“Good girl,” Jerry encourages. “You have a couple days’ worth of calories to make up for, at least.”
“Trust me,” I tell him, settling back in my seat and gathering the condiments to myself. “I plan to.”
IX
I never take that walk with Tariq. Everyone understands when I beg off to the bedroom to rest while they’re playing a card game a couple of hours after dinner. Cherish is back to her old self, by all accounts, and is laughing and conspiring with her mom when I slide her phone off the kitchen island and into the front of my shorts.
Behind the bedroom door, I unlock the device by swiping my finger in the pattern I’ve watched her perform a million times. She’s never changed it, and she’s never made any attempt to keep me or anyone else from figuring it out. It’s not horribly difficult anyway. The fact that the pattern starts off-center probably seemed unlikely enough for Cherish. No further security measures required.
I’m not betraying her confidence. We hand each other our phones all the time, swap devices to read texts and tweets and posts, and sometimes reply from the wrong one by accident. That’s just part of being as close as we are. The only reason I need it now is because I don’t have Kelly’s phone number. Obviously. And I need to find out if he did something to my boyfriend. If whatever he did has something to do with Cherish’s uncharacteristic boldness.
I’ll be able to tell immediately, whether Kelly lies or not. I just need to get him face-to-face.
Can I see you? I text him from Cherish’s phone.
I’m surprised to see that the last conversation between them is from before the night of the boys’ fight.
She really hasn’t spoken to him since then.
“That’s why you’re so upset,” I tell her, even though she’s not in earshot. It didn’t have anything to do with me, or something she’s “always noticed” I’m doing. She’s heartbroken and lashing out at the one person it’s safe to push away. Because she knows I’m not going anywhere.
He’s a lovesick pup. His response is immediate.
For real?! Of course, babe, thank God. Just tell me when and where.
I try to think of where they might have snuck off to before, if they have. I could scroll up and try to quickly find out, but I don’t know how much longer I can have her phone without being noticed. And anyway, I know Cherish. If she’s ever snuck out to see Kelly, she wouldn’t go far. She’d be timid, even though no one can tell that about her but me. And Kelly would be used to risk, so it wouldn’t bother him to come to her.
Somewhere on the Whitman property, then, far enough from the house to feel private, but close enough that she never really left home.
Gazebo. I text him. Late.
And then I delete the messages I’ve sent, and his replies, and I lock the device to sneak it back downstairs.
Toward the edge of the Whitmans’ property, their private park becomes a rolling hill that naturally bestows both whimsy and privacy from the twelfth hole of the golf course it overlooks. There’s a gazebo, with a lattice enclosure that stands waist-high, and simple, curved benches inside, and the structure marks the end of the line. After it, there’s indigenous foliage in a neat line—only the sculptable kind that flowers, of course, unless someone is responsible for the precision placement of the blossoms—and there’s wooden fencing discreetly woven between.
Someone like Kelly can figure out a dozen ways to trespass beneath the shingled roof either from the Whitmans’ place or from the country club, I’m sure.
I wait until Cherish is asleep, and the house is completely dark, even though if asked, I’ll just say I want to walk the grounds to clear my head, or my lungs. No one can watch me all the way to the gazebo; I’m not really all that concerned with secrecy except where Cherish is concerned.
Whatever the reason for her soul-crushing episode today, I don’t ever want it to happen again.
I can see a tall silhouette before I’ve started hiking the incline toward the gazebo, even though Kelly’s doing an okay job blending his form with one of the posts. He’s checking himself on all sides, obviously, but that means there’s a brief blind spot in every direction and he doesn’t see me approaching from the Whitman house as soon as he could’ve.
I know when he does because he straightens up, and then his posture recoils sharply, and he’s hunched again.
He’s fidgety after that, but he manages not to rush out of hiding and down the hill to me, instead waiting for me to get all the way there.
Of course, it isn’t me he’s waiting for.
“Cherish?”
I don’t answer at first. There’s no unnatural light in the structure; the ones at ground level encircling its perimeter are clearly for up-lighting and showcasing the gazebo itself, which is blocking much of what’s pouring down from the moon.
Kelly backs out of the gazebo toward the golf course so that the moonlight washes his brown skin in a pale shimmer, but it doesn’t help him see me any better.
“Cherish.”
This time it’s a command. Like it’ll break a spell and she’ll materialize in my place.
“I’m not,” I finally say. “Did you really think you deserved to ever hear from her again? After what we all saw you do?”
His face hardens, but when he tries to square his shoulders, he winces again.
I don’t let my brow furrow. I don’t acknowledge his pain.
“What, ’cause I threw some stuff? I’m supposed to be terrifying now?”
“You lunged at me, Kelly, or don’t you remember?”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, but I can read his face. He’s looking for a way to blame me. He wants to say that it’s my fault the way it looked, but he can’t.
He doesn’t know that he can just ask me.
“You got her afraid of me,” he says instead.
“I’d say you did that on your own. But I’m not surprised you can’t take responsibility for your actions. You have no self-control.”
“Yeah?” he cranes his neck forward, but the rest of him stays behind. “Then why aren’t you scared?”
It’s too late to wince or startle now.
“I see you don’t need Tariq to hide behind when you trick me into meeting you in the middle of the night. You seem pretty confident right now.”
I run through a short list of possible replies, but they all fall apart on the slightest inspection. They rely on his obvious but unconfessed physical impairment, but I couldn’t have foreseen that, and he doesn’t seem to realize that I know.