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“Here, I think you should read this,” she said, handing her notebook to Haley.
Haley took it and struggled to read what was on the page. But it was difficult. The words were all bouncing around, playing mean games with her eyes. After a few minutes, she managed to catch them all. It was a character description of sorts. And the character it described seemed like someone who she, herself, would like to be.
“Who’s this about?”
“You.”
“Me? Are you serious?”
Erica shrugged and there was a flush in her cheeks. “I don’t know. Just felt like writing it, I guess.”
Haley’s brows knitted together and she looked at the page again. “But this doesn’t sound like me at all.”
“Trust me. It’s you.”
“But how can you think that I’m responsible?”
“You are. You’re just going through some shit. But this won’t be you for long.”
“But how do you know? Before this summer we didn’t even talk.”
“You don’t need to talk to someone to know them. All you need to do is watch. See how they carry themselves. See how they treat others.”
Erica kept talking and Haley fought to keep her mind in focus. She knew her friend was saying something deep and she tried to grasp all she could, but. . . there was too much alcohol in her. A cloud had descended and everything suddenly seemed impossibly distant.
After awhile, Erica stopped what she was saying. “You don’t look too good, Haley. You’re green.”
“Huh?”
“You don’t look so great,” Erica said more slowly this time, her voice even more distant than before, as though she were underwater. She leaned closer, looking concerned. “You should get some rest. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Haley tried to ask Erica what she had just said, but she was sinking into a dark, balmy pool.
She noticed Erica staring at her. She tried to ask her why but her mouth wasn’t obeying. Neither were her eyes. Every time she managed to open then, they’d slam shut again. And after much futile effort, finally, they remained shut.
Chapter 53
HALEY CLUNG TO the darkness behind her eyelids, the remnants of a comforting dream still heavy in her mind. She was dreaming about Austin. They were standing on her porch and he was leaning over to kiss her. Feelings she hadn’t felt in a long time washed over her. The weak-in-your-knees, tingly excited feelings she’d witnessed vicariously through movie love scenes or through Tiffany and her string of boys. She’d had similar feelings for Mac—just not as intense—and it had been wonderful, but that had been long ago. And now Mac was gone.
“Haley?”
Someone was calling her name. Without opening her eyes, she felt around. Her hand closed in on her pillow. Yes, she was at her own house. Tiffany. . . no Erica, had driven her home.
She knew that if she opened her eyes, she’d lose the moment, so she willed herself to return to the dream, to continue feeling the pleasant physical dizziness that had enveloped her. Her body began to relax again and Austin’s face returned. He thought she was pretty, not plain. He really liked her. She sank deep, deep, deeper.
Now she was at Luke’s. Her mother was walking around in a uniform, smiling and serving coffee. Her hair was done up and she looked happy. Austin and Mac were talking to her father at the bar. Her father threw his head back and laughed. That laugh. She hadn’t heard it for almost a year. It was one of those comforting parts of him she had forgotten.
Erica walked up to the two of them. “My mother snuck out in the middle of the night,” she said. “She wasn’t meant to grow old with a used car salesman.”
Tiffany was standing next to her: “I can’t stay with the same boy forever. I want to leave this backward town. I want. . . I want. . . Haley, do you miss me?”
The voice was louder this time. Becky’s. “Haley! Wake up. Erica’s here!”
Haley tried one last time to hold on to the dream, but the kaleidoscope quickly melted away as someone shuffled loudly into the room. Haley opened one eye.
Becky was standing next to the bed staring at her. Erica stood in the doorway, looking concerned.
“You okay?” Erica asked. “Guess we overdid it, huh?”
“I thought you had a shift today?” Haley whispered. She felt as though someone really strong was squashing her head. Her mouth tasted atrocious.
“Um, I did,” Erica said. “It’s already five o’clock.”
***
TWO HOURS LATER, the sky was a deep shade of blue, the color of dusk. Haley gazed out at the bayou, a cup of tea in her hands. She reached into her pocket, then dropped an aspirin on her tongue which still tasted last night’s cigarettes.
The Smith’s next door were firing up their grill, something her father loved to do when he was alive. Mrs. Smith spotted her on the porch and waved from her position in front of the grill. Haley waved back, then closed her eyes. Her head was pounding. She would never smoke again, she told herself. Or drink. At least not that much. She was starting to black out when she drank. Not remember things. Erica was right. She was losing herself. She’d always been responsible and it was something she took pride in. Mac had been right, too. Numbing the pain wasn’t going to make it go away. It was only prolonging things. And they’d already been prolonged long enough.
She set the teacup on the table next to her and started to rock. She needed to make some changes in her life, whether her mother got better or not. Major ones. And she couldn’t just wait for others to do so.
Hearing shouts, Haley’s eyes popped open. Becky and Seacrest were ru
Becky was yelling Haley’s name. It seemed so out of character for the two to be ru
Two yards away, Becky started to say something, but couldn’t seem to get it out. Seacrest was ru
The girls reached the carport. “Did you hear?” Becky asked, standing in front of Haley, out of breath.
“Hear what?” Haley asked.
“Oh Jesus, you didn’t,” Becky said.
Seacrest stopped and blew air from her lungs. Her cheeks were beet red.
When she heard her sister finally spit out the words, tears welled up from behind her eyes.
“That boy, Charles. . .” Becky repeated, as if stu
Chapter 54
THE MORNING OF Charles’s funeral was drizzly and gray. As Haley and Erica plodded toward the dusty green canopy that towered over the casket where Charles now lay, Becky and Seacrest silently trailed them.
The air was muggy and the oak that draped over their section of the cemetery seemed to drink up the little sunlight God had given them for Charles’s burial.
Sweat beaded across Haley’s forehead and her mind raced. She thought of his last visit. He’d been so concerned about his mother.
He had also told her that he needed for Haley to believe in him. She said she had, but had she really? More importantly, had he believed her?
She felt sick at the realization that Charles was about to be lowered into the ground. She envisioned his poor mother finding him in the backyard, hanging, lifeless, from a pecan tree. What a horrible way to go. . . and to be discovered.
She stroked the pendant around her neck. Maybe she’d had a hand in this. If only she’d tried harder to understand what he had been trying to tell her. To believe that he had nothing to do with Tiffany’s disappearance. Because he hadn’t, had he?