Cracked Up To Be

JESSICA WELLINGTON. MISSING.



I rip the poster off the wall.



TWENTY-FOUR



"I'm sorry," Jake says.



I crumple the poster, walk over to the garbage and get rid of it. If I don't get rid of it, no one will, and if no one gets rid of it--



Once my hands are empty, I don't know what to do with them, so I snap. My fingers.



"Chris said she was your--your best..." He trails off like the gravity of the situation has hit him full on, like he knew Jessie, and it's funny watching that happen on his face. Better his than mine. "I'm so sorry."



I tilt my chin defiantly, still snapping.



"I bet you--" I have to wait three finger snaps before I can speak. "I--"



And then I'm walking down the hall, away from him, walking down the hall as fast as I can, as close as I can get to running without actually doing it. People pass me on their way to classes or to Becky, who's always been a kind of celebrity because everyone thinks she's the last person who saw Jessie alive and Jessie told her she was running away and everything and Chris is probably holding her through it, because that's traumatizing, you know, and I feel like I'm going to throw up.



I'm really going to throw up.



I push through the back doors, outside, at the same time Henley announces a special assembly in the auditorium. I gag on the fresh air and let the thought take over: Jessie's dead Jessie's dead she's dead she's dead. I end up on my knees, but I don't vomit. I dig my fingers into the pavement until the fingernail on the index finger of my right hand snaps back and there's red.



"Shit."



I suck on my finger and taste my own blood. It hurts. I want to scream.



Instead, I get calm.



Like, leaving-my-body calm.



I stand and brush bits of gravel and dirt off my skirt and knees at the same time the doors behind me open. It's Evan. His mouth is a terrible O and he makes these gasping noises, fish-out-of-water sounds. He's heard.



"Jessie's dead," I tell him.



He lets out this groan, curls his hands into fists and presses them into his eyes and sobs. The calm that's enveloped me never falters. I wonder if I should be worried about this.



I should be worried about this.



"I can't believe it." He wipes his eyes with the back of his sleeve. "I can't. I--"



"You didn't actually think she was coming back?" I always make it worse. "I called it ages ago. Dead."



He chokes. "Bitch."



"Fuck you."



"Fuck you." His neck and face turn red. "Show a little respect. She did more for you than you ever did for her."



"Fuck you."



We could probably do this all day. And Jessie's dead. I pinch my arm.



"I should get back in," he finally mutters, sniffing. His eyes well up again. The closer he gets to crying, the further I feel from it myself. "Chris will be looking for me. I should go back..." "What's stopping you?"



"Becky."



"What?"



"I can't stand being around her. She--" The tears spill over. He buries his head in his hands, and if it was anyone but me next to him he'd be comforted. "I mean, I don't like you, but if you told me you were running away, I'd stop you. I'd talk you out of it. Becky didn't even... I mean--"



"Bullshit," I mutter. "You would've driven me home, helped me pack and given me enough bus fare to get out of town."



"So that's what you think of me. You really think I--"



He stops. He cheats on his girlfriends. He knows what I think of him.



"Why did you come back?" I ask. "Why would you come back to this when everyone thinks it's you--that you made her run--"



"Because," he says. "It's what I deserve."



I swallow. "What did she say to you?"



"What are you talking about?" He stares at me. But he knows what I'm talking about. "Why are you asking me all these--I have to... I have to go inside."



He brushes past me.



"At the party," I say at his back. "She said something--she said she was going to say something you wouldn't like."



"You said you didn't remember the party," he says slowly.



"Like I'd tell you otherwise." I wrap my arms around myself. "I remember."



The parts I'd like to forget.



He faces me.



"She said she'd never forgive me and that she--" He chokes on the words. "That she hoped I was guilty for the rest of my life, but I didn't know she was planning to--I didn't--"



And he's crying again.



"Oh, give me a break, Evan," I snap, because I'm annoyed by the sound of it, the idea that he would make himself guilty because Jessie said she hoped he would be. She wasn't like that. "She wasn't that type of person and you know it. She would've forgiven you."



"But that's what she said and then she ran away so I would--"



"She was a good person."



"No," Evan says, crying even harder. "She said she would run away and she did it to get back at me--" Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. "But she wasn't supposed to--she said she was going to run away and now she's--"



"She didn't run away!"



