The Locket (26 page)

Cramped fingers dared a brush up and down my face, swiping away water and something hotter that rolled down into my mouth. The blood was coming from my nose, from the place where the locket’s chain had scraped away my skin.

Bringing both hands to cling onto the ladder once more, I turned and brushed my face against my shoulder, leaving a spot of black on the gray fabric I could just make out in the dim light from the Birnbaums’ porch.

I peeked at Mitch’s house through the leaves. My parents were long asleep and trusted me so implicitly they’d never get up to check and make sure I was home in bed. Especially just after midnight on my birthday. But maybe Dr. Birnbaum or his new fiancée . . . maybe . . .

The porch remained empty and the house silent and dark. I wondered if Dr. Birnbaum thought Mitch was asleep or assumed his son was still out at the gig where he was supposed to have been booked until midnight.

Ally’s dad had said something about suing Mitch and the band for half the fee he’d paid them, but Ally had assured me he was just drunk and didn’t really care. She’d sworn he would forget the whole thing by tomorrow. She’d hugged me and told me not to worry and promised she’d come over Monday morning to help me do my zombie Little Mermaid makeup for the first day of Undead Disney homecoming week.

Then she’d turned and thrown up in the kitchen sink, right in front of me and Isaac and her football player friend, who was so drunk he didn’t even seemed to realize she was puking. He’d just kept rubbing her back and playing with her hair, grinning at me and Isaac with this scary, empty look in his eyes.

No one at the party had been telling their friends that they’d had enough, no one had been looking out for each other the way Mitch had always looked after me.

The guitar strumming stopped for a second. “Mitch!” I screamed again, certain he would hear me.

But he didn’t hear. Or at least he didn’t care to respond. The guitar chords struck up again, this time playing a tune I didn’t recognize at first. It was only when I’d coaxed my shaking arms and roiling stomach up another three steps that I heard Mitch’s voice, soft and slurred beneath the rain and the wind, singing, “Deserves a quiet night . . . sure all these people understand.”

R.E.M. “Nightswimming.” He’d played it on the way back from our last cliff-diving trip the summer of my freshman year, just before school had started and he, Isaac, and I had begun to grow apart. The song had made us all sad, as if we could sense we were at the end of something innocent and wonderful and life was about to get a hell of a lot more complicated.

“Mitch? Mitch, it’s me,” I said, voice trembling as I reached the top step and stared across the platform.

The music stopped and Mitch’s hand reached for a bottle near his hip. He took a swig, hissing before he dropped it back down onto the boards. I couldn’t see the exact shape of the bottle, but the sickly sweet, burning smell of whiskey hung in the air, tattling on the kid who’d stolen it from his dad’s liquor cabinet above the refrigerator.

Mitch was
drinking
up here. Really
drinking
, not just unwinding with a beer or two, but slamming back shots of hard alcohol. I’d never seen Mitch drunk before and had no idea how chugging whiskey would affect him. What if he passed out? How in the world would I get him down?

This wasn’t good. Not good at all.

I licked my lips and shook the rain out of my eyes, struggling to get up the courage to climb out onto the platform. “Mitch, I—”

“Go away.” Mitch inched farther away, swinging his feet to dangle over the side like he was sitting on the edge of the swimming dock down at the lake, not hanging thirty feet in the air. Just looking at him made my head spin and my guts threaten to turn themselves inside out.

Guess whiskey had helped cure
his
fear of heights.

“I’m not going away. You shouldn’t be drinking up here,” I said, shouting to be heard over a sudden gust of wind. The tree rocked back and forth, moaning, while my pulse raced and my hands gripped the ladder step so tightly my knuckles snapped and cracked.

For the first time since that night in Isaac’s truck, I felt the obscene weight of holding the future in my own hands. There would be no more do overs. The locket was gone, every second counted, and I had to get Mitch out of this tree before one of us was seriously hurt.

“Come on,” I called, trying to channel my mom’s bossy voice. “Come down. We can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk. I don’t have anything to say to you.” He took another swig from his whiskey, tilting it back to suck down the last few drops before pitching the empty bottle out into the air. “Go away.”

