If you assumed there was only one set of stairs for everyone and we all started at different points, then that meant I’d hit the place on the staircase that everyone else eventually reached. And if that was the place we all eventually reached, wouldn’t that mean I was close to the top?
My heart hammered in my chest, clanging against my skin like it wanted to escape. I still couldn’t see the top of the stairs, so there was no guarantee I was right. But it gave me hope. Hope that there was something waiting for me up there. Hope that I wasn’t alone after all.
I was on my feet before I knew what I was doing, running as if my life depended on it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WORDS THAT SWIM
The sun screamed through the cheetah-printed curtains when I woke up the morning after the party. I tried hiding my head under the pillow, but the sun leaked through the sides until I finally gave up and went to Sunny’s room to see if she was awake.
Her door was cracked, so I pushed it open wider and tiptoed inside. Sunny was buried under her white duvet, a soundless lump under a mass of blankets. I took a running leap onto the bed and started jumping up and down to wake her.
“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood!” I sang. “A beautiful day in the neighborhood! Won’t you please, won’t you please, please won’t you be my … neighbor!” I hopped on top of her when I sang the last line, grabbing at the blankets to yank them away from her body. She was curled up into a ball, her face buried inside her hands so I couldn’t see her.
“Sunny, wake up. Yoo-hoo!” I reached out to tickle her, the way she used to do when we were kids and she woke up before me at one of our ritual sleepovers. She pulled her hands away from her face long enough to slap me away, and that’s when I saw she was crying.
“Sunny?” I stopped bouncing, the grin slipping from my face as I sat down on the bed next to her. “Sunny, what’s wrong? What happened?”
She sniffled loudly and hid her face underneath one of her pillows.
“Please go away, Taylor. Please.”
Her voice was small and muffled. The bed shook with the rhythm of her crying, and I didn’t know what to do. Sunny never cried. Not when Mark Schroen dumped her, not when she lost homecoming princess to Lizzie Masters, not even when someone stole her Coach handbag from her gym locker. There was only that one time, many years ago, when her mom left.
“Sunny,” I whispered, reaching out to smooth the hair that poked out from underneath the pillow. “Sunny, what’s wrong? What happened?”
She started sobbing louder, and that made me even more nervous. My first thought was maybe someone had told her about me and Justin, but that didn’t make sense. I expected her to be mad, pissed even, but she wouldn’t cry about it. Not like this. Then I remembered someone was in the room with her when I went to bed. They were laughing, but maybe something went down after I’d gone to sleep?
“Sunny, did something happen last night? With the guy who was in the room with you?”
I waited, listening to the sound of her ragged breath under the downy pillow. When she didn’t say anything, I lay down on the bed and wrapped my arms around her. She felt small, like a frail bird shaking underneath the weight of my arms. I never realized how tiny she was; she always seemed bigger than life.
“Sunny, please. I’m your best friend. You can tell me anything. Whatever it is, I’ll help. But you have to tell me what happened, okay? I can’t help unless you talk to me.”
I squeezed her tighter, pressing my knees against the back of her legs and my face against her hair. She smelled like a hangover, a mix of last night’s cigarettes and beer.
“Come on, Sunny. Talk to me,” I pleaded. When that didn’t work I added, “If you don’t say something soon I’m going to assume it’s because you’ve gone lesbo and want me to spoon you all morning. Ooooo,” I said, my tone playful so she’d know I was kidding. “Maybe it wasn’t a guy you had in here last night. Maybe it was a chick with a really low voice. Are you playing for the other side now, Sunny? You better get up and look at me or I’m going to tell the whole school that you’ve joined the softball team.”
She let out a short laugh and sat up. I sat up too, looking at her red and swollen eyes straight on.
“What happened?” I asked again. Her bottom lip quivered and a single tear slid down her cheek, tracing the trail of wetness left behind by earlier tears. It freaked me out to see her that way.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” she said, her voice small and unsure. “We were in here talking, and then suddenly we were kissing, and then … then … ” She looked down at her hands, studying the lines on her palms. “We’d had a lot to drink, and I should have stopped him. It all happened so fast. Please don’t be mad at me.”
When she looked back at me, her eyes were wide and wet, pleading with me. It was a look I recognized from the many apologies she’d given me throughout the years. The Sunny mantra: better to ask forgiveness than permission.
“Please,” she repeated. “Please don’t be mad at me. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was drunk and stupid and out of control. You have to believe me. You’re my best friend. I don’t want to lose you.” She reached out and took my hands, but I yanked them away.
“Who were you with last night?” I asked, my voice flat. The air in her bedroom had suddenly become thick and hot. The sunlight streaming in through the slats of her blinds warmed my skin to an almost unbearable temperature.
I thought back to the day when Logan had asked me out, to the drawing he’d done of me and the all-caps words scrawled on the bottom of the page asking me if I wanted to grab a bite sometime. I’d brought the note with me to history class to show Sunny, floating into the classroom as I held the picture out for her to see. She made a face, looking at it like it was a flaming baggy of dog poop.