The After Girls Page 12

  “What?” Sydney asked, almost a whisper. It was so quiet between them for a moment that she could hear an owl in the distance. “What?”

  “There’s something else,” Ella said, struggling to get the words out between gasps for breath.

  “El,” Sydney said. “You need to calm down.”

  Ella nodded, and she really did look shaken. Terrified, almost. She was taking this whole cabin thing way too seriously. It was creepy, yeah, but at the end of the day it was just a bunch of photos.

  Sydney sighed, maybe a little too loudly. “What is it, Ella?” she asked. “Just tell me. What is it?”

  Ella hesitated, and Sydney tried to act at least somewhat patient as she waited for her to speak. “Can we go inside?” she asked finally. “I just — I feel like I should lie down.”

  Sydney nodded. This was really getting theatrical, but she didn’t want her to faint again. Especially not on her watch.

  “Alright,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  They scrubbed the mud off Ella’s legs and arms, and then they went to Sydney’s room. Ella crawled onto the bed, stretching out over the covers.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Sydney asked.

  “No.” She didn’t even look at her — just stared at the ceiling fan. Whir whir whir whir whir.

  “Can I get you some water or something?”

  Ella shook her head.

  Sydney sat down on the bed, carefully. She felt like any wrong move would break her friend, send her into another crying fit. She didn’t want to hurt her anymore — she didn’t want to hurt anyone. She didn’t want anyone to hurt themselves.

  “Here,” Ella said, pushing her bag at Sydney.

  “What?”

  “Pull out my phone.”

  Sydney rolled her eyes. She hated drama. Especially the sober kind.

  “Seriously, El, what is this about?”

  “Just pull out my phone.” Her voice was earnest.

  Sydney did.

  “Turn it on.”

  She sighed loudly and pushed the button, waiting for the familiar little trill, the colorful screen. “On,” she said, her voice full of faux cheer.

  Ella seemed to be almost holding her breath. She spit the words out fast: “Are there any calls?”

  “No,” Sydney said. “Not one. Are we going somewhere with this?”

  Ella breathed a sigh that sounded like pure relief. “Okay,” she said. “Just look at the recent calls.”

  Sydney shook her head. Ella couldn’t just tell her whatever the hell was bothering her? They had to go through a song and dance?

  But she forgot her annoyance in an instant — she felt a jolt, her heartbeat going double-time, as her eyes locked on the first name on the list.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Even on Sydney’s pretty, pulled-together, trying-to-stay-calm face, it looked like fear.

  Ella watched her tuck the phone back in the bag, burying it as if that would make it go away. Maybe for Sydney it would.

  Ella took a deep breath. A part of her felt better, now that someone at least knew. “Well?” she asked.

  Sydney stared at her, like she was playing something out in her mind. Finally: “So this is why you’re upset?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?” Ella snapped. “What? That’s not enough for you?”

  When Sydney spoke her voice was so soft and quiet that it only sounded patronizing. “El,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You don’t really think …”

  “I don’t really think what?” she asked, sitting up on the bed now. “What? What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Sydney said. “It was obviously an accident.”

  “What do you mean?” Ella asked. She was up now, pacing back and forth, working it all out in her head.

  “Like someone obviously called you by mistake.”

  Ella shook her head. “No,” she said. “No. The phone was dead, Syd. Dead. Like it hadn’t been used since — ” she couldn’t bring herself to say it. “Like it definitely hadn’t been used in a long time.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I told you,” Ella snapped. “I went in her room. It was right there.”

  “You mean you went looking for the phone because of the call?” Sydney asked. “Why didn’t you just ask Grace or Jake if they called you by accident? Then you wouldn’t have to go snooping around her room and hunting down evidence.”

  Ella stared at her. Whatever Sydney had felt in that first instant — whatever fear or compassion or understanding she’d had — was gone as quickly as it had come. If this could be explained, then they didn’t have to deal with it. If they didn’t have to deal with it, then they didn’t have to keep talking about Astrid. They could drink their way through the summer, worry about nothing more than bad hangovers. They could forget. It was clearly what Sydney wanted. And she’d do anything to get there. Ella wanted to tell her about the message, but she knew Sydney would just give a stupid explanation. It would be an “accident” — just like this.

  “You don’t get it,” Ella said. “You don’t get it at all.”

  She grabbed her bag and reached for the door.

  “El,” Sydney said, standing up and pretending to actually care.

  “No,” she said. “Just forget about it. I’ll see you later.”

  And she walked out before Syd could object.

  • • •

  Ella didn’t think she was going to be able to sleep.

  After walking out on Sydney and walking home, she’d managed to evade her mom’s questions about the dinner by saying that she had a stomach ache and just wanted to go to bed.

  Her stomach felt fine. It was the rest of her that didn’t.

  Upstairs, she pulled out her computer immediately. She logged onto Facebook once more to check her messages — nothing.

  Ben was online, too — he was always up until all hours of the night — he sent her a message.

  Hey. You wanna talk?