His words hurt, but I deserved them. Still, I couldn’t leave him up here. He was my friend and he was obviously smashed or going to be smashed very soon. I had to get him down on the ground and into his house. “Okay, we don’t have to talk. Just come down.”

“I don’t want to come down.”

“Please, Mitch, I don’t want you to fall.”

He turned to look over his shoulder. His face was in shadow, but for a second, I swore I could see the loathing in his eyes. “Like you care?”

“I do care. You know I care, I—”

“Fuck you, Katie.”

My mouth fell open and my hands spasmed around the wood in my hands. Mitch had never said anything mean to me. Ever. Not in our entire lives. I’d only ever heard him cuss a handful of times, and I’d
never
heard him tell someone to “eff” themselves. The shock of knowing he hated me enough to say those words stunned me into silence.

“You know, I thought you were so different, that you saw past all the superficial shit,” Mitch said, his words vaguely slurred but still coming through loud and clear. “I thought you cared about people,
really
cared about them, whether they fit into the stupid Brantley Hills mold or not.”

“I
do
care.”

“No, you don’t. All you care about is being Isaac’s perfect little girlfriend,” he said, the disgust in his tone making me flinch. “You’re as stupid and shallow as Isaac and all his friends.”

“I thought Isaac was a ‘great guy,’” I said, finally getting the courage to crawl out onto the platform, anger dulling the edge of my fear.

“I said a lot of dumb things Wednesday night.” He laughed. “No matter what you said, I was so sure . . . when we were dancing . . . I thought I could see it . . .” He turned back around. “Just leave me alone.”

“No. You’re the one who sang that song in front of Isaac and everyone,” I said. “You don’t get to tell me to go away. You have to talk to me.”

“Good work on the confrontation skills, Katie, but you’ve got the wrong guy.” He swayed to one side, making my heart lurch until he righted himself again. I had to get him down on the ground. Now. “Go argue with your boyfriend.”

“I’d rather argue with you.” I reached out, grabbing a fistful of his soggy sweater. “Come on. Come down and argue with me.”

He turned, his face caught in sharp silhouette. “I don’t care enough to argue with you. Not anymore.”

Tears filled my eyes, mixing with the rain. “Mitch, please.”

“You aren’t the person I thought you were. Just . . . go away.” He shook his head. “You’re not worth it.”

His words made me shake all over and my throat close up so tight I swore it made a whistling sound when I sucked in a breath of cold, wet air. He didn’t think I was “worth it.” He didn’t respect me, care about me, or even value our friendship enough to put up the energy to argue.

The reality of it hit me hard enough to make my bones ache. I’d lost Mitch. I’d
really
lost him and it hurt so bad. So, so,
so
bad. It was like a light had gone out inside of me, like someone had died and I knew they were never, ever coming back—no matter how much I cried, no matter how long I begged. Regret filled up every place inside of me, until I could taste it on my tongue, smell the pain seeping through my skin and drifting in the air.

This was so much worse than breaking up with Isaac. Losing Isaac had broken a piece of my heart, but losing Mitch shook something loose in my soul. Something jagged that knocked around inside me, bruising and screaming and bleeding, until finally my stupid brain got the message my innermost self had been trying to tell me all along.

“But I love you,” I said, bursting into tears as I realized how entirely true the words were. “I love you.”

And I did. I loved Mitch. I’d loved him . . . always. When we were little, it had been the love of a dear friend, but now it was more. So much more. It was insane that I hadn’t seen it, felt it,
known
it to be true before now.

But then I’d always suspected I wasn’t the smartest person in the world.

“Please, Mitch, I—”

“Go away, Katie,” he said, still not turning to look at me. I grabbed hold of his sweater with both hands, fists clinging tight, willing him to turn around and look at me.

“No, I’m not going away.” I sucked in a deep breath, shouting to be heard over the howling of the wind. “I love you. I don’t love Isaac, I love
you
.”

“I don’t care.”

I cried harder, angry and hurt and sad and panicked and scared all at once. This
couldn’t
be happening. It couldn’t be too late. “Please, don’t do this. I know I’m stupid. I know I’ve made mistakes, but I have been a good friend to you. I love—”

“Go away!” Mitch turned around too fast, yanking his sweater out of my hands, angling his body just a little too far to the right.

