Twelve
SENIOR YEAR
Meredith and Ben are still heavy on my mind when I get down to the football field the next afternoon. Joel is already sitting toward the top of the bleachers. I hope he doesn’t ask for details on why I had to bail yesterday. I’m also hoping he has a plan for how to start this conversation, because I’m drawing a total blank.
“Hey,” I say as I slip into the row of metal seats. He’s staring out at the field where practice is in session with a sad, far-off look in his eyes. When I sit down, he doesn’t say anything.
Joel quit the team after last season. He’d told me he planned to, but I never thought he’d actually go through with it. Football was something he loved and was genuinely good at. And from the look on his face, it’s something he regrets giving up.
“Do you miss playing?”
He jumps a little, like I’ve caught him red-handed, then rubs the knee of his jeans and shakes his head. “Nah.” He glances up, and even though I’m pretty sure my expression is neutral, he backpedals. “Okay, sometimes. But quitting was the right thing to do.”
It seems more like he’s parroting something that was told to him rather than stating his convictions. Especially when his eyes dart back to the field, and I catch a glimpse of that same wistfulness before he says, “Do you miss cheering?”
“Yes and no. I miss the games. I miss being in the center of everything. I miss being part of a team. But I don’t miss feeling like I was under a microscope all the time.”
And I’m not sure I even knew I felt that way until right now.
“I hear you. Sometimes you’re so busy trying to keep everyone else happy that you end up making yourself miserable in the process.” He takes one last look out at the field before sitting straighter and flipping his preoccupied expression off like a light switch. “So I thought you’d chickened out when you didn’t show yesterday.”
“Chickened out? Should I be scared to have this conversation?” I am, but I don’t want him to know that. Of course, if the way I’m perched on the bleacher like I might take flight at any second is an indication, he can already tell.
“No, definitely not. I’m glad we’re finally going to get it all out there. This should’ve happened a long time ago.”
“Then why didn’t it?”
“Might have had something to do with the fact that you said you were done with me.”
“Oh, that.” We both chuckle nervously, and I sneak a sideways glance at him. “So all joking aside. What happened that night?”
Joel draws a breath and looks at the ground. “I really don’t know, Mace. I guess I just . . . lost my nerve.”
“About taking me to the dance?”
“Not so much taking you as going, period.” He picks at the fraying denim near his knee again. “I had a lot going on last year, things that I never talked to anyone about. No one here trusted me, my dad was gone, my mom had her hands full with work and my brothers, and I was basically the default father in the house. It was a lot of pressure. And I guess I did a pretty shitty job of dealing with it.”
“I get all that, Joel.” I stop, trying to figure out how to forgive him without excusing what he did. “But I bent over backward trying to prove to you that some people didn’t care what school you came from or what team you used to play for. I always had your back. And you slapped me in the face for it.”
More than that, he made a fool out of me. Betrayed my trust. The hurt has lingered like a phantom limb ever since.
“You’re right. And you have no idea how sorry I am for that. But if you think it didn’t hurt me that you turned on me so fast, you’re wrong.”
“Turned on you? The night started with you pulling a disappearing act and ended with Meredith’s house almost burning down. How was I supposed to react?”
Joel’s voice sharpens. “You really think I’d do something that petty? I mean, I know everyone else believes it, but really think about it, Mace. What the hell does it prove to destroy your homecoming float? How does it make a shit ton of sense to put on some douche bag display of loyalty to Mortonville when I still had to show my face here for the next two years?”
His anger is so real and his response is so logical that I don’t even know what to say. It would be frightening to think that anyone could lie this convincingly.
“Who else could’ve done it?” I ask softly.
Joel rubs at his eyebrow, looking both agitated and tired. His tone softens. “I honestly can’t tell you.”
“Okay. Then maybe you can tell me this.” I swallow over the sudden dryness in my throat, debating whether or not I want to know the answer to my next question right up until it leaves my mouth: “Did I tell you where the float was hidden?” Joel looks at me like I’ve grown a third eye, so I elaborate. “In the parking lot at the slushie stand that night. I was . . . pretty drunk.”
