Page 7 of Cruel Winter with You

When the girl he was seeing called me a bitch for accidentally walking into her, he broke up with her in under ten minutes.

When I spent the night at Tabitha’s and couldn’t go back to sleep after a nightmare, Marc, on his way to get a glass of water, found me huddled on the living room couch, sat next to me for hours, and took my mind off my bad dream by telling me the backstories of every single non-playable character in his favorite video game.

When I got the call that my grandma’s health had taken a turn for the worse, I don’t remember what Dad told me on the phone or how I explained the situation to the Comptons. That day, and the ones that followed, are a blur, and my onlymemory anchoring me is of Marc breaking the speed limit to get me to the hospital and his hand reaching across the center console, never letting go of mine.

All in all, I don’t know if it’s fair to say that Marc and I were friends during our teenage years. But somehow, when I really needed him, he was always around.

It took me a long, long while to realize that it wasn’t by accident.

Marc came to our senior prom as the date of Maddy Rodgers, a very beautiful, kind, intelligent, popular girl who managed to graduate valedictorian but never to learn that my name was not, in fact, Amy.

Tabitha and I were so focused on what was to come, we barely noticed. I was going to Berkeley. Tabitha and CJ, to Colorado. Niall had a scholarship to Bennington, and neither of us was interested in attempting a long-distance relationship. Still, the end of high school felt like a momentous occasion, and after years of being almost disgustinglygood, we decided to live it up a little. Tabitha and I lied to our parents and said we’d sleep over at each other’s places. Then we took our hard-earned Froyo salaries, pooled funds with Niall and CJ, booked two hotel rooms, and—

Got caught.

The moment we walked into the hotel lobby and saw Tabitha’s parents waiting for us will go down as one of the most mortifying in the history of man.

“How did you know where we’d be?” Tabitha asked her mom from the back seat of the car.

“Jamie’s dad called to talk to her. And that’s how your castle of lies unraveled.”

I buried my face in my hands and wished upon a deathly star.

“‘Castle’?” Tabitha snorted. “It’s barely a hut. We just wanted to hang out with our boyfriends for once. For eighteen years we’ve been nothing but angels! We’ve literally never even tried to sneak out—”

“Probably the reason you’re so bad at it,” Mr. Compton pointed out. Fairly.

“How did you know what hotel we’d booked, though?” I asked slowly. In another small act of rebellion, I’d had a tiny bite of CJ’s edible, which made my brain sluggish and my surroundings a bit too thick to wade through.

“We didn’t. But Marc said it was the one where most seniors were planning to go, so we took an educated guess.”

Tabitha said nothing, but even in my half-dazed state I knew to be terrified of the way her entire body stiffened like a hammer. And when her parents drove us back to their house (with the promise that “Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, Jamie’s dad will be here, too, and you two are going to get properly yelled at.”), she didn’t hesitate. Marc was already asleep. But Tabitha, powered by Mike’s Hard Lemonade and the alcohol-metabolizing enzymes she had yet to develop, barged into his room and turned on the light.

“I can’t believe you fuckingtoldthem,” she hissed at her brother.

I followed her inside and closed the door behind me, knowing that if the Comptons heard them fight, we’d be in even bigger trouble. When I turned, Marc was sitting on the edge of his bed, bare chested and bleary eyed. He ran his hand through his hair, yawned for twenty leisurely seconds, but didn’t play dumb. “Come on, Tab,” he said.

“‘Come on’?What the fuck is up with you and ruining my life?”

“They found out on their own. And you two were out after curfew and weren’t picking up your phones. They were going to call the police.”

“So you told them about the stupid hotel!”

“I only told them where other seniors were going. I had no idea what you two were up to. But if you’re planning on starting to live your life like normal people and slip out more often, I’m very happy to teach you hownotto get caught—”

“You couldn’t let me have this one thing, huh?”

“Tab ...” He rolled his eyes. “Just go to bed.”

“No! How would you feel if I snitched you out? How would you feel if I told your secrets?”

Marc stood and widened his arms. “You’d be welcome to it, but I don’t have any. Listen, can I go back to sleep? It’s not my fault if you two are still virgins at the ripe old age of—”

Tabitha moved so fast, the glitter of her dress brought to mind a shooting star. I saw her grab the drawer in Marc’s desk, pull out a box, and then throw it on the rug in front of his bed.

The box opened, and a few dozen papers scattered around it.

Pictures. Lots of them. Pictures of ...

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