By Monday, Jess was sure everyone knew, and she knew everyone would say it was her fault. She seduced him, she was a home wrecker, a little slut who ruined a family. She could have stood that. What she couldn’t stand was the thought of seeing Dani. Dani, who blamed her. Who wouldn’t believe her, who would look straight through her. Who would never speak to her again.
So she stayed home from school, and her mother agreed to it for now, until they could figure out the best way forward. She might finish out the school year in Camp Verde or Prescott. Her mom swung by the house on her lunch break and picked up Jess’s homework from the school. She made dinner for them, and they sat together at the table, and after, in front of the TV. Every day, her tone brusque, she asked, “Have you heard from him?” When Jess shook her head, she said, “Good.” Her tone softened then, as did her face. After a week, when they sat on the sofa, her mother reached out and put her arm around her, but her body remained rigid. Jess knew she was disappointed, angry, and disapproving but trying not to show it. Jess cried so hard she burst a blood vessel in her right eye, a tiny squiggle from pupil to inner corner.
It was true she hadn’t heard from him. She didn’t know where he was, and she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to think of him at all. When the phone rang in the afternoons, she didn’t answer it. Whoever it was didn’t leave a message. Warren didn’t call, either, so she gathered that he knew. She gathered that that relationship was dead, too.
One afternoon after school, her teacher, Ms. Genoways, came by the house, bringing her homework.
“I heard you were sick,” she said. “You don’t look sick.”
Jess pressed at her bloodshot eye. “Scarlet letter fever,” she said.
Ms. G smiled. “Funny.”
Jess said, “You know, though, right?”
She scratched her cheek. “Well, yes. It’s quite the pickle you’re in, honey. But that doesn’t mean you should be locked up in the house. This isn’t the nineteenth century.”
“I’m not locked up,” she said. “I don’t want to see anyone, anyway.”
“Okay. Fair enough,” she said. “I brought a couple of books I thought you might like.”
Jess looked at the books. House of Light by Mary Oliver and Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley.
“Thank you,” she said. She took the books from her teacher. “Does everyone know?”
“Some,” Ms. G said. “The adults, anyway. Don’t worry—they’re focused on him, not you.”
“I haven’t talked to anyone about it.”
“You don’t have to. That’s not why I came.” Ms. G sighed. “I was worried. I worry too much. I don’t know. I thought at this age I’d be less worried, but nope. Worse.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Jess said. She hesitated and then added, “But I wanted to.” That was the first time she’d said it aloud, confessed the truth. “I almost did.”
“But you didn’t,” Ms. G said. “And even if you had, you’re not the one at fault, kiddo.” She shook her head and muttered something that sounded like “that motherfucker.”
“We always talked about love in your class,” Jess said. “What makes it true. What makes it real. But we never found an answer.”
“There is no answer. There is no one way. That’s what makes it so complicated.”
“In literature or real life?”
“Both,” Ms. G said. “All.”
“Do you believe in it?”
Ms. G hugged her purse to her chest. “I believe people believe in it. I believe it has enormous sway when we do believe it.”
“He told me he loved me.”
Ms. G laughed. “Oh, honey. Of course he did. He probably even believed it.”
Jess shook her head. “I go back and forth. It was real, it wasn’t real. I believe it, I don’t believe it. It’s like he was pretending, playing make-believe, because it could never happen. But I hurt everybody. That’s real. What kind of love is that?” She pressed at her chest, at the terrible animal weight crouching there. “How do I fix it? What should I do?”
“I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you.”
“Say I am you. Say you did this, and now you’re older, and you’re looking back, and you know what to do.”
“Jess,” Ms. G said.
“Please.” Jess scratched hard at her scalp and then clawed at her neck until red welts appeared. “I just want someone to tell me what to do.”
“You know I can’t. Poems and stories”—Ms. G tapped the cover of one of the books—“they help me when I’m lost and confused. Which is often.”
“Oh my god, fuck poetry,” Jess said, her voice rising. “Why can’t you answer a question straight for once? If you can’t tell me what to do, tell me what you would do.”
Ms. G slung her purse over her shoulder and stared at her a moment. “I’d finish high school, however I had to, and then get the hell out of here. Go to college. Put it behind me. Live my life.”
“Run from it, you mean,” Jess said.
“Run toward something else.”
A week before Christmas, after her mother fell asleep around ten, Jess snuck out for a walk to see the holiday lights. That had been one of their traditions in Phoenix, walking and driving the neighborhoods to ooh and ahh, to laugh and wonder at the over-the-top displays, at the skinny paloverdes wrapped tight with bulbs, prickly pears dripping with icicles. They hadn’t put up a tree or any decorations this year—their first Christmas in Sycamore, Jess realized—though they always had in Phoenix. There, the three of them would spend hours untangling cords and wires before tacking them along the roofline and wrapping the porch.
Tonight she walked down Quail Run past the orchard, where Iris had left on the twinkle lights, a ghostly glimmer against the black swath of trees. She wandered through the neighborhoods across from the Syc, admiring the colorful bulbs strung through bushes and wound around lampposts. She peered through windows to catch the flicker of trees and tinsel. On Pi?on Drive, she passed Dani’s, where there were no decorations. No lights at all, in fact, the porch and windows blank. When she reached the District, she huddled against the wind in her alcove, watching the sparkling strings at the Woodchute blur behind her tears.
Around midnight, when she returned home and approached her driveway, a man stepped out of the shadows and into the porch light. She barked a scream.
The man held up his hands. Adam. “It’s me,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“God, you scared me,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“You haven’t answered the phone.” He had a scruffy beard, and his eyes looked bloodshot. “I’ve been at a hotel in Flagstaff, but I got a room at the Woodchute tonight. I wanted to talk to you.”
“I’m not going to a motel with you,” she said.
“I didn’t mean—never mind. My car is down the road,” he said. “I don’t want people to talk. I don’t want to make it worse.”
She laughed. “Worse?”
“Can you please—” He stopped, his voice choked up. He looked at his feet.
“All right,” she said.
He carried a flashlight and lit the way to the end of the street, where the Squareback sat on the side of the road. She climbed in the passenger side and crouched over her knees against the cold. Two trash bags crowded the wheel well at her feet, and the back seat was piled to the roof with more of them. She pushed at the plastic, and something sharp dug into her palm.