Torn Read Online Free Page B

pants on the bathroom floor and burping at the dinner table.
    ‘Ha! You can talk … you’re hardly the Queen of Hygiene yourself.’
    She throws a pillow at my head. ‘Shut it, you. You don’t know what it’s like. I could
kill
them sometimes.’
    We’re both silent for a second.
    ‘So … anyway, what have you been up to since yesterday?’
    ‘Nothing much. Dad keeps watching me. I think he’s waiting for me to have some kind of breakdown. And he made me eat a fried breakfast AND roast chicken for lunch.’ And by the way, Dead Tara told me to ask you about the night she died.
    ‘God, your dad’s such a feeder. Still, I reckon you could do with some more meat on your bones.’
    I throw the pillow back at Cass, but it misses and knocks a picture frame off her bedside table. Cass picks up the frame and sets in back in place. It’s a photo of me and her taken a couple of years ago on a school trip to France. We’re eating gigantic ice creams and we’re both sticking our tongues out. You can see other people in the background. Tara’s there, her perfect profile visible over my shoulder.
    I have to tell Cass, even though I know exactly what she’ll say. ‘Jack called. He wants to talk to me about it.’
    ‘Jack? Who’s … what? Her
brother
?’ I’ve noticed that Cass doesn’t like using Tara’s name these days. As if it makes a difference. I’m tempted to remind Cass that Tara is/was not Lord Voldemort. But maybe she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it, and maybe it doesn’t matter if it makes her feel better.
    ‘Yeah. He called me earlier. He wants to meet up on Tuesday.’
    ‘You’re not going to?
Are
you?’ Cass is horrified.
    ‘I … I don’t know. I said yes, but …’
    ‘You can’t! Have you lost your fucking mind?’
    ‘No, but … I couldn’t say no to him.’
    ‘Why not?! It’s not hard. Tell him you don’t think you can talk about it. You’re
traumatized
. Yeah, no one can argue with that.’
    ‘Don’t you think he deserves … ?’
    ‘Deserves what? To know the truth? You
have
lost your mind, haven’t you? How many times am I going to have to say this to you: no one can find out what happened. No one. You KNOW that, don’t you? If anyone finds out, we’ll be in deep, deep shit. They’re not going to say, “Oh, it’s OK. We understand it was an accident and you were scared and panicked and did the wrong thing.” We’ll go to prison. All of us. For God’s sake, Alice. I can’t believe you’re even considering this.’
    I’m stunned by her viciousness. I know it’s driven by fear, but it’s still horrible to see her face all twisted up. I can feel the tears start to well up. I can’t help it. ‘I … wasn’t going to tell him anything. I would never do that.’
    Her face softens. ‘Alice, we have to be careful. If you talk to Jack, you might let something slip by mistake. We have to be on our guard all the time, atleast until all the fuss dies down. I really, really don’t think you should do this.’
    ‘I don’t think he’s going to interrogate me or anything. Maybe he’s got no one else to talk to.’
    ‘But why does it have to be
you
? Of all people?’
    ‘Because he knows I was in Tara’s cabin? Because I used to be friends with her, I don’t know. I think I owe it to him to at least talk to him. It seems like the least I can do, after—’
    ‘It was an
accident
, remember?’ I swear, if I hear Cass say the word
accident
one more time … It’s been her mantra since it happened. She holds onto it like a life raft in a storm.
    ‘It was still our fault. And we could have told the truth about what happened. We should have told the truth.’ She knows how I feel, and I know how she feels, and we’re so utterly opposed that I wonder how things can ever be the same between us. How can we possibly get back to normal after something like this? We don’t deserve normal.
    Cass sighs and flops back on the bed. ‘Let’s not talk about it any more.