Paper Valentine (17 page)

He gives Carmen a suggestive grin and reaches for her, but she steps out of his way like she barely even sees him. Her gaze is worried and fixed on Angelie.

Over on the grass, Connor is messing around with Ariel and Pinky, teasing them that he’s going to steal the chocolate off their sundaes with his spoon. I’m suddenly glad they’re distracted, too far away to overhear Mike’s comments about Carmen or see the way Angelie is looking down at me from the picnic table.

“You’re not okay, Hannah.” The way Angelie says it is heavy, like she’s saying more too, daring me to disagree. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re really just not okay.”

The way she’s watching me is patronizing, and in the six months since Lillian died, nothing about what’s left of our little group has really stabilized. Now it seems like everything is falling apart. So much has changed.

Since school let out, Angelie has pretty much completely stopped following Lillian’s fashion mandate of outrageous sophistication. Tonight she’s wearing a plain, cream-colored tank dress I don’t recognize. It’s a clean, preppy style, and every day she looks more and more like the conventional girls—the ones Lillian was always so disdainful of. The ones who get involved and organize things and look just like everybody else.

I’m wearing an old Warped Tour T-shirt of my mom’s and a pair of twill shorts I never wear, no accessories, no makeup. I don’t look like anything.

There’s a gap between us, maybe only a few feet. We’re too different in height to stand nose to nose anyway, but she’s up on the picnic table, looking down at me like she’s waiting for me to scuttle off somewhere.

“What is your problem?” I say. My grape slush is so cold, the plastic cup feels like it’s burning my hand. “Why are you acting like this?”

“Hannah,” she says, giving me the most patient, long- suffering look. “There’s something going on with you. I mean, come on—lying to your mom that you were at the movies with me, hanging around with boys like that. I haven’t seen you in weeks and now you show up here, with him, looking like you just rolled out of bed, and it’s like I don’t even recognize you.”

Once, Angelie and I slept together in the daybed at Jessica’s sleepover when Lillian was away on vacation. We talked about our favorite bands, and she let me paste plastic jewels on her fingernails. Now, I kind of want to yank her down off the picnic table by her hair.

Ariel has stopped capering and is standing off to the edge of the picnic area, watching us. I have a strange feeling she might be thinking that this is partly her fault because she was the one who told the lie, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Angelie,” I say, and it’s the weirdest thing, but I’m smiling. “Do you ever just wish that we could be kids again, like back in fifth grade?”

She looks at me like I have lost my mind. “No,” she says. “No, because fifth grade was fricking miserable. I was the tallest kid in our class, and I had terrible glasses, and you and Lillian just expected everyone to be as perfect as you were!”

I don’t answer right away. Her version of things is twisted and confusing and so, so flawed. “We weren’t, though. We—”

Angelie hops down from the picnic table and comes right up to me, sticking her spoon in my face. “I spent the last five years trying to figure out how to be just like you guys, okay? And now she’s dead, and you’re here looking like a homeless person and prancing around with a giant retard. So don’t go telling me how things were.”

And just like that, everything inside me seems to go numb, like I’ve turned to stone.

Jessica is watching us with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open. Her expression is close to excitement, but Carmen looks worried, like she just wants the evening and the whole summer to go back to normal. I know the feeling, just like I know she won’t actually say anything. Of the five of us, Carmen and I have always been the ones who never start arguments or really stick up for ourselves. Carmen, because she’s quiet and nice and never wants anyone to think she’s being loud or bitchy, me because I never had to.

Because Lillian would always do it for me.

“Excuse me?” I say, sounding cool and sweet, just like Lillian always used to.

And Angelie feels it. Her face goes stark and rigid, because this, right here, this is Lillian.

It’s awful to remember how dismissive she could be, how easily she talked to us. She was the one in charge, and it didn’t matter if I could only watch slasher movies between my fingers or if Jessica was scared to go off the high-dive. Lillian ran roughshod over all of us.

Angelie stares down at me, hurt and angry, because even from beyond the grave, Lillian has this unshakable hold on her. On all of us.

“Oh, you were done?” I say, and I hate it.

