Absent

19: SECRET GIRLFRIEND

I STAY IN KELSEY FOR THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON. WES AND I arrive late in the art room to stunned silence from our classmates. No whispers, though, no laughs. I almost smile in gratitude. We sit at our usual opposite tables, not looking at each other, but after class, he falls in step with me again, walking me all the way to physics, the halls around us holding their breath.

He doesn’t mention the prom until just before we part ways, when he runs a hand through his shaggy hair and says, “I seem to remember you saying that I don’t have to get a corsage.”

“No corsage necessary. And,” I think quickly, “you don’t have to pick me up. We can meet here at school. In the hall by that sheet for the mural.”

“No meeting parents either?” He grins. “I didn’t realize I was going to get lucky.” The grin disappears as he hears his own words. “Oh. I mean . . . I didn’t mean—”

I laugh until the embarrassment on his face becomes laughter, too.

“So, prom?” he says.

“So, prom,” I agree, the words—no less who I am, no less the person I’m speaking them to—surreal.

I sit through physics in a daze. But beneath the disbelief is a little green sprout of happiness, like the ivy in the crevice of the roof ledge. But with it comes another feeling: regret as wide and deep as those first days after my death. What if I hadn’t wasted my time—myself—on a guy who was only around for kisses in the trees? Would I have noticed the crooked-smiled burner who wanted to know me better? What if I hadn’t pushed him away with my nicknames and judgments? Who would he have turned out to be? Who would I have been?

It’s the memory of Lucas and the burner girl that finally pierces my fog. When the last bell rings, I walk Kelsey out to the road and then descend from my death spot to Mr. Fisk’s classroom, where I stutter through the strange story of Lucas and the burner girl in the bathroom to the increasingly appalled expression on Evan’s face.

“We have to tell Brooke,” Evan says. “Where do you think she is? Maybe the gym? The soccer field?”

“I don’t think we should say anything,” I protest, well aware of all the other secrets I’ve been keeping from Evan, too. “Brooke already hates Lucas. This will just make it worse.”

“But what if he does it again? What if she walks in on it? If he’s doing it on her death spot, it’s only a matter of time before she does.”

And he’s right, I know, but just when I gather the words to argue some more anyway, a voice behind us says, “Save your ethical debate.”

The two of us turn to find Brooke in the doorway.

“I already walked in on him,” she says.

“You saw? You mean, Lucas and—”

“His latest disposable girl?” She makes an angry, ugly scoffing sound. “Yeah, I saw.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Don’t you apologize for Lucas Hayes. And”—she pauses as if deciding something—“don’t be angry at me.” Her mouth twists. “Or, on second thought, be angry at me. I would.”

I shake my head. “Why would I be angry at you?”

“Because.” Brooke’s gaze is so level and still, it’s almost like she’s forcing herself to meet my eyes. “Because I should have told you a long time ago.”

“Told me what?”

She bites her lip. Unbites. “About Lucas Hayes and me.”

“I don’t understand,” I say.

But this is a lie. I do understand. I’ve understood since I saw Lucas with the burner girl. I’ve understood from the moment he pointed to Brooke’s death spot and asked her to lie down. Maybe part of me understood before that. The meeting with Heath. The flooding of Brooke’s bathroom. Don’t say that, Lucas had said to me in the burners’ circle when I’d told him he’d practically saved a girl’s life. Because I didn’t save her, he’d said.

“You were together,” I say slowly.

Brooke nods, her face coldly pretty, the way sharp things are, glittering, daring you to touch them. “We met up. Like you. We hooked up. Like you. If anyone else was around, he would ignore me. Like you.”

Like you, her words whisper in my mind. Like you. “How long?” I say, and my voice sounds like an echo in my ears.

“From the end of junior year until the day I died. He didn’t want anyone to know, though, and so no one did. I can keep a secret.” Her mouth quirks. “Like you.”

“And that day? The day you died?” Evan asks.

“It was Lucas, wasn’t it?” I say, thinking of the conversation I overheard between him and Heath in the bathroom. “He was the one who bought the cocaine. Who wanted to use it.”

“Did he get you to try it, too?” she asks.

“No.”

“I’m surprised. But it was probably just a matter of time. He has a real nose for it, you know?” She wraps her ponytail around and around her hand, then unwraps it. Wraps it and unwraps it, like a boxer wrapping his fists. “I’ll be honest. He didn’t have to convince me much. I wanted to try it. We did it a couple of times together, after school, one weekend. That afternoon, we were supposed to go to his house because his mom was at work. But then Bosworth was monitoring the parking lot, so we couldn’t get out, and who cares anyway, right? We’d just do it there in the bathroom and find our way off campus once Bosworth left.” She pulls her ponytail across her face, hiding the crumple of her mouth and chin. “He handed it to me, you know that? Said, You first. And maybe something was wrong with it. Maybe something was wrong with me. I don’t know, but it started to burn. My whole brain was burning. My eyes.” She closes her eyes and exhales a shuddering breath. “And he watched it happen. He stood there staring while I died.”

“And, when they found you, he said he didn’t know you.” I say the rest for her, the story everyone at the school knows. “He said he’d been walking by and heard a noise, like someone had fallen, and he’d gone in and found you on the floor.”

“Innocent bystander,” she says, eyes narrowing. “Big hero. Who wouldn’t believe him? Everyone knew the kind of girl I was. No one even questioned it.”

“He must have been scared,” Evan says, “to lie like that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say, and I’m surprised at the vehemence in my voice. “It doesn’t matter if he was scared or in trouble or what. He should have said that he was there with her. He should have said that they were there together. He shouldn’t have said he didn’t know her, that she was just some girl.”