Secrets. He knew how to reel them out, how to hook you with them. And so he must have known how to hold them.
What I thought I knew about Caleb: the books he read and loved. The things he didn’t want me to see, and why he didn’t want me to see them (college letters, an uncertain future between us). What he really didn’t want me to see: something deeper, darker, more personal. The simmering of a betrayal.
Max had already uncovered the spot between the mattress and the box spring. I’d gone through his drawers, his closet, the books knocked off the shelves. But now I find myself on my hands and knees, my face pressed close to the carpet, the manufactured fibers scratching at my cheek, looking for more. Looking for what else Caleb wanted to keep hidden.
There’s an indentation in the carpet, about ten inches from the foot of the bed, as if the entire bed has been shifted just slightly to the left recently. It could be from Max tearing through Caleb’s things, or before. Impossible to tell now, with the room out of order, the perspective shifted.
The first thing I do is check for any other place he might have stashed money, thinking this might be where he’d hidden Max’s, if he’d truly taken it. My hands brush against the base of the box spring, the metal bed frame, but there’s nothing else. No taped envelope, no packet of cash. Now that he was eighteen, maybe he finally opened that bank account after all.
There’s a duffel bag, big and bulky, taking up most of the floor beneath his bed. I angle it out, dragging the bag across the carpet, and it snags on a metal foot of the bed. This is his gym bag, for his lacrosse gear; he’d swing it up and over his back, wearing the strap across his chest.
But unzipping the bag, the first thing I see are the long, slender ski poles, the goggles, the hard immobile boots that he’d attach to his skis. As if he stored all his off-season gear in one location. Anything worth something, all stashed under the bed until winter.
I leave the ski poles inside, as they span the length of the bag, giving it shape, along with his lacrosse stick. The goggles, I hold up to the window, though, watch as they color everything red, dulling the glare.
I slip them over my eyes and stare at my hands. They look like they belong to someone else, in another time and place.
Caleb let me borrow these once, during a group outing back in January, seasons before our hiking trip. There had been a picture of this day on the wall as well. A snowy background, the group of us bundled up, all smiles.
My parents made Julian come with us. Not that I’d asked if I could go. Not that I thought I needed to. I’d told them about the trip, and they’d said, “Who else will be there?”
I said, “Hailey, Sophie, Max, Caleb.”
I know now I should’ve led with Caleb. By listing him last, it made it seem like I had something to hide. Something that I was keeping from them, that they should not trust.
“If your brother goes,” was their response. A freaking double standard if I’d ever heard one. Julian had gone skiing with his friends the year before. But Julian, of course, was trustworthy. And I’d just been caught with Caleb in my room when Caleb was not supposed to be in my room. We were only doing homework. And okay, his hand was on the small of my back, under my shirt, but still. Homework. The mortification still burned. The lack of trust burned even more. Apparently, I was the only one who required a chaperone.
Julian had had plenty of girlfriends, I had learned from being at the same school. I assumed he had just not been bold enough to sneak them into his room. Or to tell our parents about them.
Julian acted like being required to accompany us on our ski trip wasn’t a big deal. He even drove. Pretended he’d been meaning to hit the slopes that weekend anyway, and if he knew I was interested, he would’ve gone sooner with me. We picked up Hailey on the way, but Caleb drove Max and Sophie. The whole thing felt like a chaperoned date, one that cut both ways. Hailey’s crush on my brother had only grown over the years, and there were few thoughts that weirded me out more than the idea of Hailey and my brother together.
I had not banned her from her attempts, though I did beg her not to share any details. Ever. Ever, ever, ever.
Thankfully, Julian didn’t seem super interested. But I think it weirded him out even more, to realize that Hailey was my age, and I was dating someone he knew, was friends with some of his friends too, and suddenly our worlds were interlocked, overlapping, with no defined borders or protocols.
Later, at the resort, Max, Julian, and I picked up our rentals, and met up with Caleb, Hailey, and Sophie, who had their own gear, in the locker area. Caleb took one look at the goggles I was adjusting and frowned. “Those are crap. You’re going to break your nose if you can’t get them fitted right.”
“Unfortunate, since I can’t get them fitted right,” I said.
He slid his off his head, swapped with me. He used my crappy rentals, which fit to his head just fine.
“Thank you,” I said, kissing his cheek. I lowered his goggles over my eyes, and the world filtered to a duller red.
He grinned. “I happen to like your nose.”
