The Fallout Chapter 8

None.

I step through the door, and the heat is instantly on me.

Josh’s already halfway across the parking lot.

“Josh! Josh, wait!” He stops. By the time I reach him, I’m already sticky with sweat. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” he says.

Home. I could go home, to my place. No one’s there. I glance back at the school. I can actually see the heat coming off of it. And I hate the people inside.

“Can I come with you?” I beg. He looks like he’s about to tell me to fuck off, but I cut him off.

“Please?”

He turns and heads for his car. I follow him.

He lets me.

Josh lives near the outskirts of town .

It’s an old house. The painted exterior is flaking away, and the front porch looks tired. The wooden fences that separate it from nicer homes on either side are in desperate need of repair. He didn’t always live here. He used to live in a bungalow a few streets over, and then his mom died. I always figured it was one of those situations where he and his dad couldn’t stand being where she’d been, but I don’t know if that’s true.

I thought it once and I’ve tried not to think about it since.

Josh gets out of the car. I do the same. Now that school is behind us, the whole situation feels less dire and kind of stupid, like I shouldn’t have come here. I wipe my palms on my shorts, and Josh gestures for me to follow him. We bypass the front door and edge down a narrow path of dried-out yellow grass between the fence and the house that leads into the backyard.

Where there’s a pool.

It’s in-ground. A quietly neglected piece of paradise. A few leaves float across the surface of the water. There are two chaise lounges at the side and worn-out wicker furniture taking up space on the patio. A sliding door leads inside.

Josh pushes open the back door. “I’ll be right back.”

I wonder if he will be. While he’s inside, I meander around the pool. I get it. It’s like neutral ground. It’s as close to inside as I’m getting, and that suits me fine. I entertain a visual of us in his house, on a couch, side by side or something, and it’s parental-inspectionon- prom-night shades of weird. Not that this isn’t weird.

I spot a fly floating on the surface of the water, its little legs pumping madly as it fights to keep itself afloat: I know that feeling. I roll up my sleeves, cup it into my hands, and seek out the least-dead patch of grass I can find. I set it down and it stays there, stunned. It’s still not moving when Josh returns with three bottles and two glasses. He sets them on the table. Coke, Jack, vodka. He faces me, and I try to ignore how much I understand what he just did. At Taylor’s parties, I was usually the first to start drinking and the last to stop, and it wasn’t because I enjoyed the taste.

It was because I hated the people I was around.

He half turns to me. “So why’d you do it?”

“She deserved it,” I say.

Josh mixes two Jack and Cokes and hands me the first. I halve the glass quickly and then I polish it off. I can’t tell if he’s impressed or not. He takes a generous drink from his own glass, and his expression never changes.

It makes me feel even more awkward than I already do.

“My dad keeps his liquor cabinet locked,” I tell him.

He sets his glass on the table and wanders over to the edge of the pool. He rolls up his jeans and sits down, dangling his bare legs in the chlorinated water. He doesn’t invite me to join him, and I feel dumb about that, too, so I pour myself a shot of vodka, knock it back, and then I just go for it. I sit next to him, cross-legged, and try not to look as tense as I feel.

“What happened to your arms?” Josh asks.

I look down. What’s left of the bruises Chad gave me are in plain sight. My stomach twists. I roll down my sleeves, until I realize the act of hiding them will inspire more questions.

“Nothing,” I mutter.

“Is that why you were seeing my mom?”

I laugh. “Yeah, totally. I punch myself in the arms a lot. It’s a real problem.”

He doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if his mom actually did see people who punched themselves in the arms a lot, and then I feel really stupid. And then I figure if I feel this stupid, I might as well go double or nothing:

“So can I sit with you at lunch on Monday?”

“No.”

He gets to his feet. The way he moves is so light, easy. I’m jealous of how he walks around school with everyone thinking these horrible things about him, like it doesn’t mean anything. I can barely maintain eye contact anymore.

He grabs the vodka and takes a long sip from it. When he’s finished, he wipes his mouth and contemplates the bottle, and there’s something so beautiful and lonely about it that I almost wish I had a camera. I shake the thought away. He sets the bottle down and returns to his spot beside me. Dips his legs back in.

“What’ll you give me for it?” he asks.

I stare. “What?”

“To sit with me at lunch on Monday? What will you give me for it?”

I flip him off. He laughs. I guess I could hide in the washroom for the rest of the year, but I don’t know.

It’d be nice to make Dakota think that I had an ally. The illusion of someone being on my side. I reach into my pocket for an antacid and shove it in my mouth.