Angelie looks almost shocked, like she might even apologize, take it all back, just the way she always used to. Then, she draws herself up and lifts her hands like she’s about to grab me by the shoulders but doesn’t quite dare. “Get out of my face, you nasty flat-chested bitch.”

I wonder if this is how people get into fights. She’s a lot bigger than me and will probably murder me if we actually wind up hitting each other.

I don’t care. For the first time in maybe my whole life, I feel dangerous and magical, like a dragon or a mermaid. A fury, standing there with my half-gone grape slush and my jaw clenched, ready for whatever comes next.

When Finny moves beside me, I feel it more than see it. He doesn’t say anything, but I can sense him there, looming.

“Oh my God,” Angelie says, looking up with narrowed eyes. “Who invited you into this conversation?”

I understand that Angelie is dangerous in a way I’ve never realized. That she probably even has the power to hurt Finny. He’s standing with his hands in his pockets, looking down at her. His expression is unreadable, then he frowns slightly but doesn’t say anything. Maybe he was invincible against Connor last year when he yanked him off me in detention, but this is a completely different world. One that can’t be solved just by being the biggest. All his easy confidence disappears when he’s faced with the pack of little witches who laughed at his shoes.

Without saying a word, I drop the plastic cup, then step up onto the picnic bench and grab him around the neck. It takes everyone by surprise, even him. But it’s easy. I stand with my feet planted on the wooden bench and my arms around his neck, and look straight into his sea-green eyes. The way he looks at me makes something go shivery and hot in my chest and in the next second, I’m kissing him in front of everyone.

He doesn’t react right away, but then his hands move to my hips. And in the few seconds between Angelie’s shocked gasp and Finny’s hands, something changes. I understand that I’m not doing this for them anymore. We’re beyond that now. We’re someplace better, and I smile against his mouth, keeping my eyes closed and my arms around his neck.

When the kiss is over, I stand looking down at everyone, and for a strange moment, I think that this must be how Lillian felt all the time.

But no. Her feeling was bad enough to make her break herself apart from the inside. Mine is wild and powerful and final. Done. The thing is, Lillian never would have proved her point by just doing what made her happy, letting Angelie see how she felt. Lillian’s way was always to lash out, at herself or someone else. And maybe I can fake that—I can tilt my head the same way she did or mimic the way she talked—but in the end, maybe the only thing I’m completely sure of is that I am not her.

Angelie stands blinking with her spoon in her hand, looking at me in pure, undisguised horror. “Oh my God, why, Hannah?”

“Because Finny is an excellent kisser,” I say, and his face goes red all the way up to the roots of his hair, but he’s smiling.

Angelie’s mouth has fallen open, glossy and sticky-looking. I jump down from the bench and stand with my arms at my sides, smiling up at her.

“This is so screwed up,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t even believe you’d be this dumb. I mean, it’s like you have no survival instincts whatsoever.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“Oh come on, Hannah! Why do you think the police are cruising up and down the streets all day, watching boys like him? Why do you think they’re stopping us all the time at the mall or the pool to ask if we’ve seen anything, if they didn’t have some kind of evidence it was one of those delinquents? For all you know, he’s probably the fucking killer!”

No one moves or says anything, and it’s like we’ve all stopped breathing. If my jaw gets any tighter, I think my teeth will break. We’re six inches from each other, so close I can smell her spring-clean bath gel and her flavored lipgloss. I’m staring into her eyes, searching for some way to demolish her, when Finny reaches out and just barely touches my arm.

“Come on,” he says, looking out over the neighborhood. “It’s late. Let’s get you guys home.”

“That’s right,” says Angelie. “Go home with your giant psycho killer. Bye, psycho—bye!”

I don’t argue. I just give her a little wave and my brightest, fakest smile. “You’re a raging bitch, Angelie. So have fun with that.” And I look around at Carmen and Jessica and Connor before I turn to go. “Eventually everyone else is going to figure it out too.”

As we start down the little blacktop path toward home, no one says anything. I can tell that Finny’s upset, angry or embarrassed over what just happened. I can read the damage in his face, but I don’t know what to say.

