Allyson In Between ✔︎

Chapter Twenty-Four

She pinches the end of her nose, collecting a bubble of snot, and smears it on her shirt. I'm sure there's a box of tissue out in the hallway. I should go find it and bring it back. Or at the very least, I should sit on the bed and comfort my sister. But my feet don't agree. Because every bad thing that happened between Noah and me can be traced back to that freaking phone call.

No, that's not true. If I could've mustered the courage to talk to Noah after I kissed the boy from New Jersey, then Lindsay's lie wouldn't have had so much power over us.

"I know what you're thinking," she says. "I could've told you what I'd done. I wanted to, but...at first, I was afraid of the retaliation. And then, after Noah cussed you out in the lunchroom..."

Lindsay uses her cupped hand to scrape away the tears still clinging to her jaw. And then she swallows, hard. "I didn't say this to Mom because it makes me sound horrible, but after you and Noah stopped talking, you were so lost and needy you didn't complain when I tried to hang out with you. It was almost like you wanted me around. But that changed after he didn't acknowledge your sixteenth birthday. I tried to sit beside you on the front porch—trying to comfort you while you watched the movers take away his grandparent's furniture—but you wanted to be alone. And then that's all you ever wanted."

I try to imagine myself, sitting on the front steps of this house looking at the green real estate sign planted in the Dodge's front yard. But instead, I get a conjured image of Noah's devastated face—as he listens to Drew tell me it "wasn't like that." While his disgusting scrubby face says, so obviously, that it was.

"I really did want to tell you what I'd done," Lindsay says. "I came close one night a few weeks before your accident. We were out on one of our walks and you told me that you and Noah were talking again, but things were still a little weird. I knew that if I could find the courage to confess, all the weirdness would go away. But I also knew you'd stop talking to me—or something worse—and I didn't want our friendship to end."

"You mean the friendship that started after I corrupted you with drugs? God, Linds." I let the weight of my guilt take me down to floor. "I was so stupid and condescending the day you smoked weed in front of me. I scolded you for doing something you learned from me. You must have wanted to slap me."

"Yeah, I sort of did, but I also liked the idea that you wanted to protect me. I guess we both needed you to be the big sister you thought you were when we lived in North Carolina."

"Speaking of me being stupid," I say. "I remembered something real about Kara today. I'm sorry I blocked that out, or reinvented my past or whatever. I must've hated myself for being such a..." My phone vibrates. "Crap. Somebody's calling me."

"See who it is."

I shimmy the phone out of my pocket. And my heart yo-yos. I show Lindsay the caller ID: Noah Dodge.

"Go ahead and answer it," she says, shifting her weight forward. "I'll give you some privacy."

"No."

"You don't want to talk to him?"

"I don't know."

"Why wouldn't you?" she asks. Obviously disappointed.

"Because I...um...kissed Drew—my own personal drug dealer. Noah's not going to want me when he finds out. If he doesn't already know."

"He will, Ally. He has to. If you and Noah don't end up together, how will you ever be able to forgive me?"

"I do forgive you. I mean, yeah. I'm hurt and angry about what you did, but those feeling are all mixed up with...other feelings that are..."

Ugh. I push myself up from the floor. I need to move.

"I have all this...resentment," I say, pacing. "But it's aimed at me—if that makes sense. It's like my coma lasted three years instead of two days. I woke up to find that an impostor has been living my life all that time—and doing a screwy job of it. But I can't blame screwy Allyson for everything that went wrong, because I'm making the same kinds of mistakes she made."

Lindsay scrunches her nose. Meaning she doesn't understand. And I guess no one can.

Except for maybe the people at the support group meeting I missed while I was trying to fix my broken family.

My phone buzzes and I hold it up to show Lindsay the Missed Call notification. Then I walk it over to the built-in bookshelf and leave it there. "I can't deal with Noah right now," I say. "But I know that when I do, it's not going to change the way I feel about you and me. We've got some work to do—this conversation with Mom and Dad, and probably family sessions with Dr. Greene—but we both want the same thing, right?"

"You mean the friendship without the drugs?"

"That's a good place to start," I say. And then a door slams somewhere downstairs.

I head toward the window to check on Mom and Dad. "Family meeting downstairs in five minutes," Dad calls before I get there.

"Family meeting," I say, grimacing. "That sounds official. Is this one of those things we've been doing that I can't remember?"

"No," Lindsay says, looking a little pale. "But I'd bet large sums of money that it's something we'll be doing from now on."