I hadn’t heard from Ashley since the text messages we’d exchanged during my visit with Eden. I’d thought about calling her, but I wasn’t sure what I would say. Especially once I knew that Brother Lloyd had talked about me to his congregation. And if her little sister was part of the crowd that had decided to hate me, I worried she had, too.
I found out soon enough.
Miles and I had driven to the next town over after school one day. If we were going to prom, we both needed something to wear. So we’d made our way to one of the strip malls that had, on one end, a place where Miles could rent a tux with the money his grandmother had excitedly given him when she found out he was taking “such a nice girl” to prom. On the other end, there was a consignment shop where I hoped I’d find an affordable dress that I could sell back in a couple of weeks.
Mom didn’t have the money to buy me a new dress, not even from one of the department stores, and I was trying to save every penny I could for my move to Los Angeles. But buying used clothing isn’t really the shameful thing in Virgil County that it is elsewhere. A lot of girls at VCHS would be getting their dresses secondhand. Being poor—or at least on the very bottom of lower middle class—was kind of the norm. In fact, you were more likely to be teased if it appeared as though you’d spent too much money.
Anyway, I chose a spot in the middle of the parking lot so we could each go to our separate destinations and reconvene once we’d finished shopping.
“Meet at the pizza place in two hours?” I asked, pointing at the restaurant roughly in the middle of the strip.
He raised one thick eyebrow. “Two hours?”
“Listen,” I said. “You’re going to walk in, probably get measured, and try on a couple of tuxes that will all look the same and be done with it. I have way more options to deal with. And since I’m shopping secondhand, the sizing is a little less straightforward. You’ve got it easy. I need two hours. Which, really, all things considered, isn’t that much. Oh my God, if Sarah was here …” I trailed off as that old, familiar pain seized my chest.
Sarah would have loved shopping for prom. Not just for her dress but mine, too. She would have dragged me to every store within an hour’s drive. She would have taken pictures and notes on her phone so we could compare and make the perfect choice. It would’ve involved weeks of shopping.
But instead, it was just going to be me, shopping in one store, without her.
Miles covered my hand with his own and squeezed, anchoring me the way he always did. “Okay. Two hours.” He paused. “I have a question, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Should we … Are we going to coordinate?” he asked, his words slipping out in a quiet slur. “You know. Colors.”
“You mean, like … match? Your tie or whatever matching my dress?”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
“Do we have to?”
“I don’t care if you don’t.”
“Hmm. Well, I say we pick what we like, and if we end up clashing, we’ll revel in it.”
Miles gave a lazy smile. “Let’s both pick ridiculously bright colors.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “We can blind all of our classmates.”
“Well, Denny has always said he needed more blind friends.”
We both laughed before sliding out of my truck. I’d worried that, now that he knew about my asexuality, things would be awkward between us. But, if anything, it was the opposite. I felt more at ease with Miles than ever. The last secret I kept from him had been revealed and, while I still didn’t know where that left us in terms of our feelings for each other, things were comfortable. Easy.
Unless I brought up the letters, of course.
I didn’t, though. Not that day.
He gave me a quick wave before slumping off to the other end of the parking lot. I turned and started toward the consignment shop, but I’d only gone past two rows of cars when I saw Ashley’s van parked in a handicapped spot. And there was Ashley, with her husband, loading shopping bags into the back.
I ducked my head and tried to walk past as quickly as I could, but of course it couldn’t be that easy.
“Hey, Ash,” I heard Logan say before I’d managed to slip by. “I think that’s Lee over there.”
Ashley looked over her shoulder, her eyes meeting directly with mine. She was in her power chair with Miriam on her lap. She looked away from me and passed Miriam to Logan. “Will you put her in the car seat for me, babe? I’ll only be a minute.”
Once he’d taken Miriam, Ashley turned and began moving toward me. I stopped a few feet away, lingering on the sidewalk just across from the spot where Ashley had parked. I couldn’t move, even though all I wanted at that moment was to run to the consignment shop and hide behind clothing racks. Ashley’s stare had pinned me in place.
She maneuvered her chair up the small curb and stopped when we were only a few feet apart. At first, she said nothing. I guess she must’ve been waiting for me to speak. We both knew I owed her an explanation. But my mouth felt dry and my tongue was heavy. After nearly a minute, all I could manage was a quiet, “Hey.”
“Hi,” she replied, her tone terse. After another pause, she said, “What’s wrong with you, Lee?”
“Ashley—”
“I know what you’ve been saying … about Sarah,” she said. “Brother Lloyd told us. It’s all anyone in my church can talk about. They keep asking me why my friend would tell these kind of lies. And I don’t know what to tell them because I have no idea.”
