I take a deep breath and look at her, and for a moment I see the girl I used to know. The one who used to crawl in bed with me during sleepovers and fall asleep with her head on my shoulder, and I’m sorry that I lost her, that I was stupid enough all these years to think she was gone. “I still would.”
She holds my gaze. “Don’t tell Rob.”
“He doesn’t know?”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” she says. And then, matter-of-factly: “And neither will you.”
“We don’t talk anymore,” I say. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”
“He cares about you,” she says.
I almost feel like laughing. “That doesn’t mean a lot, coming from you.”
“Just promise me you won’t tell him.” There’s something else in her voice now. Something a little desperate. “Promise me you won’t say anything.”
“I won’t,” I say, “but from what your parents were saying out there, he might find out soon enough anyway.”
She looks down at her hands, and I see that they’re shaking. “He still thinks he has the perfect family,” she says. “I don’t want to take that away from him.”
She looks up at me, and there are new tears in her eyes, but they aren’t bitter or angry. They’re filled with something else entirely. Something like love. And I think, for the first time in ten years, that we might be alike after all.
Scene Five
We all gather in thePL on Monday morning, cranky and bleary-eyed. After Juliet and her parents left last night, I stayed up listening to my parents’ hushed tones. Even after they went to bed, sometime in the single digits, I couldn’t sleep. I just kept thinking about Juliet’s words—being impartial doesn’t make you innocent—and the look on her face when she asked me not to tell Rob.
Charlie and Olivia are arguing lightly over who discovered the particular brand of jeans they have on, and the rest of the seniors wandering around are fairly quiet, whispering in small groups or tooling around on the internet.
“Rose, you were there,” Olivia says, not looking at me. “We went to Bloomingdale’s, didn’t we? Tell her.”
Lauren and Dorothy are in a corner, scrolling through something on Lauren’s iPhone, and they look up and glance at me. I smile and toss some mumbled version of “I dunno” in Olivia’s direction. Then John Susquich comes strolling in, theSan Bellaro Newsin his hand, and he looks at me before sitting down. “Damn, Caplet,” he says, and then flips open his paper.
And then my stomach drops like it’s an elevator unhinged. Because I know what they’re reading, and I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. Everyone’s eyes are on me, darting like laser beams. I don’t have to see the headlineROCKED BY SCANDALor the old photographs of Juliet’s dad and Rob’s mom kissing by a car and outside a hotel, or the photos of Uncle Richard groping some woman outside the Capitol. I already know what’s in there. I guess Uncle Richard didn’t have to announce it, after all.
“Jesus CHRIST.” Charlie grabs John’s paper and shoves it in my face. “Have you seen this? Are you seeing this?” She flaps it wildly so the pictures blur.
“Yes.”
“This is massive. Does Rob know? Rosaline!” Charlie knocks the back of my head, my answer finally dawning on her. “Youknew?”
Juliet ducks into the PL, her sunglasses secured tightly to herface. The entire room turns, gawks, and falls silent. It’s one thing for this to be about your uncle. It’s another entirely for it to be about your dad.
She looks small, or it could just be that she’s alone. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen her at school without Rob suctioned to her side. But now Rob’s suspended and her family is the subject of a sex scandal. I feel sorry for her. Especially after last night.
“No way,” Charlie says, like she’s having a conversation with my thoughts. “Don’t go there. This serves her right. Karma sucks.”
“Yeah, it does.” It sucks for all of us. I lost my best friend and my cousin, she lost her parents, and somewhere in there we all lost each other. That’s the thing about free will: Every decision we make is a choiceagainstsomething as much as it isforsomething else.
Juliet turns to us briefly, and then she leaves the way she came.
“We’re going to be late,” Olivia says.
Charlie tucks the paper under her arm and cups my elbow. “Rose, let’s go.”
“Hang on.” I make a move to follow Juliet, but Olivia steps in front of me.
“Not happening,” she says.
“What?”
