There’s a sharp knock on the door. “Genevieve?” Rachael calls. “You okay in there?”
“Just a second.” Using the bathtub for support, I pull myself back to my feet and hurriedly splash some water on my face. I open the bathroom door. “I’m fine. I just haven’t been feeling very good today.”
Rachael touches my face. “You don’t look fine. Your skin is clammy and you’re shaking all over. Did something happen?”
You mean like did I burn down a restaurant?
“No. I think I just ate something bad.”
She frowns. “I ate the same food as you today. Maybe we should go to the urgent care.”
“Really.” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll be okay. I need to talk to my dad about something, though. Do you know if he’ll be home soon?” I fight to keep my voice level. As scared as I am, I can’t let this go on any longer. No matter what the consequences are, I need to tell the truth before things get any worse.
“He’s spending the night in Salt Lake City tonight, remember? He’s got that tumor removal surgery in the morning.”
Shit. I forgot about that. Dad is expecting to be in surgery at least ten hours, and then he’ll be in Salt Lake City for an extra day just in case there are immediate complications.
“He’ll be back on the fourth,” Rachael says. “But if you need him, you can call him.”
“That’s okay.” I need him, but I can’t do this over the phone. I say a silent apology to Brad Freeman as I shake my head. “It can wait.”
The next day is a haze. There’s not much going on with the touch trail, so Rachael tells me I should take the day off and rest. I assure her I’ll call her at work if I start to feel worse. Once she’s gone, I crawl back into bed and try to go back to sleep. It doesn’t happen, so instead I spend the day cataloguing all my sins: jealousy, selfishness, recklessness, cowardice, lying, more lying, still more lying. I think about every single thing I’ve done in the past few weeks and stick mental pins in all the places where I made terrible choices. It’s like a road map of destruction leading from my house to Tyrell James’s house to Wentzville all the way to Utah.
Elliott texts me at lunchtime but I can’t bring myself to read it. I can’t bring myself to do anything. I don’t shower. I don’t eat. I don’t even change out of my pajamas until right before Rachael gets home.
After I’m dressed, I venture just far enough outside to get the mail. As I head back to the house, I catch sight of the old man next door peeking out the blinds at me. I quickly drop my head to my chin, my hair falling forward to hide part of my face. I hurry back inside and toss the mail on the living room coffee table, my heart pounding erratically until I’m back in the safety of my room. It’s like I’ve reverted back to the girl I was when I first got here.
My eyes flick to my computer. Maybe I should respond to Brad Freeman’s message. I could tell him I got my memory back and that I’m going to tell everyone the truth, once I tell my parents and we figure out the best way to proceed.
I log on to my email account and start to reply to his message, but I’m only a few words in when it hits me that this might be a bad idea. How do I know this message is even from the real Brad Freeman? It could be from a reporter, or some inquisitive Kadet who doesn’t believe Freeman is guilty. Or even if it really is Freeman, what if he publishes my reply to him before I get a chance to talk to my dad?
Rachael knocks on the door to my bedroom. “Genevieve?”
Shutting my laptop, I grab a book and pretend to be reading. “Come in,” I call.
She ducks into the room and shuts the door behind her. “I figured since it was just us girls tonight that maybe we could do something fun. St. George is having a Fourth of July carnival this week. They’re supposed to have some awesome rides there.”
The thought of carnival rides—of even just leaving the house—almost sends me running to the bathroom again. “I’m not sure I’m up to it,” I tell her.
“You’re still feeling sick?” She tilts her head to the side, her brow furrowing. It’s easy to read her mind.
“Don’t call my dad. There’s nothing he can do from Salt Lake City and I don’t want to worry him for no reason,” I say. “I promise if I’m not feeling better by tomorrow I’ll go to the doctor.”
“All right,” she says. “But you should at least try to eat something. I’ll make you some chicken soup. How does that sound?”
My mom used to make me chicken soup when I was little—when I was sick, when I was cold, when I was sad. And somehow it made everything better. I don’t even know if it was the soup or the loving way she prepared it, humming to herself as she sliced and diced bits of chicken and carrots, holding me up so I could watch the golden liquid bubble and boil. All I know is that growing up sucks because chicken soup might taste good, but it won’t fix everything anymore.
