I Swear (17 page)

After the formalities, Kellan asked the question I’d been dreading since last night.

“Was Beth Patterson still friends with Leslie Gatlin when she helped you distract Leslie so that you could write on her locker?”

“Yes,” said Krista.

“Why did she help you, then?” asked Kellan.

“Objection for the record,” interjected Patrick. “Counsel is asking the witness to speculate.”

“I’m just trying to find out about the nature of the relationship between the witness and Miss Patterson.”

“Then just ask her that, for chrissakes, Kellan.” Patrick rolled his eyes and took a swig of water. He was having a tough day, and it was about to get tougher.

“Are you currently friends with Beth Patterson?” Kellan asked, revising the question.

“Yes,” said Krista.

“What is her role in your group, where Leslie is concerned?”

Krista jumped at the opportunity. “She was always sending messages to Leslie from a Facebook account she set up.”

“Who participated in writing these messages?” asked Kellan.

Krista blinked at him like she didn’t understand the question. “I’m sorry?”

“Did anyone besides Miss Patterson use this Facebook page to send messages to Miss Gatlin?”

“No,” said Krista. “She was the ‘send’ girl. It was sort of her thing.”

I reached over and paused the playback.

“Did she just say that?” I asked. “Did that really just happen?”

Jillian nodded. Katherine eyed me for a moment.

“What does Krista have against you, Beth?” Katherine was on to something.

I sighed. “She’s about to tell you, I think.” I pressed play.

“Did Miss Patterson host a party the week before Leslie Gatlin’s death?” Kellan asked.

“Yes,” said Krista. “It was her birthday.”

“Did you attend the party?” Kellan asked.

“Yes.”

“And you spent the night at Miss Patterson’s after the party had ended?”

“Yes, I did,” said Krista.

“Was Miss Gatlin also in attendance?” asked Kellan.

“I wouldn’t say ‘attendance,’ exactly,” said Krista. “But she showed up.”

“Was she invited to the party?”

“No.” Krista laughed.

“Why do you laugh when you say that?” asked Kellan.

“Because no one had hung out with her for over three years except Jake.”

“So you were surprised to see her?”

“Uh . . . yes,” scoffed Krista.

“Did anyone else see Leslie Gatlin at this party?”

“No. It was a small get-together. Just us girls. Beth’s mom isn’t into big parties.”

“So just you and Beth saw her?”

“Yes. I’d gone to my car to get a sweatshirt I left in the backseat, when I saw Leslie walk up the front drive. Beth’s house is on a corner, so I walked through the backyard to the hedge along Beth’s driveway so I could see what was going on.”

“And what happened?”

“Leslie was pleading with Beth about something. She was
trying to get her to take an envelope she was holding out.”

“Did Miss Patterson take the envelope?” asked Kellan.

“No,” said Krista. “She told Leslie that she shouldn’t have come, and she begged her to leave, then she went back in the front door.”

“What happened next?” asked Kellan.

“Leslie dropped to her knees on the front porch and cried for a minute. Then she put the envelope in the mailbox at the front door and left.”

“Did you retrieve the envelope?”

“Yes,” said Krista.

“Did you open it?”

“Yes.”

“What was inside the envelope?”

“A letter,” said Krista. “And a necklace.”

“Will you please describe the necklace to me?”

“It was a silver chain with a tiny anchor on it.”

“Did you give the letter and the necklace to Miss Patterson?”

“No,” said Krista.

“Where are the letter and necklace now?”

“Macie took the necklace.”

“You’re referring to Macie Merrick, correct?” asked Kellan.

“Yes.”

“What did she do with it?”

“She left the necklace on Jake’s pillow with a note the night Leslie killed herself,” said Krista.

“And the letter?” asked Kellan.

“We planned to give the letter to Beth, but then Leslie died the next week, and Macie told me to keep it quiet. She had a plan.”

“Where is the letter now?” asked Kellan.

Krista pulled a lavender envelope out of her purse on the floor. “It’s right here.” She smiled.

“Would you please read what it says for us?”

