The After Girls Page 9

  “It’s that pillow of yours,” George said. “It’s no wonder you can’t sleep.”

  Sydney just shrugged and headed straight to the stove. George had one of those alignment pillows that you had to order on TV. He was always going on and on about how it had changed his life. Like, even when they had people over for dinner. She liked feather pillows, like normal people. George gave Sydney a friendly pat on the shoulder and headed to the table, kissing her mother on the lips and Darcy on the forehead before he sat down.

  She filled her plate with grits and lots of butter, eggs, and a slice of facon. It’s not that she was against breakfast, per se, or composting, or George’s Chaco sandals, it’s just that it wasn’t her mother. Or at least it hadn’t been. When she’d been with her dad, the best breakfast Sydney could look forward to was an Eggo waffle with syrup while her mom munched on a granola bar before she headed to the office. Her mom and her dad had both been accountants. They’d divorced when she was ten — he lived only thirty minutes away and she saw him enough to feel like they still had a relationship — but she still couldn’t help but feel that her mom was on family #2. While the ink was still wet on the divorce papers, she met George and they moved to Falling Rock, and within a couple of years they had Darcy, veggie bacon, and a membership at the local co-op. Plus, no more work for her mother.

  George was some kind of technology whiz, and this time around, at least, she was spending her time doing what mattered. Her mom just hadn’t felt that way when she was five.

  Sydney was almost done with breakfast — the grits were salty and greasy, just like she liked them — when she had an idea. “George,” she said, setting her fork down.

  “Yes dear?” He had this habit of calling her dear at family gatherings, like breakfast. It annoyed her — it fell somewhere in between trying to be a father and trying to be a friend, and she didn’t really need either. “You’ve been in Falling Rock a long time,” she said.

  “Thirty years,” he said with a smile.

  She cleared her throat. “Did you know Astrid’s dad?”

  He didn’t look up as he answered. “I did,” he said. “Good man. It was a tragedy.”

  Tragedy. There was that word again. Like you could just say it and somehow everything suddenly made sense.

  Her mom gave her an understanding look — it was like she was studying to be a grief counselor — and she kept going.

  “How come you never talked about him?” she asked. “Like to Grace or anything.”

  He looked at her then, narrowing his eyes. Then he paused. “He’s been gone a long time,” he said. “Since before I even met your mother. I guess I just don’t think about it that much. Why?”

  The doorbell rang and her mom quietly got up to answer it.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I just think it’s weird that no one ever talked about him.”

  “It was a long time ago,” George said again with a dismissive shrug.

  That’s when her mom called her, her voice so happy and light that it could only be Carter at the door. Everyone wanted the two of them to get together. It was the smart, responsible thing to do. Maybe that’s why she’d never been so into the idea. She didn’t exactly do smart and responsible.

  George was obviously a dead-end, so she grabbed her plate, set it in the sink, and headed to the door.

  “Hey,” she said. Carter was all smiles. “Wal-Mart?” he asked. “I need socks.”

  “I don’t know,” Sydney said. She pulled her phone out of her pocket. Still no response from the, Are you okay? Call me when you can, text that she’d sent Ella last night.

  “You should go,” her mom urged. “What else do you have to do? It might make you feel better.”

  “Alright, alright,” she said, rolling her eyes at her mother and forcing a smile for Carter. “Let me just get my shoes.”

  • • •

  She and Carter often went on little excursions like this. She didn’t even know if he truly needed socks. Or if he just wanted to get out of the house. Or if he just wanted to hang out with her.

  “So what happened with you and Max the other night?” he asked. Sydney sighed as she realized that the latter was probably the case.

  “Nothing,” she said, even though it was a total lie. She knew it. He probably knew it. In reality, she and Max had made out in a corner of The Grove through the entire last act before fooling around in his car before she decided that it wasn’t a good idea and demanded, perhaps a little drunkenly, to be taken home.

