Page 81 of The Roommate Lie

“Edna took care of everything with the cops, and she handled the stuff with my dad too. She called my mom and told her everything herself, so I wouldn’t have to. And when she got there, my mom wasn’t mad at me like my dad swore she would be. She just hugged me and told me she was sorry. She said she was mad at herself for not noticing what was happening, and she promised me we’d fix it together.”

Mama Roscoe is a woman of her word. She called things off with my dad that Friday night, filed for divorce on Monday, and by Tuesday when we had our first “family meeting breakfast” with Carl, she’d already enrolled me in rehab.

“Edna found a teen substance abuse center for me in Cascade Canyon. I was in and out before summer break ended, and no one ever found out about that either. She and her husband even footed the bill for anything insurance wouldn’t cover.”

She did more than that, though. When I got out of rehab and the kids at school still wanted me to be Old Charlie—when they started pressuring me and giving me a hard time about cleaning up—Edna never judged me for dropping out. She just drove me to the community college down the mountain so I could get my GED; she helped me study.

“She’s been looking out for me ever since,” I tell Alice. “When I dropped out of art school and came back for good, she even started dragging me to any events she could: book clubs, bingo nights, the works. She made me feel like I belonged here when most people were just disappointed I came back.”

If it wasn’t for Edna, I don’t know what would’ve happened to me. She’s saved my life a dozen times.

“There’s no way she would write about me the way the Victorian has. She wouldn’t do that to me.”

I’m not sure what I expect Alice to say after all that. I’m not even sure if I expect her to believe me, but when I finally glanceat her on the stairs above me, she looks like she’s trying not to cry. And that scares me a little.

I said too much.

I scramble for a way to backtrack, a way to joke around and save face. She’s standing too close, two steps away on the staircase, and maybe it’s my turn to bolt.

Before I can, she does the simplest, smallest thing. But also the biggest.

She moves down one step, so she’s just barely above me. Then she hugs me. “I’m so sorry that happened to you,” she whispers. “And I’m so glad Edna was there.”

Me too.

That moment overwhelms me, her reaction. No girl has ever hugged me like this before, so calmly and sweetly for that long. It feels like a remedy, like her touch is trying to heal something inside me, so I let it.

Sometimes, healing looks like a doctor’s visit. It’s rehab and therapy and getting whatever medications you need to feel well again. But sometimes it’s holding a perfect girl in your arms and knowing she doesn’t think you’re a bad guy. It’s telling her everything and realizing she doesn’t hate you afterward.

It feels good to hold Alice close. To notice the care in her embrace and the soft thump of her heart against my chest. If I never had to let her go, I wouldn’t.

If I could hold on to Alice Kilpatrick forever, that would be just fine by me.

I need to get us out of this house. I need to getmeout of this house. Luckily, our to-do list has us covered. The perfect escape is ready and waiting, item number three.

Make a wish.

Alice works on her book until lunch. After we eat, I tell her I have something planned, and then I ask her one simple question: bus or gondola.

Her eyes light up. “Gondola.”

Chapter Forty-Three

ALICE

Gondolas are boats in Italy. Of course I’d pick that over a bus.Gondolas are boats.

Except this is no boat.

After Charlie and I leave the hedgerow, he leads me to a small shack right outside downtown. Ashack. The sign out front says Ponderosa Falls Aerial Tramway: Your Friends in Flight Since 1962. And I nearly pass out in the dirt parking lot.

Aerial tramway?

I can see the cable lines beside us. Thick black cords reach diagonally into the sky, that cable line stretching over acres of trees until it reaches the summit of a mountain over a mile away. At the end of that cable line, a small orange tramway car sways back and forth in the distance, just hanging there. Like an heirloom tomato on a vine that’s waiting to fall off.

Nope. No way.

This is not the excursion I signed up for. This is not an Italian-style boat destined to glide down a lazy river. It’s a sky-bound death trap—a metal coffin suspended by cables—and I don’t even know what to say.

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