7. Jayne #5
“So, you know what I mean,” I continue. “Ben showed up at our house with a literal boom box playing ‘In Your Eyes’ by Peter Gabriel. Say Anything was one of Sadie’s favorite movies, actually.
Even though it’s ancient at this point. She loved it, and Ben knew that, so he just came and stood outside and waited, playing that stupid song.
After the fourth night of him doing that, even I was starting to soften up.
I remember when she finally opened the door for him, and he just stood there, crying.
Honestly crying, and telling her over and over again how sorry he was and what a big mistake he’d made.
The two of them had big plans, you know?
A big future. He loved her so much, even though he acted like an idiot.
In the end, he earned Sadie’s forgiveness.
He earned mine, too. I’m not an ice queen, Detective. I know that people make mistakes.”
“And what about Miss Stratton?”
I shrug. “I guess the reason I couldn’t forgive Liz the same way was because she just seemed like someone who was saying the stuff she was supposed to say, you know?”
“I can imagine.”
“Yeah.” I’m quiet for a moment, not sure what else to say about it that I haven’t already said or gone over myself a thousand times in my head. “Were there other questions?” I ask finally.
“Yes,” Detective Hunt says, and I can tell by how furiously he’s scribbling notes that the details of Liz and Ben aren’t going to disappear in all this.
“It sounds like you tried to talk Sadie and Liz out of going to the party last night. Can you tell me more about that? Why you didn’t want them to go, and why you did end up there after all? ”
“Sure. Ever just get a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach that just won’t go away? Because that’s the feeling I had when I got home yesterday and Sadie and Liz were talking about Trevor’s. Just this immediate sense that something bad was going to happen.”
“Sounds like you have a bit of a sixth sense,” Detective Hunt says, the hint of a smile twitching around his downturned mouth.
He might be kidding, but I most certainly am not.
“You’re not a twin, are you, Detective?”
“No.”
“Well, then, it’s probably not something you can understand.
But twins just… know things. When I tell you I had a bad feeling, I mean it, and you can write that down in your notebook the same way you wrote down every other fact.
I felt in my gut that something bad was going to happen to my sister.
I just wish I had done more to stop her from going. ”
I half expect him to laugh at me. But something about the way I say it…
the fact that I haven’t had a moment without tears in my eyes since they sat me down in here three hours ago…
something makes him listen. Or at least pretend to.
Although I’m pretty good at knowing when someone is pretending. It’s sort of a specialty of mine.
“I’m sorry, Jayne,” he says finally. “You’re right in your assumption. I don’t have a twin. Or any siblings at all. I’m a card-carrying only child. So I can’t know what that’s like. I will make a note.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course. Would you like another tea?”
It’s a peace offering, in its own way. I stare at the shrunken lemon slice now sitting at the bottom of my empty cup.
“Sure,” I say. “Thank you.”
The detective motions to the mirror on the wall of the room, and I realize it’s a two-way mirror. Of course someone has been observing our conversation.
A few moments later, a uniformed officer comes in with a fresh cup of tea. She gives me an encouraging smile as she sets it down.
The wonderful thing about riding a horse is that it requires every ounce of physical and mental focus.
It’s the only time my mind ever quiets down, and I don’t have to focus on anything except what’s in front of me.
I’m still basking in the peace of it when I come through the front door.
The Mason situation is something that I know needs to be dealt with, but it can wait until Monday.
Besides, I’m still not sure what I even mean by “dealt with.” Tell the photography club sponsor?
The principal? Especially if the picture is destroyed by then—something I wouldn’t put past him after my reaction to it—I won’t really have a leg to stand on.
But that’s a Monday Jayne problem. It’s only Friday afternoon.
I head straight for the shower when I get home, and when I come back downstairs, I can hear Sadie and Liz in the kitchen.
Of course they’re talking about Trevor’s party, and I feel a knot form in my stomach.