“What do you want?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe I should stop putting dents in my crappy reputation. It’s bad enough being a waster, but it’s a thousand times worse being a waster who hangs out with Hayley Williams, right?”

I ignore that. “You want to know why I was seeing your mom?”

“Why else do you think I let you come here?”

“Guess. If you guess right, I’ll tell you.”

He leans back and stares at the sky. “I can’t. I have you mostly pegged, but I just can’t figure out why you of all people would need my mom’s help.”

“You have me pegged,” I repeat.

He nods. “You’re Dakota Rae’s right hand. That’s the lowest form of life on the highest part of the social ladder. There’s not much to you.” He straightens before I can reply. “Okay, let me try: Your dealer ex-boyfriend got you hooked on Adderall, and shrink visits were part of your recovery process.”

I roll my eyes. “Wow, got it in one.”

“It’s probably something boring like an eating disorder.”

My stomach lurches. I don’t want to talk about this with him anymore. “Forget it. I’m not telling you even if it means I have to sit alone every day for the rest of the year.”

“I’ll walk you to your classes,” he says, looking at me.

I stare at him. He’s serious. He’ll let me sit with him and he’ll walk me to my classes if I tell him why I was seeing his mom. My fingers tingle—some kind of physical response to let me know this is a deal that’s too good to pass up, and before I’ve even really decided to tell him, I’m telling him, just spewing it out: “I couldn’t eat.”

“So I was right.” He sounds disappointed. “Eating disorder.”

“It wasn’t an eating disorder,” I say. He raises an eyebrow and I flush, trying to figure out a way to explain it. “I wanted to eat and I couldn’t.”

Everyone thought it was an eating disorder, at first, and that’s when Kara really started hating me. It drove her crazy every time Dakota slid half her lunch to me looking all concerned. When I stopped eating, people cared.

“I went to a bunch of doctors, and they couldn’t find anything physically wrong me …so I started seeing your mom.”

“But you can eat now?”

I think of the pills in my pocket. “Mostly.”

“So you just woke up one day and you couldn’t eat anymore? Really?”

I nod. “Something like that.”

Liz is out. I put my hand in the water and try to ignore that voice in my head. Liz is out. I remember waking up that Monday, sitting down at the table for breakfast, and ending up over the sink, puking. Ithought it was nerves. I thought it would go away.

“Why?” he asks. “What was the reason?”

“That’s between me and your mom,” I say, but it’s a lie. I never told her why I couldn’t eat, even though I knew. I just fed her half-truths because she was so warm and I wanted her to like me more than I wanted her to help me. And she would’ve never liked me if she’d known. “So can I sit with you or not?”

“No. But thanks.”

I stare at him. He stares back, a small smile at the corner of his mouth.

“You’re an asshole,” I tell him.

“What did you think was going to happen? I hate going to school and you’re the reason why. Just think about that for a minute and then tell me if you’re still shocked.”

“It didn’t have to be like that for you,” I snap. “You think about that.”

“I’m so sorry that I came to Hallowell and forgot to genuflect in front of your best friend,” he snaps back. “Not that it makes a difference. Liz Cooper was on her knee for Dakota all the time, and it didn’t do her any favors in the end, right?”

“Shut up.”

“But don’t you want to talk about Liz? Don’t you want to talk about that time you sabotaged her homework? Broke into her locker? Trashed her things?”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “Josh, stop—”

“Started that rumor campaign about her? Hey, remember you told Duane Storey she was a total dyke when she was really into him?”

“Josh—”

“And I’ve been dying to know…was there actually a weekly ‘Make Liz Cooper Cry’ competition, or did it just turn out that way?”

“Liz was the reason I saw your mother,” I snap. It catches Josh off guard. His eyes widen, just a little. “You don’t have me pegged.” I bite my lip. Hard. “And I liked Liz. I didn’t get off on watching Dakota torture her every fucking day. She was my—”

“Friend?” he finishes in disbelief.

Once upon a time. Once upon a time, I really, really liked Liz. Total girl-crush. Being around her was so easy. And Liz liked me too. A lot. That was the problem.

She’s pulling you away…

“Okay, wait, so you fucked her up,” Josh says slowly. “And you went to my mom because you couldn’t eat because you were fucked up because you fucked Liz up?”

“Something like that, yeah,” I mutter.

Somehow this new piece of information only makes him hate me more. “Always the victim, right? Liz tried to kill herself, and I’m supposed to sit here and feel sorry for you because you feel guilty about it?”

“She tried to kill herself?” I whisper.