Girl in a Bad Place Page 5

  “What happened? Are you okay?” I leap up from the couch in alarm, hurrying to her side.

  “Jackson and I had a big fight,” she says. “I just broke up with him.”

  Before I’ve worked out what to say, Jackson bursts in the door behind her. This is a nightmare.

  “Um, heard of knocking?” I snap at him. I don’t know what happened yet, but I know I’m Team Cara.

  He ignores me altogether. “You can’t break up with me and then just leave,” he shouts, much too close to Cara’s face. “I don’t even know what I did!”

  “I obviously didn’t want to talk about it anymore.” She wipes fiercely at tears streaming down her face. “That’s why I came here. You know what you did. I told you what you did.”

  “You’ve gone totally crazy.” He scowls at her.

  I hover nearby, anxious. I want to intervene. Seeing Cara weeping infuriates me, sets me on fire with the need to eliminate the source of her pain. But it’s not my fight, and I don’t want to make it worse.

  “We’re always fighting lately,” she shouts at Jackson through her tears. “We both know that we’re not going to stay together once we leave for college, so we might as well not spend the next year miserable and yelling at each other.”

  “That is so—” Jackson sucks in an angry breath. “I can’t believe you would do this. I wasted more than a year on you. And what was even the point? So you could break up with me over one dumb fight? Good luck finding someone else who will put up with your crap for as long as I did without you even putting out.”

  “Whoa.” I step between them, sparkling with rage. “Not cool, Jackson. You need to leave. Now.”

  “I’m not done—”

  “Now,” Hugh says quietly, slipping between us.

  Jackson hesitates a moment longer, but Hugh is big enough to be intimidating. Combined with the quiet assertiveness, especially.

  I close my eyes against the sound of Jackson slamming our front door.

  Cara slumps against the wall, looking vulnerable and defeated. I feel … the opposite. Relieved that she came to me, that she needs me after all. Maybe it makes me monstrous, but I’ve been so worried.

  Now I’m getting my chance to fix things.

  I drive a sobbing Cara back to her house in Hugh’s car, while he promises to explain to Gavin what happened, if Gavin shows up at mine. This whole thing is a mess I am totally unprepared to deal with. I want to help, but I don’t know how.

  So I pull out the best weapon in my arsenal: ice cream. We sit in Cara’s kitchen, eating directly from a carton. I probably don’t need the ice cream, but you know. Solidarity. Any excuse to eat some. Cara’s barely nibbling at it.

  “So what happened this morning?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.” She drops her face into her hands. “We were fighting, and lately it feels like we’re always fighting. I just … didn’t want to be together anymore. And I didn’t want to talk about it, either. I just wanted it to be over. Have you ever felt like that? Like you were just … done? We were in his car, and I knew your house was a lot closer than mine, so I got out and fled, basically. But, of course, he followed me.”

  I lean across the kitchen island and squeeze her arm. “I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what to say. I didn’t realize you guys were having such a hard time.” Even if I sort of did.

  She lifts her face from her hands. “Was I wrong? Should I not have broken up with him?”

  I hesitate, not because I think she is wrong, but because I’m worried about why she did it. About why they’ve been fighting more. About whether it even has anything to do with Jackson himself. “If you weren’t happy, then staying together doesn’t benefit either of you. I mean, what is it you argue about?”

  “Oh, everything. Today it was him pressuring me about sex. Same old.”

  That settles a sour feeling deep in my gut. “You didn’t owe him your virginity just because you’d been together for a year. You know that.”

  She grimaces.

  “Cara. Tell me you know that.”

  “I know that. I do.” She jabs her spoon into the ice cream, which she’s still barely touched. “I just feel so mixed up. I was in love with him. If you love someone, aren’t you supposed to want to stay with them?”

  I don’t know what to say. Cara’s not an impulsive person. If she did this, some part of her has been thinking it through for a while.

  “Maybe I never loved him at all,” she goes on. “Maybe I only thought I did. I don’t know anything, Mailee. I just don’t know anything anymore.”

