I Swear Read online

  “They found her in her garage this morning—in her mom’s car. It had been running all night.”

  “What do you mean?” I could hear the words he was saying, and they seemed to be coming out in order, but none of them made sense.

  “She had a bag on her lap—like she was packed for a trip or something. But she never left the garage.”

  I tried to pick up the triangle of bowl on the counter but my hand wouldn’t work, and as the shard fell into the sink with the others, I felt my knees begin to buckle. I leaned back against the counter as my mom rounded the corner with her briefcase, her heels clicking on the dark wood.

  “Jake?” She said my name like a question. Her wide, blue eyes searched mine for answers, then darted to the shards of bowl on the counter and in the sink, the water running hard and loud as I slowly melted down the cabinets and onto the floor. I was holding on to my phone like it was the only thing that would keep me upright. As I looked at my mom—framed by the doorway—the room seemed to shift an inch or two, like the whole world had dropped off center to the left.

  Not a big change.

  But it was all I could see.

  Brad kept saying my name into the phone. His voice sounded far away behind the roar in my ears. My face was hot and wet with sweat and something else. I couldn’t see clearly and wiped at my eyes. My hand came away wet, and that’s when I knew that I was crying. I felt a weight in my chest like I was underwater, and realized I needed to breathe—it wasn’t happening by itself. I gasped and choked into the phone.

  “Brad.” And then again, louder. “Brad.”

  “Yeah, man. I’m here.”

  “Where’s Jillian?”

  5. JILLIAN

  I was pulling into the back parking lot when I saw Brad sprinting toward me; his long, lean frame didn’t pause until he was sitting in my passenger seat.

  “Drive,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Starbucks. Now.”

  “Brad, we have like eight minutes until first period starts.”

  “No first period today—Jenkins is calling an assembly as soon as the reporters clear out.”

  I stepped on the gas.

  I had seen the satellite dishes on the cluster of vans when I’d arrived this morning, and even though I was a thousand feet away on the next corner, I knew that Macie was standing in the epicenter, holding court. The only thing more spot-on than her fashion sense is her acumen for media relations.

  She comes by it honestly.

  When we were in kindergarten, her dad ran for city council. In fourth grade he was elected mayor. In eighth grade the good people of Seattle sent him to the state legislature. He was gunning for D.C. next, and if his movie star looks and silver tongue were any indication, he’d be there before we finished college. It’s weird—he’s got this magnetic pull. When he talks to you, you feel like you’re the only person in the room, even though you’re never the only person in the room. It’s always a mob scene when he’s around—even when it’s just his family.

  Macie has four brothers—two older, two younger. Mikey, Matty, Manny, and Marty. (Yeah, I know. Who does that to their kids?) They’re not Mormons or anything. I don’t even think Macie’s mom and dad even particularly wanted a big family. Truth be told, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. They still can’t.

  Macie is definitely Daddy’s girl.

  “She’s our rose among the thorns,” her dad always says, beaming, when he’s introducing the family on election night, after he declares victory. Her brothers look like a boy band—Mikey is the jock, Matty is the adorkable nerd, Manny is the skinny emo boy with the long bangs, and Marty is . . . well, the disaster. He’s been smoking pot since he was ten, and the rumors about his drug use almost took down Mr. Merrick’s campaign for state senate.

  Watching him pull that one out of the fire was surreal. There was an ad that ran almost every commercial break during the local and national newscasts on the Big Three networks. It was a steady shot that had Mr. Merrick staring directly into the camera, eyes welling up but not shedding a single tear. This was righteous rage. This was the iron hand of justified anger. Macie and I stood right behind the camera and watched him in take after take as he leveled his gaze and squared his jaw and said, “The slander must stop. I’ll stand up for you, like I stand up for my son. Let’s circle the wagons and clean up Olympia.”

