Page 56 of The Fall of Iris Henley
If she’d lived.
The music is still playing in the gym as I leave the locker room. I don’t have to check Sekrit to know that someone’s probably already posted about my fall, that people are probably already cheering it on.She’s getting what she deserves. Wish she’d broken her fucking neck.
A part of me still insists that’s not fair. But there’s a part of me, too, that knows different. I deserve this pain. Not because I murdered anyone, not because I am the person they think I am on Sekrit, but because I failed Lynette, I failed Sophie, and I failed Hayden.
I drive home with my mind churning. I’ve been assuming that the harassment had more to do with Rocky than Lynette. The name of the Sekrit account is Rockytruther, after all. But Jonah didn’t even know Rocky. I guess that could mean one of two things. One: He wanted to wreck my life for fun, because he’s a sociopath.
Or two: He wanted to wreck my life because he and Lynette had been closer than I’d thought. Because he’s punishing me for the ways I’d failed her.
After Lynette had forced me to introduce myself to him the summer after freshman year, we’d all hung out together plenty of times. In the evenings there were dances and socials—and even on the nights that nothing was planned, we’d end up in one of the campus common areas watching movies or playing foosball. I’d never noticed anything percolating between them. That first year Jonah had a girlfriend, and Lynette had principles about pursuing boys her friends liked. At least, she’d had those principles before our falling-out; obviously that hadn’t prevented her from hooking up with Rocky in the end.
Maybe Lynette and Jonah had gotten together that second summer, but they’d kept it on the DL. Or maybe they’d been texting in secret. Then when he found out about what’d happened to her, maybe he blamed me. I was the one who got her kicked off the team. I was the one who led to her being so isolated, so lonely, that she was a perfect target for Rocky to take advantage of.
When I pull up to the house, Max is there, sitting on my porch.
“Hi,” I say.
“Are you okay?” is all he asks.
It takes longer than it should for the question to register. I stare back at him, trying to figure out how I could begin to answer.
Before I do, he stands up and steps close. He pulls me into a hug.
“Obviously not,” he says.
Inside, he follows me up to my room. I sit down hard on the side of my bed, but he lingers near the door, his eyes darting around.
“Been a minute since I’ve been in here,” he says. “Didn’t there used to be more cat posters?”
“That was elementary school,” I say, picking up a pillow and hugging it to my chest. “I wanted to be a vet.”
“I remember,” he says. He looks at the pictures on my wall now: a framed print of a rose, photographed in black and white; a framed print of Picasso’sDove of Peace; and a blue-and-white Dallas Cowgirls pennant Gloria gave me last year when I made top girl. I’ve never bothered too much with decorating my room, partly because Mom won’t let me do anything really daring—but suddenly, seeing it through Max’s eyes, it strikes me how bland it all is. None of it is anything I’ve chosen for myself.
“They dropped me,” I say. “The cheer team. We were doing a basket toss. That’s… They’re supposed to launch me up and then catch me. But they didn’t catch me.”
Max does a quick double take. “Shit, Henley, are you okay? Do you need to go to the doctor, or…”
“Hayden and Sophie are done with me,” I say. Self-pity is boiling over inside of me, words flooding out before I can stop them. “And I don’t blame them. And now the rest of the team is done with me too. Gloria said I can’t cheer anymore, unless all this gets cleared up. But I don’t see how that’s going to happen. I’ve lost my friends, I’ve lost cheerleading. My mom’s going to kill me when she finds out. I won’t have anything left.”
My voice breaks. Max sits next to me and pulls me close again. I’m not crying, exactly, so much as gasping, sobbing without tears, breathing in his warmth. His black tee smells like all the summer days I remember from being a kid, setting up a Slip ‘N Slide in his backyard, or lying sprawled on the patio with brightly colored chalk, days I spent taking Max for granted because, after all, he was always there. God, what a luxury that was, and I didn’t even know it.
“I’ve ruined everything,” I whisper. “I’ve lost everyone.”
“No you haven’t.” He leans back so there’s enough distance between us that he can look down at me. “Not everyone.”
His eyes are like quartz, clear and flecked with green and blue and brown. I’m used to the distances he usually creates with his deadpan humor or his flat sardonic smile. It’s rare, with Max, to feel genuinely close. But right now—we are. We are so close our breath starts to sync up, inhale, exhale, inhale. My lips part. I can’t look away from him.
And then, suddenly, he releases his hold on me, and we’re sitting side by side again. The only evidence of anything unusual is a pink tinge, high on his cheekbones, and even that fades soon enough.
My thoughts cartwheel around, wild and unfocused.Did you just almost consider the remote possibility of kissing Max? Max Fisher? Who has a girlfriend? While you’re in the middle of an actual crisis? No. No, that can’t be right. You must have hit your head in the gym.
“So,” Max says, clearing his throat. “Rockytruther struck again.”
“He did,” I say slowly. “And… I think I know who it is now.”
His gaze whips back toward me. “You do?”
I nod miserably. “There’s only one person who knew all that stuff about Sophie and Hayden. Well,” I say, thinking of Lynette, “one living person.”
