Page 67 of The Narrow

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MORNING COMES, ANDVeronica holds me to my promise to go to the hospital. She gets keys to the Land Rover from Remi and drives me herself, uncharacteristically silent. Her jaw is set, her eyes fixed on the road ahead.

The pain is not as bad as the guilt. She knows now that I’ve been lying to her. Keeping secrets. Maybe once, telling the truth would have been better than keeping up the lie, but after this long, confession isn’t a balm anymore but a blade driven straight to the heart.

“I wish you’d told me,” she says when we’re halfway there.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you? I would have helped you,” Veronica says.

“You would have wanted me to turn him in,” I say.

“Of course I would have,” Veronica snaps. “This guy attacked you. He broke your fucking arm. He gave you a fucking concussion. He should be in fucking jail.”

Guilt curdles in my gut. The longer I don’t correct them, the more it becomes a lie. “It’s not about him. Luke—”

“What does it have to do with Luke? He hurt you too?” Veronica demands.

“No,” I say quickly, looking anywhere but at her, and this time it is a lie. “But he’s on parole, and Dylan wasn’t supposed to be there. He could go to prison.”

“Parole for what?” Veronica asks.

I don’t answer. Other people don’t see Luke as a person. They can’t put the bad things he’s done in the context of the good. Maybe it still works out to him being rotten. But it’s different from only defining him by his worst deeds. I don’t mind if people hate him. I do, too. I also know he brought me soup when I had the flu and let me watch cartoons on his iPad. He protected me from a bully at school in fourth grade, taught me how to tie my shoes, spent an entire Saturday morning doing a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with me. The good doesn’t outweigh the bad, but it still exists. I need people to know it still exists.

“You should have told me. I could have helped,” Veronica says.

“No, you couldn’t,” I say.

“Of course I could. My parents have all kinds of resources. They could—”

“This is why I didn’t tell you. You think you can fix everything. You think that every problem is just a matter of how much money you have to throw at it,” I say angrily.

“That’s not true,” Veronica protests. She shakes her head. “I thought you trusted me. I thought we told each other everything. When did that change?”

“It didn’t,” I say.

Veronica snorts. “You’re keeping secrets from me. That means something’s changed.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I say, and watch the moment she realizes what I mean. Nothing has changed—because I’ve been keeping secrets from her all along.

She lets out an angry hiss. “I thought we were friends.”

“We are. You’re my best friend.”

“How can you say that when apparently you’ve been keeping secrets from me the whole time? What have you been hiding? Has it been like this the whole time and you didn’t tell me?”

“Not like this. Not this bad,” I say, looking out the window. I swallow. I can’t start crying. “I wanted to be the person you thought I was. Not your sad charity case of a friend.”

She’s silent. Then, “Are you safe at home?”

“I thought I was,” I tell her. For certain definitions of the word. “This summer was different.”

Veronica clenches her teeth and doesn’t say anything more until we reach the hospital. She drops me off in front of the ER and circles around to find parking. By the time I’m through checking in and have found a place to sit, she’s back. She takes the chair beside me, staring down at her phone. I know from the soft chimes in my pocket she’s messaging the group chat, but I don’t have the energy to check what she’s saying.

“I’m just letting everyone know where we are,” she says, still not looking at me.

“How much are you going to tell them?” I ask.

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