Daisy shook her head, turning so that Jamie could ease her bag onto her back. “It’s nice out. I just want to walk.”
She still wasn’t quite looking at either of us, the subject we’d abandoned no doubt still lingering in her mind.Dalton. “Call me when you get home,” I told her. “So I know you didn’t get kidnapped and chopped to pieces.”
That got Daisy to smile—just as I knew it would. Her gaze flicked up to Jamie. “Careful, James. Someone’s coming for that creative writing of yours.”
“I’m areader,” Jamie emphasized with a flat mouth. “Not a writer.”
Daisy rolled her eyes, waving at both of us before turning back toward the kitchen archway. “Bye, Ms. Fontaine! Tell Mr. Brighton I said hi!”
When the front door shut behind her, Jamie turned to me. He lowered his voice so Mom wouldn’t overhear. “Why didn’t you press more about Dalton?”
The accusation in his voice surprised me. “Why didn’tyoupress more about Dalton? Daisy’s not justmyfriend; she’s yours too.”
“It was clear she wanted you to.” Jamie tilted his head. “And why didn’t you tell her about Beck?”
I glanced over his shoulder. Mom was still busy looking over her cleaning supplies in the kitchen. “What exactly should I have told her?”
“That you two were flirting in the game room lastnight.”
I grabbed his arm and pulled him even further from the kitchen, into the hallway, stopping just at the bottom of the stairs. “We werenotflirting!” I hissed, looking at him with outrage. “You missed the entire conversation.”
“Oh, is footsie underneath the chess table not considered flirting?”
“That—was—that wassonot what it looked like!”
“You should tell Daisy the truth about what happened,” Jamie went on, wearing his holier-than-thou expression. “The truth about the garden.”
The truth about the garden. That I’d been the one to destroy the flowerbeds. That I’d been the one to light the rosebush on fire. That I’d been the one who kissed Beckham Jennings. As if all of it was an easy thing to come clean about.
Jamie added, “Friends don’t keep secrets.”
“Says the guy who let her be blindsided about NYU.”
“I just don’t understand why it’s all a secret. It was an accident. You were young?—”
“Because if it gets out, everyone will call me a liar.” A roaring buzz filled my ears, and I gave my head a shake to clear it. It only seemed to get worse. “Beck isfine. They’ve already even forgiven him and let him back on the grounds. Do you know what they think when they look at Beck?Boys will be boys.” My stomach turned. “If they found out I’d lied, that I pinned the fire on him, they would—Mom and Dad would?—”
My breath started coming faster, something feeling like it was grippingmenow. Jamie leaned into my pincher grip, but didn’t tear away. AD-I-S-A-P-P-O-I-N-T-M-E-N-T. The letters swarmed me, like wasps emerging from their crushed nest. AnE-M-B-A-R-R-A-S-S-M-E-N-T.Words my parents would’ve thought.A-S-H-A-M-E-D. What they would’ve felt.
All because I’d thrown a tantrum over Destelle not coming home.
“Assuagement,” Jamie said suddenly.
I almost didn’t hear him over the buzz of the letters in my head. “What?”
“How do you spell it?”
I hadn’t heard the word before, and tried to picture it in my mind. When I was little, learning the spelling of words was almost a compulsion for me. Nowadays, it was rare that I spelled a word I didn’t know. I’d grown less obsessed with the art of spelling big, unknown words and more accustomed to just spelling the words that already danced in my brain.
But I still remembered the techniques I’d used when Jamie used to throw big ones at me. “A-S-S-U-A-G-E-M-E-N-T.”
Jamie didn’t blink. “Remuneration.”
“R-E-M-U-N-E-R-A-T-I-O-N.” Each letter built and then rebuilt in my mind, and feeling them on my lips calmed me slightly.
“Syphilis.”
A sudden, strange sound burst from me, and it took me a moment to realize it was a strangled laugh.