  Carter just gave her a look. He’d probably seen them pawing each other in the corner.

  “What?” she asked. “You want me to give you every gory detail?”

  “No,” he said. “I just want to be your friend.”

  “We are friends,” Sydney said. “It’s just weird to talk about Max with you.”

  Carter didn’t answer that. Instead, he pretended to be distracted by the fishing aisle. “Look at this,” he said, turning back to her, but it looked like his smile was painted on. “Maybe I should get this for the fair.”

  He pulled an electric orange vest around him, and it totally didn’t fit across his shoulders. He crossed his arms in front of him anyway and posed, and in an instant the awkwardness between them diffused.

  “Hot,” Sydney said. “Should I take a picture?”

  “No, just immortalize me in your mind.”

  Normally she would have thought it was funny, she would have pulled on a vest herself. But she couldn’t get Ella out of her mind. The girl had fainted. It was so un-Ella in every single way.

  “Didn’t you need socks?” she asked.

  “I’m getting there,” he said. “It’s about the journey, Sydda-Lee, not the destination.”

  “You know I hate that name.”

  He ignored her and took off his vest and put it carefully back on the hanger. He grabbed two camo fishing hats: one for him, one for her. He put his on and then tugged hers over her head.

  “We should go fishing sometime,” he said. “This look suits you.”

  She smiled a fake smile.

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Why is it weird to talk about Max with me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “It just is.”

  He nodded, but he looked a little disappointed.

  “Where should we head next?” he asked.

  “I thought you wanted socks?” she said. All of a sudden she was tired of messing around here. She didn’t want to go bounce on the exercise balls until an associate inevitably told them to stop. She couldn’t keep her mind from going back to Ella.

  She tried to imagine what had happened. Had she just fallen right over in the middle of Trail Mix? Was she making a latte? Was she sweeping up the floor? And then she’d just collapsed?

  But the weird thing about it was that this part of her, this teeny tiny part of her, was almost a little bit jealous. Ella was so consumed with grief that she was falling over, while she was out here shopping for socks. She was drinking and partying and carrying on with summer.

  Almost as if nothing had happened at all.

  What would Astrid think if she could see her? Would she think she didn’t care?

  “Uh, Syd?” Carter asked. “You coming?”

  “Sorry,” she said, his voice startling her, breaking her train of thought. “Yeah,” she said, and she slowly followed him down the aisle.

  • • •

  Sydney called Ella as soon as she got home. She answered on the fifth ring.

  “Hey,” Ella said. She sounded groggy.

  “Did I wake you?”

  Ella cleared her throat. “Kind of,” she said. “I was just lying here.”

  Sydney looked at her watch. It was almost noon. It wasn’t like Ella to sleep late. Of course, it wasn’t like Ella to faint, either.

  “Ben told me you fainted, so I called yesterday, but — ”

  “I know. My mom told me.”

 
“And I texted you.”

  “I know,” Ella said. “I just — ”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s okay. Are you feeling better?” Sydney asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Do you want me to come over?” Sydney was desperate to do something. She knew she hadn’t been there for Astrid. She knew it deep in her heart — it had cut her to the bone every day since. She needed to help Ella if she could.

  “I’m okay,” Ella said, but her voice was anything but convincing.

  “What happened?” Sydney asked. “I mean, how did it happen?”

  Ella sighed, as if she’d already told this story one too many times. “I was tired. I didn’t sleep much the night before. I was having bad dreams.”

  “What kind of dreams?”

  “Bad ones,” Ella snapped. “Sorry. I kept dreaming I was in the cabin, you know, like I was.”

  “You mean when you found her?” Sydney felt nauseous. Yet another thing she hadn’t done. She hadn’t been there with Ella when she’d discovered Astrid.

  Ella’s silence was a confirmation.

  “Oh God,” Sydney said. “Oh God, I’m so, so sorry. I’m coming over.”

