Page 69

I didn’t call the cops after Ray Parsons tried to rape me, so he tried again on someone else.

I didn’t tell Branley she’s more than tits and ass and legs, so she still believed it.

I didn’t stop Alex from coming to the church even though I knew it was a bad idea, so now I’m standing here, empty hands at my side, looking at the blood spattered on the wall. Red trailing fingers point accusingly downward at a body hidden behind the altar.

Branley is on her butt in the dirt rocking back and forth and crying, her underwear in a ball in her hands, tears running down her face. A guy is against the wall saying shit, shit, shit, over and over again, like it’s the only word he knows. I can see the top of Jack’s head over the pew, but Alex isn’t getting up and I don’t want to know why.

My head is still ringing from the shotgun blast as I make my way over to Branley, but I’m barely lifting my feet and I trip over a beer bottle, the sound of it rolling away empty and hollow. Branley looks up at me but doesn’t stop rocking. I sit down next to her, peeling the thong from her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she says, words barely seeping out between tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“You should put on your underwear,” I tell her. I don’t know what else to say and it seems to be the most sensible thing at the moment.

The guy in the corner is still saying shit shit shit. Between him and Branley’s I’m sorrys filling the air I can’t make my own words. Jack isn’t saying anything either, just leaning over an unmoving Alex, holding her hand against his face. It’s limp and loose in his hold, and I try not to look at her blood pooling around our shoes as I crouch next to him.

There are no questions, but I want to ask them anyway. I want to say, Is she dead? Is she gone? Is she going to be okay? so that Jack can tell me no, no, and yes. But the words won’t come because I know speaking them is useless, even as I reach out and press my warm skin against hers, now cooling.

The litany of shit shit shit has stopped, and the guy against the wall looks at me. “Hey, I know you,” he says. And I think my own mother could be in front of me right now and I wouldn’t recognize her.

“I don’t think so,” I say, but he’s saying shit shit shit again.

Tonight I have been too stupid, too slow, too still. I have not done things I should have. My hand goes for my phone but my fingers are too shaky to dial.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Calling the cops,” I say. Like I should’ve fucking done months ago when I was right in this very place but I didn’t, and now Alex killed someone and I don’t know what happened to Branley, and there’s blood pooling on the floor and fuck I just figured out where that guy knows me from.

Now all I can say is fuck fuck fuck, and he takes it from me, making the call himself. I slump next to him, rock cold against my back.

“Here.” He hands me a stick of gum. “You don’t want to smell like beer when the cops come.” I take it, balling up the wad of paper and throwing it on the floor with the rest of the trash.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” he says. “To you that night, or to that girl now. You gotta know that.”

And I don’t know if it’s guilt or fear or shock making his voice quiver, or maybe it’s the actual truth and he wants so badly to believe it himself he’s got to tell me, of all people. But I don’t want his words, because I can’t forgive him right now. Not when the spreading pool of Alex’s blood has almost reached me.

“It’s just Ray, man,” he says. “He’s like a bulldozer. You’re along for the ride or you’re crushed underneath.”

And I think, yeah, he would’ve raped me, and Branley too, because who wants to be crushed when you can do the crushing? But when he gives me my phone back his hands are shaking worse than mine, and we can hardly make the exchange.

So I don’t say it. I don’t tell him that he’s an asshole who would rather rape girls than stand up to his friend because I couldn’t even make a fucking phone call to report my own assault because I was worried my friends who were drinking would be pissed at me, so what the fuck do I know?

“What do we tell them?” I ask. “What do we tell the cops when they get here?”

“The truth,” he says. “Ain’t no way around it. We tell them the truth.”

The truth is that I saw my best friend kill someone with no hesitation. The truth is that I stood still and did nothing while the life was knocked out of her. The truth is that Alex had just told me we had the kind of friendship that doesn’t end.

The truth is she had no way of knowing she was wrong.

61. JACK

I tell the truth. All of it.

Officer Nolan comes to my hospital room and writes until his pen is out of ink, holds up a finger to let me know he’ll be right back, and returns with one from the nurse’s desk, an advertisement for an antidepressant stamped across it.

He hasn’t said a word and I have no idea if he believes me or not, but when he asked me what happened I wanted to answer, and not just about tonight. Because maybe if I talk about Alex—the Alex from before I even knew her—she won’t be able to leave me yet. I’m keeping her alive with words, telling what happened years ago right up until now.

The town will explode, I know. Alex’s name will be everywhere, yearbooks cracked open so people can point and say they knew her. Her name and mine will be linked together forever, our names and faces the first thing that come to mind when the other is mentioned. And that’s exactly what I want.