Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later (24 page)

I stand there, stunned; I can’t move. He’s so wrong. He doesn’t understand. I bury my face in my hands and the tears come and I hear myself sobbing. My whole body is shaking. What have I done?

When I look up, Todd is there. He’s standing in the doorway watching me. I think he’s going to leave, but he doesn’t. Instead he comes toward me. I feel his arms around me. And I fall into him.

“It’ll be okay. Whatever it is, he didn’t mean it. Please, stop crying.”

I can’t. And it isn’t what Steven said, it isn’t what anyone said, it’s the feel of Todd’s arms around me, the length of his body pressed against me. All the longings of five years are answered. And I know from the strength of his arms locking around me and the heat of his body against mine that he’s lost, too.

All my good sense and fairness and even honor, ’cause I have honor, are way out of reach. All I feel is passion, that same wild passion that I felt five years ago. It’s all back. I’m out of control. And so is he. And we kiss and it’s so deep and I need it so badly.…

But I can’t! I lean my face away from him. I’m still in his arms.

“Oh, my God!” It’s not my scream. It’s Elizabeth’s. She’s standing in the doorway.

Todd and I look at each other in horror, too shocked to let go.

“Oh, no! This is a nightmare!” Elizabeth puts her hands to her face and sobs.

Now we turn and I see Bruce standing behind her, just watching.

I don’t know what to do, and then I do what I have to do: I rush over to my sister.

“Lizzie, Lizzie, this is so terrible. I can’t believe it’s happening!”

Elizabeth takes her hands from her face, all shiny with tears, and stands there shaking her head, whispering over and over again, “No, no.”

I turn to Todd, hoping for help, but he’s still frozen to the spot, watching my sister’s agony.

“What can I do? What can I say?” I put my arms out, but I can’t bring myself to touch her.

“There’s nothing to be said, is there?”

“No,” I say. “Nothing.”

“Ken found us at Pizza and told us.”

I don’t hear her right.

Behind me I feel Todd move and then come over to Elizabeth.

“Ken?” he says.

I don’t know what they’re talking about.

“The housekeeper found Winston and went running over to Ken’s house. She’s the one who called the police.”

“Winston?” It’s something with Winston. It’s not us. I don’t dare look at Todd. Or Bruce.

“Can you believe it? He’s dead. Winston is dead!”

A minute ago I’d lost everything, and now I have a reprieve. Winston’s death. Death trumps betrayal. How disgusting am I?

“I still can’t believe it,” I say.

Yes, I’m fast on my feet. I have to save us. For now, anyway.

“How did it happen?” Todd asks.

“Nobody knows for sure. It looks like he fell off the balcony.”

“Wow, that’s a good twenty feet,” he says.

He’s with me. We’re like criminals.

“What do you mean, it looks like he fell?” I really want to know. It’s all so weird. For a second it’s like nothing happened before. Except when I catch Bruce’s eyes, I don’t like the look.

“Of course he fell,” Elizabeth says, and I can see she’s a little impatient with me. “But they don’t know. I mean, it could have been one of those silent heart attacks or something. Who told you, anyway?”

“Out in the street,” I say. “Everyone knows.”

“It has to be Caroline.” Elizabeth turns to Bruce. “Don’t you think?”

Bruce nods in agreement, but he doesn’t answer. He just watches us. Not good.

Elizabeth puts her arms out and we both, Todd and I, go to her.

I see Bruce leave.

“How about we catch a movie?” Now Todd was worrying about Jessica, pulling her out of the bad thoughts he knew she was having. They took turns worrying about each other.

“Sure,” she said. “Whatever you want.”

12

Sweet Valley

Liam had left for Los Angeles a couple of days earlier to see his parents. He and Elizabeth planned to meet up the afternoon of the party at LAX airport in Los Angeles and drive down to Sweet Valley together.

Elizabeth’s plane was arriving at three thirty, which would leave enough time, even with delays, to change clothes in the ladies’ room, drive down, and be at the club by seven for the dinner. Elizabeth had planned it so she and Liam would arrive after everyone else. Her parents knew she was coming, but she had asked them not to say anything to spoil the surprise for her grandmother, not to mention her sister and Todd.

This was all very devious for Elizabeth, but the circumstances called for taking any advantage she could get. After eight months and all that had happened it was beyond difficult.

Her parents wanted her to come enough that they agreed to keep her secret from Jessica, at least until the day of the party.

The six-hour plane trip passed quickly, so absorbed was Elizabeth in how she was going to handle everything from the trivial—her entrance—to the stomach-turning first sight of her loathsome betrayers. Eight months she’d spent with a wound that would never close, not even with the power of anger or revenge. Now she would see them for the first time since that day when the two people she loved most in the world had decimated her life.

How perfectly they had carried it off. Even at Winston’s funeral. She remembered every moment of it.

