Emma and my mom were already gone by the time I went down for breakfast on Tuesday, and I ate cold cereal alone, standing over the sink.
I closed my eyes and tried to hear the roar of the crowd at the Starlight, taste what it was like to kiss Tate, feel her hand in mine. But there was just the conversation with my mom the day before, like a scrape I could test with my finger. Something about the rawness made me want to reach for it and just keep digging.
In the living room, my dad stood at the window with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the empty street.
I sat down on the floor and leaned against the couch. The sound of the rain was giving me a dull, hazy feeling, like I might be sleeping but wasn't sure.
I leaned against the couch, thinking how hard it was to ever communicate with anyone. How I couldn't ever figure out how to say all the things I meant. Because it was more complicated. More complicated than kissing Tate and more complicated than the terrible secret I knew about her sister. It was the claustrophobic idea of someone getting that close, of knowing that much about you. How, for her, I'd have to turn into something real.
I kept thinking about her mouth. How she'd slid her hands under my shirt. How I was so excellent at picking things that weren't right that it was hard to know if anything was what I should actually want.
I couldn't help thinking that maybe making out by the churchyard had been some kind of reward, a prize for believing her or a bribe so I'd tell the rest of what I knew. That Natalie was still alive. But I'd only just discovered that interesting fact myself, and there was no way she could have known, so the thing in the grass had to have been real. It had to mean that she'd wanted to kiss me. At least a little?
"You're in a brown study this morning," my dad said, turning from the window.
I shrugged and didn't correct him. What I was was completely out of my depth.
I left for school earlier than usual, trudging along Orchard and cutting across the footbridge. It was foggy down in the ravine and mist hung around my feet as I crossed the bridge, thinking about my mom's warning, which was in complete agreement with what the Morrigan had said about keeping out of the Lady's way.
I crossed Welsh Street with my hands in my pockets. The neighborhood was deserted and I was starting to feel lost again, the same way I did at night sometimes, like maybe I didn't exist, when I saw someone ahead of me. Someone in a gray jacket, with short, messy hair, and I hurried to catch up.
"Tate, hey."
She looked over her shoulder and made a face that wasn't even close to a smile. Waved one hand, dropped it again.
I came up next to her. "How are things?"
She shrugged and didn't answer.
I turned so I was in front of her, walking backward. "Did you do that worksheet for English?"
"Don't," she said. "Don't pretend this is a normal conversation, okay? Don't keep acting like everything's fine."
"What do you want me to say?"
Tate sighed. "Why do you keep asking that? I don't want you to say anything. I want it to matter that she's gone."
I felt hot and awkward suddenly but didn't look away. "Nobody's saying it doesn't matter. It's just not something we can help, you know? It's not like we can do anything about it."
And that was true. It was the indisputable truth, but I felt like a liar saying it. Natalie was alive until Friday. Right now, I should be figuring out a way to save her because that's what brave, honorable people did and I had a weird feeling that Tate could see the guilt on me, this big dishonest smear, splashed across my face.
Everything about her seemed to have locked down since our fifteen or twenty minutes by the graveyard. It was disconcerting to think that I had kissed her and now I could barely look at her.
"How come you don't have your car?"
She pushed past me. "It wouldn't start."
I stepped in front of her again. "What's wrong with it?"
"If I knew that, don't you think I'd have fixed it?" She gave me an exasperated look. "Look, I'm in kind of a hurry. Could you maybe let me keep walking?"
By the time I got to English, I was feeling pretty agitated, but I couldn't tell if it was with myself or with Tate. The idea that she'd only made out with me to thank me for finally admitting I believed her or else to make some kind of point was just low, but on another level, I didn't really care. I still wanted to kiss her.
A few rows in front of me, Alice sat staring at the whiteboard and playing with her hair. She kept winding it around her finger, then unwinding it again. Her face was smooth and regular, like something you already know is going to be imperfection free.
"Tate," Mrs. Brummel said, with a sugary smile, like she was trying really hard to prove that nothing uncomfortable had happened on Friday. "Would you hand back the quizzes, please?"
Tate slid out of her desk and she was more like something by Van Gogh, all color and texture and light. Her hair was standing up in a kind of rooster crest and her elbows were sharp through her thermal shirt. She took the stack of quizzes and started down my aisle, sorting through the papers.
I leaned forward in my seat. "Jenna--Jenna, do you have a pen?"
Jenna fished one out of her bag and handed it to me, smiling like a toothpaste ad or how a cat would smile if it had braces and highlighted hair and something to smile about.
I didn't have my notebook, so I started going through my pockets, looking for ticket stubs, gum wrappers, receipts. Finally, I found a piece of a band flier and wrote on the back, Can I walk you home?
When Tate got to my seat, I held out the note, but she didn't look at it. She turned the quiz facedown on my desk and went to keep moving down the row.
I caught her wrist. This wasn't something I'd planned ahead of time, and it took me by surprise. Her skin was cool and her bones felt small in my hand.
For a second, we stayed like that, me holding her by the wrist and her letting me. Then she jerked back like I was contagious.
She handed back the rest of the quizzes and took her seat without looking at Mrs. Brummel or at anyone else. I watched her, but she didn't raise her head or glance around.
We spent the class period going through the answers to the quiz and discussing each one in mind-numbing detail. I flipped through my textbook, looking for interesting pictures or maybe some magic solution to all my problems.
I was skimming the Romantics section when I turned the page to a photo of a painted jar. The people on the jar were all in profile. They danced and capered and sprawled around playing little flutes. They reminded me of the after party in the House of Mayhem, all celebration and awkward, spooky grace.
On the opposite page, there was a poem. It described how beauty and truth mattered more than anything else. They were the same thing.
But it didn't matter how pretty you painted the world. The fact was, my friends didn't know me, Tate didn't want me, and the truth was a really ugly thing.
I closed the book and stared at the clock, willing it to move faster.
In front of me, Alice and Jenna were discussing the Halloween party out at the lake and whether there'd be a bonfire this year or if the rain would mean they'd have to settle for little campfires in the barbecue pits under the picnic shelters. I watched them because they were both pretty and it was kind of nice to have something normal to distract me from my life.
Alice was wearing another installment in her wide selection of low-cut shirts, and I was enjoying tormenting myself a little, which Roswell would say is a very masochistic attitude. Also, self-indulgent, but her hair was honey brown and shiny, and thinking about Tate made me feel like an idiot.
Alice turned and caught me watching them. She gave me a bored look. "Are you going to the party, Mackie?" Her eyebrows were raised, but her lids were half lowered, like looking at me was making her tired.
On another day--any other day--I would have taken the question for what it was. Her version of being better than me, of writing me off and making me feel inferior. But things had been massively screwed up lately. They'd been downright obnoxious, and I just smiled, raising my eyebrows, leaning forward like I'd seen Roswell do a million times. "Why? Did you want to go with me?"
Alice opened her mouth and blinked. She closed her mouth, and I was surprised and kind of gratified to see that she was blushing. Beyond her, Tate was making dutiful notes on her quiz. I thought I saw her shoulders tighten but wasn't sure.
Alice gaped at me and then recovered. "Are you asking me to go with you?"
Her voice was playful, challenging, and I kept smiling, liking how her mouth looked soft and shiny. "Well, that depends on whether or not you're saying yes."
"Yes," she said, biting her lip, giving me a conspiratorial smile.
Behind her, Tate sat stubbornly at her desk, staring down at her quiz like the answers mattered.