I knew he was going to fall before he did and dove for him, but it was too late. I screamed as he slid off the side of the platform, chin knocking hard against the edge before he dropped like a stone, long body rolling once in the air on the way down, sending his skull to meet the ground first.

It was over so fast, the thirty feet from platform to ground snapped away before I could move a muscle. The dull thud of Mitch’s body connecting with mud and leaves came seconds after, a soft, innocuous sound that split something open inside of me, flooding every cell with pure, cold fear.

Suddenly the night went quiet, the rain and the wind and the storm muted by the rage and grief racing each other through my veins, trying to see which one would win, and whether I’d start to scream or cry.

Instead, I called his name.

“Mitch! Mitch!” I leaned over the edge, peering into the darkness, but I couldn’t see anything in the shadows on the ground. There was nothing moving down there. Nothing. Not even leaves blowing across the yard.

“Mitch!” His name ended in a ragged sob as another gust of wind shook the platform.

I clung to the wood as my heart pounded in my ears—so fast and loud I couldn’t hear myself think. I was so afraid, so horribly, terribly afraid. My fear was a giant crushing monster that laughed in my face, taunting me with my absolute stupidity. I’d thought I’d felt terror so many times in the past few weeks, but I hadn’t known the meaning of the word.
This
was hopeless, mind-numbing fear—knowing Mitch might be hurt, broken, or . . .

“No. No, no, no,” I chanted beneath my breath, the shattered note in my own voice making me bite my numb lip.

I couldn’t lose it now. I had to get down there. I had to get to Mitch. I had to find help. It wasn’t that far to fall. He
had
to be okay. Maybe he was unconscious, maybe bruised or worse, but okay. Mitch couldn’t be
gone
because of this. Because of
me
. Because of the—

The locket
.
Oh, no, oh, God.

In my mind’s eye I saw it slither between the rusty bars of the drain—a serpent stealing away from the scene of the crime.

The realization made me shake all over, my entire body trembling and twitching with pure, unadulterated fear. I knew in that instant that I was never going to make it down the ladder on my own. I was too afraid of those slick steps, of the vast, hungry darkness, and of the horrible permanence of whatever I’d find lying in the leaves beneath the platform I’d made.

“Dad! Dad! Help! Dad!” I screamed and screamed as tears spilled down my face, hot against my frozen cheeks. I screamed until my throat was raw and my body ached, I screamed until I was certain no one would ever hear but kept screaming anyway, too afraid to stop and confront the enormity of my sins.

Finally, someone answered my call, and a familiar voice called my name.

For a split second, I thought it was Mitch, but then the shout came again. It was Dad. He’d heard me. I inched forward, just far enough to peer over the platform. A flashlight cut a path through the rain, its beam wobbling as my overweight, out-of-shape father stumbled toward me in the slick mud and leaves. Even with his baked-goods belly and thin, balding hair plastered to his face, in that moment Dad was the hero he’d been to me when I was small, the strong, loving man who could heal every hurt with a kiss and a smile.

If only he could fix this. If only he could fix Mitch.

“Dad! Mitch is hurt! He fell!” I yelled, praying he could hear me over the wailing of the wind. “Call 911!”

I saw Dad turn and heard him shout for someone to call an ambulance. It was only then that I saw my mother struggling through the rain behind Dad, still wrapped in her pink housecoat. She only hesitated a fraction of a second before turning and hurrying back toward the house.

I realized then that my hands were bleeding. The tips of several fingers throbbed and tacky warmth made my skin stick to the wood even when I forced myself to relax my claw-like hold on the platform. I’d ripped some of my nails away from my fingertips.

I observed this detail with an odd detachment as I watched my dad take the last few steps that would lead him to Mitch. “He’s in the leaves. Underneath me!” I shouted to my father, my words ending in a sharp intake of breath as his flashlight fell on Mitch.

My best friend lay in a tangle, his long limbs bent at unnatural angles, his neck twisted sharply to one side. It reminded me of the vision I’d had while we were picking apples, of my own damaged body after an imaginary fall off the stupid orchard ladder. But this wasn’t a vision. It was real. Heart-stoppingly real.