This doesn’t make me laugh like it might’ve in the past. It makes me think. Would Meeka be a good mother? It’s a weird thought, but as I look at her, I want to say . . . maybe. She’s loyal, fiercely so. I know she’d do anything for me. I can’t imagine her with an actual baby, though. Not because she’s seventeen. There are plenty of girls in our class who I can imagine as mothers. Meeka is different. I’d like to say it’s because she’s more mature than them, but that sounds counterintuitive. Let’s say it’s her priorities. She’s got so many other things she’d like to do with her life first. That makes me wonder why she was wasting her time with Cole. Will I ever stop thinking about Cole?
I lunge for the toilet and my body heaves, but nothing comes.
As Meeka rubs my back, she says, “Since you’re not up to it, I’m going to make a few decisions for you.”
“That so?” I mumble.
“’Tis. Okay, this is what’s happening. You are going back out there. You are going to say your goodbyes and get in my car. I am going to drive you home and you are going to get into bed. You are going to sleep. You are going to wake up in the morning and you are going to go to your game and you are going to score three goals. No, four. Actually, five. Five spectacular goals. You are going to shatter that record. It’s what you deserve. It’s who you are. A fucking shooting star.”
She helps me up, hugs me, and we push through the door. Jed Barrow is waiting outside. He shakes his head in exasperation. We were in there for a long time.
“The babies are officially made,” Meeka says, and she punches him on the shoulder as we pass.
We weave through the crowd, giving half hugs to the kids we like, with Meeka doing all the talking, squeezing my cheeks and saying things like “We gotta get our lil’ darlin’ wested up for tomorrow, so she can score wots and wots of goals.”
As we circle around the house, we see Logan. He’s next to the driveway, sitting down with his back against a tree. Alone.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” we both respond.
“You out?” he asks.
“You bet,” Meeka says.
Then we don’t say anything else for a few seconds, until Logan breaks the silence.
“Good luck tomorrow. I wish I could be there, but . . .”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “It’s a stupid game. A stupid number. That’s all.”
“No, it’s a big deal,” he says. “And you deserve all the credit you get.”
That’s a compliment, but somehow it sounds like a threat. Maybe I’m hearing it wrong, but the word “credit” doesn’t sound good.
“Thanks?” is all I can manage to say.
“Have fun,” Meeka adds. “Be good.”
Logan tries to smile, but it doesn’t work. It’s painful to watch, so I don’t.
Past him, in a patch of trees, I spot someone else. A boy, peeing. His blue Carhartt, splattered with bits of white paint, tells me it’s Grayson. The four of us, together again. Okay, not really together, but in the same place. Only for a few seconds, though. Long enough to make me remember our confession as I rush to Meeka’s car.
* * *
• • •
Huddled over the phones, the four of us said it one by one. First Grayson, then Logan, then me, and finally Meeka. The same words except for our names.
“I, Holly Morse, along with Grayson Hobbs, Logan Bailey, and Meeka Miller, have buried this recording with Cole Weston because we are the ones who caused his death. It is not a crime because we did it in self-defense. Cole Weston was a dangerous young man. He threatened Meeka. And he threatened the rest of us. It was only going to get worse from there. He had access to guns. He was great at hiding things, and the police would have never found any evidence, so they would have never been able to charge him with a serious crime. That is, until it was too late. Cole assured us of this. We believed him. So we stopped him. It was self-defense. For ourselves and our town. For the future we all want and deserve.”
LOGAN
I’M DRIVING HOME by myself. Not that I expected to be leaving with Esther, but Grayson destroyed any slim chance I had of that. Probably a good thing. Random hookups are a bad idea for any number of reasons. If I want to get anywhere with Esther, I should ask her out properly. Be respectful. The opposite of the Cole approach.
Not that Cole ever actually used any approach. As far as I know, Meeka is the only girl he’d ever been with, and he more or less fell into that relationship. Still, he talked a big, and foul, game.
“Every girl is a slut, deep down,” he once told me and Grayson. “All you have to do is find her weakness and you can bring the sluttiness out of her. You don’t even have to treat her nice. In fact, it works better if you treat her like garbage.”
So disgusting. And it certainly wasn’t the only time he talked like that.
There was this one rainy Sunday last May, and we were all bowling together. Grayson was checking out Gayle Jasper, who was working at the alley. She was a graduating senior with a mane of red hair and a family name that, to be honest, carried some baggage.
“Give her two Mike’s Hard Lemonades and she’ll be blowing you back there behind the pins,” Cole whispered to Grayson, though I was close enough to hear.
Grayson chewed at his thumbnail like he was thinking about it.
Meeka, who was a little farther away, asked, “What are you guys talking about?”
“Oh, just girls with . . . questionable morals,” Cole said. “Present company excluded, of course.”
It made me so uncomfortable, and I couldn’t stop glancing over at Gayle to make sure she couldn’t hear us. Meeka put two and two together.
“For fuck’s sake,” she said softly. “The rumors about her aren’t at all true.”
“About who?” Holly asked as she returned from the bathroom.
“If anything, it’s the opposite of what guys tell you,” Meeka went on. “She didn’t put herself in those situations. I heard she doesn’t even remember what happened.”
“No one forced her to drink,” Cole said. “That’s on her. And how convenient that she ‘forgets’ what happens. And the guys, who were plenty drunk too, all remember. Why’s that?”
“Trauma maybe?” Meeka said. “PTSD? Heard of it? Call me when you experience something traumatic and I’ll—”
Meeka closed her eyes. She must’ve immediately regretted what she said. She didn’t say she was sorry, though.