  It was after our first day of eighth grade—I’ll never forget it: We were standing behind the camera guy while we watched the director and the campaign manager fight it out. Even though we were off to one side and in the corner, Macie was right in the middle of it. Her eyes were almost as bright as her father’s are when a key light hits them. She couldn’t get enough. She was quiet as her dad drove us home from the set. Everybody was quiet. No one was sure if the commercial would work, and if he didn’t win this race, it’d be at least two years before Mr. Merrick could run for anything again.

  We were pulling into her driveway when Macie broke the silence.

  “Jillian and I are running for student council at Westport next year.”

  It was so matter-of-fact, so confident—but more than confident. It was shrewd, like she had a secret. I looked at her, then glanced up at her dad’s reflection in the rearview mirror.

  A movie star smiled back with eyes that welled up but didn’t shed a single tear.

  Everybody thinks it was that commercial that saved his race for state senate, but they forget that after our first day of eighth grade, Mr. Merrick went after it like he’d never campaigned before. He stood on cars at dealerships, cut ribbons at grocery stores, served food to the homeless, and attended four fund-raising dinners one Friday night and was up at five a.m. cooking pancakes at a Catholic church the next morning.

  He was everywhere.

  No one remembers that Marty disappeared to “stay with relatives” in Nevada somewhere for the whole month of October. They remember only that Mike Merrick was on every newscast for a month straight. They sort of cock their collective head to one side and barely remember the commercial if you mention it, but I know that the fire behind Mr. Merrick’s fight that fall wasn’t the ad at all.

  It was that moment in the driveway when Macie went into the family business.

  • • •

  The Starbucks across the street from the school was almost empty when we pulled up. I parked way back on the side so nobody would see us. Brad ordered while I sat slumped in a leather club chair, staring out the front door and across the street at the ring of news vans. Piano jazz tinkled into my ears and the rhythm matched the syncopated sickness in my stomach. I jumped when my phone did—a text from Jake: Where are you?

  This was ridiculous. I couldn’t avoid him forever.

  I swallowed as I tapped a finger onto the screen so that I could reply, but then Brad set down my Venti skinny vanilla latte and started pouring raw-sugar packs into his Grande drip.

  “You okay?” he asked quietly.

  I held the phone out so he could see the text from my brother.

  “I can’t run from him all day, Brad. He sleeps down the hall.”

  “But you don’t have to see him before I do.”

  Brad and Jake have been best friends since kindergarten. Since the summer they started playing football together in the park down the street. Since girls had cooties.

  “Lemme take this one, Jills.”

  I put down the phone and picked up my latte. It was sweet, and warm on my lips. As I sipped it, I stared into Brad’s brown eyes. He was always so sure that nothing was really wrong, so confident that it could be “handled.” He was the cool, collected pragmatist to Jake’s headstrong hothead.

  Katherine had summed it up best one night last summer: “That boy don’t care if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.”

  I smiled as I thought of it. Brad caught me and grinned back. “Atta girl,” he said, wiping some foam off my upper lip with his fingertip. He popped it into his mouth and
raised his eyebrows at me when he licked it off.

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

  He grabbed my hand and helped me up.

  “Thought you’d never ask,” he said.

  6. KATHERINE

  As I stood next to Macie in front of the cameras and watched her taking questions from the reporters, all I could think about was Aunt Liza telling me that I didn’t have to prove I was pretty. Before every pageant I’d ever competed in, Aunt Liza did my hair. Nobody could get a French twist quite as tight as she could, and we always talked while she worked with the brushes and the pins. I always asked if she was coming, and every time I asked, she said the same thing:

  “Sweet pea, I know you got more brains and more talent than the rest of them girls combined, and I’ve never even seen ’em. You ain’t got to prove you’re pretty to me.”

  Macie had come to prove something this morning. She was dressed for a funeral. Her outfit was perfect and professional—and all black. Her lips were red like blood, and when Principal Jenkins had seen her click click click out onto the front steps of the school, he’d looked relieved. The reporters saw a Merrick and rushed on over to us like Jenkins was yesterday’s tuna fish.

