chapter twenty-nine-2

"Did she tell you why she kept it from you?" "She wanted proof first because she didn't think I would believe her without it." My mother shot me a knowing look. "I wonder who here can relate to someone keeping a huge secret because they were afraid no one would believe them . . ." I groaned. "Mom, that's not the same." "It doesn't have to be the same. It just means you should understand." She tugged on my hand and brought me down beside her onto the bed, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and bringing me into her chest. "I know Emily and Griffin were two really important people in your life who let you down. But that doesn't mean that you have to shut everyone else out when they make a mistake. Felonies, maybe, but not every mistake." I sighed into her shirt. "You didn't even like Kolby. Why would you want me back with him?" "I never said I didn't like him. I've known him since you were all kids. I know he's a sweet boy. I was just worried about what people would say when they found out, or that maybe unresolved feelings about what Emily had done would end up making you hurt even more than you already were. But you were also normal with him." She leaned back and smiled at me. "You were going out on dates and talking late at night on the phone, and I thought, This is what I want for you." "A boyfriend?" I asked drily. She gave my shoulder a light smack. "No. For you to act like a normal seventeen-year-old. And I think Kolby gave a little bit of that back to you. And Aniston too. That's why I think you should forgive them. I don't want you to turn into a hermit." Then she feigned an innocent look. "In fact, you might even find the time to forgive Bex this summer." I frowned. "What?" "I called Mrs. Connor and when Scoops! opens up again next month, your job will be there waiting for you." "No," I moaned. "Why would you do that?" "I want you to have a normal life, Clara. I also want you to earn your own paycheck so you can help with the insurance and gas for the car we'll get for you sometime this summer. And again, I don't want you to become a hermit." I slumped against her shoulder. "No one's ever going to see me as anything more than Emily Porterfield's little sister. Except when she was just a popular cheerleader, it didn't have such bad connotations." "That's only how they'll see you if you never make anything more of yourself. Which you can't if you stay inside this house all the time by yourself." Then she patted my knee and stood up from the mattress, turning back to the closet. "Now come on. We have a lot of work to do here." I found Aniston the next afternoon at school, slipping dollar bills into a vending machine in the cafeteria, and I smoothed my hands over the chenille pink material of the sweater I had kept from Emily's closet the night before, still sort of scented like berries before I'd washed it and put on my own perfume. It was the only pink shirt I had. When I approached her as she pressed D3 for an orange, she glanced over at me through the loose strands of hair she'd kept out of her French braid, her gaze drifting down to the pink sweater before turning back to the vending machine. "This is the only pink top I could find in my whole house," I told her. "And it's kind of warm outside today, so I'm sweating a lot right now." "Thanks for the update," she replied, her tone clipped as the machine released her orange. "You're welcome. But the reason I'm wearing it is because I know pink is super important to you, and I wanted to do something that was important to you to let you know I'm sorry for not trusting that you had good reasons to keep Elizabeth Monner's killer a secret from me. And you were right when you said I was being a hypocrite about it. So I'm sorry for that too." She was still looking away from me, her pink nails picking at the skin of the orange. "You're pretty much my only friend too, so if the reason we're not friends right now has anything to do with me being a total idiot, will you please forgive me and let that not keep us from being friends?" "Only if I can borrow your sweater sometime," she teased softly, running her hand over the sleeve. "Pink looks good on you. Also you just totally ranted, which means I'm rubbing off on you in more ways than one." "Heaven help me." She laughed, and I hesitated for a moment before I told her, "I'm ready to do the interview. The one you asked about, like, two months ago. I'll do it." "You don't have to do that. We're good. And besides, people were right about me being this nosy journalist wannabe. I shouldn't have gone so deep into it. I mean, I got blocked by a lot of different phone numbers." She sighed, sticking her thumb in the top of the orange. "My mom's right. I'm obsessive." "Maybe, but that doesn't mean you should go back to writing soft-hitting exposés about disappearing urinal cakes in the boys' bathroom or something. It just means you have to try a new approach. And if you hadn't got so deep into it, then I would've never told anyone about what happened with Griffin and me, and we wouldn't have become friends." "Yeah."