“Ali?” Jenna called again.
A screen door banged across the street, and Toby Cavanaugh stepped onto the porch. Ali froze. What was he doing home? Hadn’t he been sent away forever?
Toby stepped off the porch and crossed the yard. “Jenna, what are you doing over there?”
His haunted voice made Ali flinch. That horrible moment in sixth grade all came back to her in an instant: the angry way Toby had said I saw you that night, the horror in his eyes when she’d thrown what she knew about him back in his face. Not long before that, she’d come upon Jenna in tears. Even though she tormented Jenna in school, Jenna knew more about Ali than anyone else—and she never told anyone. All of a sudden, she wanted to atone for how nasty she’d been. She wanted to make it up to her.
What’s wrong? she asked Jenna. She squeezed her hand. You can tell me. You know I won’t tell a soul.
Jenna raised her head. It took her a long time to speak. It’s my brother, she began.
When she was finished, Ali gave her a hug. You know that I have sibling problems, too. I can help you. We should come up with something to make him go away forever.
And they had.
“Jenna,” Toby said again, more sternly this time. When he reached the curb where Jenna was standing, he paused, as if sensing Ali was there, too. His eyes narrowed into two iron-cold slits. Ali’s heart thudded in her throat.
Finally, he took Jenna’s arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go in.”
Jenna pulled on her dog’s harness. Tapping her white cane, her dog walking at her side, she disappeared inside the house, not saying another word.
17
LIKE GETTING WATER FROM A STONE
There was no sound as beautiful, Ali thought as the twangy guitar-note ringtone that announced she had a new text message from Nick.
What’s your favorite subject in school? was the latest one. Ali, who was sitting on her front porch swing waiting for Aria, tapped the keyboard with her reply. It used to be English, she wrote, but now we have to read so many boring books that I guess it’s study hall. LOL. She didn’t want to list her real favorite class—science—for fear that she’d look like a nerd.
Mine too, Nick wrote back, and Ali smiled.
Her phone beeped again. Hey, remember that counselor at camp who got stung by all those bees? Nick wrote. What was his name?
Ali bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. I know who you mean, she typed after a moment. Can’t remember though.
A familiar Subaru rolled up, and Aria got out of the back, carrying Pigtunia under her arm. We’ll talk later, Ali wrote to him. I’ll be here, Nick wrote back.
She glanced at Aria’s father behind the wheel. He wore a ripped T-shirt with printing so faded on the front that it wasn’t even legible anymore. His thinning hair stood up every which way, and he had that half-beard scruff going that some girls thought was sexy but Ali thought just looked dirty. She couldn’t even look him in the eye.
Byron looked away, too, as if he knew Ali knew. Which meant Aria had to know, too, right? If Aria admitted something, then maybe Ali would tell her that she knew how it felt. That she’d seen her mom and that random guy at the mall. The secret felt like a shaken-up can of Coke inside her, its contents fizzing and pressing against her sides. It would feel good to tell someone, especially someone who could commiserate.
Aria walked up the porch steps and sat down on the swing next to Ali. “What’s up?”
“Not much,” Ali said. “What’s up with you?”
Aria pushed off the porch rails to give the swing a bit more momentum. “So I have to talk to you about something.”
Ali’s heart lifted. “What?” she asked innocently.
Aria spun the beaded bracelet around her wrist. “You know the drama class I’m taking after school?” Aria asked. “Well, we had a new student today. Toby Cavanaugh.”
On instinct, Ali gazed across the yard, half expecting Toby still to be standing there, as he had been last night. “He’s back,” she stated, not exactly like a question.
“Yeah.” Aria bit her pointer finger. “He kept staring at me, too. And then we had to do this speech exercise, and we were partnered together. I had to say a phrase, and he had to repeat it back to me until the phrase changed. I picked It never snows in the summer. And we said it back and forth, back and forth, until Toby started saying I know what you did last summer.” She widened her eyes dramatically. “Do you think Toby knows something?”
Ali touched a rusty spot on the swing’s chain. Only Spencer had been there for her confrontation with Toby, and Ali had made her promise to not tell the others. It seemed safer to keep it between them.
“Toby doesn’t know what we did,” she said definitively. “And anyway, The Jenna Thing happened last spring, not summer. He’s just mental.” Then she looked at Aria. “That’s what you had to tell me?”