They Wish They Were Us Read online

  We were desperate to recall the details of her, but we were also desperate to move on. The forgetting was nice sometimes, because we started laughing again, too, first by accident at stupid reality TV shows, then on purpose, until our stomachs ached.

  That was the odd summer, the black mark on our perfect records, the one three-month span we just had to push through so everything would be all right when it came time for college applications. Just get through this now, everyone said, and you will be fine.

  And so, I had been given the summer off for the first time in my life. No science camp, no job tutoring middle schoolers, no girls in STEM program at the community college. At the advice of Headmaster Weingarten, Mom and Dad just let me be, and that is how I learned what boredom was, and how it mixed so devilishly with grief. Together, they became a thick, silky slime that was only remedied, it seemed, by vodka cut with splashes of flavored fizzy water, and joints as thick as my pinky finger, rolled by random Cartwright boys who claimed to have the dankest shit in the tristate area. What an enormous relief to realize that everyone else’s parents had also agreed to this non-treatment of trauma.

  Together the six of us were quarantined to the beaches of Gold Coast. Only Henry had a job, being a stringer for the Gold Coast Gazette. Instead we felt like normal kids, riding bikes over rocky gravel and searching for horseshoe crabs stranded on the sand. We would beat this infectious disease, everyone decided, and by September we would return to Gold Coast Prep bright-eyed and ready to ace our AP classes. And even though we had suffered such a loss—What a tragedy! What a terrible, terrible horror!—this was all we needed. One summer of dicking around with no consequences and no stress.

  Just get it out of your system, Nikki’s mom said to her when she finally returned from Singapore. Then we would be back on track and ready to grab the futures that dangled in front of us. All of us but Shaila.

  Adam had been in London that summer, studying at the National Theatre with some Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright I’d never heard of, but he came home for a week before leaving for Brown. He said I was his first call when he touched down on American soil.

  “Such bullshit,” he said. “Expecting you all to just get over it.”

  I mumbled my agreement, but turned away. We were stretched side by side on the pebbly beach next to the Bay Bridge Lighthouse, where the coast makes a hard right angle before it retreats into the brush. The waves in front of us were more like gentle ripples and the water was so clear, you could see tiny fish from where we lay.

  “Come on.” Adam stood and pulled his shirt off in one motion. Little rocks rained down. He held his hand out to me and I grabbed it with reluctance.

  I peeled off my shorts and tank top, leaving no time to be self-conscious of the rumpled bikini I’d thrown on that morning—or to ogle his clearly defined six-pack. I staggered behind him to the water. Within seconds Adam was gone, sinking below the surface.

  “Screw it,” I said out loud, and waded in, dunking my head completely.

  The water was warm like a bath from the August sun, and for the first time since Shaila died, I was alone. It was exhilarating. I opened my mouth and screamed into the silence, letting moss and dirt and sediment flow in and out of my body. I imagined Shaila there with me, clenching my hands in hers and shaking her head back and forth, shrieking with rage and delight.

  When I bobbed to the surface, Adam was already back on the beach, the sand around him damp and dark.

  “Feel better?” he called out.

  “Not really,” I yelled.

  “It helps though.”

  I swam to the shore and flopped down beside him. The ground stuck to my wet skin like Velcro.

  “It’s fucked,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I was talking about—Shaila’s death, Adam’s imminent departure, or the idea that we’re supposed to live and die all in the same life. Doesn’t that seem like too much for one person to bear?

  “What do we do now?” I asked, trying to silence the screams in my head.

  “We go on,” Adam said. “We keep going.”

  I nodded but I did not ask my next question. How?

  SIX

  YOU SURE YOU don’t wanna come to Quentin’s tonight? I type, trying to find the line between obsessed and friendly, desperate and chill. Adam never wants to come to Player parties now that he’s in college, but after seeing him at Diane’s, I wish he would.

  Nah, you do your thing. Not sure those guys need me hanging around anymore. See you next time.

  My stomach sinks. I miss him already and he’s not even gone.