The day of the funeral is gray and stays that way until the rain starts, around eleven o’clock in the morning. By twelve it’s gone dark with sheets of driving rain. We all go together, the three of us, and arrive at the church just after noon, racing from our cars to avoid getting wet, but the wind catches the rain and blows it horizontally, sweeping it under even the biggest golf umbrellas. No one escapes a drenching.

By the time the people—and there are at least two hundred and fifty—arrive and shake off their umbrellas and take off their dripping raincoats, it’s almost as wet inside as out.

“The only advantage of dying young is the big turnout you get at your funeral,” says Jessica, looking around.

By the time the dampness combines with the natural mustiness and hollowness of the dark church, the event takes on the tragic feel it deserves. No matter how much people liked him or didn’t like him, when a twenty-seven-year-old dies, there is a terrible sadness about it. The fact that it was an unnecessary accident only compounds the grief. According to the coroner’s report, Winston fell from his twenty-foot balcony and died when he hit the unforgiving white marble floor below.

The high percentage of alcohol in his system more than certainly contributed to the accident.

People who didn’t know him would have thought Winston was a winner, but we knew he was the model of a true loser. After making gobs of money in the dot-com venture with Bruce—and getting out just before it all crashed—Bruce was better than ever, but Winston was the classic spoiled-by-success story. He hardly had any friends and those were mostly hangers-on, a coterie of people who sucked up to him for whatever they could get.

I don’t know what caused the transformation, but whatever it was, it was really sad because he’d been such a funny guy in school—goofy funny, who could really make me laugh. After, he morphed completely into an arrogant, self-centered rich man who flaunted his wealth. Because he was still single he was much sought after, despite the fact that his ears still stuck out and his Adam’s apple jumped up and down on his long, skinny neck. More important, he treated women badly.

He was the perfect proof of my theory that you only see the truth of people when they’re on top. Everyone’s nice on the bottom when they need something.

Still, Winston’s death is one of those tragic, wasteful accidents. Except to Caroline Pearce, who is already spreading a story that has nothing to do with an accident. Even at the funeral, she was whispering,
“Cherchez la femme,”
and because people like action, they’re eating it up.

“Caroline has no boundaries,” I whisper to Jessica, who is sitting next to me.

She nods, but it’s like she’s somewhere else.

I poke Todd, who’s on my other side. “Thanks to Caroline, people are going to have a good time gossiping about Winston, aren’t they?”

He barely nods. He seems very distracted, understandably. Even though they weren’t close anymore, Winston had been his best friend in high school and Todd really feels the loss.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking like that,” I say, taking his hand. Normally, he would squeeze my hand in response, but now he simply lets his rest, limp, in mine. I look at him to see if he’s heard me, but like Jessica, he’s somewhere else, too.

The minister, Reverend Archer, is a warm and kindly man in his fifties, and he’s talking about Winston’s place in the great hereafter. All I can think is that if all the beautiful stories about heaven are true, Winston will still have his awful pretentious white-and-gold house. And it won’t ever get dirty.

Just that silly thought makes me tear up. He was an old friend, maybe not a friend anymore, but still someone who would always be part of my history, part of those indelible high school and college years. With his disappearance from the world, a small part of me disappears, too. When tears begin to slide down my face, they’re for both of us.

And also for some strange, unnamed unhappiness I feel that has nothing to do with Winston or his death. I’m still holding Todd’s hand, but I let it go, maybe too abruptly, and that wakes him from his daze. I guess he sees my tears, and he puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me closer.

I feel Jessica’s body move in against mine and we’re joined.

“I know he turned out to be a real shit,” Jessica says, “but maybe I had something to do with that.”

“You?” I say. “How?”

“Because I was always turning him down. Like in high school, when he would ask me to some dance, I would like practically laugh at him. I should have been way more understanding. And it wasn’t just me. All the girls he really liked treated him like that. I mean, he was goofy-looking and dorky, but that didn’t stop him from having crazy crushes. Maybe that’s why he was so cynical and nasty when he got rich and the A-list girls all started chasing him.”

“So we should forgive his disgusting misogynistic behavior because he was rejected by cute girls in high school?”

“Actually, yes. It like scarred him.”

“Maybe it did, but he still should have been better than that.”

“I would forgive him. It’s important to forgive.”

Even though this is slightly out of character, I can see that Jessica is really sincere and that this does matter to her. Maybe my sister is finally maturing.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I suppose that rejection stuff could have had some effect on him.”

“He couldn’t help the way he felt. Sometimes people can’t even stop if they know it’s way wrong and it’s going to hurt other people.”

She knows how to get to me. “He really was such a nice kid in school, sweet and funny and all that, wasn’t he, Todd?”

But Todd is barely paying attention. He’s lost in his own thoughts and my question goes right past him. So I say it again.