  “You know more than you think. Look how he acted at my house. It’s not okay to shame you for being a virgin, especially not in front of your friends. He doesn’t get to decide when you’re ready. And pressuring you like that wasn’t helpful. I know it’s going to hurt for a while, but I think you’re so much better off.”

  “Thanks, Mailee. I’m sorry for ruining your day. Your brother’s home and everything, you don’t have to be here with me.”

  “Stop. You didn’t ruin anything. You run my whole life for me. I think the least I can do is reciprocate by eating ice cream with you when you’re going through a breakup.”

  She lets out a tiny laugh, and I feel my shoulders finally relax. “I hope the burden of eating ice cream isn’t too much for you to bear.”

  “It is a heavy one, but I’ll try to get through it.”

  She sighs deeply. “This really sucks. I feel so … I wanted it to end better. But I guess … well, Firehorse said that the greatest decisions of our lives are preceded by chaos, so maybe this is my chaos.”

  “Firehorse? Like, the guy who lives in the woods?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When did he say that?”

  She opens her mouth to answer me, but just then we hear her mom getting home. Cara wipes quickly at her eyes, but it doesn’t hide anything.

  “Hi, Mrs. Pearlman,” I say politely.

  “Hi, Mailee. Cara, what’s wrong?”

  “Relationship stuff, Mom. No offense, but I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  Cara’s mom has her same honey-blonde hair. It’s been going gray pretty rapidly over the past couple years, but you don’t notice unless you’re standing close to her.

  “Okay,” she says hesitantly. “If you really don’t want to.”

  She doesn’t stick around. Her footsteps echo from the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. Cara and her mom used to talk about everything. In fact, Cara’s mom coached us both through using a tampon for the first time. She was full of life and fire. She used to read lines with me sometimes, and she’d get really into it.

  I hadn’t realized until this moment how much I missed that.

  “Is everything else okay?” I ask hesitantly.

  “Of course,” Cara says breezily. A standard, easy response. And nothing more.

  “You can always talk to me, you know. You don’t have to take this stuff all on yourself.”

  She smiles faintly.

  “It’s just things with Jackson. Everything will be fine now,” she says, like she’s convincing herself. “Everything will be great.”

  I nod. Of course she’s right.

  She always is.

  I’m simultaneously exhausted and amped up when I get home. Mom’s car is parked out front—I knew she would find a way to leave work early—and I open the front door to the sound of her laughter. She sits together with Hugh and Gavin in the living room, which is more than a little terrifying. Not only is this the first time Gavin’s been alone with my brother, but we’re adding my mom? God only knows what kind of embarrassing stories she saw fit to tell him about me.

  Gavin, sitting in the armchair, notices me first. “How’s Cara doing?”

  “About like you’d expect.” I frown. “But she’ll be okay.”

  Mom turns to glance at me from where she sits beside Hugh on the couch. “I heard it was an eventful morning!”

  “It was.” I sigh. “But I was mor
e of a bystander than a participant.”

  I want to talk to Gavin—alone—but I don’t know how to accomplish that with Mom sitting right there. She trusts me with him, but usually when he comes up to my room, my parents are still at work. Or I’m already in there so he just passes through the house.

  Hugh saves me. “Hey, Mom, I have some pictures from my internship on my laptop; want to see?”

  When they leave, I’m able to usher Gavin upstairs with minimum awkwardness.

  “So what happened, exactly?” he asks when I’ve closed the door behind us. “Your brother filled me in a little, but … ”

  I sum up the morning’s drama as best I can, stumbling a bit when I get to the part where Jackson was a royal jerk about Cara’s virginity.

  Gavin and I haven’t slept together, either. Gavin seems to respect that I’m not ready, but Jackson had told Cara he was okay with it, too. What if, by the time we’ve been together a year, I’m still not ready and Gavin’s not okay with it? I try to suppress the little voice of worry in the back of my mind, the voice that’s been chewing on my brain since I heard Jackson’s words. He and Gavin aren’t the same person. But when something like this happens to your beautiful best friend, it’s hard to believe it won’t happen to you, too.

