm-hmm," Monica said, nodding.
Kristy rolled her eyes, then took a sip of her beer. Her palm felt warm against mine, and I realized how long it had been since anyone had held my hand. I looked at Wes, remembering his sculpture, the heart cut into the palm. He was looking at me, just as I'd thought he would be, but like Bert's, his look was not what I expected. No pity, no sadness: nothing had changed. I realized all those times I'd felt people stare at me, their faces had been pictures, abstracts. None of them were mirrors, able to reflect back the expression I thought only I wore, the feelings only I felt. Until now, this moment, as our eyes met. If there was a way to recognize something you'd never seen but still knew by heart, I felt it as I looked at his face. Finally, someone understood.
"Still," Kristy said wistfully, "I did like her halter top. I have a black skirt that would look just great with that."
We just sat there for a second, none of us talking. In the middle of the clearing, someone was playing with a flashlight, the beam moving across the trees overhead, showing bits and pieces of branches and leaves, a glimpse here and there, then darkness again. I knew that in the last few minutes everything had changed. I'd tried to hold myself apart, showing only what I wanted, doling out bits and pieces of who I was. But that only works for so long. Eventually, even the smallest fragments can't help but make a whole.