“Did you sleep well?” my mother asks.
“I did. Did you?”
My mother frowns. “Of course we did! We aren’t injured, and you’re home safe now.”
My father’s lips twitch briefly, not quite smiling. “I think Eva was making small talk, dear.”
“Oh.” She scoops fruit salad into a bowl and admits, “I’m a little distracted.” She pauses, but when no one asks why, she continues, “Trying to figure out the new schedule.”
“I’m fine, Mom. There’s food in the fridge, and I’m good on my crutches.”
She smiles at me in the way that says it’s cute that I’m clueless. “I know.”
I think I’m making my parents a little uncomfortable with the way I quickly reach out to touch them when they reach toward me even a little. I don’t understand the hallucinations, but I do realize one thing—being touched seems to trigger them. I don’t want to see my mother’s death, and I’m not sure if I’ll see my father’s again if he touches me. Either way, I won’t chance it. My head is pounding already.
“I have your pills,” she starts.
“Tylenol is enough.”
Before she can overreact, my father reminds her that they are PNR, patient requested. She’s mollified, but she set alarms in her phone for the Tylenol and the sedative they still want me to take. I’m not entirely sure how many days of her hovering at home I can handle. I’d much rather she go back to work with Dad at the winery.
After my father leaves and my mother wanders off to another part of the house, I stretch out to nap on the sofa until Robert gets here. It’s possibly the least comfortable place I’ve slept in years, but I still manage to doze. Unfortunately, I sleep fitfully, waking expectantly several times. There are no nurses to wake me, but I think I’ve become accustomed to the frequent interruptions and wake as if they are still happening.
When my mother checks in on me and discovers that I’m awake, she sits primly across from me in one of the stiff but pretty floral-patterned chairs and announces, “I think the thing to do is to get your ideas for hiring a companion.”
“Grace can be here some,” I suggest. “You’re here in the evenings.”
“Eva.” That’s all she says, just my name, but she also gets that look—the one that says she’s inflexible. I know resistance won’t help this time. A companion is inevitable.
“Fine.”
“Thank you.” She rewards me with the smile that usually works on people, but I’m wise to my mother’s seemingly innocuous ways. She’s never a bulldozer like Mrs. Yeung can be, but she is a well-bred Southern woman. That means that she’s been trained in making the world bend to her will since before she was born. Her aunts and the church ladies all stepped in to help the “poor motherless dear,” so she was extra indoctrinated into the rules of being a gently bred Southern lady.
“Does Robert have any plans for the summer? Or the Kennelly girl?”
“I’m not sure,” I hedge. “Robert is coming over this morning.”
“Good!” She beams at me and leaves again.
Right now, I sort of hate that my parents like him, deeming him “a sensible boy, just like his father and uncle.” He’s fine, I suppose, and being with him is nice. My family likes him, and we have fun when we go out. I owe it to the both of us to try to talk about whatever’s going on instead of just ignoring it.
Maybe he just feels guilty for not answering the night of the accident or maybe he’s afraid to see me when I’m injured—or maybe time apart has also made him realize that we’re really not much more than friends.
I call Mom back, and with her help, I brush my hair again, change into a nicer shirt, and even put on earrings. My lips are cracked from so long in the dry hospital air, so I’ve been using a lot of lip balm, but for this, I use gloss with a little color. I can’t put on foundation or concealer, but I could do my eyes—if I was willing to look into a mirror. I’m not.
When he arrives, I notice that my hand is shaking. I hear his voice as my mother greets him, and I watch him saunter into the room. He’s looking at me with the startling blue eyes I’ve missed, but the slow smile he usually gets when he sees me is missing. Instead, he’s staring at me in a sort of shock, and I know that I must look worse than he expected.
“Damn, Eva!” He presses his lips closed as soon as the words are out, and I know he regrets saying it. He tries again, saying only, “How are you?”
