Chapter 28: End to the Lies

I awoke to Lara’s voice, feeling like I’d just talked to her.

“Wake up, bro,” she announced.

I tried to make sense of things, but I was groggy as hell. “Why?”

“We have to get back home. It’s getting light out.”

“We’re not home?”

Lara just sniggered, so I looked around. Jonah’s cabin, of course. I forced myself to sit up and looked at the two blankets that covered me. Two more were folded on the opposite couch, next to where Lara was sitting, observing me.

When did I get the blankets last night?

“Where’s Pete?” I asked.

“Showering.”

I listened, but couldn’t hear the water running.

“Shannon?” I asked.

“She’s outside taking pictures, but she’s ready to go.”

“And Alice?”

“Don’t know. I’m going back up to the house now to look for her. I just came down to wake you up and see what was happening.”

“Not a whole hell of a lot,” I groaned. “I can barely see you.”

“How was your night?” she asked with deceptive simplicity.

“Fine. Me and Shannon just hung out, took some pictures of the stars, smoked some weed. Too much, I think. Then I passed out here and you woke me up. You?”

“Pretty much the same,” she said, with a teasing twitch of her brow. “But hopefully completely different, too. All right, I’m going to mount a search for Alice.”

Lara stood and headed for the door.

“Don’t get lost,” I called out.

“I know my way around,” she replied. “I’ll meet you at the car.”

I fell back down to the couch. There was nothing for me to do, really. I just had to grab my guitar and walk up the hill when everyone was ready. A seventeen second effort, maybe eighteen in my lazy state. Finding Alice could take a while. No point in getting up now, just to stand around by the car for an hour.

I was awakened again by Shannon entering the cabin and leaving the door open. Having taken the night off, my skin was now able to detect cold air again. The frozen wave that collided with me was a persistent alarm clock.

“Hey, Matty,” she chimed with exhilaration. “I thought you were getting up!”

“Ugh, not yet. How can you be so awake?” I groaned.

“Been up for hours! Beautiful place, up here. I already have half my nature project done.”

“Nature project?”

Shannon looked at me funnily. “Yeah, for class?”

I shrugged. “Jane’s class?”

Shannon grinned mischievously. “You don’t remember anything from last night, do you?”

My gut tightened a bit. What is she talking about?

“No, I do. We took pictures of the stars, smoked some pot, hung out. Nature project, though?”

“You must not have heard me when I said it, then.”

I grunted. Shannon gave me a warm smile as she put her camera away.

“Are we leaving, then?” I asked.

“Time to go.”

“Pete’s still in the shower?”

Shannon frowned and then shook her head. “Not down here, he isn’t. The bathroom’s open if you need it.”

“Oh, okay.”

“I’ll meet you up at the car.”

I went to relieve myself, passing by a couple of rooms with immaculately made beds. So clearly Pete and Lara had spent the night up at the main house. So had Alice. And Hayley, I remembered with a grin. Had I really just spent the night with Shannon, alone? I could already hear the questions from Lara. Or had she just asked me them earlier this morning? I splashed water on my face and filled my mouth greedily, trying to wash the cobwebs away from both.

I hadn’t done anything bad with Shannon. At least, I think I would’ve remembered if I had. I promised myself I wouldn’t and had no reason to believe I’d backed out of that. And why would I? I was with Heather. Shannon was a good friend now, clearly, but that’s all it was. As fun as she was, I didn’t want to be with her in that way. But had that feeling held up last night, after the pot started erasing my memories?

I flushed and followed the trail away from the cabin, almost forgetting to grab my guitar on the way. Pete was waiting up by the car and he waved casually when I got near the top of the hill.

“What’s up, man?” he greeted. “Good show last night, huh?”

“Yeah, good stuff. I think they dug it.”

“Damn right they did! People were saying how awesome we were all night long. I think we have some new fans.”

“Cool. Is Lara still looking for Alice?”

Pete laughed. “Yeah. We never saw her again last night. Then again, we didn’t look all that much. But I think she found her. She’s probably needing a moment to get up. Who knows what her night was like, being queen of the castle and all. I’m not going to complain, though. I’m glad she found something to do.”

Pete seemed oddly confident this morning, I thought. Shannon came around from the side of the house and Lara and Alice soon emerged from the side door to the mansion. There was some interesting contortions to get everyone into the back of Shannon’s car. I was glad not to be squeezing in there. A minute later we were rolling down the slope of Jonah’s driveway. A few cars still peppered the property, either belonging to sleepers or abandoned by drunken owners who found other means to get home.

