The Girls of No Return (33 page)

I raised my eyebrows as she plopped the plate down between us.

“We better eat quickly,” she said. “You never know when someone'll decide to come in for a refreshing beverage.”

The cookies were delicious — peanut butter and M&M — and we scarfed them down in less than two minutes. Finally, Boone wiped a crumb off her chin and looked down at the empty plate.

“Congratulations,” she said. “We are official gluttons.” She sighed contentedly and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes.

The sun was starting to go down over the trees. From where we sat, we could see through the windows to the lake. I stood up. “Let's get back to the cabin,” I said. “The movie is probably over. We can see if Jules still thinks it's good, twelve years later.”

“Good idea,” said Boone. “My guess is that she likes it even more now. Especially if it's that one with the talking dog.”

We were laughing as we left the Mess Hall, and I was still laughing as I pulled one of the hoods from my sweatshirts over my head, so I didn't notice, at first, that Boone had gone silent.

“What?” I said, when I realized that she had stopped making any noise at all. I had to turn my whole torso to look at her, since the hood obscured my peripheral vision. When I could see her, though, I was also able to see what she was looking at.

Gia. Coming down off the trail from Buckhorn, jacket cinched tight, makeup in place. She was pulling her messy hair back into a ponytail.

The wind, frosting through the boughs of the trees.

The staccato chatter of a chipmunk.

The distant, rhythmic pulse as the water lapped at the shore.

These were the only sounds.

I didn't move. Neither did Boone. Gia hadn't seen us, and I wondered whether it would matter even if she had, or if she would just continue smoothing her shirt and putting one foot in front of the other.

Finally, I heard Boone take a deep breath. She was preparing herself. She was going to cry out, ask Gia where she'd been — and Gia would tell her, of course, and then it would all be known. My treachery, Gia's lies, everything. She took another breath, but no sound came out.

Gia kept walking, and soon rounded a tree and disappeared from sight.

I looked at Boone. Her eyes were half-closed, like she was remembering a dream she'd had the night before. Her mouth was set in a tight line, but I could see how it quivered at the edges.

“That little bitch.” She opened her eyes and glared at the trees where the trail to Buckhorn began. Her voice started off flat, void of emotion, but it got louder as she spoke. “That slut.” She turned to me suddenly, her eyes narrowing. “Did you — ?”

“No.” The word was out of my mouth before I even thought it. “I swear I never told her.” I couldn't stop. If there had been a roll of duct tape lying around, I would have taped my mouth shut.

Boone nodded slowly. “Okay.” She let out a long exhalation. I waited for her to ask me more questions and uncover my lie, but she didn't. “Then she must have heard us talking about Ben. And now she's . . . what? She's
visiting
him? What else is she doing? BITCH!” Boone yelled the word into the trees.

I heard a noise behind me and turned to see one of the cooks letting herself into the kitchen. She had paused at the door when she heard Boone shout. We looked at each other now, and I shrugged my shoulders. She raised her eyebrows, opened the door, and went inside.

“What are you going to do?” I didn't know what else to say. She assumed that Gia had done this on her own. How was I supposed to tell her that it was my fault, now that I'd already lied? My mind knew that she would find out soon enough, but my gut wanted to believe that she might not, that I could be absolved by omission.

“I'm going to kill her.”

The words rocked between us like an abandoned swing.

“Don't joke.” I tried to come off dismissive, carefree, as though I already knew it
was
a joke, but my voice sounded thin and scratchy.

“Who's joking?” Boone didn't pull her gaze from the trees. She seemed to be speaking only to herself and those ancient pines. “I'll kill them both.”

And then she started to cry. One tear pushed angrily down her cheek, willfully paving the way for the others to follow. Boone didn't sob — she didn't even catch her breath — but the tears came steadily, falling together in a thin stream from each eye. She didn't brush them away. She seemed incapable of it. Her arms hung uselessly at her sides, and she just kept staring into the trees as though looking for something she had lost, as though it might be there yet: a way out.

