Chasing River (Burying Water 3)

I roll my eyes and start laughing now. “Oh come on! Everyone in school knew you did it. You practically lived behind Decker’s with that big box of spray paint.”

“That’s because Sue and Roger let me.” The owners of the bowling alley were known to be really nice, fine with letting kids cover the massive brick wall in graffiti, as long as there was no profanity or gang symbols, or any sort of hate speech.

“Your tag was on the bottom right corner, Ivy. I know what your tag looks like because every new thing you added to Decker’s wall had that little pink squiggly line.” Her brow quirks sharply and I shrug. “What? So I admired your work. You’re good.”

She shakes her head in disbelief. “First of all, whoever did that to Poppa’s was an idiot and a complete amateur. I’m better than that. I was better than that when I was seven years old. Second, do you really think I’d be stupid enough to vandalize a store and tag it?”

“Maybe you wanted people to know that you did it.” I shrug. “You did seem kind of angry back then.”

She throws her arms up in the air in a rare bout of melodrama. “I was kind of angry back then! Because high school sucked! But it had nothing to do with the Jews or the Middle East. I was set up!”

I give a furtive glance around, hoping no one’s paying too much attention to us. My gaze catches River’s and a distracting blip of excitement flutters inside my stomach. He frowns and nods toward Ivy, then mouths, “Everything okay?”

With a quick nod, I turn back to her, not wanting her to accuse me of ignoring her for a guy. “Why on earth would I go to all the trouble to do that to you, Ivy? We weren’t even in the same grade. We didn’t have a single class together!”

She exhales heavily and her scowl softens. “Do you remember that big party in Piper’s Mill Park in the spring? The one where Ashley Johnson tripped over a case of beer and broke her nose?”

“Yeah.” I chuckle. She ended up needing two rounds of plastic surgery to fix it. I was at home, sick with the stomach flu that night.

“Well, Jesse and I had just started talking again, after breaking up the September before. He invited me to go, so I did. Anyways, that night we got really drunk and broke into the park office.”

My eyes widen. “That was you? Man, my dad was pissed . . .”

“Yeah, well . . . young and stupid and drunk, right? Anyway, Bonnie barged in on us . . . you know.”

I groan, seeing where this is going. At least she isn’t trying to give me details, as Bonnie has tried to do on more than one occasion.

“She was pissed. Screamed at him for slumming with a psycho slut like me. Then, a week later . . . voilà! I get arrested for graffiti that I didn’t do. By your father. I figured Bonnie told you and you got mad because you didn’t want your brother with the ‘psycho slut,’ so you and her concocted that graffiti plan.”

“Ugh . . . this sounds like the plot of a really bad teen movie. I hate drama!” But it’s also shedding some new light on those years. “When did you say you and Jesse started dating for the first time?”

“The first day of my sophomore year, in art class.” A soft smile touches her lips. “I was so nervous; I didn’t know a single person. I spent most of the class with my head down, sketching tattoo designs on my notebook. I guess he looked over my shoulder and knew what I was doing because he asked me if I could design a tattoo of a ’69 Plymouth Barracuda.”

“The one on his back.”

She nods.

I take a deep breath, because this is my best friend that I’m about to throw under the bus. Though, from the sounds of it, she may deserve it. “Did you know that Bonnie and Jesse dated for the summer between our sophomore and junior year?”

“I heard something about that. But she broke it off, right?”

I shake my head slowly. That’s the story Bonnie told everyone, even though I knew it wasn’t true. Jesse didn’t care enough to correct it. “He ended it the second day into our junior year. She was devastated. She spent our entire junior year trying to get back with him. Secretly, of course. She’d never admit to being hung up on a guy to anyone.”

She chews the inside of her mouth. “You think that’s why she went after me?”

“She had a huge crush on Jesse.”

“Huh.” She leans back into her chair as realization takes over. “So she’s probably the one who vandalized Poppa’s Diner, isn’t she?”

I shrug. “She never said anything to me about it. Probably because she knew I’d never be okay with it. But she was hanging around with Doug Bentley and those guys, too.” Complete shitheads. “If I had to guess . . .” Bonnie has been my best friend since kindergarten, but she has her faults. One of them is being a jealous, competitive bitch, especially when it comes to guys.

“And you honestly didn’t know about any of this?” Ivy’s eyes remind me of an owl’s—piercing—as she tries to read me.

“I knew that she didn’t like you, but I didn’t know why.” And to be honest, I never really bothered to ask. I didn’t care. “Bonnie and I had a rule about Jesse: she wasn’t allowed to talk to me about him.”

She chews the inside of her mouth, pondering that.

“If I wanted to keep you two apart, believe me, it would have been because I had your best interests at heart, not Jesse’s or mine. My brother was a major fuck-up. My father almost arrested him for stabbing Tommy,” I remind her.

She rolls her eyes. “I knew Jesse would never do that. I can’t believe your dad even considered it.”

“He was just doing his job.” And it nearly tore our family apart. “He let you off for the diner, though, right?”

She sighs, the steam fueling her anger before evaporating quickly. “Yeah, because he had no real proof. But my parents still made me paint the entire wall because they figured it was somehow my fault that it had happened in the first place. Plus Poppa banned me from the diner. For life.”

“That old man has a long memory,” I murmur.

She strums the tabletop with her fingers. “So she’s probably the one who started that rumor about me making out with Liz DiPalma behind the portables too, then.” My knowing stare answers her question. “What a fucking bitch!”

“Well, to be fair, you did shave your entire head out of the blue and start hanging out with the school’s token lesbian student almost exclusively, so anyone could have started that rumor.”

“Liz is a nice person.”

“I’m sure she is. But that was high school, and teenagers can be jerks about that kind of stuff.”

“What a bunch of assholes.” Ivy flags the waitress down for another round.

I think I’m going to puke.

But I also feel somehow lighter with all that dirty laundry finally aired. “So you actually thought I was masterminding your systematic destruction?”

“Wouldn’t you? I mean, no offense, but that group was like some single-minded neutron force and you were its leader. You all looked the same and acted the same and dressed the same.” She snorts, twirling a strand of her hair between her fingers. “I remember when you started coming to school with those perfect, fat curls. Bonnie and all the others came to school with perfect, fat curls the very next day. It was pathetic.”