To my surprise, Joel laughs. “So was I. You could’ve told me where to find the Holy Grail, for all I know.”
“Oh.”
I don’t know what else to say. I feel like I should be relieved. Yet I’m not. Because even though my memories of that night are hazy, the feeling of dread that I woke up with had little to do with a hangover. The feeling that I said something I shouldn’t have—to someone I shouldn’t have—has been following me like a shadow ever since.
“You look upset,” Joel says.
“I guess I’m disappointed that I still don’t know who set the fire.”
To my own ears, the words sound uncertain. But Joel’s whole face changes. It’s like I lifted a year’s worth of storm clouds off his shoulders, and the smile that lights his face is brighter than a summer sky.
“You believe me, then?”
After a moment, I say, “If Meredith does, then why shouldn’t I?”
Joel must not realize the question isn’t entirely rhetorical because he looks positively giddy. He must know it too, because he clears his throat and takes his cell phone from his pocket. “Well, I can’t give you any leads on the fire, but there’s at least one mystery I can solve for you.” He taps the screen of his phone a few times, and the next thing I know, I’m looking once again at the picture of him, me, and Ben from junior year.
“You posted that?” Blood starts to pound in my ears. What else is he going to confess to about the night that picture went online?
“Guilty as charged.”
“But why?”
Joel flips the phone between his hands. “Because I know you’re into pictures, and I feel awful about the way things happened. I was a huge jerk to you, and you didn’t deserve it. I wanted to make things right. And I thought it would help if I reminded you that things were good once.”
Did you also think it would help to ambush me on a dark football field and kiss me until I couldn’t remember my own name?
I don’t ask the question out loud. If he felt what I felt, why should I have to pull a confession out of him?
Simple. Because he either didn’t do it . . . or he didn’t feel it.
Joel fidgets under my expectant stare. “I’ll delete it, though,” he continues. “If it bothers you.”
I sit on my hands, trying not to look disappointed. “I don’t think it bothers me as much as it bothers the other person in the picture.”
“Oh.” Joel stays quiet for a few beats, turning his phone over in his hand. “Guess I didn’t appeal to Ben’s nostalgic side?”
“Not exactly.”
“I won’t do it again. I can’t keep up with all these people trying to make it look like their lives are perfect, anyway.”
I’m taken aback by his comment. “That’s not what the site’s about at all. People use it to share pieces of their lives. It’s a way to capture memories, not a competition.”
“If that’s the real reason people use it, then you and Jadie shouldn’t need to moderate the content and the comments. Right?” He taps his temple. “Memories are up here.” Now he taps his phone. “Putting them here is about other people’s reactions to them.” I don’t get a chance to argue before he pulls up something else on the screen of his cell. “But I do have one more picture to show you.”
He holds up the phone. When I squint against the afternoon brightness, he hands it to me instead. I’m totally confused to find myself looking at a picture of a silver heart-shaped necklace in the palm of what I’m assuming is Joel’s hand. My own hand goes instinctively to my neck, even though the locket I used to wear, so similar to the one in the photo, is long gone.
This picture isn’t posted to the RF page. It’s in his photo gallery. And there’s a simple, one-word caption scrawled in editing pen at the bottom: Homecoming?
When I look up, the necklace from the picture is dangling over the back of Joel’s hand. And while the curve of his mouth says he’s super-pleased with himself for pulling this off, the slight bounce of his foot against the concrete gives away his uncertainty.
My hand lingers at my collarbone as my eyes drop to the necklace. “Is that for me?”
Commence the asking of dumb, super-obvious questions.
“It’s for you.” He chuckles and lays the pendant in my hand. “I noticed you never got another one after what happened last year. That day that I ran into you and Ben at the—”
“I remember,” I say.
It’s the fact that he remembers that has me totally confounded.