His tears stop and my heart is going crazy in my chest because it wants out of me and I want out of me and I hate him, I hate Evan, I've always hated him because it's my fault he's ruined and it's all I think when I see him, it's my fault and I could fix him, but I don't want to give that to him because if I do, I have to tell and I've never told anyone it's my fault.



"She ran away," he says.



"She was in the woods. She was with--" I shake my head. I want it out of my head, but I don't want to say it. "No, you're right. She ran away--"



I start walking, put some distance between us. I don't even know where I'm going. He grabs me by the arm and pulls me back.



"Parker, who was she with?"



I shrug him off.



"Some guy. Leave me alone, Evan, I have to--"



"This was after Becky saw her? After she told Becky she was running away?"



"I have to go," I say, moving again, and he grabs me again. "I have things I need to--I have--"



"Parker."



I close my eyes.



"Yes."



"Who was she with?"



"I don't know."



"What happened?"



So I tell him.



"You didn't..." He stares at me like I'm some kind of monster.



My mouth is dry, parched. I feel slightly sick again but beyond that--nothing.



"Why?" he demands.



"I don't know. I don't--"



His hands come out and he shoves me hard and I fall back and hit the ground hard and I want to stay there, but he's on me, clawing at my arms and my shirt, anything he can get a hold on, trying to get me up again, and all I can think is yes and he's screaming at me, "You bitch, this is your fault, I thought it was me this whole time," and his fingernails dig into my skin and I keep saying, "I know, I know, I know," but I can't feel anything and then Chris is there and he's pushing Evan back, and he's screaming, too, "What the fuck are you doing, man? Get the fuck out of here!"



I scramble to my hands and knees, gravel digging into my skin. As soon as I'm on my feet, Evan makes another lunge at me, but Chris pushes him back.



"It was her! I thought it was me!" Evan's voice is hoarse. "It was her--"



"Get the fuck out of here, Evan!"



Chris gives Evan one last shove and Evan swears and stalks across the parking lot. There are angry red fingernail scratches up and down my arms, a little blood here and there. But it feels like nothing. Chris turns to me, furious.



"What did you say to him?" he says. "What the fuck did you say to him?"



"Chris," Becky says, "don't--"



And then Jake asks if I'm okay, but I shrug, shrug, shrug them all off. This is so stupid.



"Get away from me."



This is so stupid. I have plans and I'm not letting this ruin them because Jessie's been dead forever and I'm still alive and I still have things to do.



I head back inside, straight for my locker.



I wait for the JD to settle before I exit the stall. I wait until I know I'm good and wasted and everyone would know it to look at me, just like old times, and I walk unsteadily across the washroom floor and I fumble with the door for a minute before I pull it open and I step into the hall and crash into someone.



I hope it's Grey.



Or Henley.



TWENTY-FIVE



Jack Daniel's is a more unsavory color coming up than going down--it always is-- and I'm hunched over a toilet I don't recognize, puking my guts out.



I don't know where I am.



I hope I'm so wasted I can't tell I'm actually at home. After I'm done puking--it feels like forever--I float to my feet and a pair of hands guides me to a bed that swallows me alive. It's not my bed. I'm definitely not at home.



Maybe the hospital?



I inch my eyes open and the room goes in and out of focus. I catch a glimpse of a photo on the wall I've seen before. I'm at Chris's house. Saved again. But I don't want to be saved. I try to say it, but I can't get the words out of my mouth, only garbled sound. Someone says something to me in a soothing tone and I mumble something back, but I don't know what I'm saying, hearing, anything.



I don't know how to live with myself.



Even before Jessie disappeared, I never understood how I was supposed to work as a person or how I was supposed to work with other people. Something was really wrong with me, like I felt wrong all the time. I longed for some kind of symmetry, a balance. I chose perfection. Opposite of wrong. Right. Perfect. Good.



I get caught up in outcomes. I convince myself they're truths. No one will notice how wrong you are if everything you do ends up right. The rest becomes incidental. So incidental that, after a while, you forget. Maybe you are perfect. Good. It must be true. Who can argue with results? You're not so wrong after all. So you buy into it and you go crazy maintaining it. Except it creeps up on you sometimes, that you're not right. Imperfect. Bad. So you snap your fingers and it goes away.