  I shove my phone into my pocket and push the lock down on Quentin’s front door. The house sits on a tiny, tree-lined street straddling the border between Gold Coast and Clam Cove. Everyone calls this area Gold Cove for short. The houses here are smaller, painted in the same four colors—navy, crimson, birch, or gray—because they’re registered as landmarks with the historical society. They all date back to 1825 or earlier.

  Each mailbox on this street has a little gold plaque nailed to it, a signal that these homes are special, they are old. And in Gold Coast, old doesn’t just mean dusty or unkempt. It means you were here when big things happened, that you appreciate the historical distinctions the town has been awarded. Or that you were able to suck up to the right real estate agent twenty years ago when the town sold them off one by one. If you own one of these historical houses, it means you belong, no matter what.

  It makes sense that Quentin lives here. He’s beyond obsessed with Gold Coast history and can recite every single mayor since the Revolutionary War. His fascination transferred over to Prep in middle school, too, when he learned that the school’s founder, Edgar Grace, quite literally came over on the Mayflower and eventually settled the area as a beachside oasis. I think the weird colonial vibe inspires his art or something. Otherwise why would he know that Grace’s lineage died out in the early twentieth century when all of his descendants tragically caught scarlet fever? So random. He’s basically become the keeper of Player history, too. He was the first of us to successfully memorize the Player packet, able to recite the chant backward and forward, and spew basic info about every single Player when called on during lineups.

  At the house, it’s just him and his mom, a Welsh novelist who drinks her scotch neat. His dad died of cancer before we became tight and Quentin never brings him up. Their place always feels cozy, like a cabin in the mountains even though it’s only a few miles from the beach. Every other stair creaks just a bit, and the front door is so short that Quentin has to duck his head when he enters.

  Their stuff is everywhere, not put away by a cleaning service twice a week like at Nikki’s or Henry’s. Even the shed out back is comforting. It once belonged to a blacksmith or something but Quentin’s mom converted it into an art studio for him. Now it smells like turpentine and charcoal pencils. The last time I was in there, he had tacked up portraits of all the Players. Even Shaila.

  “Fucking finally!” Nikki throws herself into my arms and I wrap myself around her, burying my face in her jean jacket. It’s so thin and soft, like leather.

  “Sorry,” I say, sheepish. “Got held up. Adam’s in town.”

  “Oooh!” Nikki coos. “You’re like the Adam whisperer. Come on.” She takes my hand and weaves through the living room, past the reclaimed wood end table and over a woven basket full of fleece blankets. But before we make it to the kitchen, she stops. “Heads up,” she says, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She’s parted it in the middle so she looks like an indie princess. “Robert made the jungle juice, so . . . you know.” She feigns passing out and her voice drops to a whisper. It’s hard to hear over the booming music.

  I grimace. “I’ll make my own drink, then.”

  Before she can respond, I feel someone move up behind me. “There she is.” In a beat, Henry spins me around to face him and slips a warm hand onto t
he small of my back. His fingers press into my skin and I shiver.

  “Here I am,” I say. Henry’s face is flushed, but he’s steady and his eyes are locked on mine, like he’s actually, for real, happy to see me. A bout of sweetness blooms in my chest, and for a second, I forget that I spent the whole day drooling over Adam.

  “Missed you today, J,” Henry says, his mouth forming a tender little pout.

  “Oh yeah?” I lean into him, letting myself be enveloped.

  “Maybe just a little. Want a drink?” I nod. Henry turns and shouts into the kitchen. “Make way! Make way! Jill Newman has arrived! And the girl wants a drink!” Like that, the crowd parts, leaving a little aisle for me to shuffle down toward the kitchen island. But I hide behind my hair as everyone stares. Being in the Player fishbowl sometimes sucks.

  I take my time mixing a cup of whatever’s available as Henry leans up against the wall, scanning the room. He thrusts his drink toward Avi Brill, his producer on the Prep News channel, who’s standing near the TV. Looks like he’s trying to queue up some sad-ass documentary to play on mute.

  “Classic,” Henry mumbles. Then he turns to me. “Heard you were with Adam.”