“Better.” I try not to notice that he’s looking down rather than at my face. I tell myself that it’s hard to blame him: I still don’t like to see what I look like right now, and this is the first time he’s seen my injuries. “How are exams?”
“Not horrible.” He squirms in his chair. “What’s up?”
There’s an awkwardness that makes me want to give up and forget we tried to talk, but I need answers so I ask, “Where were you the night of the accident?”
“Eva . . .” He looks up then, meets my eyes, and immediately looks away.
That’s when I realize there’s another reason he won’t look at me. It’s not just my battered face; it’s guilt. I’m ready for answers now though; I need to know, so I continue, “You didn’t answer my calls or texts after you stood me up.”
After a quiet moment, he asks, “Do you really want to do this now?”
“What don’t you want me to know?”
He sighs. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?” When I shake my head, he says, “I was with Amy.”
“Crowne?” My voice is steady although my chest hurts. I want to scream at him, but I won’t. I can’t. I am Eva Elizabeth Tilling, I remind myself. I don’t scream or yell. The voice in my mind sounds a lot like my mother’s right now. Apparently, her lectures on propriety did sink in.
Calmly, I ask, “You were with Amy Crowne and that’s why you left me waiting?”
He nods silently.
It’s not that cheating hadn’t occurred to me as a possibility, but really? With her? The girl who told everyone I was a skank, who lied and said that I wasn’t a virgin when I slept with Robert, the girl who told everyone that I slept with him in the first place?
When I don’t say anything, he adds, “It wasn’t like I knew that not showing would lead to . . .” He lifts a hand and gestures.
“Almost dying? Being unconscious? Getting sliced up and having a broken leg?” Maybe I’m not screaming, but I’ve raised my voice. I sound like someone else. I’m not sure who. I am polite and even tempered: reasonable Eva, responsible Eva . . . but right now, I’m also cheated-on Eva.
“Eva,” he starts again. I look up and meet his eyes, and he continues, “I made a mistake, but I didn’t cause this. You could’ve called someone else. I’m sure Grace—”
“Fuck you.” Tears blur my vision. I swear I’ve cried more in the past week than in the past year. “You could’ve told me you weren’t coming instead of leaving me there. You could’ve at least texted.” I wipe at my cheeks and wince at the pain. “And afterwards? You should’ve told me.”
He looks aghast, as if I’d just suggested his father was a closet Democrat. “I didn’t want to break up while you were in the hospital.”
“Were you going to break up with me?”
He goes perfectly still, and I know him well enough to tell by his expression that he’s debating how truthful he should be. After a moment, he says, “No, but I figured you would break up with me. It’s not what I want; it was what I was trying to prevent. Amy threatened to tell you about us that night if I didn’t. That’s where I was. I was trying to convince her not to tell you.”
“For how long?”
“Does it matter?” Robert’s tone is evasive.
Pieces start clicking into place for me. Even as I hope I’m wrong, I say, “That’s why she made such a big deal over me sleeping with you.”
“I didn’t want to pressure you,” Robert says.
When we were dating, I was grateful that he wasn’t trying to get in my pants. Now I unde
rstand why. “The whole time we were dating, you were sleeping with Amy?”
“No. Not the first few weeks, but . . . when Amy came up to me at the party, that one you couldn’t make, it just made sense. I’ve always liked her, but I couldn’t date her. My parents would be furious, especially since I was dating you. They think you’re perfect.”
“I see.”
“I broke it off though. I told her the other week that we were done, but she showed up when I was getting ready to leave to meet you that night, and she was just being crazy. She’s not usually like that, but she threatened to tell you, and to tell my parents what we had done. Dad would get it, but Mom would be upset. Everyone knows about Amy’s past.”
Despite everything, I feel bad for Amy. We aren’t friends, but she doesn’t deserve this any more than I do. My voice is still level when I ask, “Did you tell Amy that?”
“I did.” He pauses, glances at me awkwardly, and then adds, “Just so you know, I was careful. I used a condom every time. I wouldn’t risk us that way. She went on the pill too.”
