Chapter THREE
Em was distracted on the drive over to the party. All she wanted was a hint from Zach. Just one hint that he felt what she’d been feeling. That she wasn’t insane. That she hadn’t imagined all the fizzy, crazy vibes bouncing between them for the past few weeks. Any hint would do. Then she’d let it go. Really.
“Thanks so much for coming with me,” she said to JD as they rounded the corner, not realizing that she’d said it just a few minutes earlier.
“Ah, you know. It’s always a treat when eccentrics like myself are allowed into the presence of populars.” JD sighed sarcastically, adjusting his hat. “Perhaps I’ll get lucky and some girl will want a piece of the Fountain,” he said, invoking his rarely used nickname, the Fountain of Nerdiness.
Em barely noticed. She fumbled with the bag on her lap, digging for her lip gloss, trying to steal a glimpse of her ref lection in the passenger-side mirror. As they got closer to Minster’s, she scanned the cars that were already lining the street, looking for a particular blue Jeep Wrangler, one with
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Ascension High basketball and football bumper stickers lined up neatly side by side.
When they finally arrived at Ian’s house, Em’s brain was swimming with thoughts of Zach. She felt like she’d already had a few drinks; everything looked just a little off-balance as she walked through the door, like someone had set all the rooms at slightly different angles.
For one thing, the whole mood of the party seemed . . .
off. People were drinking and dancing and f lirting, as usual, but everyone’s voices seemed quieter, and groups of whispering girls kept breaking off, shaking their heads, hugging each other.
On top of that, Gabby was in turbo mode. Her outfit looked great (she’d paired her dress with brown tights and wedge boots), and she’d been right about having a good hair day. As she dragged Em toward the kitchen, and the punch, she chat-tered about her forthcoming family trip to Spain and Majorca.
“Em, you have to promise—pinkie swear—that we’ll go to Maintenance when I get back,” Gabby said, referring to their favorite Christmastime tradition—one they would have to forego this year. It involved taking the train down to Boston, lunching at a Newbury Street restaurant, and shopping.
“Of course, Gabs,” Em said.
“I can’t believe I’m going to be away for eight whole days,”
Gabby said, bouncing from topic to topic. “It feels like a life-time. Chase is wasted, by the way. Watch out. God, Em, you have to promise not to do a single fun thing while I’m gone.”
Em grinned. Of course she would miss her best friend, but 29
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she was secretly a bit grateful that they would have some time apart. It was just like Gabby to assume that the world would stop when she left, and restart the moment she returned.
“Oh, and don’t let Zach do anything fun either,” Gabby added as they approached the keg and the punch bowl, where Zach was standing with a few other juniors.
Em’s stomach flipped. It seemed recently that every time she saw him, she was experiencing him for the first time—his piercing eyes, his adorably shaggy hair, his broad shoulders, the way his nose kind of crinkled when he was paying attention.
It was as though a spotlight had been switched on, and in its beam, she saw only Zach.
She knew it was wrong, and she knew it was terrible, but she also knew that this feeling was the one that pop songs were written about. Em threw her shoulders back and prepared for the private heartbreak that had become part of her daily routine.
“Hi, baby!” Gabby bounded toward Zach and gave him a peck on the lips. Em looked away. “Did you miss me?” Without giving him the chance to respond, Gabby barreled ahead.
“Not as much as you’re going to miss me next week. Look who I found!”
“Is there Red Bull in that punch? You’re crazier than usual.” Zach laughed and gently detached himself from Gabby, reminding her that the trip was only eight days long, not eight years. He motioned to the punch bowl. “Hey, Em.” Did she imagine it, or did Zach’s eyes brighten when he turned them on her? “Can I pour you some of this crazy-making elixir? And watch out for Singer—he’s a man on a mission tonight.”
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Em nodded, trying to ignore the thrill that zipped through her as Zach passed her the cup of punch, accidentally brushing her wrist with his fingertips.
“So I heard. What kind of mission?” she asked.