“It’s not a lie,” I said. “I’m sorry, Ashley. I should’ve told you, I know, but the necklace wasn’t—”
“Stop.” She held out her hand, palm facing me. “Just stop. I can’t believe you, Lee. I thought you wanted to tell the truth. I thought that was why you had me write that letter.”
“That is why,” I said. “I want to tell the truth and this—about Sarah. It’s the truth. It’s the whole reason I decided to do this.”
“It is not the truth,” she argued. “It can’t be. I heard her. I was outside the bathroom and I heard her.”
I shook my head, but Ashley kept going.
“If it really wasn’t her necklace—if she really didn’t talk to him—you would have told everyone sooner. You would have told me sooner. I thought we were friends, Lee. I thought of you like my family.”
“We are friends, Ashley.”
“We’re not.” And I could see tears in her eyes then. She wasn’t just mad. She was hurt. Really hurt. Ashley wasn’t the one of us who cried. Me, sure. Eden too, sometimes. Even Miles and Denny had shed a few tears since the shooting. But never Ashley. She was the one who held us when we cried. Who comforted us when we were hurt. Who protected us from those who might hurt us in the first place.
But I was the one making her cry now. Just one more thing to feel guilty about, I guess.
She ran a hand across her face, pushing the small salty drops off her cheeks. “If we were friends, you wouldn’t have made me out to be a liar.”
“I wasn’t trying to make you a liar,” I said. “Until I read your letter, I had no idea you were the one who started the rumor. If I had, I would have said something to you first. But by then, I’d already told Sarah’s parents. I’m sorry, Ashley. I never meant to put you in the middle of this, but … but you’re the one who told everyone. I didn’t say anything sooner, so it’s my fault, too. But—”
“I heard her,” she said again. “I heard what she said. It was Sarah’s necklace and she stood up to him and hearing that … hearing her changed my life. It gave me faith and strength that I needed. And I told everyone because it was so … it meant so much to me. And if it didn’t happen—if it wasn’t her—then I don’t know what’s real and I …” She trailed off as she tried to wipe her face again, but there were far too many tears now. They refused to be pushed aside and continued pouring down her cheeks.
I stepped forward, instinctively going to hug her, but she moved her chair back before I could get any closer.
“I know what I heard was real,” she said. “It has to be. Because if it’s not, then I’m a liar. And I’m not a liar. I’m not a bad person.”
“Of course you’re not. I never said you were.”
“In your version of the story I am,” she said. “According to you, I told everyone a lie about Sarah.”
“Technically, you did,” I said. “I know you didn’t mean to, but, Ashley, I was with her. I was the one holding her hand when she died. It didn’t happen. Not the way you remember. I’m sorry.”
I’d never wanted her to feel guilty, even though I did. It had been a mistake. A big one, yes, but a mistake made by a traumatized seventeen-year-old girl. “I should’ve talked to you as soon as I read your letter. I’m sorry. Let’s just … let’s talk about this. I—”
But she turned her chair and moved back toward the curb without a good-bye. Or even, as maybe would have been more appropriate, a “go to hell.”
I let her go without calling after her. I knew it wouldn’t have done any good. But I stood there, in the same spot, until long after I saw her van leave the parking lot.
By the time I was able to move again, I really wasn’t in the mood to shop for a dress. I only tried on a couple and took the first one that fit, barely even taking note of what it looked like. I ended up waiting for Miles at the pizza place a good while before we were supposed to meet, and when he showed up, having stopped by the bookstore after getting his tux fitted, he was disappointed to find that I hadn’t followed through with our plans to wear the brightest colors we could find.
“It’s black,” he said, peeking into my bag. “Your dress.”
“Oh … yeah. Sorry. I forgot.”
“It’s cool,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll look great.”
“What color tie or vest or whatever did you get?”
The right corner of his mouth quirked upward. “It’ll be a surprise,” he said. After a second, though, his half smile faded away. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I chewed my bottom lip. “I’m fine.”
He just tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at me. He wasn’t buying it. I don’t think I’d expected him to.
“It’s just …” I dipped a breadstick into the small container of marinara sauce we were sharing. I’d ordered us food while I was waiting for him to get to the pizza place. “I ran into Ashley. In the parking lot.”
“Oh.”
I didn’t have to say anything else. He knew exactly what seeing her would have meant. And based on my demeanor in that moment, he could probably have guessed how the conversation had gone. I appreciated that he didn’t push for details. Instead, he just gave me some cash for his half of the dinner bill and offered to carry the bag with my prom dress out to the truck for me.
We drove back to Virgil County in silence, but at some point along the way, his hand had moved to cover mine as it rested on the stick shift. And I didn’t pull away.