Stopped by In Focus. Heading home soon.
My mom texts me back a thumbs-up.
“Anyway,” I say, looking at Jules again. “You’re here for the next few weeks?”
She nods. “Yep. And this place doesn’t see a whole lot of action, so feel free to stop by anytime.” She squeezes my hand. “There’s nothing that says we can’t know each other now, right?”
“Right,” I say. “I definitely will.” And I know it’s true. This feels right, her being a part of my life. Like a tiny bit of that big emptiness is gone.
I walk home feeling like I just found another little piece of myself that fits. It makes me want to tell Paige about it—and everything else that’s happened in the last couple of days. She doesn’t know about the interview, or work, or anything. I’ve been kind of a loner since I got home, and Paige has been trying so hard, and after talking to Jules, I want to make sure we don’t drift too, so I decide to stop by her house on my way home.
There’s so much I want to talk to her about. I go over it all in my head as I walk, order it into priorities: what just happened with Jules, how to fix things with Matt after that interview, my camera, the pictures, the things scrawled all over my wall, all of it. The walking and the cataloguing are calming, like I’m moving forward and have a plan, instead of being lost and grasping at things I can’t remember. Before I know it, I round the corner to her street, and I feel something I haven’t since I’ve woken up. Hopeful for what’s ahead.
Then I stop short.
At first I’m confused. I look around to make sure that I didn’t get lost, that I still know the way to the house Paige has lived in ever since I can remember. I do a complete turn, check the street names, and verify that I’m definitely in the right place. It’s just that there’s something else that seems to be in the wrong place. And that thing is Matt’s truck, parked in Paige’s driveway.
I stand there frozen for a moment, trying to make sense of it, reminding myself that we’re all friends. He probably went to her to talk too. Maybe even to ask her the same questions about how to handle everything that’s happened to us. I turn off the sidewalk up to her walk. But then her front door opens, and the two of them come out together.
I duck behind a shrub and watch as they come down the walk to his truck. Their faces are serious.
Matt stops, rests one hand on the hood. He shakes his head, then looks at Paige. “I don’t know. I’m trying, and I can tell she is too, but it’s like she doesn’t know me.”
I bite my lip, because I can feel my eyes start to water at this.
Paige takes a step toward him, then rests her arm on the hood, mirroring him. “You have to give her time. I know she’s different—I was over there the other day, and . . . it’s hard. I think—” She pauses, shrugs. “I don’t even think she knows herself right now.”
Her words sting, and all the hope and reassurance I’d felt just moments before rush out of me. It’s one thing to have thought it myself, but it’s entirely different to hear Paige say it out loud. That I’m not myself. That I’m different than before. That I don’t know who I am. But she’s right, and until this moment I thought, or at least hoped, that maybe no one else realized that what I’ve been so afraid is true.
Paige brings a hand to Matt’s shoulder. “We’ll get her back, I promise. It’s just gonna take a little time, and a few more gentle reminders of who she is, and what matters to her,” she says confidently. “And hopefully it’ll be even better than before.”
Matt’s quiet a moment, and I can almost feel the same question I asked my mom on the tip of his tongue: What if it isn’t?
But he doesn’t ask it. “I hope you’re right,” he says, mustering a smile I don’t believe.
Paige smiles back, and I don’t believe hers either. “I know I am, because I know Liv,” she says. “Come on. Let’s go get something to eat, and we can figure out what to do next.”
He nods. “Yeah, okay.”
They part, walk to each side of the truck, and get in. For a second I worry they might see me when they back up, and I look around for somewhere to hide. But it doesn’t matter. Matt’s truck rolls right by me, with Paige saying something I can’t hear, and him smiling at it, and it’s like I’m not even there.
I watch, frozen, as my best friend and my boyfriend drive away together to figure out how to get me back, and what’s next, whatever that means. I watch until they turn the corner and disappear, trying to sort out what I’m feeling. It’s not anger or jealousy. Those would be easier, because there would be someone else to blame. But the only person to blame here is me. I feel like I’ve failed—at being Paige’s friend and Matt’s girlfriend. At being the girl they knew—or thought they knew.
The other thing I feel is a creeping sense of guilt. At what they don’t know, and what I’m just beginning to know. That I’d been keeping secrets. Hiding things from the two people who were closest to me. Hiding myself, really.
TWENTY-ONE
WHEN I MAKE IT to my driveway, I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. My dad is supposed to be at work, but his car is here. At home. I take a deep breath, then go up the walk to our door. When I get there, I can see through the living room window that my parents are together. Waiting for me.
I can tell my dad must’ve called off work early, because he’s still in his work boots and pants, and he’s dressed down to the plain white T-shirt he always wears under his uniform. The TV is on. My mom is pacing.
The interview must have aired.
I stand on the step and take another deep breath, and then I open the door. Both of their heads swivel in my direction.
My mom stops pacing and crosses her arms over her chest. “Have a seat, please.” Her voice has that barely-containing-her-anger shakiness to it.
I open my mouth to try to explain, but I don’t get the chance.
“Go ahead and sit down, Liv,” my dad says. His voice is calm. Good cop to my mom’s bad cop.
Both of them look older and more tired than they should, even accounting for my time gap, and I feel guilty about doing the interview. And bad that they had to find out about it like this. Some tiny part of me was thinking that maybe they wouldn’t even have to know about it, but I realize now that was foolish.
“What were you thinking, Olivia?” my mom practically spits as soon as I sit down. “An interview? With that woman?” Her voice rises with each question. “And God, the video.” Her eyes start to water, and she goes quiet a moment. Then she takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. “I wish you’d never seen that.”
“I had to see it.”
My mom shakes her head. “You shouldn’t have. It’s awful.”
“Yeah, it is. But it happened to me, and to Matt, and I needed to see it.”
My mom sits, massaging her temples. My dad puts a big hand on her shoulder and squeezes.