  She heard her friend’s words break. “No,” she said. “Ben’s going to come over later, and my mom’s here, and I just don’t — ”

  “I’ll be there soon,” Sydney said.

  “No,” Ella said. “No. It won’t help. Just leave me alone today. Please.”

  “Okay,” Sydney said. “Okay.” She felt like she might cry herself. Ella didn’t want her to help. Ella just wanted to be left alone. Is that what she should want, too? To just curl up in a ball and think about Astrid?

  “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you later,” Ella said, her voice shaking, and she hung up the phone.

  Sydney lay back on her bed. She closed her eyes and thought of Astrid and tried to cry. She’d still only done it the once, when she was up on stage.

  But it was no use. The tears weren’t coming. She didn’t want them to anyway. She whipped her eyes back open, and the first thing she saw was the book that her aunt had given her the other day.

  Maybe it will help you understand, her aunt’s voice rang in her head.

  She knew it wouldn’t, but she picked it up anyway. She couldn’t help but feel a deep curiosity. She couldn’t help but wonder what it was that Audie wanted her to see.

  So she flipped to the first page and she started to read.

  • • •

  She was only on chapter three, but she could not understand how people could actually believe all this. Spirits left behind. Bodiless specters. The voices of the woods.

  She flipped the page.

  “The Afterlife of Alexa Coleman.”

  The face of a teenage girl stared prettily back at her. She could have been about Astrid’s age. It was hard to tell from the photo. It had obviously been clipped from a newspaper.

  Sydney read the words below: “Nobody saw it coming … jumped from a cliff above the river … just sixteen.”

  Her aunt went on to describe the “mysterious” events that transpired after her death — visions of a nightgowned young girl, roaming through the woods, how the ivy stopped growing on the ledge where she jumped — paired with quotes from neighbors and friends and family — “She was too young to really leave us,” “I swear she’s still out there somewhere, watching us through the trees.”

  Jesus.

  Sydney shook her head. The poor girl had died more than twenty years ago. She wondered if the girl’s real friends bought all this, if they liked the young girl being kept around on supernatural life support.

  Sydney read over the name again, running her finger across the words on the page.

  And then she saw it. A quote that startled her. From one of the girl’s childhood friends. “I keep dreaming about her. I keep seeing her in those woods. I keep seeing that cliff. I go there still. It looks just like it did when we were younger. And sometimes I can feel her, watching me.”

  Sydney flipped the book shut. She knew that all this wasn’t real; she knew that it was just imagination, grief, too much time on her aunt’s hands, but she couldn’t help it; it still gave her the creeps. Like a scary movie. One you know can’t be real. But one that frightens you just the same. That gives you that sinking, that heaviness, that bad feeling right in your gut.

  A young girl. The woods. There were too many parallels.

  She thought about their cabin, sitting there, just like it always had been.

  And she decided that something needed to change.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Was it horrible to not want to see your best friend?

  Ella hung up the phone with Sydney feeling spent — guilty. Maybe she should have just let her come over, but she had a feeling that she just wouldn’t quite understand. Sydney wouldn’t want to talk about Astrid. She’d want to talk about anything but. She’d want to distract her. She’d ask her to go shopping or something, but at the moment, the thought of a new pair of wedges — or weighing in on Syd’s stage-makeup choices — made Ella cringe.

  So she stretched, looking out the window. It was a nice day out — so far, at least. In this town, a storm could come in a matter of minutes. She knew she should get up — do something — but she wasn’t ready to move. So she pulled her computer onto her lap.

  She checked her messages first — like she had every hour since she’d hit send — nothing. Then she went to Astrid’s page. It was habit now, a nervous tic. She wanted something to happen. Maybe if she waited long enough, it would.

  Ella clicked through the photos. She found one that she’d added, not all that long ago. Astrid smiled at her, showing her teeth, her hair draped across her shoulders. Her eyes were wide, and more than anything, she didn’t look sad. A blue sky stretched behind her, and round, pebbly rocks. On her shoulders, Ella could see the skinny straps of a swimsuit beneath a tank top.