  Ella hesitated. He’d come over after she’d fainted, and he’d been usual kind Ben. He’d completely forgiven her anger from the night before. He’d even stopped her when she’d tried to explain herself. Things were good between them now. As good as they could be. She’d told him about the dreams. She’d told him that she was going to go to Grace’s tonight. He probably just wanted to hear about it. He probably just wanted to be there for her. But she knew that Ben wouldn’t understand what she was thinking right now. She didn’t even understand what she was thinking right now.

  Ella?

  Still, talking to him would be better than sitting alone in her room and driving herself crazy.

  Sure. Call me.

  Her phone rang in a matter of seconds.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  Ella leaned back on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Maybe she could just talk to Ben all night and never sleep. She was afraid to.

  “How was your night?” Ben sounded all genuine and actually concerned. “How was dinner?” She instantly regretted texting him earlier that she was going over there. But she took a deep breath. There was really no point in not telling him that, at least. “She threw me out of the house.”

  “She what?”

  “Threw me out.”

  “Wait a second. Grace? Start from the beginning.”

  Ella rolled over. “There’s really nothing to tell. I went into her room and she just, like, lost it.”

  “Wait, Grace’s?”

  “No,” Ella said. “Astrid’s.”

  “Ohhhh,” he said, and she could hear that he was nodding. “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why? I wanted to see it. I’m her friend.”

  “I know,” he said. “Don’t get upset. I’m just trying to figure it out.”

  “Figure what out?” she asked. “And I’m not getting upset. Why does everyone keep telling me to calm down?”

  “I’m not telling you to calm down,” Ben said, hi
s voice just a tiny bit strained. “I’m just trying to figure out, I don’t know, what happened.”

  “I’m telling you what happened,” Ella said, making no attempt to hide her annoyance. “The door was closed, and I went in anyway, because I wanted to, and I was just looking. I wasn’t going to mess anything up, and she just came in screaming at me, and so I left.”

  Ben was silent for a second.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “That makes sense.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “It makes sense. I get it. It’s natural for you to want to see. She shouldn’t have done that to you.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “I’m really sorry you had to go through that.”

  Ella took a deep breath. “Ben, she was being so weird. You don’t even know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was so mean to me. The things that she was saying, they were just, they just sounded so mean.”

  “She’s grieving, El. Everyone does it differently.”

  “I know,” Ella said. “I’ve just never seen her like this. It was … it was … scary.”

  “I’m sorry, baby. It will get better.”

  There he was again, trying to wrap it up, tie all the strings. But it was okay, because tonight, she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. She didn’t want to think about it anymore. She just wanted to be distracted. She just wanted to hear the sound of a warm voice. One that would be there for her. One that always had been before.

  “So did you just go straight home?” he asked.

  And she knew that she could have told him about the cabin, and she could have told him about the phone call. She could have told him about losing it at Sydney’s but she didn’t want to. Ben was even more practical than she was. He wouldn’t understand. And she didn’t want him thinking she’d lost it. She knew that Sydney was already beginning to. So she lied. She knew it was bad to lie to your boyfriend, but she did it anyway.

  “Yeah,” she said. “How was your day?”

  And she lay there as he told her about hanging with his football buddies, messing around online, the funny commercial he’d seen on TV while watching baseball with his dad. And she let him talk until he couldn’t talk anymore. Because she wanted to do anything but go to sleep.

  • • •

  Ella woke the next morning to seconds of peace. For a minute, she saw the sun shining through the windows, and she felt the breeze of the fan, cool on her skin, and she saw the phone, lying right next to her — she’d fallen asleep moments after saying goodnight to Ben — and she forgot.

  But it came back to her, like an actual stomach ache. The words she’d seen, Grace’s screams, the way Sydney and Max had looked at her, like she’d gone nuts. The faces, all of Astrid’s faces, watching her from the floor of the cabin.

  And then she remembered her dream. She was back there, but the photos weren’t on the floor. They were back on the wall again, staring her down. And the room was empty, but she heard the doorknob turn behind her, and she knew that when she turned around she’d see those eyes, she’d see those blacked-out eyes. She’d see her friend’s hair. And she still wouldn’t be able to do anything to help her.

  • • •

  Sydney called at ten, offered a half apology — “I should have been more understanding,” blah blah blah — and asked her to go with her to the cabin to box up all the photos until they decided exactly what to do with them. They agreed to meet at noon. Ella didn’t have work until later that afternoon — assuming she was still allowed to work for Grace — so they’d have time to get them together before another rainstorm could hit.

  The ground had mostly dried from the night before, and it was easy to get to the clearing. Ella stopped once she got to the porch. She took a deep breath and looked at the dusty windows, peeling paint, and thin walls, even cracked in places. It seemed so different from the night before. It seemed so harmless. She stared at the names in front of her. Astrid. Ella. Sydney. So much of the place still looked just the same.

  They’d been twelve when they’d found it. It was just Astrid and Ella, the summer after they’d first met, and it was a day like any other, the sun high in the sky and a brisk Appalachian breeze cool against their sweating skin. Astrid and Ella had been pushing the boundaries for awhile now. Each time they went deeper into the woods than they had before. There were boundaries, at least there were supposed to be, places where kids could play safely, where no one would get lost, where no one would come across an errant backpacker, hiking in from the trail. A kid, not one that they knew, someone older, someone who lived on the other side of the neighborhood, had wandered, gotten hurt, gotten stuck, and gotten lost. He was okay in the end, but it scared everyone.

