Her and Me and You (10 page)

“I’m sorry,” said Adina. Her expression was blank but she sounded remorseful.

“What else?” nudged Fred.

“I didn’t mean what I said about your face.”

I wiped my wet nose with the back of my wrist.

“And what else?” continued Fred. “What about the rumor? The kiss?”

She looked at him. “That wasn’t me.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” she said. “I told one person we kissed.” Her eyes shot back to me. “The story got twisted.”

She’s lying. She never stops.
“Adina,” I said.

“Don’t say my name that way.”

“What way?”

“Like you hate me. Like I’m your enemy. I’m not.”

“Adina,” I said again. “
We
didn’t kiss. You, like, attacked me.”

“Fine, whatever,
I
kissed
you
. It was nice, right? You liked it?”

I searched Fred’s face. Was she crazy?

She smiled at me. “Wait here, okay? I’ll go get the open bottle and some snacks.”

She wandered away, back toward the kitchen. Fred sat down next to me. “You’re weirded out.”

“She’s
out
of her fucking mind.”

“She’s not, she’s just—her perspective is skewed.” Would it
never
end? Would he
ever
quit defending her?

“She’s a fucking anorexic. Maybe if she ate something every once in a while, she’d stay sane.”

“She’s not—she eats. She’s picky.”

He couldn’t possibly be
that
naive. “Are you blind?”

Fred recoiled. “
No
, I’m not blind.”

“And her drinking—”

“We
all
drink.”

“Not like that, we don’t.” Silence. Death stares. “I think I should go.”

Fred recanted. “No, no, Alex, don’t. Please.” He took my hand. “You’re right, okay? You’re right, I just—we all have to get along.”

“Why? Why do we all have to get along?”

“Because. She’s my sister. Stay, please?” His hand was hot. “Just drink something and stay? I’ll make us dinner. I can cook, I swear it.” His lashes fluttered. “Come on, you wore your dress.”

I had, but why? Tonight had been a waste of good clothes.

“Please,” Fred pleaded.
“Please.”
He kissed me. His lips tasted like ChapStick and tobacco.

“Okay,” I said, relenting.

“Yeah? Is that a yes?”

I nodded.

“Good.” He bit his thumbnail. “You won’t be sorry, I swear it.”

We’d finished one bottle and started another. My second, Adina’s third. She was piss drunk, hanging upside down off the side of the sofa, laughing and braiding a long lock of hair.

“You guys look really great this way. All flipped around.” She righted herself. “Anyone want a peanut?” She thrust a plastic bag with five unshelled nuts in my face.

Fred took the bag.

I wasn’t sure why I’d stayed. Drunk Adina was only a fraction more pleasant than sober Adina. “I have candy in my car,” I offered. “I should get it.” We still hadn’t eaten. I stood, feeling woozy.

“No thanks,” she said. Then: “Let’s play a game.”

“I’ll be back in two secs—”

“No, now.” She pulled me down by my dress hem. Fred winced. “Sit.” She pushed on her teeth with two fingers. “Truth or dare.”

“Adina.” Fred.

“What?” And then, to me: “Truth or dare, Katonah?”

“I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t really care.”

“Sure you do. You care about everything. Pick one.”

“I— Truth.”

“Alex, you don’t have to—”

“Shut up,” she snapped at Fred. “Truth, great, I love it.” Then, sounding upbeat and impish: “Tell me about your secret relationship with my brother.”

“There’s no secret relationship.”

“You’ve been together, I know you have.” She stuck her chin out.

“We haven’t.”

“Come on, tell me what it’s like, with Fred.”

Instant nausea. I looked at Fred, who wasn’t moving. “Please stop,” he said softly.

“Stop what?”

“Interrogating her. She’s telling the truth, we haven’t done anything.”

“You’re lying to me,” she insisted, suddenly seeming so pissed. “I don’t ever lie to you. I don’t keep things from you.”

“Once, okay? We kissed once.”

She paused to chew a hangnail. “Like how?”

He looked up. “Like, how people kiss, Adina. Like a kiss, I dunno.”

“Like a peck?”

“I don’t know.”

“Show me.”

I froze, my eyes darting between twins. “No,” I blurted, getting up on my knees.

“I was talking to him, freak, not you.”