  Macie made the local evening news last year when we ran for student council and won. We were the first two females ever to win the president and vice president positions at Westport High, and she’d made the most of it—kept my hand up in the air for so long clutched in hers when the reporters showed up for the vote announcement that my whole arm fell asleep.

  I remember standing there and asking through my smile why there were reporters in the gym.

  “Because I had my dad’s press secretary tip off her contacts, silly,” she hissed. “Keep smiling. This is gonna get you into Harvard Law.”

  So I smiled. Hard. Till it hurt.

  Today, I didn’t have to ask Macie how the reporters knew about a suicide at a local high school. I knew. She’d probably sent two or three text messages and an email from her phone at Jillian’s this morning. She’d known exactly what time she and I should walk out onto the front steps.

  “Miss Merrick, as student body president, what’s the message you have for your fellow students today?” It was Mary Jackson from Channel 13 News.

  “That suicide is not the answer,” said Macie in a clear, concerned voice. She looked stricken. “High school can be hard. The schedule is demanding. The social stress is high. But there is always another answer,” she said. “Our message today at Westport, and at high schools all over our city, should be that there is always hope.”

  “Did you know Leslie Gatlin?” asked Hank Arnold from Action News 5.

  “I did know her, Hank, though we weren’t close. On behalf of the student body here at Westport, I want to send our deepest sympathies and condolences to her family. I can’t imagine what her parents must be feeling this morning.”

  Had to hand it to Macie. She was good at this. It was like watching a pro running back dodging linemen all the way to the end zone.

  I glanced over at Brad, who was standing behind the cameras across from Macie, but he was looking down at his phone, and before I could catch his eye, he took several steps backward and answered a call. I heard him whisper, “Hey, Jillian,” but I couldn’t hear anything else.

  “Did Leslie seem agitated or sad the last time you spoke?” Hank followed up with Macie.

  “I wouldn’t want to speculate on Leslie’s mental health,” said Macie, then she looked directly into the camera. “I hadn’t spoken to her in several weeks. I just . . .” And there was a pause so slight that if you were watchin’ her at home, you might not have caught it unless you were staring right at her. Her lip quivered and for a hot second her eyes got a little glossy, like a pat of butter melting on a pancake. Almost tears—but not quite. “I can’t imagine what must have been going on in her mind.” Macie swallowed hard and blinked several times, obviously shaken. “What kind of anguish does one have to be in to devastate the people you leave behind?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brad take off running toward the senior parking lot, as Mary Jackson jostled for position in front of Macie and asked, “Macie, to your knowledge, was Leslie bullied?”

  “Thank you for asking, Mary.” Macie was all business now. “Principal Jenkins has instituted a zero-tolerance policy for bullying. One of our major initiatives this year on the student council has been to institute a campus-wide bully-free zone. I’ve already talked this morning to Katherine Fraisure, my stuco vice president, and my boyfriend, Brad Wyst, the captain of the football team. We’re planning to head up a committee to make counseling services and peer support groups available here at Westport.”

  As the questions continued, Macie deferred a couple to Principal Jenkins, who joined us on the front steps, and I slowly lowered my eyes and glanced at my watch. Ten minutes until the assembly. I barely had enough time to sneak over to Starbucks for some tea and a Perfect Oatmeal. The idea of sitting through an assembly on an empty stomach was enough to kill me. Deep down, though, beneath the hunger, there was a knot growing in my stomach that had been there since I’d woken up and heard Beth crying this morning. It was fear, plain and simple, and the more Macie talked, the worse it felt.

  I had a bad feeling about all this. Leslie had been bullied. I knew. Macie knew it. We knew, because we’d done the bullying. Macie could spin it all she wanted, but at the end of the day, now there was tape of her lying about what went on.

  I stepped back as Macie crowded forward toward the rush of mics. If you think I’m going down with this ship, you don’t know me very well.

