“I was grieving.”
“You don’t even remember it. I’m sorry your dad died. He was a sweet man. He was a second dad to me.” Here her voice trembled. “David and I and all your friends tried to do everything for you. Anything to help you. You wouldn’t take it. You shoved everyone away. You were horrible to me, and you can either believe that or not. Except David. You just used your father’s death to eclipse everything in David’s life. You just turned into this…huge sucking neediness and he thought he had to be the one to fix you.” She wouldn’t look at Jane. “Yeah, grief, whatever. Does it take over everyone else’s life? My parents told me I had to be such a friend to you. I spent all this time with you and you never got better. I get it, your dad, OK. But my grades suffered. I couldn’t sleep for worrying that you were going to hurt yourself. I’m not a therapist, I was a kid. Your mother was useless. It was the rest of us, trying to hold you up, and never once did you say thank you or I’ll try to be happy again or anything. That’s why David stepped back from you, finally.” She stopped, the words at an end like she’d run out of rope.
Jane’s throat felt like concrete. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You won’t believe me, fine. Whatever. It’s all done.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because you lost your dad. Because I’m not a total bitch. And because…it doesn’t matter. You took so much from me. I lost you, and I loved you then, and I lost David. I didn’t study, I spent so much time being your amateur therapist. I didn’t get into Stanford. Or Harvard. I slipped from valedictorian. My parents were so upset. I’m just a checklist to them. Accomplish this, win this…and I’m supposed to take over the world and yet I’m still supposed to be your crutch, I’m supposed to still fix you. Well, fix your damn self.” She stopped the car in the middle of the road. Horns honking behind her. “Fix yourself. Either put a gun to your head like your dad did or throw yourself off the cliff, but this time alone, or get off the stupid streets and make a life for yourself.”
Cars honking, voices raised in anger.
“OK,” Jane said, not knowing what else to say. Jane felt sick with rage, but Kamala was talking like she never had and Jane needed to press her. Kamala drove forward.
“You were trying to find us that night. I saw the text message Randy Franklin collected for his report. Did you find us?” Jane asked.
Kamala didn’t answer. She did, Jane thought. She did.
“You want me to stop being such a leech and move forward. I think knowing that might help.”
“Great. Let’s help. I found you,” she said, her voice like a dead thing. “Yep. Sure did.”
“Where?”
“I found you kissing him.”
“No. I don’t remember kissing him.”
“You took him from me and then you killed him. You screwed him when you knew, you knew, that I was in love with him and I’d dated him for two years and it doesn’t matter that he lived next door to you or that you knew him first. What kind of friend does what you did?” She stopped; they were on the campus now, and she eased close to the sidewalk. “You don’t remember what kind of person you are? That’s your blessing. You were horrible.”
“So why did you pretend to care? Why did you play so nice?”
“Helping you made for a good college essay. Get out of my car.”
Jane did, trembling. She walked away, setting the backpack on her shoulder. She stopped and glanced back toward Kamala, but she was gone.
Was it all a lie? It would be such pure Kamala to say all that, just to be horrible.
She and David. That Kamala wouldn’t lie about.
David and I were like brother and sister, she’d once said recently. To Trevor. And he’d said, Well, that’s not quite accurate.
Had he known as well? Is that why he’d been so uncomfortable with her? Was everyone afraid she was going to remember she was in love with the boy she’d killed? Why keep this secret from her? Or did only Kamala know, and Trevor just made a comment that she was misreading?
Was that why we were going to run off to Canada? To be together, and away from everyone? Like some stupid teenager fantasy?
What kind of person was I? Well, I got my answer. You cheated with your best friend’s boyfriend. She suddenly didn’t want to talk to Amari. She didn’t want to know more.
She hadn’t noticed the truck following her and Kamala from her mother’s office. She didn’t see the truck illegally park in the lot across from where she stood, or the man get out of it. He wasn’t tall but he was powerfully built. Shiloh Rooke watched Jane as she walked. He followed her. She walked to a big fountain with a sculpture of running mustangs, hewn in iron. Dozens of students milled about. He leaned against a wall and watched.
35
IT HAD EXPLODED at a speed Perri could not have imagined.
The captions under the video read either of two ways: She was “grieving mom” or Jane was “amnesia victim”—someone beyond her circle of friends had tied her to the accident—or she was “daughter of famed mom blogger.” She could see Laurel being behind a bit of self-promotion; she had kept an eye on Laurel’s mom blog in the months after the crash, alert for the barest hint that Laurel was looking to excuse Jane from David’s death with self-indulgent entries or pleas for understanding.
As “grieving mom” she was trending on both Faceplace and Cheeper. Soon the phone would ring, unwanted calls. Her phone beeped. She wasn’t going to answer it unless it was Cal, but then she saw it was Ronnie Gervase, who had called her before. Who had hugged her at breakfast before the cemetery incident and reminded her of the fundraiser gala meeting.
“Hello, Ronnie.”
“Hon, how are you?” Voice soft as silk. A silk garrote, Perri thought.
“I’m all right. This is embarrassing.”
“Of course it is. I just wish I was there to give you a hug.”
“Thank you.”
“Listen, hon, the board of directors have called me and they are so grateful to you for all you’ve done for the education fundraiser gala—you have been fabulous—but I think they think it best if you take a step back.”
Such vague, inoffensive language. She closed her eyes. “This will blow over. You know the Internet. All eyes on something new tomorrow.”
“I do, of course, but they don’t. It’s just not the look they want for a gala. You understand.”
She felt hollowed out. “Do I need to resign publicly?”
“Oh, no, they’ll handle the wording. We had a couple of sponsors call who got itchy about staying in, and you know what they’re like. One pulls out, they all start to run. We all just want you to rest and feel better.”
Like she was some sort of Victorian hysteric, or ill, when she was just mad. Why couldn’t she be mad? She shouldn’t have pulled Jane from the car, but why was everyone forgetting that Jane—through either intent or recklessness—killed her son?
“You know, Ronnie, whatever. Good luck with the gala.”
“Don’t be that way.”