Besides, if I leave now, I won’t have to spend study hall trying not to make eye contact with Gina. I know I should face her, but I don’t think I’m brave enough to do it just yet.
I don’t say anything else, and Paulie doesn’t wait for an end to my sentence. She walks ahead, shoulders pulled back in that perfect cheerleader posture. She moves like she knows I’ll follow.
And of course, I do.
11.
PAULIE DRIVES FAST AND BRAKES hard. I buckle in and spend most of the drive trying not to grab the dashboard. Every time she accelerates, her cheeks dimple with a held-back smile. She keeps the windows up and weaves in and out of traffic with even more precision than usual.
“Where are we going?” I ask. She said “for a drive” before, but she’s driving like someone with a destination in mind.
“Barclay Rock,” she says. I laugh.
“Are you trying to make time with me, Paulie?” I tease. She laughs too, and wiggles her eyebrows at me. God, it feels good to be laughing right now. It feels normal, and I realize I haven’t laughed like this since I killed Josh.
Barclay Rock is the premier make-out spot in town. It’s on the other side of the hill from the reservoir. When you’re up there, you can see clear to the horizon. It’s a pretty classic destination for anyone who’s hoping to get some action, but there are also some decent picnic spots if you don’t mind getting harassed by aggro squirrels with no fear of humans. Paulie slows down for the switchbacks that climb the hillside. I lean my head back against the seat and stretch my legs out, resting my feet on the dashboard.
“Are you gonna miss it?” I ask, thinking of the conversation I had with Roya at the reservoir.
“No,” she says flatly. I roll my head to the side to look at her. She’s got her I’m-fine face on—a careful kind of casual disregard that doesn’t suit her at all. I stare at her, waiting, until finally she rolls her eyes. “What is there to miss?” she asks. “It’s a small town with a lot of small people in it.”
“Do you think New York will be better?” I ask. I try not to feel the sting of “What is there to miss?” I know she doesn’t mean she won’t miss me, but it’s hard to tell that to the flinching feeling of dismissal that came in the wake of her words.
“Yes,” she says with absolute certainty. “Definitely.”
“You won’t be lonely?” I ask, completely failing to rise above the fear that she’ll forget about us. That she’ll forget about me.
She grabs my hand without looking, sliding her fingers between mine. She rubs her thumb over mine, and a wash of blue glitter passes over my arm, shining brightly before it fades. “I’ll miss you,” she says softly. “And all the girls, and the cheer squad. But I’m going to be so much more there than I am here, Lex. There’s going to be so much more room for me to be me, you know? The pressure will be off and I’ll have the space to figure out who I am when I’m not … here.”
I realize all at once what she means. “You mean away from your mom and dad?” I ask. She nods. Her mom and dad are great, but they smother her. A lot.
Here’s why: Paulie had a little brother who drowned when he was four and she was seven. I found out about him the first time I slept over at her house—I walked into the kitchen in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, and her mom was at the kitchen table with an open bottle of wine and a photo album.
“What are you looking at?” I asked, and she invited me to come sit at the table with her. I was fourteen and felt awkward every time I talked to my friends’ parents, but I sat, and Paulie’s mom showed me the pictures of Paulie and her little brother. Pictures of them in the tub together. Pictures of them playing. Pictures of them wearing matching outfits.
The next morning, I’d asked Paulie about it, and she’d shrugged. “She gets like that sometimes,” she said. “I think she was kind of like … made to be a mom to two kids? And now she only has one, and I’m not always enough for her to put all her mom-ness into.” I remember watching her brush her hair into a high, smooth ponytail. I wondered, at the time, what it must be like to have too much of a mom. After that, I took to asking Paulie’s mom for advice every now and then, letting her teach me things I already knew. Anything to give Paulie a break. Anything to give her mom an outlet.
“They love you a lot,” I say to Paulie as she parks the car. She shrugs.
“I know,” she says. “I love them too. But I want to be someone other than the kid that lived. I don’t care how awful it is.”
“It isn’t awful,” I tell her, and something taut in her face relaxes.
“Thanks,” she says. She slaps her hands on the steering wheel briskly, then unbuckles her seat belt and launches out of the car. Paulie has this way of rocketing from thing to thing—once she’s done with a conversation, it’s over, and there can be no lingering. I kind of love that about her. I’ve never had an awkward silence with Paulie.
By the time I’m out of the car, Paulie is rummaging around in the chaos of her trunk. It’s crammed with clothes and cheerleading stuff and water bottles and textbooks. She holds an arm out behind her, clutching a sweater I thought I’d lost months ago. I take it, and she returns to digging through the debris with both hands. She emerges from the trunk after a few more seconds, triumphantly holding a duffel bag aloft.
“Is that—” I start to ask.
“Yep,” she interrupts. She unzips the bag and pulls out Josh’s severed leg. It doesn’t look different from how legs usually look, although it’s covered in a surprisingly thick layer of blond hair. I wish I had something in my memory to connect it to Josh. I wish I could say I knew it was his leg because of the birthmark on the knee or the scar on the shin. But I wouldn’t know his leg from any other random dude’s leg out there.
I only know it’s his leg because Paulie has it in her trunk.
“Wait,” I say as she starts to zip the bag back up. “What about the arm?”
“She’ll only be able to take one,” Paulie answers, and I don’t ask. I just hold the leg as she puts the duffel back into the trunk. I’m holding it in both hands like a baseball bat. Or maybe more like a lacrosse stick. It’s warm in a way that makes me uncomfortable, but I rationalize that it’s probably just the heat of the trunk. They don’t smell. I wonder queasily if the summer heat has been cooking the leg and the arm.
“Hey,” Paulie says, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “Anyone home?”
“Yeah, sorry, what’s up?” I say, and I realize that the trunk is closed and she’s probably been trying to get my attention for a minute or two.
“We gotta go before someone drives by and sees you holding a leg,” she says. “Come on.”
I follow her away from the car, away from the overlook. She leads me across the road and into the trees that sparsely cover this part of the hill. She’s wearing a dress with a long striped skirt, and her bare shoulders are already turning a little pink in the sun. She brushes her hands across them, and I see a spark of magic fly over her skin, and then the pink is gone.