“I think it’s a Football Feast mission,” Zach stage-whispered, wiggling his eyebrows ever so slightly. “A date mission, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, Em! Speaking of which, I have to show you the dress I’m going to wear to the Feast,” Gabby said, interjecting. “It’s kind of a pale purple-blue—like that scarf I love at Maintenance?” She winked and nudged Em for emphasis, but Zach had turned around to talk with Sean. They were probably scheduling ice hoops. Playing basketball on Ascension’s frozen ponds was the boys’ favorite winter tradition.
“The dress comes up to here,” Gabby was saying, hitting the middle of her thigh. “That’s not too short, right?” She hic-cupped and then giggled a little.
For a moment, Em thought about what she would wear if she were going to the Football Feast. Maybe her green dress, the scoop-neck, pencil-skirted one that looked like something from the 1950s? Em knew that she could go if she wanted.
Sean or Brian or any of those football guys would be happy to take her. But she could only picture herself walking in on one person’s arm.
There was no way around it: Em had fallen for her best friend’s boyfriend. Over the last few months, Zach had seemed to get her in a way that no one else did. They laughed at the same jokes and rolled their eyes together at Gabby’s 31
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antics. Whereas Gabby was usually uninterested in Zach’s college goals or his basketball triumphs, Em paid attention.
It wasn’t that she didn’t think Gabby and Zach were a great couple—clearly they were a perfect match on paper, the cute prom queen and the adorable, smart captain of the basketball team—but sometimes she felt like Zach deserved someone a little bit deeper than Gabby.
Someone a little bit more like Em.
Not that she would ever do anything about it. But she had to admit that the prospect of having more than a week to hang out with Zach—without Gabby always around—was exhilarating.
“So the reporter told my mom that Sasha is on life support,” Gabby was saying to Abbie Stevens, another yearbook staffer who’d joined the group. “But even if she gets better, she’ll probably never come back to Ascension.”
Em froze midswallow and grabbed Gabby’s arm. “What are you talking about, Gabs?”
“Oh, you just got here. You haven’t heard. Sasha Bowlder tried to, you know, commit suicide,” Gabby said, wide-eyed, lowering her voice again.
Em blinked. “Sasha did what?”
“She tried to kill herself by jumping off the Piss Pass,”
Gabby said, trying to disguise a small hiccup. Maybe it was just because she was drunk, but Gabby seemed to be almost enjoying telling this story, like she was on a stage, performing. “But she didn’t die, so . . . she’s in the hospital. Paralyzed, or in a coma, or both. It’s crazy. I thought it would be nice to 32
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send flowers and a card, so I’m starting a collection. We already have, like, fifty bucks. It’s great.”
Gabby turned back to Abbie, who was now also flanked by Fiona and Lauren, but Em stayed rooted to the spot. She felt strangely shocked and she couldn’t figure out why. She and Sasha had not been friends. It’s not like she’d done anything to stop the Sasha-bashing. Sure, Em had always made a point of smiling at Sasha in the hallway, but Sasha could easily have misinterpreted that as a popular girl smirking at her.
The conversation had moved on: The girls were done with Sasha (“so tragic,” Gabby sighed) and they’d started talking about the Behemoth, a new, giant shopping center being erected out near the highway. It was halfway completed and six months behind schedule. This year’s Christmas shopping had still taken place at the old mall, which hadn’t been renovated since the 1980s.
Em excused herself from the conversation. The room was too hot; and even though she’d taken only a single sip of punch, she felt as though the room was spinning. She wondered if JD
had heard the news. She turned and walked out of the kitchen to find him.
As though he’d heard her thoughts, JD suddenly appeared in the hallway, his weird purple-shirt-and-vest combo making him stand out in the crowd, as usual.
“Hey, Em,” he said. He was holding a beer and it looked like he’d barely taken a sip. “I just heard about Sasha.”
“Me too. For some reason I just . . . I feel weird,” Em said.
“I can’t explain it.” She wanted to talk about how they could 33
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have known and how they could have stopped it, but she didn’t want to start crying. And she felt guilty caring this much only after the fact.
Em knew she’d laughed at Sasha’s expense more than once.
