4. Liz
LIZ
“ENLIGHTEN YOU?” I repeat back to Detective Norris as I fiddle with the cap on my water bottle. “Okay, then. How far back should I go?”
The detective takes a sip of his coffee sludge. “Let’s start with yesterday afternoon. How about that? Tell me everything you remember. Every little detail. Any detail could be of importance, so leave nothing out.”
I don’t need this guy mansplaining what “every detail” means.
I’m not an idiot. But I can humor him, at least for now.
It’s actually nice to remember Sadie. It makes me feel like she’s still here and yesterday was just another normal day that didn’t go so far off the rails.
Like I can pretend, for just a little while, that none of this ever happened.
Of course, I’m shit at pretending.
“Lay it out for me, Patch. Sweet or sour tonight?”
Sadie Cooper appears magically beside my locker, her dark red curls dangling over me.
“Um, privacy, please?”
“Whatcha putting in your bag?”
I slide my vape deeper into my backpack, toward the bottom. “Nothing.”
Sadie gives me a look that tells me she knows I’m lying and also that she isn’t going to give me any more shit for it.
She hates that I vape. She calls it “uncultured,” although I can never quite understand how she tracks that line of thinking with the Coors Light and cheap vodka she drinks on weekends.
What’s that saying about the pot calling the kettle black?
“Anyway,” I say, shutting my locker and slinging my bag over my shoulder. “Back to your question. I think we both know the answer to that.”
She smiles. Sadie has a million-dollar smile, and she knows it.
“Trevor’s?”
“Hell yeah, Trevor’s. It’s the first big party of the year; no way we’re missing that.”
Sadie nods. “Ben said Justin’s definitely going to be there…”
At the mention of Ben’s name, I feel my shoulders tense up. It’s been my automatic reaction for months, and I’m not sure if it’ll ever go away. God, if I’m the maid of honor at their wedding, will I be standing up there, hunched over like a troll?
Sadie doesn’t notice. “Wanna come over to my place after school? We can get ready together, and you can sleep over if you want.”
She says it as though it’s nothing, but we both know it’s become routine. I spend weekends with the Coopers more often than not, especially since my stepdad Levi started dating Melanie, a woman who somehow matches his fire-and-brimstone spiritual bullshit at a level I never imagined possible.
Needless to say, Mel (she hates that nickname, so naturally it’s the only thing I ever call her) doesn’t love having around the teenage problem child who, as she has actually reminded me more than once, is “still a bastard in spirit.” Who the hell says that kind of thing to the family of the man they’re dating?
Then again, the real question is, what kind of parent lets their partner talk that way to their own kid?
Levi married my mom when she was pregnant with me, a fact that I desperately wished he hadn’t shared with Melanie, even though it isn’t exactly a secret.
I can only imagine that her ultimate plan is to ship me off to military school (is that still a thing?), marry Levi, and pop out several of their own, fully legitimate, non-bastard children at a pace only possible with a total disregard for birth control.
At any rate, the more time Levi and Melanie spend together, the more time I spend out of the house, and the happier we all are.
Probably the only thing I thank God for, much to Levi’s chagrin, is bringing Sadie and the Coopers into my life.
Sure, being so close with a family that isn’t actually your own comes with its own complications, and, sure, those complications seem to grow the older I get, but it still beats spending time with a man who thinks I owe him eternal gratitude because he “saved” the souls of my mother and me.
As far as I’m concerned, neither of us needed saving.
Sometimes I still daydream about what it would have been like if it was just Mom and me.
If she’d raised me all on her own, even though her getting sick would have left me an orphan at eleven years old.
“Should I take your silence as a yes?” Sadie is staring at me expectantly.
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah. I mean, obviously. Where else would I be?”
Sadie nods, satisfied that all is right with the world. “Cool,” she says. “I’ll meet you on the steps at the usual spot.”
The bell rings, and we each go off on our separate ways.
I sneak a few quick drags of my vape before I step into AP US History.