“That would be cool,” I say finally. “Thanks.”
Rachael heads off to the kitchen and in a little while I join her. The soup is from a can, not fresh like my mom’s, but it still makes me miss being a little kid again.
After dinner, Rachael invites me to watch a movie with her. I sit through the first half of it to be polite and then tell her I’m going to crash. I crawl into bed and try to fall asleep, but after an hour of tossing and turning I flick my light back on and decide to read instead.
I’m eight chapters into the latest James Patterson thriller when my phone vibrates on my desk. I ignore it, but a few minutes later it vibrates again. I get up long enough to see the texts are from Elliott. I still can’t bring myself to read them, let alone respond. Whatever there was between Elliott and me is going to be gone as soon as he finds out the truth.
My stomach twists into knots when I imagine his dark eyes filling with disgust. I remember the day I met him, how upset he was about the park volunteer who didn’t show up. How is he going to feel about a girl who wrecked her boyfriend’s car, killed him, and then let someone else take the blame?
“Hey,” he says.
“Elliott?” Confused, I whirl around. My room is empty but I swear I heard his voice.
“Out here.” There’s a gentle tapping sound and I realize Elliott is standing outside my window. He gestures at the screen. “Can I come in?”
I glance toward my closed bedroom door and then toward the clock. It’s after ten-thirty. If Rachael hears me talking, she’s going to know I’m not on the phone.
I hold one finger to my lips and then quickly loosen the screws holding the screen on my window. Elliott vaults through the opening with catlike agility and lands on my floor without making a sound.
“What are you doing here?” I hiss.
“You weren’t at work today. I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He walks the perimeter of my bedroom, stopping to consider each of the photos of my dad and me on the wall. Then he sits on the edge of my bed and looks meaningfully at the spot next to him.
The image of the burning restaurant flickers at the edges of my mind. “I’m fine,” I say tersely, ignoring his unspoken suggestion to sit. “I was feeling sick.”
“Too sick to answer my texts?” With one finger, he traces the outside of a wild mustang on my quilt.
He’s got me there. Ignoring the texts of someone who is worried about you is a bitch thing to do. “I slept most of the day,” I mumble.
“Oh, good, then you’re probably not tired right now.”
“Not really,” I say. “But if Rachael catches you in here, we’re both going to be in trouble.”
Elliott grins. “Rachael loves me. She’d believe it when I explained how I only sneaked in to check on you.”
A rush of warmth courses through me at the thought. While I was ignoring his texts and hiding from the world, Elliott was thinking about me. Worrying about me. Part of me wants to go to him and wrap my arms around him. That feeling of comfort—of being connected to someone—is calling and I want it more than anything. I think about the way Elliott kissed me on the roof of the gym. It felt so freeing until guilt caught up with me, but only because kissing him was like an out-of-body experience. I would really like to be someone else right now, but it’s not fair to use Elliott to escape the things I’ve done.
“Okay, and now you’ve checked, so . . .”
He slouches forward slightly. “You want me to leave?”
“I, no . . . I don’t know.” Pain knifes through my chest. Of course I don’t want him to leave, but I know he’s going to leave eventually, so better now than later.
“I have a question,” he says.
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“Am I just, like, total friend-zone material to you?”
“Uh . . . what?”
“I know you said you weren’t ready, and I respect that. But I also know how you don’t like to hurt people’s feelings, so I’ve been wondering if maybe you just said that to be nice.”
“Elliott. It’s—”
“Not me, it’s you?” he asks, a twinge of bitterness creeping into his playful tone.
“No.” I sit next to him and punch him gently in the arm. “Well, it’s definitely me, but it isn’t that you’re friend-zone material. I mean, you know you’re hot, right?”
“Well, my dads are always saying I’m the handsome one in the family, but it’s always nice to hear a girl say it, too. Especially if she’s under fifty.”
“You’re hot,” I assure him. “And more importantly, you’ve been incredible to me. Supportive. Kind. You’ve shown me so many things since I got here. And all I ever did was help you carry some lumber. So I guess whatever this is between us, I don’t feel like I deserve it.” My voice cracks. “It doesn’t feel real to me.”