Finally, she swiped at her face with the sleeve of her shirt. She laughed once, loudly, and then began to walk toward our cabin without acknowledging my presence. I stepped quickly after her. Just as she was about to open the door, she spoke quietly, without turning to face me. “I'll tell you one thing. Ben'll have some explaining to do.” Then she went inside.

The next day, Boone disappeared after breakfast. I knew where she was going, and my plan consisted of hiding from her for as long as possible. The problem was, of course, that I was also trying to hide from Gia. It would only take one glance in my direction, and she would know everything. This complicated matters. I decided to stay in the cabin until I thought Boone would be coming back, and then hide out in the Infirmary until dinner. Nurse Whitfield would let me sleep off an imaginary stomach bug for a few hours at least. Nurses have a sixth sense for bullshit, but I was willing to test my luck.

I didn't know whom I was more scared of. On one hand, Boone would probably kill me when she found out who had introduced Gia to Ben. Then again, that might be preferable to what Gia could do. It didn't take a mathematician to see that first Boone would find out about my little “introduction,” and then she would tell Ben that his new girlfriend couldn't even smoke legally, not to mention everything else she was doing. And Ben would break it off with Gia. If A, then B, then, eventually, C. And that's where the equation circled back to little old me. Gia would assume that I had told Boone everything.

I lay on my bunk, staring at the ceiling, trying to remind myself that Gia couldn't really blame me for any of this. Except for the things I had said to her on the mountain, I hadn't done anything to harm her. But I knew she wouldn't see it that way. Somehow, I knew, she would find a way to believe that this was all my fault. And she would be right. If I hadn't wanted so badly to be alone with her on the mountain, maybe I would have been able to see what she really intended. But even as I thought about that, I couldn't silence the voice that still whispered to me in the back of my mind, reminding me of the way she'd looked at me in the Bathhouse. The touch of her finger. The fact that, despite everything she had done and said in the past week, I still knew — still wanted to know — the girl beneath the lies. I'd glimpsed her before. She was the one I wanted.

Right before lunch, Jules popped her head into the cabin.

“Still sick, huh?” She cast a worried glance at my prone form on the bunk. “Maybe you need some fresh air. Wanna go down to the beach?”

“Why?”

I had spoken sharply, and Jules looked confused. “I don't know,” she said, “just to, you know, get outside?”

I pulled my arm over my eyes. “No thanks,” I said. “I'd rather lie here.”

“Okay.” I expected to hear the door shut and the sound of her retreating footsteps, but I didn't. Instead, she walked softly over to her bunk and rifled around in her dresser drawer.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to show you something. I didn't get a chance to tell you yesterday, because you and Boone were gone all afternoon, but my parents sent me another picture of Westy.”

“Great.” My voice was flat. I didn't want to see a picture of her ridiculous dog. I wanted her to leave.

Jules either didn't hear me or pretended she hadn't, because she pulled out a photograph from her drawer and looked at it for a long minute.

“Wanna see?” she asked.

“No thanks,” I said.

“Oh.” She sat down. “God, I miss him,” she said. “He would do this thing where —”

“And what else do you miss?” I interrupted.

“What?”

“What else do you miss from home?” I felt a hard knot in my chest, pushing its way through the layers of skin and bone.

Jules glanced over at me. “The usual things, I guess,” she said. “Friends, family, good coffee. You know.”

“You miss your friends.” The knot was turning, twisting, getting hotter.

“Sure I do.” Her voice was hesitant.

“That's got to be hard, being away from your friends for so long. I bet you're a good friend to them.” I swallowed, and then continued in a voice that was unrecognizable to me. “I mean, you've been here a while. I'm surprised that Bev hasn't let you leave yet. It's not like you
chose
to come here or anything, like you could just
choose
to leave . . . is it?” Quickly, frantically, the knot began to unravel. I felt the heat spreading across my chest; all the anger, fear, and loneliness of the past week — of the past sixteen years — washed over me in a burning flood. I was so, so tired of hurting myself. I wanted to hurt someone else.