“So what do you propose? I know about her now.”
“I don’t know. I figured you’d be yelling at me by now, but you’re not. You’re still you just with a messed-up face now.” He pauses. “I can be a better boyfriend, Eva.”
My “messed-up face” hurts from how tightly I’m clenching my jaw now. Robert is an idiot. I stare at him in a sort of disconnected shock. I understand the importance of reputation, of the pressure not to be “bad,” of not failing our parents. It was one of the things we had in common, but I don’t get how that evolved into this mess. I can hear in his voice that he cares about Amy. There’s a softness there that I’m not even sure he notices.
“What do your parents think about the accident? Did you tell them?”
Robert laughs as if I’d made a joke. “I told them I had a flat. They, umm, think I’ve been visiting you.”
I don’t need to ask where he went when he was too guilty to come here, but lying to the Baucoms about it.
“You should apologize to Amy,” I say as calmly as I can. “And me. You should apologize to me. I deserve an apology.”
Robert isn’t the first guy to date someone on the side, and he’s certainly not the first to date a girl in secret because of her reputation, but that doesn’t mean I agree with it. Jessup is still the sort of place where name and money matter too much; I know the whole world isn’t like that, but our town still is. I don’t want it to be like that, and I thought Robert agreed with me. Obviously, I misunderstood.
His beautiful blue eyes are wide, and I wonder if I’d have forgiven him if not for the accident. Girls forgive boys for cheating all the time. Some keep doing it as adults. Robert’s dad has a long-term relationship with a colleague that Robert and his mom both know about, though no one ever mentions it. I don’t want to be one of the women who thinks it’s fine to “look the other way.”
“I can’t do this,” I tell him. “We’re done.”
“People will think I broke up with you because of how you look,” Robert says, and I’m not even shocked that his objections are about other people’s perceptions. He doesn’t tell me that he’ll miss me or argue that we share something special.
“Tell them I broke up with you.”
“Can we, umm, at least break up as friends?” Robert asks.
“Sure,” I snap. It’s not like there’s much option in a town the size of Jessup. Our families are friends; our friends are friends. There’s no way to avoid being around each other, so we’ll do what everyone does after they break up: we’ll put on masks and be polite. I can’t start pretending today. I’m not so much hurt that we failed, but I am hurt that he cheated and lied to me. I meet his eyes and say, “We’ll be friends, but I need time, Robert.”
“Okay . . . I’ll just say that you needed space because of the accident,” Robert adds. “We’re friends, and then maybe if you change your mind—”
“Good-bye, Robert.” I close my eyes for a moment, and then raise my voice to say, “Mom? Can you help me upstairs? Robert is leaving.” I look at him and add, “Now.”
When Mom comes into the room, I say with as little emotion as I can manage, “Robert won’t be around anymore, Mom. We broke up.”
She puts her hand to her chest as she lets out a little gasp. “Just now? His mother told Jillian Dawson that he was with you every day at the hospital. We took comfort in that.”
“He lied.”
“Oh.” She folds her hands together and waits.
“He cheated on me,” I say, trying not to let my guilt and anger show. It’s ridiculous that I feel guilt at all. It’s not like it’s my fault he cheated, but I still feel it. It’s like this idea that maybe if I’d done something different, he wouldn’t have cheated. I know it’s not true, but logic isn’t the same as emotion. Pushing my guilt away I add, “He was cheating, and that’s where he was the night of the accident—with her.”
“Oh, baby!” She’s off the chair and beside me in a blink.
I reach out to wrap an arm around her before she can touch me, avoiding the risk of falling into another hallucination.
She’s expecting tears, but this time I’m not crying. I did that already, and I refuse to cry over Robert again. I rest my head on my mother’s shoulder, and I feel an unexpected comfort at being hugged.
When she pulls back, she’s wearing her Intense Focus expression, the one that scares people into agreeing with her or donating to her cause du jour. “I’m going to call Celeste right now. She needs to know what her boy did.”
