CHAPTER 6 #2
By the time we got home, it was a little before nine, which meant there wasn’t too long left until Mom usually took our phones.
Not that I really wanted to be on it anyway.
So, instead of scrolling through social media, I just took a shower, soaking long enough that I was sure a layer of my skin had dissolved off in the heat.
D-I-S-S-O-L-V-E-D. My mind formed each letter, constructing it like an ink printer.
When I was little, my parents had been obsessed with setting Destelle up for success, which meant Jamie and I had barely registered.
He hadn’t minded. He’d been happy on his own.
I hadn’t been. And then I’d discovered a way to impress them by spelling.
Mom had lit up when I’d rattled off words like neutrosophy and intersubstitutability, so I’d chased that. I’d snuck into Dad’s office, pull books off his shelves, hunt for bigger, stranger words—anything that might earn me another bit of their attention.
Because getting Mom and Dad to notice me, when my older sister took up all the space in the room, had felt like a jolt straight to the chest. Like something I could’ve lived off of.
Now, after seven years of Destelle being off on the west coast, spelling was more habitual. Not a desperate grab for attention; more of a calming comfort. C-O-M-F-O-R-T.
I squeezed a towel through my hair as I walked into my bedroom, tapping my phone on my nightstand to check the time. There was a text waiting for me, though, and my stomach dropped to the tips of my toes.
Beck
Hey, it’s Carter. I got your number from one of the kind ladies at the club. I can’t believe I didn’t ask for it before we parted ways for the evening last night. I had a lovely time, though. When can I see you again? :)
I was frozen solid, staring at the screen even after it went dark again. My breath stalled in my lungs, heart jumping into a sprint. And then denial crept in. There was no way I’d just read what I had. I must’ve seen the name wrong.
I hesitantly tapped the screen again, once more reading Beck’s name. And then his text.
Heat rushed through me. I snatched my phone up from the nightstand, unlocked it, and immediately pressed the call button. It rang once, twice, three times—I was convinced he probably wouldn’t even pick up—and then the ringing stopped. There was only silence.
“What are we?” I demanded when I realized he was waiting for me to talk first. My legs shook so badly that I all but fell to sit on my bed. “Five?”
Beck still hesitated, and when he spoke, he pitched his voice higher. “W-Whatever do you mean—”
“Cut the crap, Beckham.”
He gave a quiet, disappointed curse. “How’d you know it was me?” He sounded normal—lazy, slightly pouty, and low. “Did Pebble Brain already text you? Lydia said you said he hadn’t asked for your—wait. Wait.” A smile crept into his voice. “Do you still have my number saved on your phone?”
My eyes bounced around my room, as if something in here would give me a good lie. Nothing. “You and Lydia gossip about my love life now?” In, like, the hour that I’d last seen her, she’d immediately called Beck?
“Is that how you knew it was me?” Beck went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Because you still have my number from before?”
I’d gotten my first phone two months before starting high school—our parents’ birthday present to Jamie and me. I’d brought it to an event at Alderton-Du Ponte, and the first person whose number I’d asked for was Beck’s.
“I don’t know why you sound so smug about it,” I grumbled, biting down on the corner of my lip. “I just never got around to deleting it.”
“Right, right. Because after everything that happened, I was the last thing on your mind, huh?”
I said nothing, not trusting myself to speak.
“Be honest,” Beck went on, voice back to its languid tenor.
I pictured him in a chair, tipping his head back, staring at the ceiling.
His bleached hair, since it was so long, would hang in jagged edges toward the floor.
“Would you have known it was me if you didn’t have my contact saved?
Because I thought I did a pretty good job of channeling the dorkiness—”
“Why is this such a joke to you?” I almost whispered, the unease coiled so tightly in my chest that I was afraid it’d crawl up my throat. “Why can’t you just leave me be?”
“Because I’m bored.”
I waited, but he didn’t go on. “You’re messing with my life because you’re bored?”
“Yeah.”
The one word was flat. Unaffected. Bored. My breathing started coming heavier, but I couldn’t pinpoint what emotion fueled me. Disbelief? Rage? Something else? “Can we be adults about this and—”
“I can be an adult about it,” Beck answered before I could finish. “You can’t. You’re only seventeen.”
“I turn eighteen on the sixth—”
“Well, then our adult conversation can wait until then.” Something shifted on the other end of the phone. “You’re letting Pebble Brain shoot his shot. Why can’t I?”
There was humor in his voice. It raked across my skin like fire. “Because you’re you.”
Beck inhaled through his teeth. “You wound me, Nell.”
“Because you don’t mean it.” I clutched the phone tighter, almost as if it were a lifeline in the insane conversation. “You’re only flirting because you’re trying to mess with me.”
“What if I did mean it?” Beck’s voice was a croon now, as delicate and soft as a confession itself. Gentle enough to trick my body into shivering, especially since those words were right into my ear. “Hm? What if then?”
