Nowhere Girl (27 page)

I went to pick up another box, but it was too heavy to lift, so I planted myself on the cold floor. “I think there are rocks in this one,” I said. But when I opened it, it was filled with notebooks. “Crap.” I groaned. “More school stuff.” I opened the first notebook to find it was filled with Savannah's handwriting. I thought maybe it was a journal for an English class or something, but after reading a few lines, I realized it was a diary. “Holy fuck,” I whispered.

Gabby dropped a stuffed rabbit on the floor and came over. “What is it?”

“Savannah kept a diary disguised as homework.” I held up the notebook for her to see. It was a standard-issue CVS notebook that we all used for school. “I can't believe I never knew.”

Gabby's eyes got big. “Are you going to read it?”

I put it on the floor beside me. “I don't know. Do you think I should?”

“Maybe there are clues in it.”

I picked up the notebook and held it to my chest, hoping to get something from it. Nothing. “Don't be ridiculous. It's not like she knew she was going to get killed.”

“I have an idea,” she said. “Hand it over and tell me when.”

I reluctantly gave it to her, and she started flipping quickly through the pages. She was about halfway through when I said, “When.”

She stopped. “I'm going to read what's on this page. If it seems useful, we'll keep going. Otherwise, we'll put it away. Deal?”

“I guess,” I said, not sure if I wanted to do this.

Gabby cleared her throat and started reading. “July 14, 1998. I can't believe we've been together for three months. Every day is like the day we met all over again. He brings me daisies and Cherry 7UP.” I smiled at how much Savannah had loved that drink. “He's the greatest guy ever.” Gabby looked up. “Shit,” she said. “Savannah had a secret boyfriend.”

I sprang up. “Give me that.” I grabbed the notebook, flipped a few pages forward, and continued to read to myself.

He likes it that I have experience. He says it makes me a woman. And he's mine. All mine. I wish I could share him with the world.

I skipped a few pages and read another entry.

I'm dying to try it. He says he won't do it with me, but it's supposed to be amazing.

What in the world was she talking about? I kept reading, even though I could hear Gabby breathing noisily, annoyed that I wasn't reading aloud.

I told him I'd be careful.

“Why didn't she tell me?” I could feel tears coming. “I thought we knew everything about each other. Why wouldn't she tell me she had a boyfriend? What did I do wrong?” Suddenly, a lifetime of being as connected to my sister as I was to myself felt like nothing more than a lie. “I can't believe this.”

Gabby stood up too and pulled me into a hug. “You did not do anything wrong. Savannah wasn't an angel.” Her face was hard. “Remember how she stopped eating lunch with us to hang out with the seniors? And how when she got invited to parties, she wouldn't bring us?” Gabby's voice was tight. “I'm sorry, Cades, but Savannah was kind of all about Savannah.”

“What?” I backed away from her. “She was my sister, Gabby. And someone killed her.” I squatted down and pulled a few more notebooks out. Two of them appeared to be more diaries, and the third one had the words
Slam Jam
written across it in green Magic Marker.

Gabby saw the books in my arms. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. Savannah was an amazing girl and a great friend. But she was human, like the rest of us.” She reached for the notebooks in my arms. “Why don't you give those to me, and I'll go through them for you?”

I shook away the notion that Gabby had had mean thoughts about my sister. “Remember this?” I asked. “Our slam book. We used to keep tabs on people in this one, especially the mean girls. I bet you Emma's mentioned in here a million times.”

Gabby laughed, a forced sound. “Here, let me take that.” When I wouldn't let go, she tried to tug it out of my hands.

“It's okay,” I said. “I'd rather go through these.”

She sighed loudly. “Okay, but we should remember that high school was a long time ago, and we all said things we didn't mean.”

There were only four boxes left, so we packed them in my car, and I told Gabby I'd go through them later. We locked up the storage unit, and I hugged her good-bye, just wanting to go home and take a shower.

