“Really? I don’t think that about you.”
“It’s an undeniable fact.”
“You weren’t mad?”
“I was just a stupid fuck. But not mad. Never mad. I’m sorry, Cadence.”
“Thanks.”
He picks up a handful of Legos and starts fitting them together.
“Why did Gat disappear? Do you know?”
Johnny sighs. “That’s another question.”
“He told me I don’t know the real him.”
“Could be true.”
“He doesn’t want to discuss my accident. Or what happened with us that summer. He wants us to act normal and like nothing happened.”
Johnny’s lined his Legos up in stripes: blue, white, and green. “Gat had been shitty to that girl Raquel, by starting up with you. He knew it wasn’t right and he hated himself for that.”
“Okay.”
“He didn’t want to be that kind of guy. He wants to be a good person. And he was really angry that summer, about all kinds of things. When he wasn’t there for you, he hated himself even more.”
“You think?”
“I’m guessing,” says Johnny.
“Is he going out with anyone?”
“Aw, Cady,” says Johnny. “He’s a pretentious ass. I love him like a brother, but you’re too good for him. Go find yourself a nice Vermont guy with muscles like Drake Loggerhead.” Then he cracks up laughing.
“You’re useless.”
“I can’t deny it,” he answers. “But you’ve got to stop being such a mushball.”
48
GIVEAWAY: Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones.
It’s one of the Chrestomanci stories Mummy read to me and Gat the year we were eight. I’ve reread it several times since then, but I doubt Gat has.
I open the book and write on the title page. For Gat with everything, everything. Cady.
I head to Cuddledown early the next morning, stepping over old teacups and DVDs. I knock on Gat’s bedroom door.
No answer.
I knock again, then push it open.
It used to be Taft’s room. It’s full of bears and model boats, plus Gat-like piles of books, empty bags of potato chips, cashews crushed underfoot. Half-full bottles of juice and soda, CDs, the Scrabble box with most of its tiles spilled across the floor. It’s as bad as the rest of the house, if not worse.
Anyway, he’s not there. He must be at the beach.
I leave the book on his pillow.
49
THAT NIGHT, GAT and I find ourselves alone on the roof of Cuddledown. Mirren felt sick and Johnny took her downstairs for some tea.
Voices and music float from New Clairmont, where the aunts and Granddad are eating blueberry pie and drinking port. The littles are watching a movie in the living room.
Gat walks the slant of the roof, all the way down to the gutter and up again. It seems dangerous, so easy to fall—but he is fearless.
Now is when I can talk to him.
Now is when we can stop pretending to be normal.
I am looking for the right words, the best way to start.
Suddenly he climbs back to where I’m sitting in three big steps. “You are very, very beautiful, Cady,” he says.
“It’s the moonlight. Makes all the girls look pretty.”
“I think you’re beautiful always and forever.” He is silhouetted against the moon. “Have you got a boyfriend in Vermont?”
Of course I don’t. I have never had a boyfriend except for him. “My boyfriend is named Percocet,” I say. “We’re very close. I even went to Europe with him last summer.”
“God.” Gat is annoyed. Stands and walks back down to the edge of the roof.
“Joking.”
Gat’s back is to me. “You say we shouldn’t feel sorry for you—”
“Yes.”
“—but then you come out with these statements. My boyfriend is named Percocet. Or, I stared at the base of the blue Italian toilet. And it’s clear you want everyone to feel sorry for you. And we would, I would, but you have no idea how lucky you are.”
My face flushes.
He is right.
I do want people to feel sorry for me. I do.
And then I don’t.
I do.
And then I don’t.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Harris sent you to Europe for eight weeks. You think he’ll ever send Johnny or Mirren? No. And he wouldn’t send me, no matter what. Just think before you complain about stuff other people would love to have.”
I flinch. “Granddad sent me to Europe?”
“Come on,” says Gat, bitter. “Did you really think your father paid for that trip?”
I know immediately that he is telling the truth.
Of course Dad didn’t pay for the trip. There’s no way he could have. College professors don’t fly first-class and stay in five-star hotels.
So used to summers on Beechwood, to endlessly stocked pantries and multiple motorboats and a staff quietly grilling steaks and washing linens—I didn’t even think about where that money might be coming from.
Granddad sent me to Europe. Why?
Why wouldn’t Mummy go with me, if the trip was a gift from Granddad? And why would Dad even take that money from my grandfather?
“You have a life stretching out in front of you with a million possibilities,” Gat says. “It—it grates on me when you ask for sympathy, that’s all.”
Gat, my Gat.
He is right. He is.
But he also doesn’t understand.
“I know no one’s beating me,” I say, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “I know I have plenty of money and a good education. Food on the table. I’m not dying of cancer. Lots of people have it much worse than I. And I do know I was lucky to go to Europe. I shouldn’t complain about it or be ungrateful.”
“Okay, then.”
“But listen. You have no idea what it feels like to have headaches like this. No idea. It hurts,” I say—and I realize tears are running down my face, though I’m not sobbing. “It makes it hard to be alive, some days. A lot of times I wish I were dead, I truly do, just to make the pain stop.”
“You do not,” he says harshly. “You do not wish you were dead. Don’t say that.”
“I just want the pain to be over,” I say. “On the days the pills don’t work. I want it to end and I would do anything—really, anything—if I knew for sure it would end the pain.”
There is a silence. He walks down to the bottom edge of the roof, facing away from me. “What do you do then? When it’s like that?”