Chapter 106: The Note

POV: Carly

She found it when she got back to the room.

A folded piece of paper on the floor just inside the door, pushed through the gap at the bottom. She almost stepped on it. She might have, if Katy hadn't been right behind her and pointed at it before she could.

She picked it up.

Her name on the outside in Whitney's handwriting. That specific cursive she had been reading since they were twelve years old, the loopy W and the way the Y curved back on itself.

She stood in the middle of the room and looked at it for a moment without opening it.

Katy closed the door behind them. She looked at the paper. She looked at Carly. She went to her own desk without saying anything and opened her laptop, which was the Katy version of giving someone privacy.

Carly sat on the edge of her bed.

She opened it.

Care.

I know you don't want to hear from me. I know I don't have the right to ask for anything after the way I handled things. I'm not asking for anything. I just need to say some things and I need to say them without being able to see your face when I do because I genuinely don't think I could get through it otherwise.

I was wrong.

Not about being scared. I was scared and I meant that and the fear was real. But I was wrong about how I handled it. I was wrong to make you feel like you had to choose between being honest with me and keeping my friendship. I was wrong to walk away when you needed someone who knew you. I have been the person who knew you for ten years and I chose to stop being that person at the worst possible moment and I am genuinely, deeply sorry for that.

I heard about the banquet. I heard about the last few days. I'm not going to pretend I wasn't watching, because you know me well enough to know I was watching even when I was pretending not to.

You looked really happy, Care. Before all of it. For weeks before any of the hard stuff. You looked the way I haven't seen you look in a really long time, maybe ever, and whatever I think about the reasons for it, I'm not so far gone that I can't see that.

I don't expect you to forgive me tonight or tomorrow or even before we graduate. I just needed you to know that I see what I did and I'm sorry and the ten years matter more to me than I showed you.

Also your homecoming theme is genuinely incredible and I overheard Sierra talking about the candelabras and I almost texted you about them approximately eleven times.

I miss you.

Whit

Carly read it twice.

She folded it back along the original creases and held it in both hands and looked at the far wall and felt the tears come up before she could do anything about them.

She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth.

She was not going to cry again. She had done enough of that this week to last her until graduation and she was going to stop doing it now.

She blinked hard. Breathed through her nose.

Katy's chair scraped back. Her footsteps crossed the room. She sat on the bed beside Carly without asking and without touching her, just near.

Carly handed her the note.

She watched Katy read it. Watched her expression move through several things without landing on any of them, the careful face of someone processing more than they were showing.

Katy folded it and handed it back.

"Well." She said.

"Yeah." Carly said.

"Are you going to respond?"

Carly turned the note over in her hands. "I don't know yet."

Katy was quiet for a moment. "She didn't ask you to. She said she wasn't asking for anything."

"I know." Carly said. "That's almost the hardest part."

Katy tilted her head slightly.

"If she had asked for something I'd know how to respond." Carly said. "I'm good at responding to requests. I'd either give it or not and there'd be a clear answer. But this is just — she just said things. True things. And I don't know what to do with true things from her right now."

Katy looked at the wall. Then back at Carly. "Do you know what you feel?"

Carly laughed. It came out slightly broken. "I feel approximately seventeen things simultaneously and none of them are in agreement."

"Okay." Katy said. "Do you still love her?"

Carly didn't hesitate. "Yes."

"Then that's enough to know for tonight." Katy said. "You don't have to figure out the rest of it before homecoming."

Carly looked at the note one more time.

She set it on her nightstand.

She was going to respond. She knew she was going to respond. She had known it the moment she read I miss you in Whitney's handwriting because she missed her too, had been missing her for weeks, and the missing was not a thing she had been able to make stop no matter how justified the anger underneath it was.

But not tonight.

Tonight she was going to put on the dress she had been planning since September and do the job she had spent three months building and be exactly where she was supposed to be.

Everything else could wait until tomorrow.

She stood up and went to her wardrobe.

"Okay." She said. "Help me with my hair."

Katy was already standing.

POV: Whitney

She had pushed it under the door at four in the afternoon.

She had been sitting on her bed since four fifteen wondering if she had done the right thing and alternately being completely certain she had and completely certain she hadn't.

She had written it seven times. The first six versions had been too long, too defensive, too much about explaining herself. The seventh version was just the truth with all the explaining stripped out and she had folded it before she could add anything else and pushed it under the door before she could change her mind.

She had not told anyone she was going to do it.

She was sitting at her temporary desk in the room she'd been moved to since the incident, the spare single at the end of the second floor corridor that smelled like old paint and was barely big enough for her bed and her desk and her thoughts, and she was trying to read and not thinking about whether Carly had found it yet.

She had to stop this.

She picked up her book.

She put it down.

She picked it up again.

She thought about the thing she had never told anyone. The thing that had been sitting in the back of every interaction she'd had since coming to Black River Academy, since long before that, since she was seven years old sitting at a kitchen table while her mother's hands stayed steady and her voice did not.

She thought about watching Carly press her hands to either side of Niko's face in the corridor after the pep rally. She had not been supposed to see that. She had turned the corner at the wrong moment and stopped and watched for three seconds before she made herself look away.

She had been thinking about it since.

Not because of Niko. Not because of any of the reasons she had told herself she was thinking about it.

Because of the specific look on Carly's face. The specific quality of being seen. Of being held by someone who knew the things other people didn't know and was choosing to be there anyway.

Whitney set the book down.

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes.

She was not going to do this tonight.

Tonight was homecoming. Tonight Carly was going to walk into that gymnasium and it was going to be extraordinary because everything Carly McPherson built was extraordinary, and Whitney was going to get dressed and go and be a person who was holding herself together.

She stood up.

She went to her wardrobe.

She got herself together.