I winced as if I’d been hit. Fred kept his head down as Adina drunkenly inched her way closer. “Show me,” she repeated.

“No.”

“Show me.” She hovered nearby, taunting him.

“Adina.” He straightened up, swinging his hand, intending to push her away.

“Come on, show me,” she said, catching his wrist. “I want to see.”

“Let go.”

“No.”

“Come on, quit it—let
go
.”

She kissed him. Like a girl might kiss a boy. One forceful, angry, little kiss. It lasted seconds but I swear, seemed like forever—me, frozen in disbelief and Fred, swatting and squirming like a caged cat.

“We’re even,” she said to me when it was through. Both watched me, looking startled. Their mouths matched—both splotchy and red.

“Fuck.” After a quiet moment or two, came the squall. “What the
fuck
was that? What’s
wrong
with you?” Fred stood quickly, tripping in place.

I watched Adina. I felt dreamy. Disbelieving. She seemed so frail now, hunched over, drunk. Banana circled her, meowing madly, pawing at her knees.

Fred to me: “Are you coming?”

I got up.

37.

We sat in the dark by the river, away from the Bishop house.

“You okay?”

Stupidly cold but, “Yeah.”

“You want to go back to the car?”

I mimed
no
, then wrapped my arms around my waist, bending forward. Fred threw a pebble into the water. It skipped twice, then sank. “We used to come here a lot as kids. She loved this place.”

I picked a rock off the ground and rolled it between two fingers. What had changed? How had a kid who loved rivers and Audubon walks turned into such a malevolent freak?

“What’re you thinking?” Fred asked.

Why did I want to be a part of this? Something so insular and weird? “What do you think I’m thinking?”

He touched my hands, then the ends of my hair. I flashed
on Audrey, two towns over, in field hockey goggles and cleats. “Your girlfriend. She moved.”

“Her dad changed jobs.”

“Are you lying?”

He looked hurt. I leaned over and scooped up a handful dirt.

“What’s that for?”

“This?” I held up my hand, inspecting it. The mud felt nice—heavy, cool. I squeezed it through my fingers and shook my hand clean. “Have you been with lots of other people?”

“Other people?”

“Like, other girls. Not Audrey. I know about Audrey.” I straightened up. “Adina says you’ve been with lots of other girls. That you’re a cheater. Is that true?”

“Like, that I’ve slept with other girls?”

“Yeah.”

“That I cheated on Audrey?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Adina said that?”

I nodded.

“No, that’s not true.” I believed him. He looked so hopeless.

“Come home with me?” I wanted that feeling back. The one from Grams’s porch. “Please?”

“Yeah, of course I’ll come.”

I grabbed Fred’s hand.

*   *   *

We didn’t do anything. We just lay there, side by side, fully dressed, not sleeping. Fred stroked my hair and I rubbed his feet with my feet. We talked about dumb stuff, crap we hated and shitty books and stuff, and then around two, Adina texted:
Where are you?
She texted twice, then called. Fred sat up. He watched his phone flash.

“Don’t answer it. Please,” I pleaded. I wouldn’t let her wreck this. “Not now, okay? Everything’s so nice right now.”

He smiled at me. He dropped his phone to the floor and curled an arm around my shoulders and chest. He’d chosen me. For once, it was me and not her. I backed into him, feeling like I’d won some shiny prize. “Thanks,” I murmured, and Fred yanked the blankets tight, overhead. We stayed that way, under the covers, until it got hot and too hard to breathe. Later, when it was nearly light, Fred told me he’d had sex only once, with Audrey Glick. And that afterward she refused to touch him, and eventually they just stopped talking.

“I’ve never had sex with anyone,” I said.

“That’s okay.” He drew circles on my shoulder with his pinky nail.

Six-fifty-four a.m., Fred’s cell again.

I leaned over the edge of the bed, sweeping the floor for his phone.
Jesus, Adina, get a boyfriend who’s not your brother
. I checked the ID screen. “Oh. Hey.” I shook Fred. “Your dad.”

Fred sat up, groggy. He took the phone. “Hello?” His cheeks changed shades. Pink to white.

“Something wrong?”

He waved me away. “Okay,” he said, folding his phone shut. Then, to me: “She crashed Dad’s car.”

“What?”

