Seth smiles. “I like those things. I don’t know if I love them.” Then he switches back into interrogation mode. “So you told me you fought with Jeremy, but you didn’t go into much detail. What did he say to you?”
“Why do you need to know that?” Seth never wanted to talk about Jeremy before, so it’s weird he wants to now.
A funny look goes over his face, but then it’s gone. “I don’t know. Could be relevant. Sometimes when we go over old memories, we remember new things.”
I think back. At the edge of the downtown, in front of the old theater, Jeremy’s face in front of me. I told him about the fight with Fiona—and he sided with her. Said she was right about me, that I couldn’t understand because I didn’t have anything I loved the way she had dance. I guessed my family didn’t count. So I lost it on him, too.
“I told Jeremy how I didn’t really like going to his games, that I just did it for him, and he never even noticed or cared,” I tell Seth now. “And it just turned into this whole downward spiral of things I’d never told him. Like how I hated the way people looked at us, like he was too good to be with me.”
Seth frowns. “You actually thought that?”
“You didn’t go to our school. You don’t know. Everyone loves Jeremy and I’m just—” I wave my hand in the air.
“Addie—”
“It’s not important.” I don’t want Seth feeling sorry for me. “Then he accused me of making all of it up just to pick a fight, and I said I didn’t need to pick a fight, since we were already in one. And then…” I hesitate. I remember this part clearly. “I said, ‘I can’t just be your girlfriend, Jeremy, I have to be me. And I don’t even know who that is anymore.’ That finally did it. I ran away and he didn’t follow me.”
Running through the crowd, eyes blurring with tears. Tripping on someone’s foot, almost falling—and then a hand catching me, hauling me to my feet. Seth.
“And then I ran into you,” I finish.
If Seth hadn’t been there—maybe I would have seen Fiona again, made up with her. Maybe if I hadn’t been so stupid and selfish that night, if I’d just looked out for my sister instead of doing what I wanted—
But no. I’d run into Seth. Told him to leave me alone and tried to keep running. But there were too many people in my way. He took my arm and guided me to the side of the crowd, asked if I wanted to talk about it. I said no. But then I asked him if he had anything to drink.
We walked away from town, down his street, to this very spot. He handed me a can of semi-warm hard cider. The taste of it on my tongue, fizzy, sweet and sour, like an apple that was about to go bad but hadn’t yet. Another sip, the stars starting to wheel overhead. It was a hot night, like this one, the crickets chirping. Little snippets of our conversation still float in my head.
He looks at you like you’re something he owns, like you’re his. He’s always looked at you like that. Since way before you started going out.
So you don’t think he really loves me?
I don’t think he really knows you. He never did.
What, and you think you do?
We were lying side by side on this rock, looking up at the sky. Seth had turned his head to look at me. Yeah. I do.
I’d only had half a can of cider when he asked if he could kiss me. I said yes. The next thing I remember is Seth’s hand in my hair, the sweet, stale taste of his tongue.
Heat comes into my face, and I push my memories away.
Seth kicks my leg. I realize I missed something he said. “What?”
“I said, who would have wanted to kill Fiona?”
“I already told you. There’s no one. I asked around. At her ballet school, at our actual school. There were no jealous ballerinas, no stalkers. She wasn’t dating anyone.”
Seth drums his fingers on the rock. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. She’d have told me.” I ignore the little voice in my head that adds, Wouldn’t she have?
He taps out another note on his phone, then looks at me. “I’ll share this with you. So we can both have it.”
“Thanks.”
Then he looks at me. “There’s another possibility.”
By the look on his face, I’m sure that I don’t want to hear it. But I ask, “What?”
He scratches that scar over his eyebrow. I wonder again where he got it. “Did anyone ever look into…your mom?”
I stare. “How would that have anything to do with this?”
“Just walk me through it. You’ve told me your mom was…complicated. Like Jekyll and Hyde, you said once.”
I was nine when my mom left. I remember her as two people: bright and fun and laughing one day, sullen and moody and slamming her door on us the next, Mommy needs to be left alone, my dad looking worried as he shepherded us to the dinner table to eat cereal for the second night in a row.
“Yeah. The summer she left was a Hyde summer. She wasn’t around a lot, and when she was, she didn’t want to be. And then she was just gone.” I hesitate. “I guess you’ve heard the rumors.”
“That she was cheating on your dad?”
“Yeah.”
“What does your dad say about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all? You’ve asked him?”