I didn’t wait for Krista to read the message. I didn’t wait for the deposition to end, or for the video to stop, or the screen to get dark. I leaped from the bed, over Jillian and Katherine. I ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.

•  •  •

It’s an odd thing, standing over the sink, staring into the mirror, knowing that your whole life has just changed. Your deepest secret is out.

How do I go back out there? How do I face Jillian? How does that conversation start?

I stood there staring at my own eyes in the mirror, trying to figure out what I would say.

Maybe: “I’ve been in love with Leslie since we were freshmen”?

Or how about: “Leslie didn’t want me, so I hated her. Sure didn’t think that was going to come up this morning when I left the house”?

I stared at myself for so long, I didn’t recognize my own
face. My brain was numb. I was so tired. I’d been so scared for so long that this would happen—that somehow all of this would bubble up to the surface.

And now it had.

I realized how anxious I had been, because now the adrenaline—all the nervous energy that I’d put into hiding this for the past three years—was draining out of me. It felt so strange—so different than I had expected. It dawned on me that I didn’t know what I had expected exactly. The visions of this thing with me and Leslie coming to light always ended in a fuzzy, dark haze of doom. There were no specifics. I’d spent so much time thinking about how to hide it that I hadn’t thought at all about what not hiding it would be like. Now that it had actually happened, I began to wonder if it could possibly be any worse than the torture of hiding it—and all the things that had led to.

There was a timid knock on the door of the bathroom. I knew it was Jillian. I stayed at the sink and tried to think of how Leslie would handle this. She was so sure of herself in every way, it had seemed when I met her. I thought about the way I had kissed her in the garage that day Jake invited us to the pool party. Suddenly, the very idea of Leslie felt a thousand light-years away, and that made me feel sadder than I had the morning she died. I sat down on the edge of the bathtub and cried.

The second knock was firm and louder. I knew it was Katherine. I took a deep breath and swiped at my face. A glance
back to the mirror proved that that was a hopeless gesture. I gripped the edge of the tub, squeezed my eyes shut, and said, “Come in.”

Jillian stuck her head in the door. “Is everything . . . okay?”

“No, Jills, everything is
not
okay. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever felt like things were more screwed up in my life.”

“Well, while we’re sharing secrets, I’ve got one,” Katherine said, and turned to Jillian. “I sent Macie those pictures of you and Brad.”

“
What?
” Jillian and I shouted at the same time.

“
You
took those pictures?” Jillian’s jaw was hanging open.

“What pictures of you and Brad?” One look at Jillian’s face told me the whole story. “You mean you and Brad have been . . . ?” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

“For three years now,” Katherine said. “Brad broke down and told Macie the whole story.”

“You’ve totally ruined my life!” Jillian almost shouted.

“No,” I said softly. “Jillian—she’s saved us.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. She had the look of a woman haunted.

“She did you a huge favor,” I said. “Now Macie doesn’t have anything over you.”

“Nobody needed to know about me and Brad,” said Jillian. I could see the heartbreak in her eyes.

Katherine looked at me, then over at Jillian.

“I wonder what did it?” she asked us. “What pushed Leslie over the edge?”

Jillian dropped her eyes to the computer and shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “The last Facebook message we sent from the Di Young account?”

“Yeah, but we sent one of those every week,” said Katherine. “Who knows if she was even getting them?”

“Macie was always sending her text messages, too,” I said.

“It could’ve been anything,” Jillian said. “I guess we may never know.”

24. JAKE

When I went back to Scarecrow Video to return the DVDs Brad and I had rented, Andy was standing at the counter. He was tall and skinny and had an encyclopedic knowledge of every horror movie ever made. Scarecrow Video had been a Capitol Hill institution since before I was born, and Andy was only about twenty-four, but when I think of the owners naming the store, I can’t help but think they must’ve named it with him in mind. He was always wearing a baggy plaid flannel shirt and ripped jeans. It sort of looked like his clothes were wearing him. He was totally cool because he wasn’t interested in being cool at all.

“Hey, brother,” he said.

“Dude,” I said. “
Evil Dead II
rocked my world.”