  They’d gone to the lake, the three of them. Ella had snapped the photo of Astrid before she’d gotten in. Astrid had been slathering on sunscreen. She had that perfect Irish coloring. Her skin was always so pale. Ella was going without. Her skin was pale, too, but it was olive. The sun could turn her around, even her imperfections, lighten her hair. She wanted to get burnt. At least a little.

  “Shouldn’t you do that after you take your clothes off?” Ella asked. Sydney was already in the lake, splashing away.

  Astrid shrugged. “I don’t really feel like swimming.”

  Ella put her hands on her hips and dipped a toe into the water. “So what, you’re not going to swim at all?”

  “I’m so disgustingly pale,” Astrid said. “Not like you guys.”

  Ella just rolled her eyes. Astrid was gorgeous. It was impossible not to see. “Well you’re never going to get a tan if you keep slathering on that stuff.” She looked at the bottle of SPF 60 in Astrid’s hands. “It’s like a body suit.”

  Astrid didn’t look up. She just kept massaging it into her leg. “My mom says I’ll get cancer if I don’t.”

  “Oh, come on,” Ella said. “You won’t get cancer from a tan.”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “Well, she’s not here, is she?”

  Astrid looked up at her then. “She’ll know when I come home,” she said. “Why do you think I don’t just whack my hair off because she’s not here? She’d see it as soon as I got home. It’s impossible to hide.”

  Ella sighed. Sometimes Astrid could be so weak. “If you want to cut it, just cut it.”

  “She’ll kill me if I do,” Astrid said. “She’d ground me forever.”

  Ella shook her head and bounced into the water, running forward to grab the rope swing that they always used for the first plunge. She looked at Astrid as she walked the rope back. “Well you know, she’s right,” she said. “You’d be crazy to cut your hair. It’s gorgeous. It’s perfect. People hire Hollywood stylists to get theirs to look like that.”

  “I h
ate it,” Astrid said, her face serious for a moment. “It’s not me.”

  “You’re nuts,” Ella said, and she grabbed the rope, felt it rub, scratch against her palms, lifted her feet and flew, higher, faster, ’til there was nothing but her and the air, a cloudless sky, and openness all around her. She let go, and the water hit her feet first, washed up her legs, surrounded her as she held her breath and plugged her nose, struggling to readjust her swimsuit bottom as the water bobbed her up.

  “Nice,” Sydney said when she was barely out of the water. “A, you coming?”

  Astrid glanced at the rope, and then back at her friends. “No,” she said. “I’m not ready to go in yet.” But it was the same song and dance, because they all knew that she wouldn’t, that she’d dip her toes in the water, walk ’til it hit her knees, but then amble back, sit on the rocks at the edge.

  And she never ever took that plunge.

  And she never let herself get burnt.

  And she never cut her hair, either. Ella had never thought a thing of it, but now she felt almost sick. Had Astrid really hated the way that her skin looked? Had she really detested her long, beautiful hair? Had she really been so fearful of disappointing her mother that she couldn’t be herself?

  How many other things like that had Ella missed?

  Ella shook her head and kept on going through the photos. Nights in the cabin. Afternoons in front of lockers. It was a while before she found one she didn’t recognize — a picture of a darling girl with red hair, so tiny and so young. It must be Astrid, when she was only five or six. Young and innocent and happy and alive. She looked to who posted it, and the name caught her eye: Jake. It was put there by Jake.

  Ella couldn’t help it. She clicked. His photo was of him at the piano. So that’s what he must be studying in school — she’d never even asked. She scanned his info — college, Chicago School of Music; hometown, Charlottesville, West Virginia; relationship status …

  Single.

  Ella jumped when she heard her phone ring.

  She pushed the computer aside and looked down at her phone. It was a number she didn’t recognize. Reluctantly, she clicked answer.