Jack sold pre-rolled joints. Emily knew that was a fact. He kept a sandwich bag full of them inside his coat pocket. It was common knowledge that Jack could hook you up. Everyone said he stole pot from the evidence room at the police station, but Emily knew that he got the weed from a cousin in Maryland and hand-rolled them himself. What she didn’t know was whether or not Jack sold harder drugs.
She tried to take herself back to that night again.
Walking through the front door. Sticking out her tongue. Clay brandishing the tab of acid like a conductor summoning the orchestra’s attention.
Jack had not been there. This was not a memory issue, or an LSD-induced black hole. This was common sense. Nardo hated Jack. All of the boys did, especially Clay. They went out of their way to be cruel to Jack, tripping him in the hall, slamming his lunch tray out of his hands, stealing his clothes out of his gym locker. And Jack went out of his way to avoid them at all costs. No matter how much money Nardo had offered, she could not see Jack willingly going to his house.
Emily thought about her Columbo conversation with Jack. One thing he’d said seemed to have particular relevance now—
Sometimes, they make up lies to throw the heat onto somebody else.
Nardo was definitely a liar. He lied to his parents about where he was going. He lied to Clay about not having any cigarettes left. He lied to Blake about not failing a history exam. He lied to Ricky all the time by not coming out and saying that he didn’t have feelings for her and it was never going to happen. It was a game to him, telling people what he wanted them to know rather than simply giving the truth.
So why would Emily ever think that Nardo was telling the truth about Jack being at The Party?
And if Nardo was lying about The Party, was he lying for the sake of lying, or was he lying to cover his own ass?
The best person to talk about this with could possibly be the worst person to approach, but Emily was almost home and Jack was probably in the shed. Things had been particularly hard at home for him lately. She coached herself on how to question him as she walked up the long driveway. Jack had told her how to implement the Columbo strategy, so it likely wouldn’t work on him. There would be no one more thing. Emily had to be honest with him and hope that, in return, he was honest with her.
She practiced aloud, trying to keep her tone even, her cadence light, almost whispering, “Did you do this to me?”
Emily closed her eyes and repeated the question. She listened carefully to her voice. She didn’t want to be accusatory. She wasn’t angry. In fact, she would probably be relieved to find out it was Cheese because it made a certain kind of sense that he would take advantage of a situation. He was so desperately lonely. He had very few friends. As far as Emily knew, he had never been on a date. Except for his weed business, he could probably go days without anyone his own age speaking to him.
Emily felt her head shaking. Even if she accepted that Jack had been at The Party, there was no way that the boys or even Ricky would’ve let Jack take advantage of Emily.
But Ricky had been passed out on the front lawn, according to Dean. And Blake and Nardo had both backed the story that they were in the upstairs bathroom. Everyone so far agreed that Clay and Emily had been out by the pool. They had been arguing. Were they arguing about Jack?
They had argued about him so many times before.
She heard a guttural sound come out of her throat. All of this endless speculation was exhausting. Her brain was on a carousel again. The house receded and plastic horses on poles started moving up and down. Tinny music drowned out the distant roar of the ocean. Tears rolled down her face. The carousel spun faster and faster. The world was blurring. Her eyes could barely stay open. Her brain finally, blissfully, turned itself off.
She had no idea how much time passed. One minute she was trudging around the side of the house, the next she was sitting on the wooden bench inside her mother’s English garden. When it was in season, flowers and plants spilled over into the walkway. Goldenrod. Black-eyed Susans. Milkweed. Great blue lobelia. The style of garden dated back to the eighteenth century, a rebellion against the symmetry and formality of the classic architectural garden.
That Esther allowed, let alone encouraged, something so wild and unstructured to grow in her yard had always struck Emily as odd. Given her mother’s strict personality, it seemed like she would be more drawn toward tightly trimmed boxwoods and rectilinear patterns. The garden had always made Emily sad. It was a reminder that there was a part of her mother that she would never know.
“Emily?”
Clay sounded surprised to see her, though he was the one who was trespassing.
She asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I—” His eyes flickered toward the shed. “I needed something to take the edge off.”
Emily smoothed together her lips. He’d come to score some pot and ended up seeing the last person on earth he wanted to see.
There were worse things that could happen to a person.
“Jack isn’t here,” she told him, though she had no idea whether or not Jack was in the shed. “I can tell him you came by.”
“Forget about it. I’ll catch up with him later.” Instead of leaving, Clay shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked back at the shed with real longing. “It’s been a rough couple of days.”
She laughed. “Sorry it’s been so hard on you.”
He gave a heavy groan as he sat down beside her on the bench. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”
Emily shook her head, because she finally just now realized that it was pointless to ask. No one was going to be honest with her.
“It wasn’t me,” Clay said, uselessly. “You know I don’t—”
“Feel that way about me,” Emily finished. “Yes, I know. Your minions have all repeated the line.”
Clay sighed again. He kicked at the gravel. A streak of dirt was left in his wake. Emily would have to smooth over the mark after he left. Which was unsurprising. She and everyone else in the clique had been smoothing over Clay’s mistakes for almost their entire lives.
He asked, “What are you going to do?”
Emily shrugged. No one had asked her what she was going to do. Her parents had decided, and now she was doing it.
He asked, “Can you feel it?”
Emily followed his gaze. He was looking at her stomach. Without thinking, she had rested her palm flat to her belly.
“No.” She moved her hand away, slightly sickened by the thought of something moving around inside of her body. She didn’t even know what a baby looked like at six weeks. Was it still considered a zygote? She had learned enough about gestation in health class to pass the exam, but the details had seemed esoteric back then. Emily imagined a cluster of cells pulsing around in a blob of liquid as they waited for a shot of hormones to tell them whether or not to turn into a kidney or a heart.
“I heard you got a marriage proposal.”
Emily felt her brain reaching back for the calmness of the carousel. She forced herself to stay in the present, asking Clay, “Did they send you here?”
“Who?”
“The clique.” She normally appreciated his coyness, but now she found it annoying. “Ricky, Blake, Nardo. Are they worried I’ll ruin your life?”
Clay looked down at the ground. He kicked a deeper furrow into the gravel. “I’m sorry, Emily. I know this isn’t what you wanted.”