CHAPTER 17
We found a water fountain at the start of the trail, and even though we were able to rinse off most of our bare skin, Beck took one look at me—and my white-turned-brown sweater—and shook his head.
“Absolutely not,” he’d said. “I’ll call your brother.
I can handle him. My aunt, on the other hand… absolutely not.”
So Beck ended up pulling out his phone to text Jamie, and we camped out at a picnic table a few feet from the mouth of the trail. The bugs hiding in the switchgrass were chirping, filling the awkward silence that had fallen over us while we waited for my brother.
Beck checked his phone for the tenth time. “You think he got lost?”
“This is his way of punishing me,” I said, picking at the half-moons of mud underneath my nails. “He’ll come, but he’ll take the long way.”
“Because it’s a punishment to be alone with me?”
Beck sat across from me, elbows braced on the table, shoulders slumped now that the adrenaline had worn off. The sun had ducked fully under the horizon now. In the dim light, the mud on his face and arms looked almost like war paint. His hair had dried stiff, sticking up in little points.
I pressed my lips together at the ridiculous sight. It was so normal. It reminded me of the little ovals on his nose from his sunglasses; something small that cracked the perfect too cool image he tried to craft. Now, he looked like a child who’d been living in the woods for the last ten years.
My heart tugged, familiar and not at the same time. “Yes,” I said finally. P-U-N-I-S-H-M-E-N-T.
Beck made a face.
“When did you start bleaching your hair?”
“A few months ago.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He began tracing the wood grain on the table with his fingertip. And then, blurted like a secret he couldn’t hold in, he said, “It made people look at me. When I bleached it.”
I felt my forehead crease. “And you wanted that?” Having people look at him seemed so opposite of what Beck would want.
“Sometimes it felt like I needed the reminder. That people could see me.”
This time, a glimmer of pain poked at my chest. I stared at his hand that rested on the table, wanting to reach for it, afraid to move. “Did you dye it at college?” I asked him. “Your semester ended already at Stanford?”
Beck’s answer came instantly, like muscle memory. “Stanford runs on a quarter system. Fall, winter, spring, summer.”
“Oh.” Right. Jamie had said that their spring quarter hadn’t been over yet. “The spring quarter is over, then?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
Even though Jamie said otherwise. The edge in Beck’s voice made me blink. “Stanford’s not boring?”
Beck turned to stare off at the dark trailhead. “Horribly.”
“When did this whole boring thing start?” I asked him, trying to lighten my voice. Something had shifted, except I couldn’t tell what. “Who told you life needs to be fun all the time? Because they were lying.”
“F-U-N.” Beck spelled the word out on a slow exhale, forcing his fingers to cut through the crunch of his hair. Flecks of mud flaked off, like pieces of a shell. “Fun. It’s an easy word to spell. Why is it so hard for life to feel it?”
I waited for the punchline, the smirk, the eye roll, anything to hint at a joke, but nothing came. It was the way he’d said it that had me stilling, paired with the blank look on his face.
I stared at him for so long that Beck glanced up, quickly, and then away, as if he were too afraid to linger, and I’d read his expression. “Well, that came out all maudlin, didn’t it? How embarrassing.” His voice was light, lazy, the way he normally spoke. “Spell it for me, Nell-Bell.”
“M-A-U-D-L-I-N.” Spelling the word aloud, though, didn’t chase away the strange feeling that’d surfaced at his words. “Beck—”
“Spell perspicacious.”
I curled my fingers in the rough grain of the table. The thin, dried layer of mud over the backs of my knuckles cracked. “P-E-R-S-P-I-C-A-C-I-O-U-S.”
“Oh, you knew that one? Didn’t try to call my bluff?”
His flippant voice and the darkness around us reminded me too much of a different time. “When was the last time you talked to your dad?”
All ounce of his remaining humor vanished. “What?”
“You said you haven’t talked to your mom in a while… But if you’ve been living with your dad, then—”
“Why are you being so nosy?” He gave me an almost disgusted look. “It’s no fun, Nellie.”
Beck looked too much like he had when he was little. Brown hair. Secretive eyes. “You asked me about my dad. Can’t I ask you about yours?”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”
“Contrary to popular belief, life isn’t all about what you want.”
“Why do you care?” His voice echoed around us, causing the crickets to momentarily fall quiet. “Like Saturday with Mrs. Johnson. Why do you keep doing this?”
“‘This’?”