I’ve always gotten a kick out of the looks teachers have on their faces when I roll into advanced classes on the first day.
They either already know about me, which means they know I’m a problem and can’t believe I could actually be smart, or they don’t know about me.
That’s almost more fun, because they assume I’m a cute little cheerleader trying her very best. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
Part problem, part striver. It’s a gray area.
But that’s always where you find the truth, isn’t it?
“Liz.” Mr. Carson, the only teacher here who could vaguely pass for someone who cares, spreads his arms in a gesture of fake welcome. “Thank God. I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to get started without you.”
“Just thought I’d make an entrance,” I reply with my best smile.
“Next time I expect something a bit grander. Please take your seat.”
I slide into my desk in the back corner and take out a notebook.
All the other kids in these classes have laptops with them, even though internet access is supposed to be locked, so all they can do is take notes.
Generally, I like to tell people that my preference for notebooks and pens is just a little quirk of mine.
The truth is that there is no way in hell Levi is going to buy me a laptop, and I’m too proud to check one out from the library or, worse, take the hand-me-down that Sadie offered me when her parents bought her a new rose-gold MacBook for senior year.
“I really just like to take notes by hand,” I remember telling her. “Otherwise, I swear I don’t remember a damn thing.”
“Patch, you’re seventeen, not seventy. But have it your way.”
The Coopers have given me a lot, and I’ve always shown the appropriate level of gratitude.
But there are still some shreds of my pride and dignity that I need to keep for myself.
To this day, I’m not sure if Sadie believed my excuse about writing things down or if she just wanted to let me save face, but either way, I love her for it.
I really don’t deserve that girl’s friendship, especially not after what happened last year, but she still seems hell-bent on giving it.
She’s always telling me that I can’t punish myself forever for what happened—that she’s over it, and I should be too.
But you know how it is; it’s always harder to forgive yourself than it is to forgive someone you love.
Maybe if you love yourself, it’s a little easier. I wouldn’t know.
“Right,” Mr. Carson is saying, turning back to the notes he has written on the chalkboard. So help me, the man still uses a chalkboard. “Back to the delightful, horse-manure-covered world of the Gilded Age! Let’s talk robber barons, shall we?”
Somehow, no matter who you talk to and no matter how many US history classes they’ve taken, no one ever makes it past the Gilded Age before they graduate.
It’s got to be promising that we’re already on this part and it’s just October.
What even comes after the Gilded Age? I assume no teacher is equipped to talk about it, but I guess Mr. Carson feels like testing the limits of pedagogy.
“The gap between the haves and the have-nots was never so great,” he’s saying. “You have tenements with immigrants, living in slums, alongside the greatest businessmen of the century.”
One of the guys in the class makes some trashy comment about all the sex the “greatest businessmen” must have been having based on something he read online about STDs in the 1800s, and that pretty much ends it for the class.
You can dress teenage boys in blazers and ties and put them in private school, but you can’t stop them from being absolute dumbasses.
And in my experience, the dumbassery is only getting started.
Just wait until they grow up and figure out how to really wield their power.
There are always exceptions that prove the rule, obviously.
A couple decent guys. Up until the end of last school year, I would have even said that Sadie’s boyfriend, Ben, was one of them.
But I’ve never been a very good judge of character, at least when it comes to guys, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that he turned out to be just as bad as the rest of them.
Too bad I can’t totally forget about him. But I can pretend I have. And I can pretend everything is great between Sadie and me again. And if I keep on pretending, it has to get easier sooner or later. And that’s all that really matters.
Sadie’s twin, Jayne… She’s another story. She’s not over it, clearly. She’s never liked me, but since everything with Ben, she hasn’t even bothered to try to hide her disgust.
Or her jealousy, quite frankly. Jayne hates that I’m closer to Sadie than she is. That Sadie considers me to be her true best friend. Sure, Jayne has the necklace too, but that was a consolation prize. Half the school knows what a bitch Jayne is. She’s not even popular.