“I think you’ve held up extraordinarily well. Don’t you sorta feel like if you can handle all this, you can handle anything?”
I hesitated. “That’s true but … I can’t go to Boston … that’s crazy, I don’t even know why I applied. I could never go somewhere completely alone.”
“Why’s it crazy? Money?”
“No,” I admitted, my voice small. “I got a scholarship.”
He furrowed his eyebrows at me. “You should do it. I mean it. Go somewhere new. Don’t stay so close to home. You’ll go back, and find that they’ve changed—or maybe they haven’t and they should have—or it’ll feel like home isn’t how you remember it. They’ll be different, and you’ll wish you’d met new people.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I’ll think about it.”
He just leaned back and rested his head on his clasped hands.
Well, since we were getting honest …
“Johnny, can I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
I hesitated, and then went for it. “Were you … in love with her?”
“Who, Dana? I liked her a lot. Once upon a time. I don’t know. I had a thing for her the whole time I knew her, but Becca got here and then told me Dana didn’t like me at all. Not even like a friend. So, I guess I gave up.”
I stared at him. “I—I meant Becca.”
He raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat. “Oh. Oh. No. I wasn’t in love with her.”
I was still reeling at the idea of anyone having feelings for Dana. It was so impossible to imagine her as anything other than mostly crazy.
“Max told me you and Becca were hooking up. And it just didn’t seem like you to do that to your best friend.”
He looked at me, and seemed to make a decision before answering. “I don’t know what we were. She was hard to read. I couldn’t tell if she actually liked me or just loved the illicitness of what we were doing. I hated myself the whole time, but I just couldn’t pull myself away from her.”
“What was it about her?”
“I honestly don’t know. I know why she was fun and why she was exciting. But I can’t figure out why I felt so strongly about her. I think I just believed there was more to her than that. And I think she felt something for me. I really do. She must have. And if there was more to her … I don’t know, she went missing before I really got to find out.”
I looked at him, and saw in his eyes that he had really cared about her.
“Well, I should go up to bed,” Johnny said suddenly, rising.
“Oh, okay, yeah. It was nice running into you.”
“You, too.”
He gave me a weary smile, and left. He’d had feelings for Dana.
Huh.
I got up to my room, which was blessedly empty. I opened the window and breathed in the air. It was a little chilly, but I wanted to feel the breeze and hear the sounds of outside.
I sat on my bed for a few minutes, thinking of what Johnny had said and listening to the wind. I kicked off my shoes and looked at the floor. There was a thumbtack there, left over from one of Dana’s and my fights. I reached down to get it and spotted the Louis Vuitton suitcase under the bed that I’d grown to ignore.
An idea struck me.
Dana wasn’t here. I could look inside it. For what, I wasn’t sure. But I was curious.
I locked the door. Dana had a key, but at least I’d hear her coming and could push it back under the bed. I did not want her knowing that I had touched precious Becca’s precious stuff.
I crouched down on the floor and slid the case out. It was strange to touch something of hers. I unzipped it and pulled up the top.
Right on top was a jewelry box. It was silver and heavy. I sifted through the tangle of delicate chains and charms that lay in it. I spotted a silver necklace with half of a heart. It looked like the best friend necklaces that Leah and I had worn as kids, but it was heavier and shinier and had a diamond. Clearly, it had not been bought for twenty-five cents from the toy machine at the grocery store. Leah and I had spent all of our money, a whole dollar each, when we were six as we tried to get the set of necklaces. We ended up with a bunch of plastic spider rings and Mickey Mouse tattoos before finally getting them. When we had, they felt hard-won.
I remembered now that I’d thought of this last September. I had seen what must be this necklace’s other half hanging from Dana’s neck. I shut the jewelry box. As I did, the door behind me rattled—Dana and her key. I threw the suitcase shut, and shoved it back under the bed. I was sitting back on my bed, my heart pounding, when Dana stepped into the room.
She looked at me, with my approximation of relaxation, and her already narrow eyes turned to mere slits.
Feeling panicky, I said hello. Like I never do.
Dana shut the door and stepped in. She looked at me for another few seconds before her gaze dropped down to the suitcase, and my stomach plummeted with guilt. And then Dana did something I did not expect. She smiled.
“You’re curious about her.”
I shook my head. “What?”
“It’s okay. We can look together.”
I couldn’t move. It was like my dream about Becca all over again. I was paralyzed as a strange scene unfolded before me. I watched as Dana pulled the suitcase back out, much more slowly and ceremoniously than I had done.
“Come here,” she said in a whisper. When I didn’t move, she looked at me and spoke a little louder. “Come here.”
I was shaking. I suddenly did not want to know the secrets that lay within Becca’s things. I didn’t want to see things that she’d seen, any more than I already had. I didn’t want to touch this person’s stuff or look at any more pictures.
“I don’t know why you never asked me before,” said Dana. She sounded kinder than she ever had. It was like she could not remember all the things she’d said to me in the past. “But today, of all days, is a good one to introduce you to her.”
She pulled out the jewelry box and smiled down at it. “I suppose you know what can be found in here. These are mostly gifts from all the boys she dated. Also the other half of this.” She laid a hand over the half of her broken heart. “What you won’t find in here was my other gift to her. I got her a charm bracelet. She was wearing it on the night … but of course she was wearing the locket from Max, too … she always wore that after he gave it to her. ‘To Eternal Love …’ She often wore both necklaces, but that night … just the one you found in the closet at the boathouse …”
Her voice trailed off as her fingers ran gently over all the silver and gold within the box. After a moment, she shut it and set it aside. She sifted through more of her clothes, trinkets and pictures, seemingly gaining her own comfort from looking at them but not saying anything out loud. I wanted to get up and run away. I didn’t want to watch her do this.
She lifted from the suitcase a soft silky slip trimmed with lace. She handled it carefully, as though it might shatter. Before I could stop her, she had raised it to my face, and had run the fabric across my cheek. “Isn’t that the softest thing you’ve ever felt? She bought it to wear for Max. She showed it to me. She wanted to sneak into his room that night, since his roommate had already gone home. But … she never got the chance … She had it laying out on the bed when she …”
Dana pulled it away from my cheek and folded it