“Butting in. Defending me. Prying. I thought you wanted me to leave you alone, anyway. That you didn’t want to see me, and that I should’ve stayed out in California, because no one wants me here.”
I’d thrown out those harsh words out of desperation, too terrified of how diligently he tried to sway me. Beck hadn’t been able to see that. He’d only been able to feel the hurt of them. “I didn’t mean it like that,” I started, but he didn’t let me finish.
“Oh, you didn’t mean it.” Beck turned as he spoke the emphatic words, as if relaying them to the bugs. “How’d you mean it, then, Nell-Bell? Because I can’t think of another interpretation. Spell it.”
I actually had to bite back the letters.
Instead, I just stared at him, the two of us locked in a competition of who would give in first. A stalemate.
Fun. It’s an easy word to spell. Why is it so hard for life to feel it?
The words sounded so… hollow. I thought of every other time Beck had thrown boredom out as an excuse, except his voice had never been so flat before. His gaze had never been so dull.
Beck broke first, turning away from me like he couldn’t manage looking at me any longer.
Like he didn’t want me to see any more than what I already saw.
“I haven’t spoken to my dad since the fall,” he said finally, answering me begrudgingly, as if he didn’t want to but couldn’t help it.
“When he paid my tuition for four years and then blocked my number.”
I blinked, blood running cold. “He blocked you?”
His mother hadn’t talked to him in four years and his father threw money at him before cutting contact. It reminded me of what Ms. Jennings had said about being more of a mother than other people around here.
Beck rolled his eyes. “Sure. Act horrified, even though you, yourself, didn’t want me around here either. Here I thought you’d feel guilty over everything that happened, but clearly, you’ve barely thought about it twice.”
I pressed my lips together, thinking back to Lydia on my front porch. “Is that why you agreed to work with Lydia? To get your revenge on me?”
Beck huffed out another non-laugh. “That’s what you think?”
“That’s what she said. She said you hated me.”
“Maybe I do hate you.” The flatness of his expression was gone now, replaced with something stonier. “Maybe I hate how perfect your life is while mine fell apart.”
His words hit like a punch to the chest. Perfect.
It was a curse on his lips, and for the first time, I wanted to protest it.
“You have no idea how much I’ve thought about it.
How bad I felt about it.” I leaned forward in almost a panic, the picnic table cutting into my stomach.
Dread made my stomach churn. “How many nights I’ve stayed up, thinking about you.
You have no idea how bad I’ve felt over what happened. ”
“I bet you did feel bad.” Beck didn’t back down, staring back. “Because perfect Eleanor made her first mistake. She lit the serenity garden on fire and kissed the bad boy, and then decided he wasn’t worth the trouble.”
That’s not true, I wanted to say, and the thought barely finished forming before it caved in on itself.
In the only way that mattered, it was true.
I’d chosen to rip the flowers up. To light that rosebud on fire.
And I’d let Mrs. Johnson point the finger at Beck when I’d known I’d been to blame.
I’d been too desperate to be the perfect daughter, to be a good girl who never did anything wrong.
Their disappointment had been too terrifying.
It might’ve been a knee-jerk reaction, but I’d used him as a shield, as a pawn I’d sacrificed so as not to lose my king.
“So that’s why you came back?” I asked again, barely hearing my words as I spoke them. “For revenge?”
Beck’s mouth twitched like he was trying to stop it from curling into something ugly. His eyes were too dark, unfocused, darting like he was watching the past play out somewhere just over my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Something inside me caved in, crumbling like a wall under too much pressure. And crumbling, too, were the lies that I’d been surrounding myself with all these years. I’d told myself that Beck taking the blame for the garden had been fine—he was a boy with a budding reputation, anyway.
But I’d helped solidify that image in stone. I’d started the fire and pushed him into it.
Tears pooled in my eyes. I should’ve stood up for him, four years ago in the garden, and every chance I’d had since. Instead, I’d let the boy I’d had feelings for burn.
The boy I still had feelings for. In that moment, I was sure. They would never go away.
I wanted to beg for Beck’s forgiveness. And that thought scared me, almost as badly as the hollow look in his eyes had. Almost as badly as being caught in the garden had.
Beck lowered his gaze from the sky, and I watched as he risked a flippant glance at me—and then did a double take.
His features hardened when he spotted my shining eyes, and he yanked his phone back out of his pocket.
His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, and he muttered, “Where the hell is your brother?”