“No.” I catch her hand in mine and squeeze. “The other girl doesn’t deserve this. She’s . . . not someone Mrs. Baucom would approve of.”
My mother’s stern expression softens. “You’re nicer than I ever was. If your father had cheated on me, I’d be damned if I’d let him hide his shame.”
Hearing my mother cuss always amuses me. She does it so rarely that it makes me smile every single time it happens. “It’s not about him. It’s about me and about her,” I clarify. “Everyone’s already going to be looking at me because of the accident. I don’t want more attention.”
After a moment, she nods, and I loosen my grip on her hand.
She doesn’t remove her hand from mine. “I won’t tell Celeste he cheated, but I won’t lie and say he visited at the hospital”—she reaches out with her other hand and cups my face gently—“and neither should you.” Then she stands, affixes a smile, and says, “How about I get you something to eat? I had LeeAnn make up a bunch of your favorites. She left a fruit salad and a tossed salad too.”
Our cook, LeeAnn, comes in twice a week and makes a series of meals that are then labeled and stacked in the fridge. It’s like having fresh home-cooked meals, and my mother seems to enjoy the illusion that she prepares them because she does put them in the oven or microwave herself. Plus, with LeeAnn doing the cooking the meals are healthier and tastier. My mother has the ability to tackle a lot of things, but cooking has never been one of her skills.
“Fruit salad sounds good.”
She leaves and heads to the kitchen, and I can’t resist the urge to text Grace immediately. I give her the quick rundown. “Robert slept with Amy. Broke up with him just now.”
“Want me to beat him up?”
I smile and reply, “Let me think about it.”
“Love you.”
“You too.” I don’t know how a few short texts can make me feel so much better, but they do. Everything is less overwhelming with a good friend on my side.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
DAY 11: “THE LIES”
Grace
I TRY NOT TO obsess over Eva’s texts from this morning, but it’s hard when I see Robert slinking through the hall with Reid and Jamie. Robert looks less arrogant than usual, or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on
my part. Nate is watching them too. I shove my history book into my locker and force myself not to speak or look at them.
“Yeung,” Reid says as they pass.
Robert, of course, says nothing to me, and Jamie doesn’t seem bright enough to initiate conversation unless there’s a keg, a drunk girl, and a dark corner. Then, he’ll nod and mutter, “Want to?” Sickeningly, it seems to work for him.
I pull out my Spanish book and look at Nate again. Eva texted that she and Robert broke up, and from the way Nate is watching Robert—and the way Robert doesn’t notice—I’ve already figured out that Robert is unaware of Eva’s renewed friendship with Nate. What I can’t decide is whether Nate’s anger at Robert is because he’s crushing on Eva and upset that she’s hurt, or if he knows about the breakup already.
“My dad said that Micki’s death and Eva’s accident had to be caused by the same person,” Piper says as she walks up to my locker with several of the others. They murmur a mix of greetings in my general direction.
“It’s possible, I guess,” I say. The idea isn’t too much of a stretch: two teen girls from Jessup in car accidents with no witnesses? It’s a little too coincidental.
“What does Eva think?” Piper doesn’t add “because that’s what we will think too,” but I know that’s her motivation. Half the girls in our class seem to share DNA with parrots. The other half smile and nod. I suspect they have opinions, but Jessup isn’t a hotbed of independent thought.
“We haven’t really talked about Micki,” I tell them.
“Will she be home by the funeral?” Jessica Greer, one of the Piper-ettes asks.
The others watch. Laurel Dawson and Bailey Owens whisper to each other, but they’re as likely to be talking about this as shoes. CeCe Watkins seems utterly unconcerned by the drama, but she is still waiting for my answer like the others are.
“I’m not sure,” I hedge. I don’t want them to know Eva is home in case she isn’t ready for a deluge of visitors. “She’s doing a lot better, but . . . we haven’t talked about it.”