“I know you don’t,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”
“What do I do? Tell me what to do.”
“I wish I could.”
The tears keep coming, my nose pressed against her throat. They’re almost a relief, warm and gentle, and their motion down my face feels like being rocked to sleep. Slowly, I relax, but I don’t let go of Charlie. Her cheek rests against my forehead. All I’d have to do is tip my chin a little and our mouths would touch. I press my fingers into her back, pulling her closer. Pulling me closer. Obliterating any space between us. I can feel her heart pound against mine, and for the first time in days, I feel right. I lift my head, settle my eyes on her lips.
And then she clears her throat and releases me. She keeps one of my hands, but now there’s so much space between us. Too much.
“How do you know?” she asks.
“How . . . how do I know what?”
“That Owen’s lying.”
I take a deep breath and try to clear my head. “We had a family meeting last night, and Mom wanted him to tell me what happened so we were all on the same page.” I hook finger quotes around the last two words. “He just . . . I just know. His whole story makes no sense. Hannah wouldn’t have been pissed about her wrist if she’d wanted to have sex. She would’ve been angry at herself, not him.”
Charlie nods. “I know.”
We stand there in silence, staring at each other. I’m breathing hard, as if I’ve been running laps around the school.
“But it’s more than that. It was like . . . god, I could feel the lie on his tongue or something.” I grip my stomach, trying to hold myself together. “And then later, we played basketball, and it just felt so . . . so . . . normal, and at the same time, it was all wrong. And I couldn’t figure out why and the only thing I can think of is that he actually did . . . that he . . .”
“Shhh,” she says, squeezing my fingers. “It’s okay. Breathe.”
I do, slowly, just like last night during my panic attack, but this time on my own, Charlie’s thumb rubbing circles on the back of my hand.
“He’s my brother,” I say when my chest feels loose enough. “I love him, Charlie.”
She doesn’t say anything, just looks at me, sadness a physical thing between us.
I press my eyes closed. My brother. He’s the boy who smiled softly at me from across the table when I told our parents I was bi, as though he’d always known. He dogged my steps during that horrible summer before freshman year, refusing to let me wallow even when I snarled and screamed at him. I’ve never been without him, could never imagine he’d hurt anyone. I’ve always trusted him.
But the boy from the woods by the lake, the boy strutting through the school halls these past few days, a new sort of story trailing in his wake, a horrible story—?that boy isn’t my brother. He’s not anyone I could ever trust.
“I need to see her,” I say. “I need to see Hannah.”
Charlie lifts an eyebrow. “Are you ready for that?”
My heart slams into my ribs. Ready is the wrong word. I’m not ready for any of this. But Hannah wasn’t either. “Do you think she wants to see me?”
“She does. She’s asked about you more than once.”
“Really?”
“She’s been worried. I mean, she’s worried about a lot of shit, but she’s also worried about your friendship.”
“God.”
“Let’s go now. I’ll go with you. I just need to get my stuff.”
“What about the meeting?”
“The meeting is about how to help Hannah.” Charlie twines my fingers with hers. “Let’s go actually help her.”
Chapter Eleven
HANNAH LIVES in a big white house with a huge wraparound porch. It pretty much begs you to drink sweet tea at twilight while your feet dangle off the green-painted bench swing and fireflies flicker through the hazy air. Her father is a lawyer, and her mother spends half of her time curating a small art gallery in Nashville and the other half reliving her misspent youth through her daughter. Consequently, Hannah savors—?to a comic degree—?making sure she’s pretty much a nail raked over the chalkboard of her mother’s nerves. She wears nothing but bohemian dresses Mrs. Prior says look like “something in which you’d smoke marijuana” and brightly colored tights under denim shorts, going braless whenever possible. Regardless, there’s rarely an event at Pebblebrook that doesn’t have Mrs. Prior in attendance. She even came to an Empower meeting once. Hannah spent the entire hour slumped in her chair with her arms folded while the rest of us smiled politely at her mother’s stories about how she met and married Hannah’s dad when she was nineteen. It was beyond awkward.