After what happened with Mason earlier, and now that I know he’s probably going to be there based on what he said this afternoon…
something about it just doesn’t feel right. Not after seeing that picture.
The thing about Sadie is that she tends to overreact to things.
I don’t even mean in the normal teenage-girl kind of way that adults love to roll their eyes about, as though turning thirty years old suddenly erased every memory of the life experiences they’d had up until that point.
I mean full-on, truly hysterical reactions.
It’s one of the reasons tensions are always running high between her and Ben.
My mom will just shake her head and say that that’s how kids are when Sadie tells us about the latest fight or disagreement, but I disagree.
First of all, what sort of mother normalizes the kind of screaming, fighting, and possessive behavior that goes on between those two?
It definitely makes me question how my parents’ relationship started out.
Second of all, I know Ben pretty well, but I know Sadie like the back of my hand.
At least I thought I did. And when she blows up, she really blows up.
That’s why I was so shocked when she forgave Liz and Ben for hooking up.
To me it seemed like exactly the kind of thing that would be the last straw for Sadie.
Your boyfriend cheating on you with your best friend?
Classic high school drama, and a classic opportunity for Sadie to finally cut Ben and Liz loose in one fell swoop without owing either of them a larger explanation.
Sadie cares so much about what people think, I figured it would take something massive for her to ever dream of breaking up with Ben.
He’s the perfect heartthrob, and the two of them are perfect together.
Or, at least, it seems that way, and my sister is far more attached to how things seem than how they actually are.
But other people knew what happened between Liz and Ben.
I might have been the one to walk in and see it firsthand, but it was obvious leading up to it that something was about to happen.
Liz was all over him that night, and he wasn’t exactly pushing her away.
It wasn’t the kind of thing that Sadie could just sweep under the rug (a technique she’s learned to perfect from Carly) and ignore.
Yet somehow, not only did her relationship with Ben emerge unscathed after his John Cusack act with the boom box, but everyone involved ended up on some kind of twisted feel-good public relations tour.
Everyone was talking about how generous Sadie was, forgiving two people who hurt her so deeply, and Ben played the part of the ashamed, doting boyfriend trying to atone for his sins perfectly.
Liz even took the chance to get sober. Or, at least, to tell everyone who will listen that she’s sober.
Spoiler alert, she’s not.
I guess I didn’t realize just how much of her own integrity my sister was willing to give away to stay at the top of the social food chain.
Things changed between us after that. Not in a formal kind of way—it just opened this sliver of space between us that feels as though it’s gotten wider with every passing day.
If we tried to fit our little broken-heart “Best Friends” necklaces together again now, it doesn’t seem like they would even fit.
It hurts me so deeply not to know how to cross the chasm, how to say that I almost miss the week when everything was a mess and we were just lost in a nineties teen drama on Netflix, left to our own devices.
Evan is always reminding me that you can’t save people from themselves.
He’s not a big believer in anyone’s ability to change.
The way he sees it, you are who you are, and no matter how many different iterations of that you may go through in your life, the fundamentals of it will always be the same.
“A leopard can’t change its spots,” he likes to say.
“All it can do is disguise them for a while.”
God, I wish he could have made it this weekend.
I’ve been putting on a good enough act around Liz since last year, but it’s hardly a secret that I haven’t forgiven her for what she did.
I probably never will, although at least if it had led to my sister ditching her and dumping Ben, I could have been grateful.
But I also know that Liz isn’t entirely responsible for the crazy things she does.
Her life is hard; she doesn’t know how to manage it all.
I’ve only met her stepdad a few times, and they were never pleasant experiences.
I can’t imagine what it’s like actually living with the man—no wonder she wants to spend all her time here.
No wonder she sometimes stares at my dad like a puppy hoping for a pat on the head.
It’s the only example she has of what a remotely healthy father would be like.
And that’s saying something, because Steven Cooper is not going to win any father-of-the-year awards.
I love the man, but a paragon of paternal virtue he is not.