  “What is it?” Gavin says, and by the caution in his tone, it’s clear that he knows exactly what I’m thinking about.

  “You would tell me, right?” I say. “If you were unhappy about the pace things are going? You wouldn’t, like, save it to throw in my face during fights? I’m not saying it’ll be a year before I’m ready, but I’m not saying it won’t be, either.”

  “Mailee.” He presses a hand gently to my cheek, but there’s hurt in his eyes. I regret saying anything. “I just want to be with you. The rest will come when it comes.”

  “That’s what my head is telling me,” I say, holding on to a fistful of his shirt. “But my heart is being a little insecure.”

  “Tell your heart to shut up, then.”

  I laugh. “I’ll try, but it’s notorious for ignoring my commands.”

  He hugs me tight and I realize that what I’m feeling isn’t actually insecurity at all; it’s guilt. Gavin is the perfect boyfriend. He is sweet and understanding and he never tries to make me feel bad about anything. I wouldn’t be so dramatic as to say I don’t deserve him, because I think unless you’re a horrible monster of a human being, deciding who you do or don’t deserve is pretty unfair to yourself. But what I do feel is that there is no way on this earth I deserve to have a sweet, wonderful, perfect boyfriend more than Cara does. Her life has been so much harder than mine. And yet, she’s a big part of why mine’s so easy.

  Maybe I shouldn’t blame Jackson for whatever went wrong between the two of them. Maybe he’s the perfect boyfriend, for someone else. But I can’t help the bitter ache in my chest when I think about the way he talked to her, or about how she must have felt when he pressured her about sex.

  Gavin presses his lips to my forehead. His fingers trail along my jaw, tilting my face up until I meet his gaze. It’s hard to be upset when he’s looking at me like I’m the world. When his fingertips are tickling my skin, and I’m starting to feel feverish and ignited. He kisses me in gentle brushes of his mouth on mine. I run my hands up under his shirt, because I like how the smooth skin of his abs feels against my fingers. He sighs and kisses me harder, weaving his hands into my hair.

  “Is it bad that when Jackson was mean to Cara, I wanted to rip the skin off his face?” I murmur.

  Gavin bursts out laughing. “I mean, it’s a little bit Silence of the Lambs … ”

  “I should have done it.”

  “I did not know you had this sadistic side to you. Should I be worried?”

  “Probably not.” But I frown, because his use of the word worried reminds me of something else I wanted to mention. “Hey, there was this thing Cara said after I brought her home that was a little … uh. She said Firehorse told her something like ‘our greatest decisions are preceded by chaos,’ and the way she said it made me wonder if she’s seen or talked to him since we all went to the commune that day. She mentions that place a lot, but usually it’s just about how sweet Avalon was. This felt like … more. I don’t know. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.”

  “Hmm.” Gavin furrows his brow. “Did you ask her if she had gone back?”

  “I asked her when he said it, but her mom interrupted and she never ended up answering me. Do you think I should tell her that thing about the girl who died in the freezer? I mean, if she’s still going there … ”

  “I’d find out if she’s still in contact with the Haven first. But yeah. I think you should tell her about that. Just so she knows and doesn’t end up blindsided, if nothing else.”

  After we came back from visiting the commune, I told Gavin as soon as I possibly could about going into the root cellar with Alexa. We both agreed that while it’s a creepy story that makes neither of us ever want to go into a walk-in freezer, it seems like she was telling the truth. That it was an unfortunate accident and everything. I just needed a second opinion, really, to make sure I wasn’t being crazy for not calling the police.

  I honestly haven’t thought about it much since. But if Cara’s still interested in that place, still talking to those people … it only seems right that she should know someone died there.

  I lean into Gavin’s chest, inhale his boyish scent.

  “At least one good thing’s come out of this,” he says, wrapping his arms around me.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “You can add ‘wanting to rip the skin off someone’s face’ to your emotions journal.”