Hailey and I were testing out the easier slopes first. Me, because I liked to work my way up, out of habit. Her, because she was terrible. But she was terrible in an adorable way. Sliding down on her butt while yelling a string of ohcrapohcrapohcrap. Getting up, making her way slowly over to the lift again. Her skis interlocking on the next try, sending her skidding. I thought she was beyond lucky that she had never seriously injured herself. I wished I could fail as spectacularly.
Even Julian seemed to watch quizzically. Captivated by the mess, and the wonder, that was Hailey Martinez.
I was waiting for Hailey at the bottom of a run, because she’d gotten knocked over near the start, and was currently working through the slow process of righting herself. Julian was watching her and not me; he had been accompanying us on our runs, like he’d been put in charge as babysitter by our parents.
I caught sight of Caleb making his way toward the lift from the other direction, and I raised my hand, about to shout his name—and then froze. A girl had pulled up beside him, and I could tell from his body language, even from the distance, that he knew her. That he liked her. And what wasn’t to like? She had a long blond braid trailing down her back, fitted white and red snow gear, a confidence in her stance. And it was obvious she could ski better than me.
I heard him laugh. I looked behind me to see if anyone else noticed, but Julian was still keeping his eye on Hailey. I turned back around just in time to see Caleb with his arms around the girl, her face pressed up against his, everything monochrome and buffered through the goggles.
But then I second-guessed myself. Because the world was the wrong color, and the edges dulled, sunlight and ultraviolet rays filtered, and reality was skewed. I looked again, and he was skiing away. Like the last second hadn’t happened.
Later, back in the locker room, when I was taking off my gear and handed him back his goggles, he said, “Go ahead, Jessa. You can ask me.”
“Ask you what?”
He looked at me, widened his eyes. “What I know you’re wondering.”
Had he seen me there, watching them? Before, or after? He hadn’t acknowledged me standing there, one way or the other. “Okay,” I said. “Who was that?”
“Ashlyn Patterson. We went to sleepaway camp together a few years ago.”
“You went to sleepaway camp?”
He smiled, amused this was my biggest take-away.
“I did. And, before you ask, yes, she was my girlfriend.”
I remembered his laughter, the way her face was pressed against his as they hugged, and I felt something twist inside. “Is she confused about whether that position is still available?”
He laughed out loud this time, peeling off his boots. He leaned closer. “Not anymore,” he said. Then he kissed me quickly on the lips as we sat beside each other on the wooden bench.
“Hey,” he said, when we stood in our regular shoes, carrying the remaining gear back to the cars. “Thanks for not freaking out.”
I bristled, wondering what he really thought of me. Or if it was because he saw himself as older, somehow more mature. That he could kiss an ex-girlfriend on the cheek in greeting, calmly express his lack of availability, wish her well, see me watching and not saying anything—but know I’d be worried anyway. I told Hailey about it on the walk back to our car as they drove away, lingering on his comment.
“Thank God,” she said, “the spell is finally broken.” I remembered her holding an imaginary wand, asking for her friend back.
She cut off my look by circling her fingers around my wrist. “Look,” she said, “I’m just saying, it’s normal to see the good and the bad, you know? It’s not all sunshine forever.”
I nodded. Like I had finally removed the filter from my eyes. Seeing all the sides of Caleb, along with his past, and finding a way to work with it all together.
On the drive home, I kept replaying the image, filtered through red. The rush of snow and adrenaline. The curiosity making me pause and look again.
“Like, what do you even do at sleepaway camp?” I asked, staring out the window.
Hailey erupted in laughter. “Oh my God. You’re doing it. You’re totally freaking out.”
“About what?” Julian asked.
Hailey did not catch the look I gave her in the rearview mirror. The one that said My brother does not need to know any of this, oh God, please don’t. But Hailey was up for any sort of conversation with Julian, even one that included me and my boyfriend.
“Caleb ran into his ex on the slopes. Some girl from sleepaway camp.”
Julian frowned, cutting his eyes to me. “That so?” he asked.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Hailey, get with the eye-signal program already, huh?”
She smiled back at me. “Let’s see, sleepaway camp. They hike,” she said, holding up a finger. “And swim in lakes. And sleep in tents or cabins. And get generally filthy. And have subpar water pressure and soap. Everyone’s kind of gross. I’m surprised they were even able to recognize each other.”
I laughed, and even Julian smiled. “Do you want me to drop you home, or are you coming back to our place, Hailey?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes, and didn’t need to turn around to imagine the glow of her expression. The way he’d spoken just to her, using her name, smiling at her joke. “Your place, please,” she said, not even trying to mask the excitement in her voice.
Now, I think back to that letter I found in his book, wondering if it could’ve come from her. This Ashlyn Patterson. And if so, why Caleb kept it, if he truly didn’t care anymore.