The ride was relatively quiet. Shannon made some small talk, but everyone else was too tired to keep any thread alive for more than a few utterances. Alice looked tired, yes, but happy. I didn’t know her all that well, since she was a more recent friend of Lara’s and didn’t come around the house to hang out much. At least, not with me. Yet how odd to hardly know her, but also know she’d spent some part of the night fucking Jonah in some lavish bedroom, no doubt. Perhaps it was the remnants of the weed, but this juxtaposition of intimate knowledge and stranger-hood was very consuming for the first five minutes of the ride.

I spent the rest of the trip trying to remember my night. I had vague images of Shannon dancing in the cabin, but couldn’t remember why she would have. There was a bag with joints, which had disappeared by the time I had woken up. Presumably Lara had reclaimed them when she woke me up. Or maybe Shannon and I had finished them.

No matter how hard I searched my mind, I couldn’t really remember any coherent sequence of events, though. I had no idea how I ended up tucked in on the couch. Was there anything else I didn’t remember?

Shannon dropped Pete off first. It took a moment for everyone to get untangled from the back seat, then another moment for Lara and Pete to make eyes and whisper at each other. This was followed by a third and very long moment of tongue fencing. Finally and thankfully he headed into his house. At Alice’s place, Lara thanked Shannon for the ride and then opened my door and gave me a warm hug. This surprised me a bit, since I figured she’d be mad at me for various reasons.

“So where are you going, then?” Shannon asked me as she pulled to the end of Alice’s driveway. I was the last passenger and in need of a destination. “Left or right?”

“I don’t know.” The field across the road looked like a comfy bed. “Straight,” I joked.

She sniffed in amusement. “You’re going to have a rough day, sounds like!”

“I should probably get some sleep, but I don’t really feel like going home and explaining myself to my folks.”

“Yeah, could be awkward getting home this early,” she agreed. “Where are you supposed to be sleeping?”

I laughed softly. “You know, I don’t even remember at this point. I think it was Brian’s house.”

“I can take you there and you could try to break in. But, then it’s just so you can crash on another couch!”

“What a life of luxury that would be,” I said sarcastically.

“We can go to the studio and chill.”

I looked at her. “You mean Clara’s place?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s kind of early, isn’t it?”

“No, Clara’s up by now, teaching the first wave of kids. She wouldn’t think anything of it. We can hang out in her living room.”

“It’d be weird for us to show up like this. I must look like hell.”

“We look great. Don’t sweat it.”

Without further discussion, Shannon pulled out of Alice’s driveway and headed toward town. I drifted in and out of thinking, not thinking, and even dozing a bit. My head was hurting quite a bit now. Eventually Shannon turned down a side street near town and pulled into a driveway.

“Is this your house?” I asked.

“Yeah. Would you mind if I took a quick shower and grabbed my dance stuff? I have to be at the studio this morning for class, so it’d be easier if I did that now. You can chill in the car or come in. Five minutes tops!”

“I see how it is,” I muttered, settling into the passenger seat.

“What?”

“You said, ‘We look great.’ Except now you’re going to shower.”

Shannon smiled sweetly at me as she hopped out of the car. She emerged from her house just about five minutes later, looking fresh and sporty. Her flowing hair from the party had been pulled back into a ponytail and she had warm-ups on over her dance clothes.

“Mm. That felt good! You should grab a shower at Clara’s. Might wake you up.”

“I’m not sure I’d be comfortable doing that.”

“She wouldn’t care. People shower there all the time.”

“I have no clothes. They’re at Brian’s.”

“I can get you an extra leotard if you want.”

I laughed and swatted her leg. “Just drive.”

Shannon grinned, but it was a bit wistful. Then she gunned her car down the road. The studio wasn’t far and she pulled smoothly into a spot half a block away and killed the engine. I was still feeling a bit apprehensive. My headache was dulled now and not bothering me quite as much, but unknown feelings of angst gnawed at me here and there. Maybe I just needed food and water.

“Ready to go in?” Shannon asked me, cheerily.

“Not really,” I moaned.

“You really are a wreck!”

“Gee, thanks.”

“We can chill here if you want. Heh, chill. It’s going to get cold pretty quick with the car off.”

“Just a short nap,” I murmured.

“I’d let you sleep out here, but someone would call the cops about a corpse!”

“Jeez, Shannon, I went from ‘looking great’ to ‘a wreck’ to ‘a corpse’? When’s my damn funeral, tomorrow?”

Shannon laughed out loud. “I was just kidding, Matty. Trying to get some signs of life out of you.”

I grunted. “Good luck. I’m hung over, so that’s definitely going to be a challenge.”

“You did have way more beer than I did. I’m just fighting off a little cottonmouth. Hey, what are you doing later today?”

“Nothing that I know of. Probably sleeping as much as I can.”

“Can I take you up on your offer for my pictures?”

I looked at her with a blank look. “What?”

“Oh, I forgot. You don’t remember much from last night.”

