slept at all the night before.
“Whaddya say, bro?”
Carter reluctantly nodded. “Sounds like a plan,” he said quietly.
“All right, cool,” said Jeff. Then, splashing a plume of water at Carter, he said, “I gotta say, though, man—you’re one lucky dog.”
Slowly lifting himself from the edge of the pool, Carter wandered back into the pool house and laid down on the unmade futon. He could smell Jules’s scent on the sheets—peaches and rosewater. He remembered his face buried in her hair the night before, breathing her in, gulping down these smells. Images from their hookup flooded his head—his hands running up her smooth legs, the devilishly playful expression on her face as they’d chased each other up the beach toward Jeff’s house, and then the warmth of her skin when he’d covered her body with his own. An enticing, lingering memory of the night before.
Was it possible that Jeff knew what he was talking about? That the problem wasn’t with what he’d done the night before, but with the fact that his love for Lilah was disappearing? And then what? What would happen to Lilah if he up and left her?
The possibility disturbed him. He imagined her spiraling into a depression like she had after the swim-team fiasco. Hurting herself, maybe seriously. It made him sick to his stomach.
In a sudden panic, he leaped up and stripped the bed, crumpling the sheets into a ball and stuffing them deep in the hamper in the bathroom.
Back on the futon, he closed his eyes and tried to calm himself. If he could just somehow get back to sleep, maybe he’d wake up in a world where he wouldn’t have to worry about any of this.
In the three and a half years they’d been together, Carter had never once neglected Lilah’s calls. Never once failed to return a text.
If only she hadn’t gotten drunk, if only she’d tried a little harder to enjoy Jeff’s party and not made such a spectacle of herself. She should have remembered how fragile things were in their relationship. She should have been more careful, more attentive, less selfish. She should have put Carter’s needs before her own.
She regretted every single thing she’d done, and her regret made her hate herself, and her self-hatred filled her with an uncontrollable need to hear Carter tell her that everything was okay.
Now he’d gone AWOL. And it was all her fault.
At eight thirty a.m., unable to stand it any longer, she called the landline at his house. Maybe his mother would be able to get him on the line. And then Lilah could say she was sorry, and everything would be okay again. She could hear her heart beating in her throat as the phone rang and rang.
Finally, Carter’s mother answered, and the sound of the sweet Georgia drawl she’d picked up while they’d lived in Savannah almost broke Lilah in half. “Hi, Mrs. Moore. Is Carter there? Can I talk to him?” It took all of her self-control to squeeze the words out.
“Oh, Lilah, no. He’s at Jeff’s house,” Mrs. Moore said.
Lilah refused to believe that this could be true. “Are you sure?” she said.
“Sure as the sunrise.”
“So … he’s okay?”
“He seemed fine when he called to say he was sleeping over,” said Mrs. Moore. “Are you okay, honey?”
Lilah definitely wasn’t okay, but she didn’t want to make the mess she’d created any bigger. “Yeah. I’m … I’m okay,” she said. “Just, he’s not answering his phone.”
“You know Carter,” his mom responded. “It’s Saturday. He’s not going to be awake till noon.”
“He didn’t answer last night, either, though. I called him, like …” Afraid she’d said too much already, and not wanting Carter’s mom to think she was crazy, Lilah stopped herself. “I called him. And I sent him some texts. He’s, like, disappeared.”
“I’m sure his phone just died,” said Carter’s mom. “You sure you’re all right, sweetie? You sound a little—”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Moore. I’ve got to go. Thanks!”
Lilah hung up before Carter’s mom could probe any further.
In a daze, she stared at the pink walls of her room, at the line of intertwined roses her father had painted along the baseboards, at the white dresser and the white bedside table and the white carpeting on the floor. She studied the poster of Allison Schmitt—an action shot of Allison bobbing out of the water, with her arm stretched in front of her as she won her gold medal in London—that she hadn’t had the nerve to take down after her own dreams of Olympic competition had combusted.
Then, finally, her eyes drifted to the huge, round mirror above the antique cherrywood dressing table she’d inherited from her grandmother. Among the photos she’d taped there was one she especially cherished. CARTER + LILAH carved into that bench. “Forever,” he’d said.
But did forever really mean forever? Maybe not, after what Lilah had done last night. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d taken the first steps toward leaving her—if he’d hooked up with some other girl after she’d left, it would explain why he hadn’t been answering his phone. The old familiar hurt tickled the edges of her heart, that dark hopelessness she sometimes felt when she was alone, the flip side of her manic behavior the night before. She felt herself moving across the room, sitting on the stool in front of the mirror. Staring at that photo like she was in a trance.
Her hand reached down and opened the bottom drawer of the dressing table. She rummaged through the old lipsticks and mascara cases there, digging around until she found what she was looking for. There it was: the tiny cartridge of razor blades she’d managed to keep hidden from her mother.
As her fingers touched them, she shuddered, horrified at herself.
“Stop it,” she told herself. “Don’t do it.”
She threw the cartridge back into the drawer and slammed it shut.
Throwing on a pair of baggy gray sweatpants and a black sports bra, she slammed out of her room and stomped down the stairs and through the bright sunlit kitchen of her house.
“Mom, I’m taking your car,” she called out.
Then, before her parents had time to surface from wherever they were and interrogate her, she grabbed the key to her mom’s Dodge Caravan off the hook by the garage door and headed to Jeff’s house in search of Carter.
Jules took her time walking home.
She lived on the southern side of town, in a neighborhood called the Slats because all the houses there were the same gray clapboards, perched on stilts, lined up tight next to one another. It was a three-mile walk