By junior year, Bowlder bashing was as much a part of the Ascension curriculum as English or math. But it had reached new levels last week, just before winter break, when someone had plastered mortifying quotes from her email exchanges all over Facebook. In them, Sasha confessed to feeling desperate to be pretty, sexy, smart—which only made her seem more sad and lonely. She wanted to be wanted. The quotes had been up for half the day when Sasha finally noticed that everyone was staring, pointing, and laughing more than usual. Em had seen her holding her bagged lunch in one hand and a soda in the other, staring at an image on someone’s phone screen. Quietly, she’d set the lunch down before turning on her heel and walking away. Her only friend, Drea Feiffer, shouted for her to slow down as the cafeteria door slammed.
And now she had tried to kill herself.
“Do you want to leave?” JD pulled at the ends of his per-petually sticking-out hair and looked at Em seriously.
“No one else wants to leave,” she said, motioning weakly to no one in particular. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of it.”
“We don’t have to make it into a big deal. Let’s just slip out.
You look kind of pale.”
Em looked gratefully up at JD. “Okay,” she said. “Let me just grab my coat. . . . I think Gabby threw it into one of the upstairs bedrooms.”
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“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll wait down here.”
Em put down her punch and walked slowly up the grand staircase, which was carpeted but still creaked beneath her feet.
At the top of the stairs was a huge, stained-glass window that looked like something from a Gothic castle. It depicted a sunny landscape but looked eerie with the moon shining through it, casting red and orange shadows on the floor. She turned right and went into the first bedroom, where a heap of coats was piled on top of a queen-sized bed. The room was large and empty-feeling, with almost nothing on the walls. No one else seemed to be upstairs, and the sounds of the party were just a dull throb from below. Outside, Em could see the snow was still falling.
Em shivered. Wasn’t heat supposed to rise? Downstairs she’d been too hot; now she was freezing. She bent over the bed to look for her coat in the dim light coming through the windows.
“Looking for something?”
Em whipped around and found herself face to neck with Zach, who at six foot one seemed well proportioned next to her five-foot-eight frame. He seemed to have materialized out of nowhere—she hadn’t heard the creaking steps.
“Looking for my coat, actually,” she said. “I was thinking about taking off.”
“So soon?” Zach pouted.
“Yeah, I’m not . . . feeling that great,” she said. But now that Zach was standing next to her, she felt somewhat lighter.
“Aww . . . you should get some rest, then.” He gave her a quick hug. He smelled of beer and soap. “Hey, we on for 35
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hanging out over break? I could really use another pair of eyes on my essay. Plus, I will destroy you in Guitar Hero to make up for last week’s upset.”
Hadn’t his hands lingered on her shoulders just a minute longer than they should have? Had he noticed how well their bodies fit together?
Em felt a flash of guilt. She shouldn’t even be thinking about Zach that way, especially not tonight.
“Yes,” she said. “And yes. I promised Gabby I wouldn’t let you out of my sight over the next week.” She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth.
“Well, that’s good.” He leaned in, smiling. “Seems like you haven’t let me out of your sight at all recently.”
All of the heat came rushing back to Em’s body. “What—
what do you mean?” she stuttered.
Zach shrugged, still grinning. “Nothing. Forget it. It’s just . . .”
He was being playful, that was all. Right? But then, before she could say another word, he held out his hand, a closed fist.
Em looked at him blankly. “What is—” Before she could finish, he flipped open his hand. In his palm lay one of the silver spiral earrings she was wearing that night. Her hands moved quickly to both ears—sure enough, the right one was missing.
“I saw it on the rug downstairs. I knew it was yours. You were wearing them last week, at Lauren’s house.”
Then, just as Em was certain that this was the sign she’d been looking for— holy shit, holy shit, it’s like Mom and Dad and the stupid pom-poms! —they heard Gabby’s voice.
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“I’m fine,” Gabby was saying in a decidedly unfine manner. There was a loud crash, as though she had bumped into something, followed by a fit of giggles. She appeared in the doorway, swaying on the arm of Fiona Marcus. Her normally glossy, springy blond hair was a mess and her necklace was turned around backward. “Zachie, Em, I’m totally fine.”