“Obviously not. Your pictures? Of the band?”

“Yeah. Can I use your darkroom to develop some prints? I asked you about it last night and you said it was okay.”

“Of course you can use it.” I sighed. “Sorry, I don’t remember everything from last night.”

“Clearly,” Shannon murmured, now staring uneasily out of the windshield.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She didn’t answer, so I spent some time formulating more words. “Is there something I should be remembering?”

More silence. She then spoke softly. “Depends if it would be bad or good to remember it. If you can’t remember, and it would be bad to remember, then why remember?”

I contemplated this for a moment, feeling my stomach twist up and dive toward the chassis. She could only mean one thing: I had gotten so fucked up that I had crossed the line. It had to be that. Why else would she be so evasive?

“I just want to know the truth,” I managed.

She took a deep breath, but said nothing.

“It wouldn’t be bad or good,” I continued nervously. “It would be what it is, at this point.”

Shannon looked at me. “I...” She sniffed and smiled a little, before speaking. “Maybe you should go first.”

We sat in the car for quite a while. Was it a game? Was it a message? I spent some time fighting with my thoughts, seeing what angle would lead to the truth she seemed to be concealing. Would she hold this over me somehow? Pretend it was nothing and then bring it out later to embarrass me, or even ruin my relationship with Heather? Or was it a game to see if I was interested in her? I glanced at Shannon out of the corner of my eye, noticing her pale hands still gripping the steering wheel.

She looked incredibly vulnerable. Immediately, I had my first moment of clarity since waking up: I was being completely unkind to my friend. A little voice in my head wasn’t being particularly nice to me right then.

How the hell would she hold anything over you? She doesn’t even know about Heather, you selfish fuck!

The voice was right. Of course I had to go first. It would be sadistic to do otherwise. What the hell was I thinking?

“I have a friend in Montauk who’s a really great photographer,” I said carefully, unsure exactly how to broach the topic. This fact seemed like common ground.

Shannon replied evenly, “Cool. A pro?”

“No, she’s in high school, actually. She taught me most of what I knew before I started Jane’s class this year.”

Shannon was quiet for a while. Then she got to the point. “And she’s your girlfriend.”

“Yeah, she is,” I said with finality.

Shannon nodded slightly. A fraction of the tension seemed to ease from her as she let out a breath. “I always kind of wondered. Your photo of the swings had your initials carved along with someone else’s. ‘H.M.’, I think.”

Wow, I thought, amazed at her memory. “Yeah, that’s her. Heather. That’s her name.”

“Cool.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,” I breathed.

“Why? It’s not like something was going on between us.”

I felt a jump of nerves, since her tone of voice seemed tense and distant again. “No, I know, but,” I stammered. “Shit...” I tried to compose myself with a deep breath before continuing. “Hey, I like hanging with you, Shannon. I just didn’t want to, to—”

“You weren’t misleading me. You never tried to do anything like that.”

“Okay,” I answered, feeling even more awkward now.

Julie had been right; it was hard to back out, even out of nothing. Now that the truth was in the air, what next? Maybe it was time to step out of the car and walk home. No. That would be selfish, again. I turned my thoughts back to Shannon, a person that until this morning felt like one of my closest friends, I realized.

“I do like being your friend,” I said quietly. “I mean that for real.”

Shannon was still gripping the wheel of her car. She turned to look at me with unsteady eyes. Those twin pools of hazel saline burgeoned, releasing two clear pearls to drift down her cheeks.

“Me too, Matty.” She sniffed. “Matty ... No, I should call you Matt,” she continued sadly. “I figured you were with someone this whole time, because, well ... But really, it’s no big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” I said, putting a hand over hers. “I really like spending time with you. I guess I thought that if I told you about Heather, then, I don’t know, I thought you might not want to hang out with me anymore. I know that’s really selfish of me, and I’m really sorry.”

Shannon was quiet. “You probably think I’m so silly,” she said with a wistful laugh. “Trying to do things with you, photography, and all the while—”

“No, Shannon, not at all. Come on. I’m the one who led you on, if anything. But here, listen.” I sat up and turned to her. “Maybe all of that doesn’t matter.”

She looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“The truth is that I really like you. A lot. You’re one of the coolest people I know. And I don’t think that’s changed just because, well, because we can’t be boyfriend and girlfriend or whatever. Think of the good times we’ve had already. I still want that. I still want to be your friend. A good friend.”

After a moment, Shannon nodded ever so slightly.

“And I’m really, really sorry that I didn’t tell you,” I said quietly. “I should’ve realized sooner.”

“Me too.”

“And I’m sorry I made you upset.”

She turned to me and wiped away some tears. “I’m not upset, because I still want to be friends too.”

I held her gaze. “Really?”