Sara Shepard - All The Things We Didn’t Say

For my mother, Mindy Shepard

Cover Page

Title Page All The Things We Didn’t Say Sara Shepard

Dedication For my mother, Mindy Shepard

PART ONE PART ONE Brooklyn, New York, December 1992

Prologue

1

2

3

PART TWO

Prologue

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

PART THREE

Prologue

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

PART FOUR

Prologue

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

PART FIVE

25

26

27

28

29

30

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Novels for young adults by the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Brooklyn, New York,

December 1992

Behind you was a poster for the DQ Butterscotch Sundae, and next to you were the gleaming, shuddering machines that dispensed the ice cream. Mark catapulted over the counter and gave you a big hug. ‘Here she is,’ he said, clapping his hands on your shoulders. You looked familiar. It was probably that I’d seen you around-at a picnic, in the halls at school, in the bleachers, in the aisles of Charles Kupka’s Drugs, The Finest Apothecary in Western Pennsylvania . You smiled at me and extended your hand, so formal. ‘Hello,’ you said. You smiled with all your teeth. ‘Hello,’ you said again.

You lived down the street from Mark. When you were little, you stole tomatoes from his garden. He used to chase you with a garden hoe with his eyes closed, chopping and chopping. But then, a month or so ago, Mark was up on a ladder, touching up the eaves of his house with white paint, and a bee came and scared him and he fell off. When he opened his eyes, flat on his back on the grass with the wind knocked out of him, the ladder still tilted against the roof, you were standing there with your wavy blonde hair and your milkmaid face and your wide, vine-ripened mouth. ‘I realized I loved her right then,’ Mark told me. He had been dying to introduce you to me for a while, but I’d been working so much that summer and had hardly been around.

I don’t know what made me go into Dairy Queen alone the next time, knowing what I knew. Mark had been my best friend since third grade, when we were both punished for sticking chewing gum to the underside of our desks. Perhaps it was because you said hello twice. Perhaps it was because Mark joked, that first time, ‘Now, don’t go stealing her away, Rich. She’s mine.’ I don’t know why he said that-I’d never stolen anything from Mark in my life. But maybe it got into my head, started whirring around. Maybe it was your dove-gray eyes, the way your hands were chapped and red from the Dairy Queen freezers, the way you swayed a little, winsome and uncertain, when you dispensed the ice cream into the pale yellow cone. The first time I went in alone, you pretended to forget my name. All you said was, ‘You’re Mark’s friend, right?’ The second time I came in, you said, ‘It’s freezing. All this snow, in October. You seriously want ice cream?’ The fifth you told me bits and pieces about your life.

You told me that you and Mark were secretly engaged. He wanted to get married as soon as you graduated-you were a grade behind us, so it was still a whole year away. You sat on the steel sink in Dairy Queen’s back room, surrounded by ice cream mix, boxes of rainbow sprinkles and glamour shots of the Buster Bar and the whorish, frothy DQ Float- Go ahead and splurge! Get it with Tab®! You told me how afraid you were, that you weren’t sure if Mark was the guy you were supposed to marry, how you thought love was supposed to hit you like a spark and you weren’t sure that had happened. ‘But I’m a good person,’ you always said when we pressed against the shelves of the walk-in, your lips tasting like caramel syrup. ‘I still do chores and everything.’ ‘It’s me, I’m the terrible one,’ was what I always said next. I wanted you to be blameless, pure. ‘He’s my best friend. I’m the bad person here.’ I touched the six freckles clustered together by your right eye, a constellation. I even gave the freckle-cluster a name, though I can’t remember it now. That’s probably a side-effect of what I’ve been through-so many precious memories have been yanked away forever.

The eighth time I told you everything about me. That winter, I took you to the old, abandoned drift mine, one of my favorite spots in all of Cobalt. We looked into the black, gaping mouth in the side of the hill to avoid staring at each other. You shivered and said coal mining had to be the scariest job in the world, trekking into those dark, uncertain caves. ‘I’m sure miners get used to it,’ I replied, but you shook your head and said you couldn’t see how. I told you that my father looked perfect on the outside, but he hardly ever ate dinner with us anymore. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had a conversation. It was always sports on TV, or long hours at work, or time spent at the new golf club closer to Pittsburgh. He wanted me to play golf, too-he got me a membership to the country club a few Christmases before. ‘Golf is a good skill for your future,’ he said gruffly, ignoring my lack of enthusiasm. ‘I’m grooming you for better things.’ The only thing I’d wanted that year was a set of encyclopedias, but my father said I could just use the encyclopedias at school. When new encyclopedias showed up on our doorstep a few weeks later, my father frowned, thinking it was a mistake. ‘It’s not,’ my mother said quickly. She’d gotten last year’s set at a discount from a door-to-door salesman, practically for free. When my father turned his back, she winked at me. I read those encyclopedias cover to cover, starting with A and ending with Z. I loved M; it was so thick. There were so many fascinating things in M. Myelin. Mummification. Melanoma.

I told you about the scholarship to Penn State-first that I’d applied, next that I’d been interviewed, and that I was waiting to hear if I got it. ‘You will,’ you assured me. ‘But that means you’ll leave me.’ I told you I’d never leave you. I told you I’d take you to college with me. ‘I’ll pack you in my suitcase.’ I took your small, tan hand and said, ‘I’ll marry you right now.’ I said I’d go get my minister’s license so I could marry us myself. You took a whack at me-you liked to slap the air when things were funny-and said we would need witnesses. I said, ‘How about this mine? It could be our witness.’ The coal was as silent and solemn as God. You looked away then. ‘You know we can’t,’ you said. We were quiet for a while after that.

Then there was the party at Jeff’s house. I had gotten there late, so we met in the hall, me holding an empty cup, on my way to the keg, you holding a sleeve of Ritz crackers. I couldn’t wait to show you the letter I’d received that very day, the one I hadn’t shown my family or anyone else yet. It had Pennsylvania State University’s prowling lion logo on the top. I unfolded it, thinking you’d be proud of me, but your expression clouded. And then you told me-you just blurted it out, two words. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And you said, ‘Yes.’ And then I was talking and not thinking, or perhaps thinking too much and talking to avoid saying what I was thinking. Just as your eyes started to fill, Mark approached. We straightened up fast. ‘What are you two talking about?’ Mark asked, swaying, his breath acrid and hot, so wasted and not even an hour into the party. He touched your boob right there in front of everyone, his beer sloshing over the lip of the cup.