We waited, me drinking in the car while Julia tapped her fingers against the steering wheel and sang along to a love song, shaking her head when I offered her the bottle.
“After I got drunk,” I said, “I told her we should go in.
And when we did, and she couldn’t find Kevin, I said I’d heard some girls talking about him going upstairs.”
He was upstairs, and he was with another girl, just like I knew he would be, and I waited for Julia to fi nally be 138
through with him. To realize he wasn’t going to change, toss off a few words that would turn him into nothing, slam the door, and move on.
But that’s not what happened. She saw everything and started to cry. I didn’t want her to cry. I wanted to help her. I wanted her to be free of Kevin, free of what she called love. I thought that if we left she’d feel better.
“So you told her that her boyfriend was upstairs, and you knew he was?” Mom said. “Amy—”
“I knew he’d be fucking someone else,” I told her, and wondered if the look on my face was as horrible as the way I knew my heart was, ruined and bitter and wrong. “I knew Julia would go up and see it. And that’s what happened. I did that. I made it happen. And when she got upset like I knew she would, I told her we should go.”
I just wanted her to stop crying. I wanted her to be happy. I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to think about the fact that I’d made sure she’d seen her boyfriend cheating on her again.
I didn’t want to think about how I’d hurt her.
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I didn’t realize I’d hurt her even more.
“So you—?” Dad said, and his voice cracked a little.
“Yes,” I said. “I was the reason we left the party. I made it so we had to. And when we did leave, I had to tell her to get in the car twice because she was crying so hard. I told her to put on her seat belt, and then I buckled it for her. I had to—I even had to tell her to start the car.”
I could tell Mom was getting ready to say something, so I kept talking. “I told Julia to drive. She did and I didn’t care where we were going, only that I’d gotten her out of there. We were going fast, so fast it was like flying. . . .”
My throat felt tight and sticky. I looked over at Mom and Dad. They were still looking at me.
I could change that.
“Then the car—we went around a corner and spun out,” I said. “It happened so fast. There was so much noise, this weird ripping screech, and then it was like—
then it was like we were flying for real. I could feel it.
Everything was so quiet and the car was going round and round. I could see the sky. I still remember seeing all the stars turn. Then my head hit the window and I passed out. And Julia . . .” My voice trailed off, broken.
“Amy,” Dad said. He was holding my hand. I hadn’t even noticed him taking it. I pulled away so I wouldn’t have to feel him drop it.
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“When I woke up everything looked so strange. The ground was up in the sky, and the road was where the stars should be. I tried to look around and a branch hit my face. We were . . . the car had flipped, been thrown up into the sky, and we were caught in a bunch of trees.
There were huge holes in the windshield, places where it had broken when branches pushed through, and I . . .
I saw her. I saw what I’d done to her.”
Mom started to cry. I wanted to stop talking then but I couldn’t. It just kept coming out.
“I looked at Julia,” I said. “She—she was so quiet.
I said her name but she didn’t answer. She was . . .” I wanted to close my eyes, but I knew what I’d see if I did.
“She was looking at me. There was—she’d put this glitter stuff on her face and it had rubbed off, smudged around her eyes. I told her that because I knew she’d want to fix it and she didn’t—she didn’t move. She just kept looking at me. Her eyes were—they were wide-open but she didn’t see me.”
Mom started crying harder. Dad was crying too. I stopped talking. We sat there and they cried. I watched them. My eyes were totally dry.
Mom wiped at her eyes and reached for me. “You look so upset.”
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“All those years of paying attention to me are really paying off, huh?” I said, and pushed her hands away. She looked like I’d hit her. She started crying again. After a while she stopped. I rolled away and stared at the wall until she and Dad got up.
“It’s okay to be sad, you know,” she said. “Are you sad?”
