Hold Me Close

Then he is kissing her. Hard and hot and leaving her breathless. His hands on her. Over her clothes, cupping her breasts, then under her shirt to touch her bare skin.

Last weekend Effie went to a slumber party with some girls from school. She’d been best friends with a couple of them in middle school, but they’re not close anymore. She pretends they are, hoping maybe it will become the truth. They all played Truth or Dare and the biggest question was about who’d “done it” and who had not. None of them had.

Effie had lied and said she hadn’t, either.

“But I thought—” Wendy Manning had started to say before Rebecca Meyers shushed her.

Effie knew what all those girls thought. In the year since she’s been home, the rumors have flown fast and thick. But Daddy had never touched her. Not like that. He’d done a lot of things, but he’d never done that. It was a lie to say Effie was a virgin, but faced with that solemn-faced group of girls, Effie was not about to say anything else. They still giggled about touching “it” or French kissing. None of them understood sex at all.

When Heath pushes a hand between her legs now, Effie pulls away. “No.”

She hasn’t slapped his face, but she might as well have. Heath frowns. He reaches for her, but she dances out of his grip again.

“I said no!”

“You don’t have to worry. I brought something,” Heath says. “We’ll be careful this time.”

Effie’s lip curls. “You want me to fuck you right here on the picnic table? Classy.”

“I want to be with you, and I want you to feel safe, not worried about anything happening again. But you know if it did, I’d take care of you.”

Effie hops off the picnic table. She doesn’t want to talk about what happened. She doesn’t want to think about it. “No.”

“You don’t love me,” Heath says.

This is too much. All this time and all that happened with them, and now he wants to tell her that he loves her? What is it supposed to mean, what is she supposed to do about it now, when everything has changed?

“I already told you how I feel about that,” she snaps. “It’s easy to love someone when they’re all you know.”

“Effie, please...”

“No.” She holds up a hand, backing away from him. “We can’t go back to where we were, Heath. Don’t you get it? What happened to us, it was totally fucked up. Okay? We had a super shitty thing happen to us, but we got out of it, we made it through, and now...it’s over. You can’t hold on to it. It’s not normal. It’s crazy. It’s wrong between us. You have to let it go. You have to let me go.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Not wanting to and not being able to are not the same things!” Effie wants to punch him with her fists but settles for hitting him with her words, forcing him back a few steps.

Heath holds up his hands. Turns his face. He stops moving so that if she keeps advancing she will be pressed against him, and she stops herself from doing that. They stand less than an arm’s length apart. Close enough she can see the throb of his pulse in his throat.

“Loving you has nothing to do with choice,” he says.

“Because we never had one!”

Heath is silent.

Effie lifts her chin. “You’ll find someone else to love. We’re still kids. You never find the one you’re supposed to be with forever when you’re a kid.”

“There is no forever for me without you,” Heath says, and Effie knows he means it. “If I never see you again, Effie, there will still never be anyone else but you.”

She’d learned about sex, but whatever she’d believed she knew about love shatters in that moment, leaving her broken in its wake. Shaking her head, Effie says nothing as she backs away. Three, four steps take her to the driver’s side of her father’s car. She’s behind the wheel a moment after that. Staring straight ahead at the road, wondering what would happen if she drives herself straight into a tree.

She unbuckles her seat belt.

She puts her foot on the gas.

But in the end, Effie is not about to die for love. Not again. Not ever.

When she walks in the front door, her parents are waiting for her. So are two uniformed policemen who exchange looks when her mother flies up off the couch to grab her. Effie recognizes one of them. He was the one who found them in the basement. Effie remembers that he held her hand while they waited for the ambulance.

“What’s going on?” She tries to slip out of her mother’s clinging, desperate grasp.

“You’re all right,” Mom says.

Her father swipes a hand over his face. “Thank God.”

Effie, staring over her shoulder at the cop, turns her attention to her mother. “Yes, I’m fine. I told you I was going to the library.”

“Effie, we know you weren’t at the library,” Officer Schmidt, that’s his name, says. “You were with Heath Shaw in Long’s Park.”

Effie fights off her mother’s grip. Panic rises. “Where is he? What’s wrong? What happened to him?”

“You don’t need to worry about him anymore,” Mom says, but Effie won’t even look at her.

Her father takes a step forward but stops when Effie shakes her head. She glares at the cop. He should understand, more than any of them.

“Where is he?”

“Heath attempted to take his own life shortly after you left him. He was discovered by a jogger and taken to Lancaster General Hospital. He’s in stable condition, but he’ll be remanded to a psychiatric care facility for the next few days while he’s monitored.”

“He tried to kill himself?” Effie sags, vaguely aware her mother is tugging her arm to get her to sit on the couch. She allows herself to be pushed. She shakes her head. “What did he do?”

“He cut himself.” Officer Schmidt’s voice is gentle, and he doesn’t look away from Effie’s eyes, not even for a second. “It was unclear whether or not he’d harmed you, however. He told us you’d been together, but not if you’d left safely.”

“Of course I did. Heath would never hurt me. Not ever.” She shakes off her mother’s attempt at a hug and buries her face in her hands. The world spins. She thinks she might vomit right there on the rug, and won’t her mom be upset then, when Effie makes a mess?

“Now that you’re home safe, that’s all we need to know.” Officer Schmidt comes closer to squeeze Effie’s shoulder. He looks again deep into her eyes, then takes a business card from his pocket and presses it into her hand. His fingers are strong and warm. “If you ever need anything, Effie, anything at all, I’m here for you.”

Lots of people will tell her that in her life, but only a few of them ever are.

chapter nine (#ulink_089173a3-0b31-5c9e-a010-c82b368fb165)

Polly had brought home a thick folder stuffed with information about the science fair. It was not optional. It was going to be a nightmare.

Effie, paint smeared all over her hands from the projects she’d been working on all day, gestured. “Okay, so what are some of the choices?”

“Testing the amount of sugar in sodas. Raising baby chicks. Ooh—”

“No,” Effie said. “No way.”