“Oh Julia, I was so afraid to say it. But I do! I think Paula is your avenging angel,” Alice declares.
I think about that as Alice hugs me in silence. I don’t hug her back, but I don’t resist, either.
“Julia?”
“Yeah?”
Alice drops her arms. “I overstepped a line before, when I was gossiping about Liv. What I said was totally inappropriate. And now I feel bad.”
“Consider me your safe place to vent.”
“Oh, I like that. Then can I ask you a question?”
“As long as you run it by Jesus first.”
Alice screws her mouth to the side. “Do you think Donald killed that other girl? Ana Alvarez?”
“No,” I lie, because I can’t bear to put my gory suspicions inside Alice’s head, alongside all those kitties and rainbows. “Okay. Now can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask me anything.”
“Do you think Liv feels guilty toward me, because I saved her and got caught?”
“Hmm. A valid question, that one.” She taps her lip with her finger, then stops. “Permission to speak freely?”
“Raise the floodgates.”
“Well then. There was this one time about a week after the Shiv—the unfortunate event—and youth min was meeting in the church basement. It was Liv’s first meeting back, in fact. I wanted to plan a candlelight ceremony thanking God that you both returned to us. I got some dirty looks. It was kind of soon, I guess. My suggestion was viewed as ‘indelicate’ by some. But I promise you my intentions were pure. Anyway, Liv got teary and ran to the bathroom. The other kids didn’t want me to, but I chased after her anyway. I say, do what’s in your heart, right? Anyway, I think I caught Liv at a low moment, because she said the oddest thing that I’ll never forget.”
I pull my scarf up over my mouth to keep from interrupting.
“I tried to say the most comforting thing I could possibly think of. I said, ‘God was watching over you that day when he sent Julia.’ I figured she’d agree. Instead, she snapped at me. She said, ‘That day she finds her speed. That day, she catches up. I needed a few simple minutes alone to make things clear.’ It was like she was talking to herself, as if I wasn’t even in the room. I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ Maybe that was indelicate. But she wasn’t making any sense.”
I tug my scarf down from my mouth. “What else?” I ask.
“She looked at me, horrified, like the way your parents do when they drop the F-bomb? Well, maybe just mine. Anyway, she tried to smooth it over, got affectionate, hooked her arm through mine, and said, ‘You know how it is, Alice, when you’re best friends and you’re together constantly? I wanted some space from Julia. To think. That’s all.’”
I cringe. Now I understand why Alice remembers this so vividly. There was nothing crueler to say to the friend I dropped than what a pain it was to be my best friend.
Alice takes a deep breath and shakes out her neck. “Naturally I never said anything to anyone. I had to respect the fact that maybe she wasn’t feeling like herself. You’d both been through heck. But secretly, at the time, I thought it was strange. Almost like she was angry with you for saving her. So no, guilty is not the word I’d use to describe the way Liv feels about you.” She looks away hard, out her window and into the night.
I want to ask more questions, get more information to process Liv’s weird outburst, but Alice is trying to keep it together. The urge to flee is overwhelming. I drop my phone into the cell dock ignition lock that Mom installed so that I can’t drive and text. A chirp, loud and long, my tone for missed calls, makes us jump. I shut off the car and hit Play on speaker.
“Julia, it’s Paula.”
Alice explodes into tiny, soft claps.
“I forgot to tell you. I thought you’d like to know your friend Olivia has been admitted to Saint Rose of Lima Hospital.”
EIGHT
360 Days After the Woods
Shane refuses to acknowledge my glare across the hospital waiting room, his pale eyes fixed on the high-mounted TV. I search for guilt in his mouth, the angle of his shoulders, the set of his cheeks with their spray of rosacea bumps, but there is nothing. Eventually, he tosses his chin, remembering I am Julia Spunk and he’s known me since he was little, or, more likely, that I have a murky relation to the girl he’s hooking up with.