  The muscles in my stomach tense. “Yep.”

  Henry groans.

  “What?” I ask, my jaw clenching. “You know we’re friends.”

  “I know,” he says, wrapping his hand around my waist again. “I just get jealous sometimes. I feel like he’s been into you forever.”

  Has he? My face flushes and I hope Henry doesn’t notice.

  “I mean . . . I get it.” Henry smiles a lazy grin, as if his mouth is too heavy to hold up, and slips a finger through the loophole of my jeans. “You’re the best.” Henry takes a sip. “He knows we’re together, right?”

  “Of course.” I raise my hand to scratch the back of his neck. Henry really is one of the good ones, I have to remind myself, even if he’s clearly downed a few cups of Robert’s juice. “He’s only in town for the weekend. I won’t even see him tomorrow. It’s no big deal.”

  “I know, I know.” Henry pulls me to him hard and his body feels like a slab of concrete.

  “Promise you like me more than him?”

  “Promise,” I whisper into his chest. I will it to be true. I want it to be true. And saying it now, out loud, is easier than the truth. The truth is unnecessary. The truth is dangerous. “Let’s find Quentin.”

  Henry follows me into the backyard. The music is quieter out here, and string lights rim Quentin’s lawn, giving the whole party a softer feel. I finally spot the host sitting on his childhood slide with Barry Knowlton, the sophomore who made the state swimming team last year. Barry sits between Quentin’s legs with his eyes fixed on Quentin like he’s the most beautiful creature in the world. Quentin drags his forefinger down Barry’s chin and they smile like dummies. Wrapped in a private moment, they’re totally oblivious of all of us making a hot mess in Quentin’s backyard. Envy flares in my stomach, for their intimacy, the sweetness. I wonder if people are jealous of Henry and me, of what they think we have.

  No, wait, of what we do have. We do.

  Quentin’s eyes suddenly meet mine and he whispers something into Barry’s hair. In a few steps, Quentin’s at my side.

  “We have to talk,” Quentin says, inserting himself in between me and Henry. “You too, man,” he says to Henry. His voice is tinny and urgent. We follow him behind a bunch of bushes, out of view of the rest of the party. Henry and Quentin keep looking at each other, seeming to exchange whole sentences with their eyes over my head.

  Their moms were college roommates who moved to Gold Coast together to ensure their families grew up side by side. Quentin and Henry’s friendship is obvious. It makes them fight like brothers, with iced-out silence or by wrestling in the mud. But they always make up easily thanks to an unwavering understanding that they are bound together not by choice, but by Mom-ordained duty. Another bond I can’t break. No matter how many inside jokes Quentin and I make, or how many times I feel Henry’s bare skin above mine, I’ll never worm my way inside their brains, like they have done with each other.

  I admitted this once to Henry when we were lying on the dock behind his house over the summer. “I wish I had what you and Quentin have,” I said lazily.

  “You have Nikki,” Henry said, dragging his fingertips over my goosepimply stomach. His touch tickled and I suppressed a giggle.

  “Not the same. It was like that with Shaila, though,” I said. It was the first time I had admitted that out loud, that Nikki wasn’t enough to replace Shaila. It dawned on me that I probably wasn’t enough to replace her, either.

  “I was always jealous of you two, you know,” he said. “Of the way girls get to be best friends with each other in such an obvious way. It’s so much weirder with guys.”

  What an odd thing to say, I thought. The boys had it so much better in just about every way. Especially in the Players. But Henry’s admission made me like him more. He was delicate, breakable. Before I could press him, Henry stood and galloped to the end of the dock, folding his body into a cannonball and launching himself into the water below.

  Now Henry and Quentin jostle each other in one of those aggro-chest-bump ways. “Yeah, man,” Henry says, shoving a shoulder into Quentin’s side. “I’ll get the others.”

  “C’mon.” Quentin motions toward one of the massive weeping willows lining the yard. We race to part its stringy leaves like a beaded curtain.

  “Some 007 shit, huh?” I say.

