“God,” I quip, “you make it sound like funerals aren’t any fun.”
“Seriously, Cady,” says Mirren. “You should plan your wedding, not your funeral. Don’t be morbid.”
“What if I never get married? What if I don’t want to get married?”
“Plan your book party, then. Or your art opening.”
“She’s winning the Olympics and the Nobel Prize,” says Gat. “She can plan parties for those.”
“Okay, fine,” I say. “Let’s plan my Olympic handball party. If it’ll make you happy.”
So we do. Chocolate handballs wrapped in blue fondant. A gold dress for me. Champagne flutes with tiny gold balls inside. We discuss whether people wear weird goggles for handball like they do for racquetball and decide that for purposes of our party, they do. All the guests will wear gold handball goggles for the duration.
“Do you play on a handball team?” asks Gat. “I mean, will there be a whole crew of Amazonian handball goddesses there, celebrating victory with you? Or did you win it by your lonesome?”
“I have no idea.”
“You really have to start educating yourself about this,” says Gat. “Or you’re never going to win the gold. We’ll have to rethink the whole party if you only get the silver.”
Life feels beautiful that day.
The four of us Liars, we have always been.
We always will be.
No matter what happens as we go to college, grow old, build lives for ourselves; no matter if Gat and I are together or not. No matter where we go, we will always be able to line up on the roof of Cuddledown and gaze at the sea.
This island is ours. Here, in some way, we are young forever.
46
Days that follow are darker. Rarely do the Liars want to go anywhere. Mirren has a sore throat and body aches. She stays mainly in Cuddledown. She paints pictures to hang in the hallways and makes rows of shells along the edges of the countertops. Dishes pile in the sink and on the coffee table. DVDs and books are in messy stacks all over the great room. The beds lie unmade and the bathrooms have a damp, mildewy smell.
Johnny eats cheese with his fingers and watches British TV comedies. One day he collects a row of old tea bags, soggy ones, and tosses them into a mug filled with orange juice.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Biggest splash gets the most points.”
“But why?”
“My mind works in mysterious ways,” says Johnny. “I find underhand is generally the best technique.”
I help him figure out a point system. Five points for a sprinkle, ten for a puddle, twenty for a decorative pattern on the wall behind the mug.
We go through a whole bottle of fresh-squeezed juice. When he’s done, Johnny leaves the mug and the mangled, leaking tea bags where they lie.
I don’t clean up, either.
Gat has a list of the hundred greatest novels ever written, and he’s pushing his way through whatever he’s been able to find on the island. He marks them with sticky notes and reads passages aloud. Invisible Man. A Passage to India. The Magnificent Ambersons. I only half pay attention when he reads, because Gat has not kissed me or reached out to me since we agreed to act normal.
I think he avoids being alone with me.
I avoid being alone with him, too, because my whole body sings to be near him, because every movement he makes is charged with electricity. I often think of putting my arms around him or running my fingers along his lips. When I let my thoughts go there—if for a moment Johnny and Mirren are out of sight, if for even a second we are alone—the sharp pain of unrequited love invites the migraine in.
These days she is a gnarled crone, touching the raw flesh of my brain with her cruel fingernails. She pokes my exposed nerves, exploring whether she’ll take up residence in my skull. If she gets in, I’m confined to my bedroom for a day or maybe two.
We eat lunch on the roof most days.
I suppose they do it when I’m ill, too.
Every now and then a bottle rolls off the roof and the glass smashes. In fact, there are shards and shards of splintered glass, sticky with lemonade, all over the porch.
Flies buzz around, attracted by the sugar.
47
End of the second week, I find Johnny alone in the yard, building a structure out of Lego pieces he must have found at Red Gate.
I’ve got pickles, cheese straws, and leftover grilled tuna from the New Clairmont kitchen. We decide not to go on the roof since it’s just the two of us. We open the containers and line them up on the edge of the dirty porch. Johnny talks about how he wants to build Hogwarts out of Lego. Or a Death Star. Or wait! Even better is a Lego tuna fish to hang in New Clairmont now that none of Granddad’s taxidermy is there anymore. That’s it. Too bad there’s not enough Lego on this stupid island for a visionary project such as his.
“Why didn’t you call or email after my accident?” I ask. I hadn’t planned to bring it up. The words spring out.
“Oh, Cady.”
I feel stupid asking, but I want to know.
“You don’t want to talk about Lego tuna fish instead?” Johnny vamps.
“I thought maybe you were annoyed with me about those emails. The ones I sent asking about Gat.”
“No, no.” Johnny wipes his hands on his T-shirt. “I disappeared because I’m an asshole. Because I don’t think through my choices and I’ve seen too many action movies and I’m kind of a follower.”
“Really? I don’t think that about you.”
“It’s an undeniable fact.”
“You weren’t mad?”
“I was just a stupid fuck. But not mad. Never mad. I’m sorry, Cadence.”
“Thanks.”
He picks up a handful of Legos and starts fitting them together.
“Why did Gat disappear? Do you know?”
Johnny sighs. “That’s another question.”
“He told me I don’t know the real him.”
“Could be true.”
“He doesn’t want to discuss my accident. Or what happened with us that summer. He wants us to act normal and like nothing happened.”
Johnny’s lined his Legos up in stripes: blue, white, and green. “Gat had been shitty to that girl Raquel, by starting up with you. He knew it wasn’t right and he hated himself for that.”
“Okay.”
“He didn’t want to be that kind of guy. He wants to be a good person. And he was really angry that summer, about all kinds of things. When he wasn’t there for you, he hated himself even more.”
“You think?”
“I’m guessing,” says Johnny.
“Is he going out with anyone?”
“Aw, Cady,” says Johnny. “He’s a pretentious ass. I love him like a brother, but you’re too good for him. Go find yourself a nice Vermont guy with muscles like Drake Loggerhead.” Then he cracks up laughing.
“You’re useless.”
“I can’t deny it,” he answers. “But you’ve got to stop being such a mushball.”
48
Giveaway: Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones.
It’s one of the Chrestomanci stories Mummy read to me and Gat the year we were eight. I’ve reread it several times since then, but I doubt Gat has.
I open the book and write on the title page. For Gat with everything, everything. Cady.
I head to Cuddledown early the next morning, stepping over old teacups and DVDs. I knock on Gat’s bedroom door.
No answer.
I knock again, then push it open.
It used to be Taft’s room. It’s full of bears and model boats, plus Gat-like piles of books, empty bags of potato chips, cashews crushed underfoot. Half-full bottles of juice and soda, CDs, the Scrabble box with most of its tiles spilled across the floor. It’s as bad as the rest of the house, if not worse.
Anyway, he’s not there. He must be at the beach.
I leave the book on his pillow.
49
That night, Gat and I find ourselves alone on the roof of Cuddledown. Mirren felt sick and Johnny took her downstairs for some tea.
Voices and music float from New Clairmont, where the aunts and Granddad are eating blueberry pie and drinking port. The littles are watching a movie in the living room.
Gat walks the slant of the roof, all the way down to the gutter and up again. It seems dangerous, so easy to fall—but he is fearless.
Now is when I can talk to him.