  “True,” I say, laughing. “That’s definitely a new one.”

  The next week, Cara convinces me to go with her to the Haven again. She used her signature pout (seriously, no one can pout like Cara—I’ve tried to emulate it so many times for acting purposes and it’s impossible), and the fact that she just went through a breakup as leverage. I tried to get out of it by telling her the root cellar story, but she already knew it.

  “Alexa told me when I went the other day,” she said, but she wasn’t clear on when “the other day” was, or why she went a second time without telling me. “She thought you got freaked out by the story and she felt bad.”

  “I didn’t get freaked out by it,” I muttered, even though it was a lie. “But I’m surprised it didn’t bother you.”

  She shrugged. “I understand their pain, I guess.”

  That ended any further discussion on that, and I had no choice but to agree to come.

  I wasn’t going to bring Gavin anyway, but Cara tells me he’s not exactly welcome, even if I wanted to. I do text him that we’re going, though, and he replies with: Drive carefully and don’t become a vegan ;)

  Cute.

  Or at least, I thought so. Cara was less amused when I showed it to her.

  It’s a hot day, and when we arrive at the Haven, we discover that everyone is swimming. Or, most everyone, anyway. Firehorse isn’t here. He’s been gone the past couple days, the others tell us. And this is no big deal, apparently. He just goes from time to time, off into the woods somewhere. It actually makes me respect him more. If you’re going to lead a commune that’s all about living in nature, I feel like you should be capable of surviving on your own in nature.

  Plus, the environment’s more relaxed without him around, I notice. Maybe it’s just me. The pressure to impress these people is lower without him, somehow. Everyone else intimidates me less.

  Avalon runs up to Cara the second we’re out of the car, wrapping her arms around Cara’s thighs. “I’m so glad you’re here!” she exclaims. Cara lights up like a Christmas tree.

  We didn’t bring bathing suits, so we borrow from girls who live here. I’m not super modest, and usually I feel fine in a bathing suit. But I also spend a lot of time picking one out each year, making sure it’s flattering. I’d never admit it to anyone, but I still have
n’t quite lost the anxiety that always accompanied beach trips when I was in middle school—when I was all ribs and elbows and knobby knees, before my body started to have some kind of shape to it, before I learned how to let insults about my slight build roll off me. But the bathing suit I’m wearing right now … it’s not flattering at all. It brings me back to those days where I felt exposed and weird-shaped. And the bottom piece is slightly too big, which means part of me is concentrating on making sure it doesn’t slip down my nonexistent butt.

  “Come on, Mailee!” one of the girls shouts to me. It’s Alexa. Cara’s already in the water, splashing around with Avalon. Watching them, I wonder how it feels to be the only kid in a place like this. Maybe she doesn’t know anything different; maybe she feels spoiled by all the adults doting on her.

  I get brave, and leap from the end of the dock, cannonballing into the water and raining a gigantic wave over anyone who didn’t get out of my way quick enough. When I surface, Cara is laughing in front of me, her face dripping with water.

  “You are such a jerk,” she says.

  “That insult would hold a lot more weight if you weren’t laughing yourself to death while you said it.”

  She splashes me, and I splash her back. Soon we’re in a full-on war. What’s left of my mascara is probably all over my face, but I don’t care. The water’s nice, refreshing. With my toes touching the bottom, I’m chest deep, which eases my bathing suit anxiety.

  Avalon joins us. She’s a good swimmer for a kid her age. Alexa doesn’t even seem worried about her. She’s off near the dock, talking to a couple other girls, and hasn’t even glanced our way.

  Cara doesn’t seem to mind, though. She twirls Avalon in the water and they laugh together like they’ve known each other their whole lives. This is the most relaxed I’ve seen Cara in … I can’t even remember how long.

  “Do you want to see the frog eggs I found?” Avalon asks.

  “Definitely!”

  Cara doesn’t spare me a second glance before she wades back toward shore with Avalon, and disappears behind a patch of cattails.