He smiled, but there was something sad behind his eyes. “You doin’ okay, man?” he asked.

There was no one else in the store at the moment. It was pretty quiet. I knew what he was talking about.

“Just didn’t see you for a long time,” he said. “Next thing I know, I’m talking to a bunch of lawyers.”

I blinked at him, trying to understand. “Wait,” I said. “You got a subpoena?”

“Yeah. I had a deposition earlier this week. What about you?”

“Mine’s soon.” We stood there quietly for a moment.

“What happened, man?” I looked up, startled somehow by his question. He put up both hands and stepped back. “Sorry—if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.”

“No—it’s . . . fine.”

I took off my baseball cap and ran a hand through my hair, then put it back on.

“Andy?”

“Yeah, man?”

“What did they ask you about?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. Just if Leslie had friends. If I ever talked to her about what was going on with her, with school. If I’d noticed anything different or out of the ordinary. They kept calling her ‘Miss Gatlin.’ It was weird.”

“What did you tell them?”

He looked at me for a second, then bit his lip and looked out the window. “Just . . . what I saw.”

I waited. He kept looking at the window or down at his hands—anywhere but in my direction.

“I told ’em that I didn’t think she was having a great time at school, but that she didn’t really talk about it much. Not with me, at least. I knew that she liked a couple of the girls on her volleyball team. The only thing that changed really was you.” He looked me straight in the eyes, then back at the parking lot. “Where’d you go, man?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I just know that she really liked you. Liked hanging with you. Was always talking about playing the guitar with you. Right after Christmas you guys had that talk in the car. I remember it was raining. She ran out and got in your ride on her break. It was dark, but you had the dome light on and I could see you guys talking. You seemed upset when she came running back in. You followed her up to the door, and when she came in, you just stood there, watching her through the window. You were totally drenched, but you didn’t seem to notice.”

I looked down at my sneakers. At that moment, I wanted to be running through the neighborhood, away from my house, face full up to the sun and the blinding white light of the rays as they bounced off the snow that still blanketed the upper half of Mount Hood. I needed to feel the rhythm in my legs, the swell in my lungs, the burn in my chest.

Andy looked back at me. “What happened?”

My legs tensed as if they might carry me into a spring out the front door of Scarecrow Video and far away from . . . what? Andy? This conversation?

The voice in my head cut through the pounding in my ears with the answer:

The truth.

•  •  •

When I pulled up to Scarecrow, the rain was coming down so hard, my windshield wipers weren’t keeping up.

I texted Leslie:
Here.

I could barely make out her figure in the window. The store was deserted. An old-fashioned movie rental place was no match for streaming Netflix when a Seattle thunderstorm was involved.

As I saw her approach the front door and pull up her hood, I smiled. Even in a raincoat she looked like dynamite. It had been so much fun watching her play volleyball this season. Brad kept giving me crap when I dragged him to her matches on Saturday mornings after we’d been up late partying after a Friday-night football game.

She was easily the best player on the team. The fact that she was easy on the eyes was just icing on the cake.

Suddenly she burst through the passenger-side door, all raindrops and umbrella, drenching my shirt as she leaned over the console for a hug.

“Oh my God. I’m so wet,” she said. “Can you believe this?” She gazed up through the windshield.

“No, I can’t,” I said, staring at the way her blond hair brushed her neck as she craned it upward to see the sheets of water pouring off the roof of the building.

She turned to look at me, and I met her lips with mine. She jumped a bit and pulled away. “Okay, wasn’t expecting that.”

I smiled at her. “There’s probably a lot you don’t expect about me. Or suspect.”

“Stop it, Jake.”

“What?” I smiled at her, but I was confused.

She ran a hand through her damp hair. “I have wet socks now because you just had to talk to me in the middle of my shift,” she said. “What’s so important?”

I glanced down at my thumbs mindlessly tapping out a beat on the steering wheel. “I know I haven’t been around a lot lately,” I began.

“Jake, I—”

“Look, don’t say anything right now,” I said, cutting her off. “Just hear me out on this.”

She looked down at her hands in her lap and let out a deep breath.