Where It Began

Andy, seeing the look on my face, in a vain effort to prevent further drama, says, “Truthfully, at first we thought it was a misunderstanding, and then we thought you knew.”

“We thought you were like the coolest person on Earth throwing yourself on a land-mine-thingy to save Billy,” Andie says.

“And your sorry little butt,” I say.

Andie, dumb as Bambi, says. “What do you mean? Billy was driving.”

“We were in the car,” Andy says quietly.

“Do you mean we could get in trouble?” Andie asks, all googly-eyed.

“Let’s see,” I say. “You dragged me out of the car I wasn’t driving and stuck the keys I didn’t steal into my unconscious hand and you totally set me up. Maybe you could get in trouble. No wonder you kept your mouths shut.”

“What keys?” Andie says, looking up at Andy, who is staring at the ground. “What’s she talking about?”

Andy says, “I swear it wasn’t like that. We pulled you out of the car because you were passed out and we were afraid it would catch fire. You were passed out before he skidded and you got really banged up. We didn’t want the car to blow with you in it, but you started to heave so we put you down. That’s all it was.”

“Gross,” says Andie. Like she never heaved into a cardboard box in the back of the limo on the way back from semiformal.

“Don’t forget the part where you ran away and left me there,” I say.

“We just went to call Billy’s mom on his cell,” Andy says. “Because she’s a lawyer. And then we heard the sirens and we stayed out of sight. That’s all it was. It wasn’t personal. And I don’t know how the keys got into your hand because I didn’t put them there.”

He thinks for a minute until his face takes on this amazed and horrified frown, and this time I can tell it’s not about whether I like Andie. “That sucks,” he says almost to himself, twining his fingers in her curls.

They are so dumb and earnest and into themselves and slimy. Still, it is hard to picture the Andies exchanging looks and prying open my fingers and slipping the keys into the palm of my unconscious hand.

It is hard to see them sitting down over a nice joint and going, “Hey, I know, let’s tell Gabby she stole Billy’s car. That’ll keep her quiet while we go to Dartmouth.” (Or in their case, while he packs up his lacrosse gear and goes to Dartmouth and she goes to Hanover, New Hampshire College of Fun and Games or wherever girls like that go.)

It is hard to see Andie even understanding the whole complicated plot and it is hard to see Andy making color-coded note cards to explain it to her. How to set up Gabby: Memorize this.

Probably he had figured it out by now, could have figured it out all along if he had given any thought to it. But why would he? He’s smart, but why would he even want to know?

I didn’t even want to know.

Because as bad as it is to be a drunken teenage felon, it’s worse to be a drunken heaving dupe.

Billy’s drunken heaving dupe.

LXIII

I GO HOME ON THE BUS, I MARCH INTO MY EMPTY living room, I pour myself a glass of John’s Glenlivet, and I drink it straight up. Then I pour myself another one and in a seriously cheesy move, I throw the glass into the fireplace where it breaks into purple splinters, spraying a plume of scotch that smells a lot like a petroleum product across the room. And right on cue, before I can throw up or cry or pass out on the wet chaise, the phone rings.

“So. Kaplan says that you remember part of it,” he says instead of hello. “That’s good, right?”

And I think of what we’re studying in psychology, how when you’re shocked beyond what you can take, when your body is flooded with adrenaline, you feel like there’s a ten-foot, hulking grizzly bear blocking your path.

That’s how I feel.

And you have to wonder if there’s some chance that Billy developed a Problem, such as terminal idiocy, when I wasn’t watching. Or if the fumes from the scotch are making me hear voices through my cell phone.

You have to wonder if we’re handing off fists full of terminal idiocy like a hot potato, first I had it and now that I am irrevocably smartened and wised-up, he has it instead.

Now he has it and he wants to pass it back to me only my hands are already burned and not exactly open and extended in his direction.

“How come you’re phoning me?”

“Gabs, this is important.”

“Important to who? Important that you don’t admit anything in writing?”

It isn’t even a question, that’s how obvious it is. I want to strangle him. But still, I want him to be all sweet and sorry, all Imaginary Boyfriend Billy so I can keep on being Delusional Girlfriend Gabby. And even though I can tell this is a sure sign of the proximity of the idiocy potato that I have my fists clenched against taking back, I can also tell that if he gives the slightest hint of wanting to be with me, they will open like pupils dilating in the dark.

“What are you talking about?” he says in his low voice, so quiet you could almost take it for sincere. “I’ve been messaging you online continuously since you got out of your coma.”

There, that sounded almost boyfriend-like, except for the part where you’d expect his lawyer to write a better script for him. That and the pesky, not-true aspect of it.

“I was never in a coma,” I say, exerting all possible self-control to make my teeth not chatter, that’s how hard I’m shaking.

“Well, that’s not what your mother was telling people.”

“Jesus, you’ve got it all figured out. Every angle on this. You’re freaking amazing.”

“Not, I assume, a compliment?”

“Sorry. No. Not.” And then: How could you? How COULD you? HOW COULD YOU? Screaming in my head, in my throat, and just behind my mouth. And I know with absolute and complete clarity, if I let it out, that’s the end of it, of some powerful, u

“Listen,” he says. “I care what happens to you. I risked my probation to get you out of trouble. I walked you through every step. I snuck out to see you. Don’t you see that?”

“Well,” it is as if my lack of anger-management skills is eclipsing my lack of discernment-in-boyfriend-selection skills without me having to exert any good judgment whatsoever. “Let me be the first to point out that you wouldn’t have had to sneak around to see me because it wouldn’t have violated your probation to see me if you hadn’t made up your bullshit story about what I did.”

“Only, I would have been seeing you when you visited me in jail. Don’t you get it? Nothing bad was going to happen to you, first offense, cute girl from the B’s. And I knew you wouldn’t have let anything bad happen to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you would have remembered, I knew that you’d take care of it.”

And even if you’d been pelted by idiocy potatoes, even if you couldn’t think your way out of a bag full of a hundred pounds of moron spuds, you could tell this was probably the truest thing he’d said to me probably ever.

“So you just lied to me and you got everyone else to go along with it? That was the plan?” I say.

“Because you object to lying?”

“Where are you even going with this, Billy? I’m the one who got duped into thinking a lie was the truth. What am I supposed to do with that, anyway?”

There is a long pause and then he says, “You’re supposed to keep your mouth shut.”

“What, are you threatening me?”

“Jesus, Gabs. I don’t know where you got that. All I’m saying is you’ve got a whole lineup of legal people who think you’ve been telling them the truth all along. If you change your story now, they’re going to think you’ve been lying to them all along.”