“I know. I think she feels kind of helpless, so she’s trying to do what she can.”
“Well, I think it’s a good idea—and you have a good plan. She gave you the outline version, and I can fill in the rest. Because you know the actual details of your life and relationships are gonna be a little bit different from the ones your mom knows.” She winks and gives me a conspiratorial smile that makes it seem like I should understand what she’s referencing.
For the first time, I’m a little nervous about what I might find out. “It can’t be that different,” I say. “Right?”
Paige shakes her head. “No. It’s not. It’s just that, you know. You show a different side to your friends than you do to your parents. That’s all I meant.” She puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. There aren’t any big skeletons in your closet or anything—I mean, not unless you count the time we swiped those leftover Lime-A-Ritas from your mom’s staff party and snuck out to meet the boys on the beach for an illegal bonfire that got a little out of hand.”
I have no idea what Lime-A-Ritas are, and I can’t picture having an illegal bonfire on the beach, but I don’t say so. I raise an eyebrow at her instead.
She shrugs. “Minor skeletons,” she says with a smile. “It was a good night. But I’m getting ahead of myself.” She drifts into the kitchen, past the open pantry door. “Wow, she did a lot of shopping too.”
“Are you hungry? Help yourself,” I say, following.
We both step into the walk-in pantry, and I watch Paige scan the shelves before she finally reaches for a bag of white cheddar popcorn and two bottles of sparkling water.
“There’s Coke in the fridge,” I offer.
She hands me one of the bottles of sparkling water. “We don’t drink soda anymore. Gave it up when we went vegetarian.” She smiles. “Good life choices and all.”
I look down at the bottle in my hand. “Oh,” I say. “Right.”
I let Paige pick out a few more snack items—all of which, I’m happy to say, I like, and I know that I like—before we head up to my room.
I sit in my desk chair, and Paige lies on my bed, chin propped with her elbows. “So,” she says, purposefully. “Where do you wanna start?”
I want to start with why there’s only Paige and no Jules here, but that feels like something I should work up to. “I, um . . .” I look around the room, my room, and my eyes land on the chalkboard wall above the desk. “This, maybe? What is all this?”
Paige smiles as she pushes herself up and comes over to the desk so she’s standing next to me. “It’s your memory board, where we—” She stops. Looks down at me. “Wow, I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to this.” She runs her eyes over the board. “You really don’t remember any of this, do you?”
I stand up so we’re shoulder to shoulder and start to read over words and phrases that feel just as foreign to me now as they were my first day back in my room. Then one catches my eye: Good Life Choices!!!
I point to it. “Is this about being a vegetarian? And no soda?”
Paige smiles. “Among other things. But you don’t remember that, do you?”
I shake my head, and we’re both quiet as we scan the board.
“Oh,” Paige says, “what about this? It’s from middle school, I think?”
I look where she’s pointing:
PUT. The toilet paper. Down.
“Um, I don’t . . .” I reach back in my mind for the context.
“It was the very first time we tried to sneak out to toilet paper a house, and your dad caught us.” She laughs. “That’s what he said. Over his police megaphone.”
The scene blossoms in my mind as soon as she says it. “Yes! I remember!” Now I laugh too. “Oh my God, yes. He let us get all the way outside with all that toilet paper, then lit us up in the middle of the front yard.”
“How old were we, anyway?” Paige asks.
“Twelve,” I say, happy that I know the answer. I do because that was the summer between sixth and seventh grade, which I still remember, in great detail. A few weeks later we succeeded in sneaking out and TP’ing our crushes’ houses without getting caught.
“That’s right,” Paige says. “Oh man, I thought we were in so much trouble.”
I shake my head at the memory. “And Jules was so embarrassed she wouldn’t come over for the rest of the summer.”
We’re both laughing, and there it is again. I can feel that moment of standing there, knowing we were caught, completely terrified of what was going to happen next, just like I can feel this moment, now. The two of us having something we share. Something that bonds us.
Our laughter fades, and I wonder if it’s because she feels like something is missing the same way I do.
“What happened?” I ask. “With Jules?” So much for working up to it.
Paige looks at the floor, and then at me, her face serious now. “What’s the last thing you remember? With her, I mean.”
“The three of us, together, talking about starting ninth grade.” I close my eyes, and I can see it, the three of us sitting here in this room. “I remember planning how we were gonna decorate our lockers, trying to figure out what our chances were of having at least one class together. Hoping it would be PE so we could hide behind each other to change. Being excited and scared all at once.” I open my eyes and look at Paige now. “I remember being friends. All of us.”
Paige is silent.
“What happened to us?”
She looks down at her hands. Won’t meet my eyes.
I wait, hoping the silence will give her the space to explain.
After a long moment, she looks at me. “Honestly? It’s been so long I don’t even remember.” She shrugs. “It was just one of those things where she started hanging out with us less and less, and we just sort of . . .” She looks down, picks at fuzz on my comforter. “Drifted.”
“But how? I don’t understand. Why would we let that happen?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.” She looks at me now. “There wasn’t any big fight, or anything like that. It was just . . .” She takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. “Sometimes people just change, Liv. It’s sad, but that’s what happened. There wasn’t anything we could do about it.”
I think of Jules, and of the three of us together, and no matter how hard I try to accept what Paige is saying, it doesn’t feel right.
I’m not ready to let it go just yet, but Paige claps her hands together. “So,” she says. “What else? You want me to tell you everything I know about you and Matt, and how you guys are meant-to-be cute?”
“No—I mean, I do. Just. There’s something else I . . .” I glance at my computer. “I saw the video. Of me, and the rescue and everything.”
Paige’s eyes widen. “Oh Jesus. Why’d they show you that? How completely traumatizing.”
“Nobody showed it to me. I found it myself.”
“It’s awful,” Paige says. “I couldn’t watch it.”
“I watched it. Over and over.”
“Why?”