“Did I say you did?” I asked, going back into the kitchen. “Jeez.”
She stomped up the stairs, leaving me alone. I pulled a string cheese and a few pieces of sliced turkey out of the fridge and stood in the kitchen eating, just kind of looking around.
I looked at the garage door and then down at the floor. The light gray rag rug had dark smudges on it. Our footprints.
I lifted my foot and looked at the bottom of my sock.
It was covered in a fine dusting of grimy-looking dirt.
Just like the dirt I’d seen on Kasey’s sock that morning.
So she’d been in the garage?
At six thirty in the morning?
. . . Why?
The contact sheet from my earlier darkroom session was completely dry. I counted down to the fifth row of negatives and over three, to the half-ruined, half-in-focus picture. I put the negative into a little frame, checked the focus, then set a piece of photo paper down and hit the timer.
After fifteen seconds I slipped the paper into the developer and stood back to watch the image emerge.
But there wasn’t an image. Unless the whole paper immediately turning black counts as an image.
I pulled that page out and rinsed it clean before dropping it in the trash.
I set another piece of paper down and turned the timer on for five seconds, figuring it might be underexposed, but at least I would have a better idea of what time to use.
But no. This one turned black too.
A panicky feeling started to rise up inside me as I looked at the package of photo paper. There were two black plastic bags with fifty sheets each; only the top one should have been unsealed. But they were both open. And the stacks of paper weren’t neat and even—they were irregular and off-center.
All of my paper had been exposed.
A package like this cost sixty dollars. With my current weekly allowance of twenty dollars, that meant three weeks of savings down the drain. And three weeks of more saving before I could even afford another package.
Three weeks without developing photos?
I started to feel kind of sick.
I’d told my sister a trillion times not to touch my stuff, not to even go into the darkroom, and she refused to listen.
Kasey was guilty. She had to be.
After a few deep breaths I went to confront my sister. My hands shook as I stalked down the hall and pounded on her door.
Stay calm, I told myself. Be mature.
She opened it, blue eyes wide.
“What?” she asked.
I took a long breath through my nose. “Just . . . tell me . . . why.”
“Huh?”
My calm exterior shattered like a lightbulb dropped from a third-floor window. “Why did you do it, Kasey?
What did I do to you? I try so hard to be nice to you when nobody else even wants to be your friend, and you—”
Her hands flew up to her cheeks, which flushed pink. “Lexi!” she cried, dismayed.
I took a step back. “Why, Kasey?!”
“I didn’t do anything,” she said. “I swear I didn’t. I don’t even know what happened. I heard a noise and then all I remember is having the weirdest dream and then I was at school and they said come to the office because of Dad and I saw all the reports on Ms. Lewin’s desk and later they were in my bag—”
“What?”
Her face fell slack, her jaw hanging slightly open, her breath ragged.
“What are you talking about, Kase?”
She shook her head and stared at the floor.
“I’m talking about my photo paper. Someone ruined it. All of it.”
“It wasn’t me,” she said in a tiny voice.
“But wait—you stole those reports from school? I thought you said you were a student grader.”
“No!” she wailed. “I told you, I didn’t . . . I mean, I guess I took them, but I didn’t mean to. I just looked in my bag and found them there.”
“You’re saying someone framed you?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
Knowing how spiteful kids could be, it was a serious possibility. “Did you see anyone near your bag?”
“I don’t know!” she said.
My patience was paper-thin. “Kasey, either you did, or you didn’t.”
“Maybe!” she said. “I mean, I don’t remember. But it had to be someone, right?”
Someone. More like Mimi Laird, or one of her snotty little friends. I didn’t say it out loud, though, because Kasey seemed traumatized enough.
I sighed. “You’re going to have to give them back.”
“I can’t!” she wailed. “I’ll get expelled!”
“Teachers understand mean kids, Kase,” I said. “You just have to do it soon so it doesn’t look any weirder.”
“Will you help me? I’m tired,” she said pitifully. “I didn’t sleep very much last night.”
I didn’t point out that she’d just taken a two-hour power nap.
A thought occurred to me. “Yeah, so . . . why were you in the garage this morning?”
Her nose wrinkled. “I wasn’t in the garage.”
“When I saw you in the hall, your socks were dirty—” I began.
“In the hall?” she asked. “I didn’t see you in the hall this morning.”
I stared at her.
“What are you talking about, Lexi? I don’t understand.”
I didn’t understand either. But I did understand that all of these bizarre things were starting to add up and make me feel like I was going crazy. After all, what was that old saying? The common link between all your problems is you?
What if I was losing it?
“I’m going for a walk,” I said, going into my room to get my house key.
“Can I come?”
“No!” I said. “I just want to be by myself for a while.”
“No fair,” she whined.
“You just stay here,” I said. “And try to figure out how you’re going to explain to your teacher that you stole everybody’s reports.”
“I didn’t!” she yelled. “I didn’t steal anything! Someone put them in my bag!”