  “You didn’t check your phone all day, did you?” he says.

  “Not really.” When Adam and I were together, I usually forgot.

  “There’s something you have to see.” Quentin reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of newspaper. It’s flimsy, from the crumbling Gold Coast Gazette.

  “Where’d you get one of these?” I laugh. My family is the only one I know who still gets the Sunday Times and even that is archaic. Dad says he could never give it up.

  “Just read it.” He crosses his arms, impatient.

  My eyes try to focus in the darkness and it takes a few seconds for the letters to come into view. It’s short, just a couple of paragraphs, but the words drain all warmth from my body.

  Notorious Local Killer Seeks Appeal

  Graham Calloway, the boy who struck a deal after confessing to killing fifteen-year-old Shaila Arnold, seeks to exonerate himself three years after her death. Calloway, who is scheduled to be transferred to New York Federal Prison when he turns eighteen in June, has released a statement through his lawyer confirming the news:

  “In light of new evidence, I, Graham Calloway, believe I was wrongfully blamed for the murder of Shaila Arnold. I will be seeking a new trial to prove my innocence. I aim to clear myself of all wrongdoing. I did not kill Shaila Arnold. I withdraw my confession.”

  The Arnold family could not be reached for comment but the Gold Coast Police Department issued their own statement, standing by their original detective work: “We will review all new evidence but support our detectives who investigated Ms. Arnold’s horrific death. We have no additional comment at this time.”

  I look up, dazed and nauseous.

  “They’re over here!” Nikki shouts. She bursts through the leaves, causing them to rustle around her. Marla, Henry, and Robert are quick on her heels and they all tumble into the circle beneath the willow. Nikki’s eyes dart to the clipping in my hand. “He showed her.”

  My head spins and I find the ground with my hands. “You all knew?” I stammer.

  “I tried calling you earlier today, but . . .” Nikki’s voice trails off.

  “When she couldn’t get you, we thought it’d be better to talk about it in person,” Marla says softly.

  “You okay?” Henry whispers. He rests a gentle hand on my shoulder and his boozy breath is hot on my
ear.

  “What does this mean?” My voice is hoarse and I can’t make sense of the words.

  For a beat no one says anything, and all we can hear is the party raging on without us.

  “He’s a liar,” Robert finally says, his fist wrapped tightly around a cup. “We were there. We all know he did it.”

  Everyone is quiet for a moment. I wonder if they’re trying to push memories of that night away, too. How the fire smelled like burning rubber. Shaila’s hard, steady gaze before everything started. My hands around her wrists. Her fierce gait as she walked away for the last time.

  “Such bullshit,” Nikki says, toeing the dirt with her combat boots. “Of course he has to come back and ruin our senior year.” She wrinkles her nose like the whole thing smells like shit, which it does. “As student council president, I’m going to talk to Headmaster Weingarten about this on Monday. No way this is going to interfere with the rest of our semester!”

  “We can’t get involved. It’s not worth it,” Quentin says. He shakes his head and picks up a stick, dragging it over the ground. “Not with college applications coming up.”

  “But what if Graham’s telling the truth?” I say under my breath.

  Five pairs of eyes turn to me. “You can’t be serious.” Henry laughs.

  “You’re the journalist,” I say. “Aren’t you the least bit curious? Don’t you want to know what happened?”

  Henry’s mouth forms a straight line. “We already do.”

  “Can we all just agree not to think about this?” Nikki pleads. “Let’s just drop it, okay? If we ignore him, the rest of Gold Coast will, too. That’s just how it is and you all know it.”

  Heads nod around me and one by one, they stand and leave.

  “C’mon, babe,” Henry says, extending his hand.

  I shake my head. “Just give me a sec, okay?”

  He nods and walks back to the house. Huddled against the tree alone, I can almost forget about the party around me, the other Players, the undie wannabes, the countless vile pops we completed to get here. I watch as my friends trail back inside. We’re all we have. I want to wrap my heart around them and hold them close. I want to tie them to me to keep them safe. To do what we couldn’t do for Shaila.