Jules looked up slowly. She had heard the accusation in my voice. Her eyes were bright with defeat. “Who told you?” she whispered.

“Terri. Your mom told her.” I felt like I was tumbling down a hill: faster, faster. “You might tell your mom to keep her mouth shut if you want to preserve your little secret. You wouldn't want everyone else finding out that you're a tourist here.”

“I'm not!” Jules cried. “I'm just as bad as the rest of you — I'm worse! There's no other place for me!” Her face crumpled. Tears started to pour from her eyes, but she went on, taking shallow, skipping breaths as she talked. “I would have done anything to get sent here. I begged the police to charge me, but there's no punishment in the world for what I did. You can't know what it feels like to kill — to have killed . . . in an instant. In one fucking second! I was looking for a Beatles song on the iPod, and I ruined everything.” Jules put her face in her hands, dropping the photograph to the floor. She started sobbing loudly, her shoulders shaking, breath ragged and fierce.

My chest was empty. There was nothing left: no heat, no knot, no anger. Instead, I watched Jules cry, the enormity of her mistake rocking over her again and again, and I knew with a wrenching clarity that this was one of the worst things that I would ever do in my life. I saw myself for what I could be — what I had just been: cruel, bullying, intentional. Jules was right. There was no punishment for this.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered. “I shouldn't have said that.”

I didn't think she heard me, if she remembered that I was in the room. I had never heard anything like the sound that Jules was making. It was the kind of noise that you imagine mothers make when their children die: the sound of a heart rending. Tears stung my own eyes, and I focused on the foot of my bed, blinking.

Finally, Jules lifted her face from her hands and looked at me through puffy eyes. “You're not,” she said.

“What?”

She was still choking back the occasional sob, but she breathed deeply and continued. “You're not sorry.”

I nodded.
I am.

“Then why did you say all of that?” She swiped at her cheek with the back of her hand.

“I didn't —”

“I don't understand you, Lida.” Jules's voice got stronger as she went on. Her eyes were still red and teary, but they focused on me as she spoke. “You've never been a friend to me. From the moment she got here, you've only had time for Gia. Sometimes —
sometimes
— Boone. Like the rest of us are too
average
for you. Do you think I haven't noticed that you only come to me when you need information — or when you're bored?”

“I haven't!”

“Please. Think about it.”

She gave me a long look, shaking her head, while I sat there, the fire in my chest replaced by a cold stone of shame.

“It's like you've got this blind spot. You can't even see the rest of us. Instead, you just keep chasing after a mirage. And it's making you mean.” She reached over and grabbed a Kleenex off the dresser, wiping her eyes delicately. “I might have killed my friends,” she said, taking a deep breath to steady herself, “but at least I knew they loved me.” She stood up and walked to the door, pausing by my bunk. I couldn't even look at her, but I could still hear her.

“ ‘Blackbird,' ” she said. “That's the song I was looking for.”

 

I awoke to Boone's hand on my arm, shaking me again.

“Lazy ass,” she was saying. “Wake up. It's almost time for dinner.”

I struggled into a sitting position, rubbing at my eyes. I knew how they must look: swollen and guilty. “I fell asleep.”

“No shit.” Boone looked like she had been running. Her braid was disheveled, stray hairs crowding her face, and she was breathing heavily. “Get up.”

“Where have you been?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

“Ben's. I went up there to get some answers.”

She leveled a gaze at me, and I knew it was over. He had told her everything. Their first meeting. My role in it. I scooted back toward the wall protectively.

“What's wrong with you? You look terrified. Hey — have you been crying?” Boone's eyes turned soft, and she leaned over the rail of my bunk toward me. “You okay?”

“I'm fine,” I said nervously. Why hadn't she hit me yet? “Bad day.”

“Hmmm.” Boone kept looking at me, but she went on, “Fine. Okay. Guess who else is having a bad day?”

“You?”

“Always. Who else?”