“You called Angelie a bitch!” Ariel says after a few minutes, prancing around us as we head down the bike path. “That was awesome.”

Pinky is quiet, trudging along beside me, scraping the toes of her sneakers along the asphalt. She looks rumpled and sleepy.

I think about Angelie and how I spent all these times wondering why she could sometimes be so mean, why she wanted to hurt me, but never had the answer. I know why now, and it’s got nothing to do with sadness or Finny or my hair. It’s just the dark, toxic sludge of residual Lillian.

Residual me.

Finny stays quiet, like if we just pretend the scene with Angelie never happened, then we can act like all these other things never happened either, like I never laughed at his shoes and no one ever called him a retard and a psycho.

“Come on,” he says. “If we cut through the park, we can take the path under the train tracks.” His voice is flat, like nothing matters.

I bump against his arm and reach for him, trying to take his hand, but he doesn’t reach back and after a second, I let my hand fall. “Can’t we go back around on Beverly Street? It’s just, I promised my mom we wouldn’t go through the park.”

Finny just keeps walking in the direction of the tracks. “So don’t tell her. Beverly takes twice as long.”

I don’t tell him that maybe I want to take the long way, walk home next to him in the dark, with my head quiet for once and his hand in mine. Even if that’s what I want, he doesn’t. What he wants is to get as far away as he can from Connor and Angelie and all the rampant ugliness of the last half hour.

“I know you’re not any of those things she said,” I whisper, just under my breath, just for him.

He glances over with an expression that’s unreadable, and because it’s unreadable, I know exactly what it means. It’s a look of total defeat.

“Well, I do,” I say.

“You’d be the first,” he mutters, looking away, and in the silence that follows, I’ve got nothing to do but reach for his hand. This time, he lets me take it.

The air near the river is thick with the smell of honeysuckle and chokecherry bushes, so warm that it’s almost like walking through a curtain. It’s getting dark now, and the park is rustling softly all around us. Finny’s hand is big and comfortable in mine, and I wonder what he did all week while I was stuck at home. If he was lonely or missed me or thought about me at all. It’s funny, but even though I’ve seen his house, I still can’t really picture what he does in his every- day life when he’s not busy with school or misdemeanors or me.

The path that leads under the railroad tracks to the Sherwood Street side is cracked and weedy. It slopes sharply, bordered by tall, brittle grass. Finny starts down first and helps Ariel and then Pinky along the steepest part. The asphalt path is narrower here, winding down the little hill, and even though the sky is still a deep jewel-blue fading to dusky purple, the shadow under the bridge is dark and cool and private.

Just as I’m stepping under the bridge, I roll my ankle on a patch of loose gravel, and the sole of my sneaker slips off the edge of the path. I knock my foot against something heavy, and Finny catches me by the back of my T-shirt to keep me from falling facedown into the weeds.

I almost walk on by, but the impact is still throbbing in my foot and there was a certain weight to it, a feeling. Not like the hard, irregular shape of a rock or a branch but a solid softness. I stop and turn back to see what I tripped on.

The darkness under the bridge is almost a living thing, oozing through the hot night air, getting all over my skin. From somewhere around us comes a high-pitched tinkling noise, drifting in from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

I dig in my pocket for my phone, fumbling for the light. In the pale glow of the screen, I can make out a mass of shapes, slopes, and angles.

“What is it?” Ariel says behind me.

I don’t move. There are long strands of fishing line hanging from the underside of the bridge, tied to glass beads and safety pins and paper airplanes that sway like wind chimes, knocking against each other a little. I know that you’re never supposed to touch things when you’re dealing with a body, but there’s this soft, hopeful voice in my head that says maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just nothing—some thrown-out trash, a pile of random junk that someone left in the park because they didn’t want to deal with it.

But even as I stand there listing all the things it could be, I know.

The screen times out, goes dark, and I have to hit a button to make it light up again. I do it without thinking and when the light flares to life again, I’m stunned but not surprised. I’m looking into the face of a girl, and there’s blood in her hair and splashed down the side of her neck. There’s a smell. It hangs in the still, humid air, and I can taste it in the back of my throat.