 

CHAPTER

31

I came home to a dark house and the darker thoughts that my sister had a secret boyfriend and my best friend kind of hated her. For once, I would have liked it if Greg had been home. We couldn't talk about the pregnancies that I'd lost, one after the other, or that there was a distance between us that was like trying to reach through glass, but he was always good at analyzing other people.

I poured myself an inch of Grey Goose, which I almost never drank, and moved the boxes one by one into my office. I'd found one of the crocheted baby blankets that Gramma Martino had made Savannah and me before we were born. Mine was light yellow, and hers was a minty green. Mine had gone to college with me and made the move from the gingerbread house to this one. It was dry-cleaned and folded in the antique trunk at the foot of my bed.

I settled on the love seat with Savannah's blanket on my lap and began reading. I finished the vodka, poured myself another, and read page after page of sentences that were all the same.

I've never felt this way about anyone. He makes me feel so loved. I can tell him anything.

As I sat for hours reading, I found myself jealous of a boy I'd never met. Yet, somehow, I was also comforted by him. Whoever he'd been, he clearly loved my sister. There were entries about the silver toe ring he'd bought her. And how their secret code was
1
+
1
=
1
because they felt like the two of them together equaled one whole person.

The night wore on, and I got a text from Greg saying he was stuck at the hospital with an emergency placement. I'd been sleeping with the third notebook on my chest when the ding of my cell phone woke me. It was after two in the morning, but I wanted to make a pot of coffee and keep reading. Savannah had had a love in her life by the time she was sixteen years old that I still hadn't experienced. All at once, it made me sad for myself, but I was somehow so comforted to know that she had someone who loved her before somebody else took her away.

I got up to make coffee, but I was so tired I lay back down on the couch, pulled up the worn blanket that still faintly smelled of my sister, and closed my eyes. I woke up to Greg sitting beside me quietly saying my name.

“What's all this?” he asked when I startled awake.

I bolted up, panicked with the thought that I hadn't found the guest book. “What time is it?” I took the notebook and threw it on the floor as if it were nothing.

“Ten after seven. Did you sleep in here last night?”

“Yeah, I was doing research, and I must have dozed off.” He glanced at the boxes, and I was terrified he was going to ask me what was in them, where they came from. I was having a hard enough time processing what I'd learned about Savannah and that Gabby had seemed so angry the night before. Now that I'd spent the night alone reading, I wasn't ready to talk about it yet.

Greg kissed my forehead and said, “I made a pot of coffee. I need to take a quick shower and get back to the hospital. Last night was a cluster.”

I waited until I heard his footsteps on the stairs before I unpacked the rest of the boxes. Most of the contents were stuff my parents could have thrown out—torn-up jeans, old sneakers, makeup bags. But I understood why they'd kept everything. Stashed between two yearbooks, I found the guest book from Savannah's funeral.

The gold letters on the cover had faded, but the ink inside was not smudged and was as bright as it had been on that cloudless November day when we'd lowered my sister into the ground. I sat on the floor and flipped through the pages. Anyone in that book could be Savannah's murderer. Any of those students, administrators, janitors, the teachers with their black-and-white headshots and bad haircuts. And maybe one of them had been her boyfriend.

“I want to take you to dinner tonight,” Greg said from the doorway.

“Holy shit.” I dropped the book. “I didn't hear you come down the stairs.” He was dressed in a suit and tie. Ever since we'd started therapy, he'd been grinning at me in this forced, sort of scary way that was meant, I guessed, to show me he really cared.

“You up for it?”

I came out into the hall, closing the office door behind me. “You know I have dinner at David's tonight.” I thought of Brady and me sitting in front of the liquor store, trying again.

“I know,” he said, smiling. “And this time, I'm going to go.”

“Oh!” I tried to sound bright, happy. I had too much to think about to deal with Greg right then.

He followed me down the hall to the kitchen. “Is that okay?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Everyone will be thrilled to see you.” Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, we both must have known that was a lie.