  As I slowly stepped to the side of Principal Jenkins and down the stairs toward my car in the senior lot, I saw Beth standing in the doorway of the lobby, in front of the trophy cases, her mouth flung so far open, I was afraid she might swallow a fly. Her wispy blond pixie cut was freshly parted, and the freckles on her nose stood out against her fair skin. She was even paler than usual.

  I stepped out of the shot and around the bank of cameras, then slipped in the door.

  “Beth?”

  “Katherine, what is she saying?”

  I glanced back out at the mob scene on the front steps. “Oh, you know Macie. She’s makin’ it up as she goes along.”

  Beth’s eyes didn’t move an inch from the back of Macie’s head.

  “No, Katherine. What is she saying about me?”

  When I put my hand on her shoulder, I could feel her shaking through her hoodie.

  “Beth, honey, she’s not sayin’ a damn thing about you. She’s just talking about safe zones and antibullying intiatives.”

  Beth turned and looked at me. Her eyes were red and puffy. She had moisturizer under her nose that wasn’t rubbed in, and her eyeliner was a crooked mess. That girl can nail a double layout dismount with a half twist, but it’s a good day when her socks match.

  “Katherine,” she whispered, her lips trembling. “You have to help me.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Beth pulled me through the hall, toward the doors that led to the back parking lot. The benches outside were deserted. Everyone was around front for the media feeding frenzy. She pulled me down onto a bench by the door and started to sob.

  “This is all my fault, Katherine. I was the meanest one to Leslie. Macie’s gonna tell everyone that I’m the one to blame.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re the only one who can help me. You’re the only one who has ever shown even a spark of standing up to Macie.”

  “Help you with what, Beth?”

  She was crying so hard she couldn’t say.

  I held her for a while until her tears subsided, then I sat her up and wiped my finger under her nose to smooth in her face cream.

  “I’m going to get some tea at Starbucks. You comin’? Macie can handle this.”

  Beth shook her head. “No, I can’t leave. I have to hear what she says.”

  I nodded. �
�I’ll meet you in the assembly with a chamomile. Sound good?”

  She smiled, and I picked up my purse.

  • • •

  When I pulled up to the Starbucks across the street, I saw Jillian holding her phone up to Brad at a table inside. And I don’t know if it was the way she looked at him, or the way he brushed that speck of foam off her lip, or the way he grabbed her hand as they stood up to leave, but something in me got real quiet and I had a feeling something was up.

  Brad held the door for Jillian, and I watched them turn away from my car as they walked down the side of the building to Jillian’s car and got in it. Then Brad talked while Jillian sipped coffee and rubbed her temples with her hands. And just when I thought Jills was gonna turn the key in the ignition, Brad reached over and took her hand off the steering wheel and kissed it, real soft.

  It felt like time stood still—like I was watching something I shouldn’t be, like in sixth grade when I found the Christmas presents too early and kept sneaking down to Mama’s room to look at the boxes under the bed when Aunt Liza took a nap. It felt all wrong, but I couldn’t stop looking.

  As I sat there watching, slouched down in my seat like a bandit, Brad took Jillian’s face in his hands and leaned in and kissed her. Not a peck; a long, slow, strong kiss that made me gasp out loud like a damn fool. And they sat there kissing for a good long time, at least a minute or two.

  Long enough for me to gather my senses, grab my phone, and take three pictures.

  I wasn’t sure why I took them.

  But all at once, I had a plan.

  7. BETH

  When Jenkins started the assembly, it was silent, and that’s saying something. Over one thousand living, breathing anythings are generally noisy. Over one thousand high schoolers can be deafening. I’ve heard it. Last fall when I scored a perfect 10 on the beam in competition, I thought the roof was falling into the gym, the cheering was so loud. Coach Stevens was the only one who was quiet. He stood there looking at me as I walked toward him, his hands on his hips, shaking his head. It wasn’t until I got right up to him that I saw he was crying.