C-R-U-E-L. It was cruel of him to ask. To pretend. I thought about the way his eyes had dropped earlier in the café, going from scanning my gaze to gazing at my lips. When you want someone, you’ll look at their mouth. You’ll imagine kissing them. You won’t be able to help it.
“You won’t,” I got out. Swallowed. My throat tightened. “So do us both a favor and butt out, would you? Your life may be a joke to you, but mine isn’t to me.”
Silence followed my harsh words, long enough that I would’ve thought Beck had hung up if it hadn’t been for the roar of white noise. When he spoke again, this time, his voice barely cut through the static in my ears. “You wound me, Nell.”
“You’ll get over it,” I said, and pulled my phone down from my ear. Without wasting another second, I ended the call, pressing the screen flat into my covers as if I could suffocate what’d just happened into the duvet.
I pressed my fingers to my lips hard. Thoughts were tripping over themselves in my mind, but Beck’s voice overshadowed them all. After everything that happened, I was the last thing on your mind.
U-N-T-R-U-E. The letters did nothing for me.
U-N-F-O-R-G-E-T-T-A-B-L-E.
The problem was that I deserved this. I deserved Beck trying to make a joke out of my life. I deserved it—all because of the one time I’d slipped up.
All because of the last time I’d been with Beckham Jennings in the serenity garden.
When I was little, I’d looked forward to every Alderton-Du Ponte event, only so I could see Beck.
We’d play chess out in the garden, or we’d sit and look at the stars, or he’d listen to me ramble and ramble, because I was good at it.
But we’d only ever interact in the garden—a little corner of sanctuary for us.
He’d ignore me within the walls of the club, but in the garden, it was like it’d been only the two of us in the world.
You have to like me at least a little, I’d told him that last night, looking at his lips. Because I like you a lot.
And then, without thinking it through, I’d kissed him.
I’d kissed Beckham Jennings.
I thought you were better than your sister, Mrs. Johnson had said when she’d found us, disgust on her face. Kissing bad boys.
“Nellie.” I jolted up at the sound of Mom’s voice. She stood in my open bedroom doorway, dressed in her pajamas with a cardigan wrapped around her. She had Jamie’s phone in her hand already. “It’s curfew.” And she held her palm out to me.
I wordlessly passed my phone over, feeling trapped in the blazing memory. “Mom?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Do you think it’s weird that the board of directors let Beck come back to Alderton-Du Ponte?” My words were slow, almost drowned out by how furiously the blood roared in my ears. “After… he ruined the garden?”
Mom sank down on the edge of my bed, her eyes wide on me. “Why? Are you upset about it?” She sighed. “I really wish Ally had given me a heads up. You know how she is. Ask for forgiveness, not permission, and all that. But if it’s bothering you—”
“It’s not.” I couldn’t quite look her straight on, settling for the collar of her pajama shirt. “Has Mrs. Johnson said anything about that night at all?”
Did she ever tell you she caught us?
Mom seemed surprised. “Mrs. Johnson? You mean about her putting out the fire Beck started?”
The fire Beck started. W-R-O-N-G. “Yeah.”
“You know Mrs. Johnson,” she said, and then shook her head. “She was dramatic about it, painting herself a hero. Conveniently leaving out the part where she was drunk out of her mind.”
She’d been drunk when she’d stumbled upon Beck and me and the fire? It had been late in the evening for the fundraiser, but I hadn’t remembered—then again, it hadn’t been my biggest priority.
“Ally wrote them a nice check to let him back for the summer.” Mom nudged my leg, drawing my eyes back to her. “But you, Nellie. I’m more worried about you. I know you said the fire was an accident—”
“It was.”
“But he still destroyed the rest of the garden. And you were there.” She reached out and pushed some of my hair behind my ear, the touch feather light.
The scent of her rose perfume still lingered on her wrist, choking me.
“Even if it happened so long ago, I’d feel better if you weren’t alone with him. ”
Her words were gentle, consoling, prickling over my skin. Mom knew nothing about what really happened that night because I’d lied. Or, really, I hadn’t corrected any assumptions, only to save myself.
Because Beck hadn’t been the one to destroy the garden. It’d been me.
I thought you were better than your sister, Mrs. Johnson had said, the words as sharp as the pain in my chest now.
To Mom, and to the Mrs. Johnson in my memory, I murmured, “Me too.”
Mom pressed a kiss to the top of my head, and the action should’ve washed me with warmth, should’ve chased away the unease in my stomach, but it didn’t.
I was still cold, even more so after she left.
I burrowed underneath my covers, bringing them up to my chin.
There was a gap in my blinds that some moonlight seeped through, enough to throw horizontal shadows on the wall.
I stared at them, too wired to close my eyes.
You wound me, Nell.
Y-O-U W-O-U-N-D M-E N-E-L-L.
With Beck, it was what I was best at.