Greg stopped short of the kitchen, and I went around the island and started washing my hands. I had no idea why I was doing this other than to get away from him.

He was handsome standing there in his suit without a patient file or a yoga mat under his arm, and I felt suddenly horrible about myself. There was my husband, his curly hair so neatly combed and his tie a little crooked and those cuff links he worked on every day slightly askew.

“You don't want me to go, do you?” he asked.

“What?” I dried my hands on the dish towel beside me. “Of course I do. It's just that, you know, we've been doing this dinner for a hundred years, and I'm surprised, that's all.” I came around the island, and Greg did something really weird: he grabbed me around the middle and kissed me, open mouthed and soft. And the world rested for a minute, like a carnival ride that stops right before it throws you around again.

“I'm going to try, Cady,” he said when we both came up for air. “I really want this to work.”

I felt kind of stunned, and for some reason, I thought of Patrick in the orchard, showing me a picture of his son. “So do I,” I told him. “I really want it to work too.” My voice sounded unnatural in that big echoey space, because what really took my breath away was that I'd felt way more kissing Greg than I'd felt kissing Brady, the hot crush of my high school years.

After Greg left for work, I went back into my office to get my cell phone, and I noticed the slam book on the floor next to the couch. I knew I should get in the shower and work on
Devils
, but I picked it up and brought it into the kitchen with me. I poured a cup of coffee I was still trying to convince myself I liked and opened it to a random page.

“She thinks she's better than us,” someone had written in pink ink.

Now that she's the new It Girl with the seniors, she barely even talks to us. It makes me want to kill her.

The word
kill
was underlined three times. I knew that handwriting. It'd been on my birthday cards and notes left on my car for almost my entire life. It was Gabby's.

*   *   *

Of course, no one minded that Greg was coming to a Thursday dinner. Chandler made more risotto, David said he'd thawed too many steaks anyway, and Gabby's salads were always big enough to feed a fraternity. But the night was awkward. David had finished his model Mustang, and we all stood around asking questions like how long did it take and how many pieces there were. And at dinner, Gabby kept sending Duncan snarky texts, trying to pick a fight because she was thinking about breaking up with him. She said he'd gotten clingy and needy. But poor, dopey Duncan kept responding that he loved her. Odion and Chandler brought Madelyn, who refused to eat the steak or the risotto and then spilled her chocolate milk across the table while her parents fought about how little Odion was studying for his citizenship test. I was hoping no one would say anything about last time when Brady had come and we'd stayed away at the liquor store too long. We couldn't discuss the things we usually talked about—mainly my marriage and whether it was working out. And Brady. Of course Brady.

Finally, Gabby said we were going outside for a smoke, even though I never smoked, and I sat on the front porch next to her while she filled the air with lopsided circles.

“Thanks for going with me yesterday,” I said. I wanted to ask her if she hated Savannah or if she was mad at her right before she died, but I didn't know how.

“No problem. Did you find the funeral book?”

I picked up the pack of cigarettes and smelled them. I crinkled my nose and put them in between us. I didn't understand their appeal. “I did. This morning. And how about our old rag book? I'd forgotten all about that thing.”

“Did you read it?” She ground out her cigarette while she spoke. “You did.”

“Gabs,” I said tentatively. “I thought you and Savannah were friends.”

“Fuck,” she said loudly. “Fuck. I was hoping you didn't read that part.” Her voice got high and tight. I'd almost never seen her upset. “We were friends. I loved your sister, but I love you more. And I hated the way she treated you. It was so obvious to everyone how much you loved her. I mean, it was like you practically thought you two were the same person. And then that stupid group of seniors took her in, and all of a sudden, she was too good for us. For you. I saw how much it hurt you, and I kind of hated her for it.”
Hated her enough to kill her?
I wondered. But I didn't say anything. I didn't answer her. I couldn't think of anything to say. “Can we forget about it?” she asked. “It was so long ago.”