Then she ran into her room and slammed the door.
At least she wasn’t insisting on coming.
I went downstairs and out the front door, locking it as I left. Out of guilt, I glanced up at Kasey’s windows to see if she was looking down at me.
She was.
I pulled my eyes away from her and glanced at the oak tree, trying to forget its horrible role in my dream.
That’s when I noticed the lines of the wood, the jagged edges of long-since-removed limbs, the soft overgrowth of bark on several of the scars left behind by pruning or broken branches.
The tree I’d drawn the night before—it was this tree. This exact tree, down to a tuft of grass growing out of a tiny hollow about six feet off the ground.
I had to get out of there. But I could think of only one place to go.
I hurried down the front walk, toward the street.
By the time I reached the school, most of the parking lot was empty. A few stragglers stood by their cars in small groups, talking. A crowd of kids waited miserably at the bus loop for their late bus. At the sight of the brick building, my body tensed, the way it does at 7:58 every weekday morning. But it was better than being surrounded by things that made me feel like I was coming completely undone.
One girl looked at me strangely. When I walked past her, she moved forward like she was going to say something, but her friend touched her arm and they both turned away.
As I passed the gym, a mob of cheerleaders emerged from the band room and went by me, chattering like first graders at a crosswalk. They weren’t wearing uniforms, but their white-ribboned ponytails and packlike formation gave them away.
A couple of them looked at me and whispered, heads bowed together like horses nuzzling.
Megan Wiley was the last to exit. She carried a notebook
and studied the papers inside it so intently that she almost walked right into me.
“Sorry,” she muttered, and then looked up. When she saw me, she took an involuntary step backward.
I averted my eyes, waiting for her to make a quick retreat into the gym after her minions, but she didn’t. Instead, when I glanced up, she was looking at me.
“How’s your dad?” she said.
The question was beyond unexpected. “Um, all right.”
“Lydia told everyone you fainted,” she said. With a shudder, she added, “Then she said your dad was probably going to die.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head. For some reason my mouth felt like it was full of straw. “He’s okay,” I said. “Just broken bones, bruised organs. Limbs, ribs, that kind of thing.”
The conversation could have ended there, but Megan swallowed hard. “I just . . . My mom died in a car accident when I was a baby,” she said. “So I was really worried.”
Wow.
“Wow,” I said. What else could I say? The things you don’t know about people. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, I don’t remember her, so . . .”
“Still,” I said. Yikes.
“I live with my grandmother,” she said, and then her eyes flickered longingly toward the door where all of her friends had gone.
“But thanks for asking,” I said.
“I’m glad she’s okay.”
“No, it was . . . he. It was my dad,” I said.
She blushed, her perfect cheeks turning a lovely rose color. “I mean—I knew that, sorry.”
“Well,” I said, wishing for a sinkhole or something to swallow me up.
We stood there, up to our ankles in awkwardness.
“Thanks,” I said at last.
She smiled a tight-lipped smile and ducked into the gym.
Huh.
I stood there for a second. Then without warning the door opened, and Megan stuck her head out.
“If you’re looking for Carter Blume, I saw him talking to Mr. Makely about five minutes ago,” she said.
My expression was apparently so shocked that it was funny, because Megan laughed. It was a short, self-conscious laugh, but it wasn’t mean or anything.
“See you,” she said, and disappeared. This time I hurried away so she couldn’t surprise me again.
Mr. Makely stood outside the library for twenty minutes after school ended every day. I’d probably have him for physics next year. He gave me a strange look as I entered the courtyard, and I got this weird, uncomfortable feeling that everyone thought my dad was dead. It made my heart beat funny for a second just to think about it. Carter wasn’t there, so I headed toward the student parking lot.
When I got there, the first thing I saw was Carter in his car, studying his iPod. I stopped suddenly as it hit me—what was I doing? Why had I run straight to Carter? I hardly even knew him, and here I was, following him around after school like a lovesick loser.
The skin around my jaw and ears felt tight, and my eyes started to burn. I wondered how fast I could get someplace else. Just somewhere he wouldn’t see me as he drove away. I scanned the parking lot and saw only low shrubs and a few cars that were all too far away to dash for.
I had no choice but to stand there and wait for him to notice me. He did a double take, then got out of the car and walked over.
“Hi,” he said, his voice a question.
I looked at him, and the “wanting to crawl under a rock and die” feeling intensified.
“How’s your dad?”
“He’s okay.”
Carter looked at me. “How are you?”
Amazing how suddenly there was no easy answer to that question.
“I’m fine,” I said.
He just looked at me and shook his head. “No you’re not.”
That made me laugh, but laughing made tears spring to my eyes. “I know,” I said.
He didn’t say anything else. He held his hand out like I should take it.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “I think I’m losing my mind.”
He looked at the sky and then at the ground. “I understand,” he said.
And then I was engulfed in his arms and his smell, laundry detergent and shampoo and all that was clean. I closed my eyes and leaned against him and let everything go.
