No time for bullshit. This won’t be easy, especially if she knows more than I do. “Did you have any clue that Cassie was thinking about killing herself?”
It comes out wrong–too harsh, almost accusing– and Juliana straightens up immediately. “You think I knew and did nothing?”
“Between the two of us, we could have figured it out.”
“I told her that taking herself off the pills was a crap idea.” The second she says it, she looks around to see if anyone’s overheard. “You’re not supposed to play around with those.”
I blink once. Twice. Did I hear her correctly? “What pills?”
“Antidepressants. I saw her staring at them when we were on break over the summer,” Juliana says. “She wanted to flush them down the toilet.”
It feels like I’ve just slammed my ribs against the beam. I didn’t know about any of this. The depression. The medication.
“I told her that shit was too expensive to waste and that she had better take it the way the doctor said to.”
Tough love. That’s what Juliana is to Cassie. I can see that for the first time. The girl made of steel who won’t be moved by Cassie’s whims.
I’m supposed to be the one she knows the best, the one that she spends silences and loud moments with and everything in between. How the hell didn’t I know this? Why did she feel like she couldn’t tell me?
“She talked about her parents.” Juliana looks down briefly, the hint of a crack. Then she’s staring back at me, daring me to ask more. “She felt pressured. Like she didn’t belong here.”
I knew that, yet I’d chalked it up to extreme senioritis, to conversations with her parents that would cease once she graduated and moved to the city.
“You should have told me,” I say. “I could have convinced her.”
Anger sparks in my chest. If I’d known the whole story, I could have stepped in sooner. When did Cassie begin to parse off her secrets?
Juliana tugs her hair back in a ponytail, quick and irritated. When she looks at me, though, it’s with confusion. “I thought you already knew.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHEN I FIND Marcos at the end of the day, I say to him, “Math or Middle-earth?”
His eyebrows scrunch up like this is a true debate. God, I could kiss him right now if I wasn’t stuck on being the worst best friend known to mankind. “I want Middle-earth,” he concedes, “although I know I should do math.”
“Great. We’re going to your house.” He hustles to catch up with me. “Just make sure I’m back by four so I can get to the gym.”
Judging by the growl of the engine, Marcos’s car hails from the 1980s. I sink into the gray passenger seat, which feels like it may drop to the pavement at any time. The vehicle, however, is impeccably clean, besides empty boxes of cereal stacked in the backseat. It smells like it’s been vacuumed so many times that the vacuum gave up and burned the fabric.
I’m still processing what Juliana said. I’ve spent enough time alone in my room trying to work through the riddles leading up to Cassie’s suicide attempt. Marcos, the one who pulled her from the water, might have some insight of his own.
As we idle at the school’s stoplight, I sense it before I see it–a window rolling down in the car next to us.
“Looks like we have spectators,” Marcos says dryly, his finger tapping out an erratic rhythm against the wheel.
I turn to see Tommy Brown’s freckled face a foot away from our window. His mouth moves but the bass from his car thumps too loudly for me to make out anything. In the passenger seat, Max Pfeiffer leans over for a closer look. The sunlight gleams against their sunglasses.
This is breaking news, I guess. Savannah Gregory riding in cars with boys.
I offer them a thumbs-up and Max disappears from view, but Tommy’s sunglasses stay focused on me until the light turns green.
“Assholes,” Marcos mutters under his breath. “Sorry about that. Tommy and Andreas had some words.”
“Andreas seems to have a lot of words with people, huh?”
He offers a half smile, one dimple creasing. “That’s a good way of putting it. They were pretty much neck and neck for first string. Andreas beat him out before the Galway game and Tommy hasn’t let him hear the end of it.” Then he glances at me, his smile relaxing. “Sorry, that’s right; you think soccer is boring.”
“‘Boring’ is a strong word,” I say. “I enjoyed eating cookie dough bites with Cassie at my brother’s games, does that count?”
He checks the rearview mirror. “How’s she doing?”
“Better,” I tell him. “Thanks to you.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear it.” He clears his throat and shifts in his seat.
The car rumbles through Ponquogue’s main drag, a collection of boutiques with Thanksgiving cornucopias and pilgrim decorations in the windows. First Pav’s Place, the purple and orange walls whizzing by, followed by Wok and Roll Chinese food, always with the door hanging open even on cold days. The Ocean Beaches sign remains crooked and warped.
From here I’d turn right at the fork by 7-Eleven to go home. Marcos signals left at Main Street’s one traffic light. Pine Needle Street.
The shops peter out, giving way to buildings with For Rent signs. The shack on the corner looks ready to collapse and give up on life for good. Bienvenidos al Pueblo, it might as well say.
“You wouldn’t be able to handle it,” Cassie had said.
Marcos’s fingers take up their tapping again.