“I was serious. You nearly died.”
We both looked away.
“Thanks for calling emergency,” I told her. “I owe you my life.”
“You owe me nothing.”
I frowned at her. “Because you don’t want me to?
Because that connects us somehow?”
A long uncomfortable silence followed.
I sighed. “It’s going to take a while for us to get used to each other, isn’t it?”
“I am who I am, Megan,” she replied. “I’m old. I can’t change now.”
“Change?” I repeated. “I wasn’t even going to try. Can’t we just stay as we are and get used to each other?”
I saw the small flicker of light in her eyes and the corners of her mouth turn up a little. “That,” she said, “may be feasible.”
A spite what I said about staying the way we were, I changed. I, who have always believed in speaking my mind and made it my mission to uncover the truth, have found myself keeping secrets. Sometimes life is more complicated than the simple rules we make for it.
In the morning that followed my poisoning, Grandmother, Matt, and I agreed to keep silent. Jamie believed his mother had become mentally confused, unintentionally giving me something that made me ill. He came to the hospital to tell us that, even brought the teacup from which I had drunk, so it could be tested and the doctors would know how to treat me. But I had already been diagnosed with an overdose of redcreep. We threw the cup in the trash.
Sophie and Alex came to the hospital together that day. I saw the brightness in Sophie’s eyes, then the delicate chain around her neck.
“That pendant looks familiar,” I said.
She smiled. “Alex bought it for me.”
In the year since, they’ve become the best of friends again, and the best of sweethearts-again.
As for Grandmother, she, too, has changed, though I certainly wouldn’t point it out to her. I suppose it’s hard to keep your life the same when two extra grandsons, my rough-and-tumble brothers, come barreling through on holidays.
Matt’s at Chase College now on a lacrosse scholarship.
I’m applying to colleges in Maryland. And we’re keeping another secret, though maybe not as well as we thought.
Just the other day Jamie stopped me on High Street. “You know,” he said. “I make wedding cakes.”