TWO
FOR A FEW WEEKS after our sleepover, Nadia stayed unusually busy. She seemed better, though, mostly back to her old self. But I started to wonder if she was avoiding me. I finally caught up with her after school and asked her if she wanted to hang out, but she said she had some stuff to do and needed to get home. Again.
When I pulled into my own driveway, Diane was standing on the front porch, jiggling with excitement. “Baby, it’s here,” she hollered as soon as I opened the car door. She hurried down the cement steps, waving a thick envelope. “I’ve been waiting. Don’t make me wait any longer.”
Diane thrust the envelope at me and bounced up and down while I ripped it open with shaking hands. I’d started to wonder if they’d just laughed and chucked my application as soon as they received it.
A huge smile stretched my face as I read the acceptance letter. The delinquent girl had turned it around. I was university-bound.
I read the letter quickly and then flipped to the next page, expecting an enrollment form or something. “Oh my God,” I whispered as I read a second letter tucked behind the acceptance. “They’re giving me a scholarsh—”
Diane crushed me to her before I had a chance to duck away. My head was pressed to her breast as she jumped up and down, whooping and crying. I was suffocating and wanted to pull away, but this was her moment, too. She’d taken me in when no other foster parent was willing risk it. And her gamble had paid off.
I let her squeeze me for a few seconds and then held up the letter to distract her. She released me and grabbed it. I stepped back, took my cell from my pocket, and hit send on Nadia’s number. She didn’t pick up.
“I’ll make anything you want for dinner tonight, baby,” Diane said, wiping her eyes. “Anything.”
“Can I take a rain check on that? I want to show this to Nadia.” Whatever she had going on, I knew she’d be excited.
Diane nodded and handed me the letter. “Go ahead. Tell her thank you for me.” She wagged her finger at me. “And be nice when she says ‘I told you so’.”
I laid the letter flat on my passenger seat and reread it at every stoplight until I turned onto Nadia’s waterfront street. I knocked at her front door a few times, but no one answered. Letter in hand, I jogged along the side of the house toward the back terrace. The cool, humid wind off the bay lifted my hair, bringing my curls to life. I pushed the strands back impatiently. “Nadia? Are you here?”
She was in her usual spot on the rear patio, looking out at the water from her chaise lounge, knees pulled to her chest. I skipped onto the elaborate brickwork, waiting for her to turn her head. I touched her shoulder. “Hey, you didn’t answer your phone.”
She looked up at me. Her eyes were so pale, her pupils tiny pinpoints. I muscled past a twist of anxiety and squinted, hoping it was a trick of the early-evening light. Nope.
“I couldn’t…find it,” she said.
She was numbed up and high once again.
I drew a long breath through my nose. I didn’t want to get into another argument with her tonight. Not when we had so much to be happy about. “I got the letter today. It’s official. And guess what?”
I waved the paper in front of her, wanting her to perk up and reach for it. She didn’t, so I laid it on the chaise next to her pedicured toes. She was still looking up at me, a vague smile on her face. “You’re happy. It’s good to see you happy.”
“We did it!” I laughed. “We’re going! We can fill out that housing form now.”
Her smile guttered and faded. “You did it,” she whispered. She took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “I’m so proud of you. You’re going to have such a good time.”
“What?” I asked as the door to the breakfast room slid open.
“Nadia,” sighed Mrs. Vetter, a wineglass in her heavily jeweled hand. As usual, she didn’t even acknowledge me. “John is picking me up in a few minutes.”
For a moment I was struck by the resemblance between mother and daughter, which had grown more apparent over the last few months as we neared the finish line for graduation. Both of them were rail thin, well dressed, pale and beautiful…and had tiny pupils.
Nadia waved her hand absently.
“Good,” Mrs. Vetter said. “I’ll see you in the morning.” The door slid shut, and her presence was forgotten, like a raindrop hitting the surface of the ocean.
“So,” I prompted, pushing my scholarship letter toward Nadia again. “Read it! See what your hard work and constant nagging accomplished.”
Nadia’s eyes had returned to the choppy gray waters of the Narragansett Bay. Deep in my belly, anger coiled. This was the shining moment, the one where I proved I was worth the time she’d spent on me. I needed her to see it. I needed her to say it.
I needed her to be all right.
I stood up and waved my hand in front of her face. “How much did you take this time?”
She leaned back and grinned. Her arms splayed out, open and helpless. “No idea.”
“Do you know how fucking pathetic that sounds?” I blurted, unable to hold back my frustration any longer. I snatched the now-creased letter from the lounge, crushing it in my fist.
She closed her eyes. “It feels fucking good, though.”
I had to step back to keep from kicking her chair over in a desperate attempt to snap her out of her trance, to bring back the Nadia who gave a shit. “Maybe I don’t want to room with you. I’ll actually be at URI to accomplish something, not just to hang out between fixes.”
I wanted her to wince. To tell me what a bitch I was. To show me I meant enough to her to be able to reach her.
Instead, she smiled again, a special smile, a devastating smile. The ultimate brush-off smile. In the time we’d been friends, I’d seen her do it to other people, this slow, fake-indulgent quirk of the lips that killed conversations, withering girls and boys alike with its confident chill. It was a smile that said No matter what you say, you can’t make me care. I’d seen her give it to her worthless ex-boyfriend Greg a thousand times. Her mom, too. I’d even seen her give it to Tegan once. And now she was aiming it at me for the first time. “Go home, Lela. You’re kind of a buzz kill.”
“Okay,” I said, voice shaking. “You’ve turned into a real bitch, you know that?”
Her hand rose slowly, trembling slightly as she raised her middle finger.
In my head, the world was caving in. This was the thing I’d feared ever since I’d let myself get close to her—that like everyone else, she would turn her back on me. I felt like such an idiot having all these dreams of being away at college with my best friend. I had started to trust it. And I should have known better. No one could possibly feel that way about me.
That cold smile hadn’t left her face, and I wanted to smack her. I wanted to shake her. Anything to get a reaction, to get some response that showed I mattered to her, that she was as afraid of losing me as I was of losing her. I stood there, waiting for the slightest change in her expression, the slightest twitch of her fingers.
Nothing.
Tears stung my eyes, but the heat of my anger burned them away. “You’re gonna be just like your mom, Nadia. Congratulations. Thanks for saving me from having to watch.”
I crammed the letter into my pocket and stomped across the manicured lawn, wishing I had something heavy to throw at the wide, crystal clear bay windows. My panic had short-circuited me—the one thing I’d had to hang on to was falling apart. I sucked in a few breaths as I reached my car, trying to calm down enough to drive. She would be better tomorrow. I’d show her the letter then.
I never got the chance, though. Tegan called the next morning. I barely made out the words through her hysterical sobbing, but after a few repetitions, they finally sank in.
Mrs. Vetter had discovered her daughter on the floor of the bathroom, an empty pill bottle next to her.
Nadia was dead.