HE TWIRLED A TWIG BETWEEN HIS FINGER AND THUMB.
“First of all,” he said slowly, “I’ve known crazy people, and I don’t think you’re crazy.” Then he sat up straighter. “I mean, your sister sounds like she’s got some issues, but I just don’t see it in you.”
“Maybe I’m the secret kind of crazy,” I said softly. “The kind where you keep it to yourself and then one day you just go off the deep end.”
Carter took a deep breath. “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed and tossed the twig away. It landed in the water with a soft splash. We were sitting in the grass near the drainage canal at the park, which isn’t as ugly as it sounds. It looks more like a little bubbling brook.
“You’re . . . strong.”
“Strong people can’t be crazy?”
He smirked and ducked his head. “Strong people don’t just go off the deep end one day. That territory belongs to the weak.”
Oh.
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” I said.
He shook his head but didn’t look at me.
“Sometimes life really blows,” I said.
“Yeah,” Carter said. “Sometimes it does. For everybody, and most people can cope. But not . . .” He sucked in air through his teeth and stared into the sun. “Not me.”
“But why beat yourself up? Who cares if you . . . ? I mean, who could possibly dislike someone just for going through something like . . .”
“You can say it, Alexis. It was a suicide attempt.” He looked right into my eyes and then cocked his head to one side. “A botched one.”
I turned back to the water and worked on braiding pine needles together, but finally my curiosity got the better of me. “. . . What’d you do?”
He lay back in the grass, keeping a wary eye on me, like a shy dog.
“Never mind,” I said. “Sorry, not my business.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’m just not used to talking about it.” He held his arm out to me. “Ever wonder why I only wear long sleeves?”
I took his forearm in my hands and pushed his sleeve back, revealing a crisscrossed etching of scars.
“My mom came home early from a conference and found me,” he said. “We had to redo the tile in the bathroom because the bloodstains wouldn’t come out.”
Without thinking about it, I hugged his arm close to me.
A second later I realized what I was doing and dropped it like a hot potato.
He laughed, a slow, easy laugh. The Carter laugh.
I just couldn’t see how someone so graceful, so clever, could ever be so depressed.
I looked down at the ditch and sighed.
“How can you be so perfect all the time?” I said without thinking.
Carter looked at me in surprise and took a second to answer.
“Perfect?” he repeated. “Ha.”
I didn’t say anything. I was paralyzed by regretful shock over what I’d just said.
“Miss Vahrren,” he said in a German psychiatrist accent, “I’m ahfrait you ah delusional.”
“Delusional,” I repeated. Sounded about right, given the events of the past day. But I pushed that out of my mind and concentrated on Carter. The fact that he hadn’t laughed in my face made me bolder. “So then . . . what are your flaws?”
“What are my flaws? I have to list them?” He laughed ruefully and shook his head. “That’s hardly fair. What are your flaws?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, my whole existence is one big flaw,” I said, lying back on the grass next to him and staring up at the sky. “I am a giant pimple on the fa
ce of humanity.”
“That’s kind of gross,” he answered.
“At least I’m honest.”
“That’s not honest,” he said. “That’s paranoid and” —he thought for a second—“very pessimistic.”
“Paranoid, pessimistic,” I said, ticking them off on my fingers. “And gross. That’s three. The tip of my flaw iceberg.”
“I’m not calling you paranoid—”
“Just the things I say?”
He batted at my arm. “Maybe you are crazy,” he said, but his tiny smile made my whole body tingle.
“Flaws,” I said, all business. “Yours. List them.”
“I’m a snob,” he said easily.
“About what?”
“Oh, lots of things. Movies, books, school plays, people from the country.”
“Which country?”
“The country. Like, farmers.” He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t even know why.”
Oh, duh. Alexis’s flaw number four: stupid. “What else?”
He hesitated. “I don’t get along with my father,” he said.
I could understand that one. I stared at a fluffy white cloud, waiting for a shape to pop out at me.
“I spend too much time thinking about myself. I blow things out of proportion. I’ve done very selfish things . . . and I’m not . . . brave.” He squinted into the sunlight and gave me a wry smile.
“Stop.” I turned my eyes away from what could have become a cloud alligator to look at Carter.
Somehow during our conversation we’d moved toward each other. Our arms were touching. My skin felt electric.
There was definitely more to Carter than his preppy exterior.
“I hope you don’t really see yourself that way,” I said.
He turned to look at me and narrowed his eyes. “How do you see me?” he said softly.
I gave him a gentle shove. “You don’t want to know.”
He waited.
“I think you’re . . .” My voice went nearly silent. “Dangerous.”
“Why?” he whispered.
“Because,” I said, though I had no idea how to put it in words. “. . . You make me think too much.”
Now he had turned his whole body to face me. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”
I felt an urgent, almost magnetic pull between us. It made my throat feel dry and airy.
“This is so weird,” I said, but it came out as a whisper.