“Shoot.”
“Why have you hated me all these years?”
“You always seemed so happy.”
She laughed. “And that’s a bad thing?”
“Yes. I envied you. I envied how people loved you, and how your life is this picture-perfect thing. My life has been hard for longer than I remember, and you walk in and you’re all rainbows and crap. I’d kill for that.”
She snickered. “That’s it? That’s why you hate me?”
“Pretty much. You have everything I’ve ever wanted... a stable life.”
She laughed even harder. “If only you knew why that was so funny.”
“What’s so funny about it?”
“You hated a fictional version of me that you made up in your head.” She bit her bottom lip for a split second. I noticed. I noticed all her seconds. “No one has a perfect life. Some people are better at keeping their secrets hidden. My life isn’t easy—far from it, really. I’ve just been really good at wearing a mask at school.”
“And you say you’re not a good actor. You’ve had me fooled.”
“Well, good. I think... I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I could let people in so my mind didn’t have to spin all by itself. You know what I mean? I don’t need anyone to try to fix me or anything—I’m strong enough to fix myself. I just wish I had someone to get comfort from every now and then. But I’m OK. Really, I’m good. Overall, my life is good.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I promised.
“Do what?”
“Say you’re OK when you’re not.”
Her head lowered. “People don’t like me when I’m sad.”
“How do you know? You never let them close enough to see your tears.”
Her lips parted, but no words came out. For the first time in my life, I saw Shay. I saw the girl behind the mask, the one who felt so much and hid those feelings from the world because she felt like a burden. I saw her cracks, and they were so beautiful that it almost made my frozen heart beat again.
I’d never known sadness could be so hauntingly beautiful.
“Tell me your secrets, and I’ll tell you mine,” I whisperedher way, the words rolling from my tongue. She shut her eyes for a second, and when she reopened them, they were flooded with emotions, but she didn’t dare let a tear fall down her cheek.
It was still too much to let someone in that close.
“My dad’s a liar. He’s been that way as long as I can remember, and tonight my grandmother called him out on his lies again. I went home after rehearsal and heard the shouting in my house, so I left and went to my cousin’s. That’s where you picked me up from.”
“That sucks. I’m really sorry.” I really was sorry about that. Greyson went through the same kind of shit with his parents. My parents didn’t get along great, but luckily, they were hardly home, so I never had to hear them fight.
“My mom will keep allowing his lies, too. She loves him too much. He could tell her the sun is purple and she wouldn’t even ask him for any proof. She’d just blindly believe him.”
“Maybe this time will be different.”
“Doubtful.” She glanced down at the car’s manual stick and trailed her finger up and down it in a slow motion. Then she made small circles, round and round against the metal rod. “You ever feel like you’re running in circles? You have your past behind you, and you’re trying to beat it, to be better than it, but then situations keep coming and tossing you backward. Every step you take forward, you fall two steps back. It feels like no matter how much you fight for your future, your past keeps pulling you under. You ever feel like that?”
“More than you know.”
“I want my parents to do something different, even if it’s just for a day. I want them to stop this cycle. I want Dad to quit with the lies for good. I want Mom to leave him if he doesn’t change his ways. I want her to know her worth. I want something to stick. I want the change to really matter. I want to stop livingin a house that suffocates me and leaves me jaded.” She didn’t give me time to respond to her comment. She palmed the hair out of her face as she sat up and crossed her legs in the passenger seat. “So, tell me your secret,” she said.
I didn’t even try to keep it to myself. I wanted to know all of her secrets, and I wanted to tell her all of mine. Why, though? Why did I feel such a pull toward a girl I’d spent so much time hating?
“You know how you have down days like today?” I asked.