“Aw, babe, you’re wasted,” Zach said, and just like that, all the charged air between him and Em was gone, deflated like a pricked balloon. He slipped an arm around Gabby’s shoulders, gently disengaging her from Fiona. “Need to go home?”
Em slipped back into best-friend zone, shaking off—with a bit of self-hatred—the last few moments.
“Where’s your coat, sweetie? Zach’ll take you home.”
Gabby waved a hand in the general direction of the bed, slurring, “Over there. And whatsamatter, Emmie? You look like the Grim Creeper spooked you.” She giggled.
“I’ll find the coat,” Em said to Zach over Gabby’s head, ignoring the Grim Creeper comment. It was the name they’d assigned to some guy who used to go to their school. He would walk the halls muttering to himself and staring too long at people. But then he’d dropped out. His name was Colin, or Crow, as some people called him, and Em realized with a fresh pang of guilt that he was also one of Drea Feiffer’s friends. Like Sasha. Yet another person they’d all randomly made fun of, just because it was easy. Em shook her head, unable to process it all.
Zach turned to take Gabby back downstairs. Em went through the pile on the bed twice, looking for Gabby’s signature 37
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BCBG coat, black wool and belted, which Gabby had adorned with an enormous rhinestone heart pin. But after searching for a few minutes (including under the bed and in the strangely empty closet), Em couldn’t find it. Gabby must have hidden it somewhere and forgotten about it; she’d probably remember when she sobered up.
So Gabby went teetering off on Zach’s arm. He had lent her his coat, which practically engulfed her. Watching them disappear into the night together made Em feel as though she had just inhaled a mouthful of sawdust.
People were shouting drunkenly and trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues as Em and JD made their way to his car a few minutes later. She could see their breath clouding in the air.
“What a weird night,” JD said as he opened the car door for Em. She just nodded. Her brain felt like it was on fire, there were so many thoughts whirling around in there. Zach.
Gabby. Sasha Bowlder. Jesus—Sasha. There was only so much she could freak out about in one night.
JD made a three-point turn to head back down Ian’s street.
They sat in heavy silence; it felt as though the events of the evening had a physical shape and were sitting between them.
Em stared out the window at the evergreens and bare branches, which tangled and became one as she stared deeper into the woods. They passed Chase, trudging toward his station wagon.
“We should ask him if he wants a ride,” Em said, her voice cutting the quiet. “Zach said he was trashed earlier.” She hoped JD had not noticed the hitch in her voice when she’d pro-38
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nounced Zach’s name. JD nodded and Em rolled down her window.
“Hey, Chase, you need a ride?” Maybe this—helping Chase—would make up for what had almost happened upstairs with Zach.
Almost happened. The important thing was that it hadn’t happened. Em hated herself for feeling disappointed.
“No, I’m fine,” Chase said. He looked awful; his skin was pasty white. “Really. Go.”
“Seriously, Chase,” Em persisted. “Just hop in the back.
Maybe we’ll make a run to Mickey D’s?” There was a bit of pleading in her voice.
“I said I’m fine, Winters. Thanks, though, really.” Em knew she’d never be able to reason with him. And at least he sounded sober. She waved, but Chase was staring at the ground and didn’t see her.
Then, as they rounded a curve, JD’s headlights illuminated three girls standing by the side of the road. Em yelped; they’d come upon the girls so suddenly, and they were so close, she was sure JD would hit them. But at the last second the car skated past them, with just a few inches of space to spare. For the briefest moment, Em made eye contact with one of the girls: a tall, voluptuous redhead with bright green eyes. Em’s heart skipped a beat, and she felt a shock of recognition. It was a combination of déjà vu and that feeling you get when you see a picture of an ancestor who looks exactly like you.
“What?” JD asked, responding to Em’s involuntary cry.
“What’s wrong?”
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“Oh, I was just afraid you would hit them,” Em said.
“Hit who?” JD scanned his rearview mirror. “I didn’t see anyone.”
“The girls right—,” Em started to say. But by the time Em swiveled around in her seat to look, the three girls had disappeared.
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