“They found an empty fifth of vodka on the floor of his Mercedes.”

“When?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, where is she?”

“St. Mary’s.”

“Is she okay?”

His face was blank. “I dunno.”

My heart went nuts—racing, skipping beats. “What do you mean,
you don’t know
? He must have said something.”

“They had to pump her stomach.”

“Is she conscious?”

He looked confused. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. Then: “I don’t know.”

“He didn’t say?”

“I don’t know.” I could hear him breathing. He pushed me sideways and stood up.

“I’m coming with you.”

“No, you have to stay.”

“Why?”

“Just—
stay
, please?” He rubbed one eye. “I’ll call, okay?” He grabbed his keys off my nightstand.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?” He seemed legitimately perplexed. “I’ll call you,” he said again. Then he walked out the door.

38.

“Babe, eat something.” Mom and I sat on the porch,
wrapped in blankets. A dish of dry toast lay in my lap.

“I don’t want it.”

“You have to eat.” This from a woman who hadn’t eaten a solid meal in more than three months. “Come on, two bites; you’ll feel better.”

I picked the dish up and placed it on the ground next to my cold tea. I eyed my phone. I’d tried Fred twenty times in the last hour. It was quarter to eleven. I was ready to implode.

“Babe.”

“What?”

“I can drive you to St. Mary’s.”

“He doesn’t want me there. He asked me to stay away.”

“Okay.” Mom’s eyes widened. “You’re sure he meant it?”

“Yeah.
Yes
.” I rubbed my face and last night’s makeup rubbed off on my hand.

“You sure you don’t want a bath? If he calls, I’ll come get you.”

“I’m fine,” I said, only I wasn’t. “Let’s not talk, okay?” I was terrified and could not stop picturing Adina slumped over the steering wheel with her head bashed in.

My cell rang.

“Oh, shit!” I screamed.
“Shit.”
I fumbled nervously for my phone. This was it—Adina was dead, or brain-dead, or comatose, I knew it. Fred would be devastated. He’d blame me. I’d destroyed his life, after all.

“Hello?” I was panting. I sounded completely deranged.

“She’s okay.”

“Oh God.”

“Alex?”

“Yeah, I’m here, I’m just—” I laughed. My body loosened. “Really relieved.”

“Her head’s pretty bad. She whacked it on the driver’s side window and her chest is bruised from the air bag.”

“But she’s fine?”

“I mean, yeah, she’s alive.” He sounded distant and weird. “She, like, poisoned herself then drove into a tree.”

I looked at my mother, who was watching me with a hand to her heart.

“Is she awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Can she go home?”

“They’re keeping her overnight. They want to do a psych eval.”

“Why?”

“Why?”
he repeated.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Alex
. “Sorry. You need anything?”

“I’m okay. I’m gonna go home now and shower.”

“Call me later?” No response. I heard clanking in the background. Metal on metal, maybe? And a man’s voice. Deep, and sad sounding. “Or I could call you?”

“Alex, my dad’s here.”

“No, of course.”

“I’ll call later.”

“Yeah, but—tell Adina I’m glad she’s okay?”

Click.

39.

Friday. A creepy hush followed me from class to class.
Everyone silent and staring. I’d heard two conflicting rumors: Adina had swallowed a bottle of pills, some liquor, and crashed her Dad’s car on purpose.
Botched suicide attempt by freak anorexic.
The second story was softer:
It was accidental, she’s so small
—
too much booze, poor little girl
. I hadn’t even considered the worst, but Charlotte insisted: “She’s so goddamn skinny—what’s the difference? Starve yourself or drink a shit-ton and drive into a tree? I mean, really. And you know about their mom, don’t you?”

Forth block. We were outside, on the lawn. Charlotte had a free period. I was skipping phys ed.

“She’s dead, I know.”

“No, you know how she died, right?”

I shrugged.

“Car wreck.”

“So?”

“So? Seriously, who drives into a tree?”

“She was drunk.”

“That girl is bat-shit crazy.” She mashed her lips together. “Admit it.”

“Admit
what
?” I was picking apart a blade of new grass.

“That maybe she drove into that tree on purpose.” She pulled a pack of Tic Tacs from her jeans pocket. “Want one?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so nice to her.” She shook out a handful of orange candy. “She’s not very nice to you.”