Elliott reaches for my hand. “The way I feel is real.” My fingers fall into the gaps between his. This small simple contact is an anchor, a tether to the real world, a way to keep my brain from spinning off into cyberspace where the hashtags are waiting for me.
“Don’t let go,” I whisper.
“I’m not letting go.” Maintaining his grip on my hand, he reclines back on my bed, pulling me with him. He curls onto his side. Gently, he adjusts my body until our chests are touching, our legs intertwined. “But why doesn’t this feel real to you?”
I consider his closeness, the constellation of freckles under his left eye, the way he smells, the angle of his jawline. Each of these tiny things is beautiful—its own kind of magic.
And I don’t deserve any of it.
The hashtags blink on in my head: #HeartlessBitch, #Coward, #Liar, #Killer. Finally I can’t take it anymore. “It doesn’t feel real because you don’t know anything about me,” I blurt out. “I’ve been lying to everyone all summer. You don’t even know my real name.” I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t bear to see the look on his face.
Elliott drags one fingertip down the scar on my cheekbone. “You’re wrong. I hope you’re not mad, but I know who you are, Genevieve. I know what you’ve been going through.”
My stomach lurches as my eyes flick open and I sit up. “What?” Elliott is the last person I expected to be following the Dallas Kade story. But he knows my name, so clearly he knows something. “How?”
“I overheard Rachael talking on the phone when you were in the hospital and they didn’t think you were going to live. She didn’t mention the accident to anyone, even when we could all tell something was wrong, so please don’t be mad at her,” Elliott says. “I was worried. So I eavesdropped. I heard her mention Dallas Kade and a car accident. I heard her telling your dad she loved him, and not to give up hope. Then I heard her breaking down into tears after she hung up.”
Hearing about the way Rachael supported my dad makes me feel like even more of a bitch for the way I treated both of them. But that’s not what hurts the most. Everything with Elliott makes sense now. “So I’m just a wounded bird to you or something? An innocent little animal who needs fixing?”
“What? No,” Elliott says. “That’s not what I mean.”
“So you weren’t attracted to me just because I needed . . . help?” It’s a struggle to force out the last word.
“Maybe initially. Is that so terrible? That I saw someone hurting and wanted to help? But since then, no. I like all of you, Genevieve. At least all the pieces you’ve been willing to share with me.”
My chest aches at the sound of my name—my real name—coming from his lips. My heart rises into my throat. “Are you still following the story?”
“No,” Elliott says. “I never had any interest in following the story. I was just curious to know more about you after we worked together at the park. I tend not to believe anything on the internet, so once I knew the basic facts I dropped it. It explained why you were so sad.”
“No, it didn’t,” I choke out. “You don’t know half of it.”
There’s a noise outside my door and I freeze. I lie back down on the bed and Elliott scoots close to me. I pull the quilt up until it covers all of us. It’s just Elliott, me, and a handful of horses hiding away in a cave made of fabric.
“So tell me,” he says.
I swallow back a sob. “I want to tell you—God, it would feel so good to finally let it out—but if I do, you’ll leave. Like my dad left, like Dallas left. Only this time it’ll be worse because I’ll deserve it.”
Elliott squeezes the fingers of the hand that is still twined through his. “I promise you, I won’t leave.”
“How can you make that kind of promise?” I whisper.
“Because I’m not perfect. I don’t expect my friends to be perfect either.”
“But what if I did something terrible?”
He pets my hair. “Maybe you did do something terrible, but that doesn’t make you terrible, okay? I’ve done bad things, but I don’t think I’m a bad person.”
It’s hard to wrap my head around Perfect Park Guide Elliott doing anything wrong. “Like what?” I murmur into his T-shirt.
He shakes his head. “You first. It’s clear whatever you’ve been hiding is eating away at you. You need to just let it all out, because otherwise you are going to destroy yourself.”
I blink rapidly. Is he right? I’ve been so obsessed with the consequences of telling the truth, I never stopped to think about the consequences of hiding it.
“I always thought of myself as a good person,” I say. “But now I know the truth.” My voice cracks. “I’m a liar, and a coward, and a killer.” And then, from the safe darkness beneath Grandma Larsen’s quilt, the whole story pours out of me in a flash flood of tears and shame.