  They probably would have remained content with their play space, with the other neighborhood kids, if it hadn’t been for him. But since the rules were made, since the boundaries were set, they needed to see more. And so they were wandering.

  Astrid had long curly hair then and horribly thick glasses. It was before she’d gotten contacts, before everyone had started to see her beauty, before boys would stare at her and men would turn their heads so quickly in the street that Ella wondered if they’d get whiplash.

  “Whoa,” Astrid said when they reached the clearing. Whoa was right. A house. A place they hadn’t known about. Right in their own backyard. Well, almost.

  Astrid turned to her, her face alight, her eyes gleaming. “We should go inside.” Astrid wasn’t so afraid of things then. She was the brave one.

  Even beneath their spindly, twelve-year-old bodies, the porch had creaked beneath them, like it wasn’t a real house, like it was a playhouse, a pretend house out of a storybook.

  Astrid and Ella had linked their hands together, had stood just where she and Sydney were standing now.

  It had been dusty inside. Awfully dusty. Astrid unhooked her hand from Ella’s. She ran her finger along the dirty wall, doodling squiggles, marking the space, even then, as hers.

  “It’s perfect,” she said.

  “Perfect for what?” Ella asked.

  “Perfect for us. It’ll be our clubhouse.”

  “We don’t have a club,” Ella said.

  Astrid smiled. “We’ll make one. We’ll clean it up. We’ll meet here. It will be our special, secret escape. We can’t tell anyone else.”

  “Except Syddie,” Ella said. Sydney was in their class in school that year. Sydney was their third musketeer.

  “Obviously.”

  “And what’ll we do here?” Ella asked.

  Astrid shrugged. She skipped about the place, opened her arms wide, twirled around in the middle. Spun until she stopped, and her eyes tried to focus, and the dizziness stole her down, her body crumpling to the floor.

  Ella was riddled with laughter. So was Astrid.

  Ella started to spin, too. The dusty walls and cobwebs swept together, became one in her eyes; flashes of light from the window mixed with the ceiling and the floor and the red of Astrid’s hair; Astrid giggled beneath her, and then Ella stopped, and the cabin swerved, taking her over until she fell, struck down by silliness and splayed out on the floor next to her friend.

  When the laughter stopped and there was nothing left but the sounds of the birds outside and the slightest patter of the creek in the distance, Astrid turned to Ella. “We have to claim it,” she said, jumping up onto her feet. “Come on.”

  The water in the creek felt clean, and they chucked their shoes aside and dipped their feet around, sloshing through the wetness, feeling the rocks beneath them. Ella leaned down to wash off the thick coat of dirt on her hands.

  Astrid picked the rocks up to examine them, then quickly cast each one aside.

  “What are you looking for?” Ella asked.

  “It has to be sharp,” she said. “For it to work.”

  “For what?” Ella asked.

  Astrid ignored her question. She did that sometimes, when she was singularly focu
sed. “Help me find one with an edge.”

  Ella began to pick them up herself, but they were river rocks. They were smooth and round. Perfect for skipping. She found a flat one, whipped her wrist back and cast it forward. It skipped one, two, three, four, five times, and then it sank into the water, leaving a trail of rippling circles behind it.

  “Got it,” Astrid said, jumping up. She held it out to Ella. “Just what we need.”

  Astrid took it to her wrist, scraping the rock against her skin. A scratched white line appeared, then just a trickle of red at the top, dark and rich against her pale white skin.

  “Oops,” Astrid said, blowing on the wound at her wrist. “Come on. It’ll be awesome. I’ll show you.”

  Now, Ella’s eyes locked on Astrid’s name, no different than it had been that day. It was this permanent, physical proof that she’d been here. It made everything all the more real.

  “You okay?” Sydney asked, and Ella looked at Syd. “I know you’re a little frazzled from last night.”

  Ella nodded. Sydney didn’t get it, but at least she was trying. “Maybe you should go first.”

  Sydney walked right up and opened the door, but when she got inside, she stopped short.

  “What,” Ella asked, but she took a couple more steps, and then she saw. The walls, the once-ravaged walls, the walls were covered — imperfectly yes, but still covered — in photos, almost as if what had happened had never been. Astrid’s faces. All around her. Staring her down. Just like the dream. Everything was just like the dream. Ella’s heart began to race.

  “Did you do this?” Sydney asked. “Did you do this last night?”

  Ella shook her head. “No,” she said. “No. It wasn’t like this last night. I was here.” She felt her breathing quicken.

  “Stop,” Sydney said, but even she looked freaked out. “Someone must have just put them back up I guess.”

  But Ella couldn’t help it. She thought of the message, the call, the dreams.

  “You still don’t get it,” Ella yelled. “You don’t know what it was like to find her,” she said. “She was right there.” Ella pointed at a space just a foot or two away from them. “You never had to see her like that,” Ella said, her voice cracking. “She was just lying right there.” She felt her heart beating a million miles an hour. She wanted it all to stop. She wanted it all to go away. Forever.