“We’ll see how it goes if I pick him up,” she said.
I didn’t know which way to encourage her. It was a very real possibility that without Tiffany, Manning and I would be separated until I turned eighteen. That was two excruciating years away from him. But the thought of them together felt like having a piece of glass lodged in my chest—I couldn’t go very long without being reminded it was there.
Manning and I needed Tiffany, but at the same time, there was no denying—she was also something in the way.
25
Lake
By Tuesday morning, three long days since they’d taken Manning away, I could no longer handle doing nothing. This time next week, I’d be back in school, even more helpless than I already was.
I went through the bathroom, knocked on Tiffany’s door, and entered.
“Rude much?” she asked. Tiffany lay on her stomach, reading Cosmopolitan, blowing on her nails. A bottle of purple polish sat precariously on her white comforter. “I could’ve been naked.”
“I’ve seen you naked.”
“What do you want?”
Tiffany’s room was the personification of a rundown childhood. In elementary school, Mom had redecorated it with white wicker furniture, ruffled bedding, and pastel walls. She’d helped Tiffany and I paint tulips along the bottom. But as Tiffany had gotten older, she’d tacked concert posters around her bed. Paint chipped off the wicker desk where she’d thrown her phone at it. She’d glued pictures of celebrities to her vanity mirror. One tulip head had been covered with a glittery sticker that said “Goddess” and another with Daria’s face. Her shoe collection had overflown from the closet, floral Doc Martens sprouting from her plush, white carpet.
I turned the stereo volume down. “Did you get ahold of Gary?”
“Hey. That was Alice in Chains.”
“Did you?”
She sighed. “He called last night. Manning robbed someone. That’s why he’s there.”
But that made no sense at all. “Are you sure?”
“Yup.”
There were so many ways to tell her Manning couldn’t have committed any crime that night, but how? I’d have to admit I was with him, and I’d promised I wouldn’t tell. “What . . . who do they think he stole from?”
She looked up at me. “Guess.”
“How would I know?” Her eyes stayed on me so long, it was as if she actually expected me to respond. “Another counselor?” I asked.
“No.” She returned to her magazine. “He didn’t take anything. Just broke into some house in the suburbs during an alcohol run. Nobody, not even Gary, knows what happened between when he left and morning. At least, nobody has come forward.”
My throat went dry. There was no robbery. There was no house. Just a truck, a lake, and infinite stars. Manning was innocent. “Does Gary think he did it?”
“No. Neither do I, obviously.”
I tried to feel relieved. Gary and Tiffany were adults—they knew better. They’d handle this. “What else did he say?”
“Manning meets with his lawyer this week, and they’ll go before a judge. I forget what it’s called, but Gary says that’s when he pleads ‘not guilty.’ We’ll know more after that.”
“But what happens until then? Is Manning coming back?” Either my chest was caving in or my heart had begun to swell. I couldn’t picture him held at the station for days, just waiting, thinking of all the things he would’ve done differently that night. Maybe, even, regretting our time together. “Or is he already back?”
Tiffany carefully flipped a page and checked her polish. “I don’t know. I guess he’s in jail.”
On her desk next to her phone sat a pink, lined notepad with hearts doodled in the margin—and notes in her handwriting. “Did Gary give you the name of the lawyer?”
Tiffany tilted her head at the magazine. She didn’t respond for so long, I assumed she’d forgotten I was here. Upside down, I read the title of the article she found so engrossing: “Best Autumn Makeup.”
I was fed up. Either it was her narcissism that got under my skin, or the fact that autumn was practically here, pressing down on us when summer could so clearly not end this way. “Tiffany, you have to take this seriously. If you don’t want him anymore, fine, but he’s still a friend of ours.”
“What makes you think I don’t want him?”
“You said that at camp.”
“And he’s my boyfriend, not your friend. Why do you want his lawyer’s name?”
“Because I have to talk to him. I think I—I might’ve seen something that night.”
Tiffany closed her magazine and sat up, catching the bottle of nail polish just as it started to tip over. “Okay, so tell me, and I’ll call him.”
We stared at each other. I felt as if I were taking a quiz without knowing the topic. Tiffany was being weird and cryptic and I had zero time for that. I went over to her desk and grabbed the notepad.
“Stop,” she said, swiping for it.