Golden ✓

Chapter 24

The walk home is nearly silent, with Grace occasionally making comments about the way the brilliant lights on the campus buildings contrast against the blackness of the night sky. I don't want to respond, don't want my voice to give away how anxious I am about how she feels about me now that she knows my deepest and darkest secret.

Halfway through our walk, with unspoken simultaneous timing, we stop.  We both slip off our shoes and carry them in our hands. I can feel the gritty sidewalk under my feet while I try to avoid any traces of broken glass. I have made so many mistakes tonight and wearing those heels was one of them. Believing that I'm not irreparably broken and that I could handle a night out was another mistake. I don't deserve to feel powerful when the reality is that I'm so weak.  I just don't have the strength to replace that memory.  Maybe I don't deserve to go back to who I was before, before I knew what I know now.

When we enter our room, Grace immediately plops down on my bed. "I owe you my secret now, don't I?" she asks kindly. I meet her eyes for the first time since starting my story and she is smiling slightly. Relief floods through me. She doesn't hate me. She knows the worst thing that I have ever done, and she still doesn't hate me for it. She's not going to abandon me like everyone else did.

"What's your secret?" I ask, keeping my voice as steady as I can, not wanting to give away my nerves from earlier or my happiness from this moment.

She takes a deep breath. "During high school, a bunch of friends and I would sneak out of our houses and break into a pool down the block. Sometime during my junior year, the cops caught us, and they were about to bring me home and wake up my parents, but I fake cried about it, and they let us off with just a warning."

"Oh?"

"Yep, and we don't do it as often now, but over Thanksgiving break, we broke back into the pool at night and went swimming."

I breathe in raggedly. Her secret is nowhere near as bad as mine. She is nowhere near as bad of a person as I am. My thoughts swirl, and I can barely hold onto one of them. This is proof that I am terrible.

"Listen, Faith," Grace says, interrupting my spiral and pulling me out of myself. She looks wistful and almost proud. She doesn't look like she thinks that my secret is worse than hers. "No one is perfect. I certainly have been bad before. I've broken hearts, I've lied, I've made mistakes. The important thing is that we learn from those experiences and we take what we learned with us through the rest of our lives."

"What did you learn from your experience?" I ask.

"That being a small woman and pretending to cry can get you out of a lot of trouble," she deadpans. I laugh, clutching at my ribs. My lungs are still sore from all the crying and they aren't happy to be used this heavily again so soon. "How long ago was that party?" Grace asks.

"Over a year ago, now."

"Ah," she says, like all the pieces just fell into place. "Did you apologize?" she asks.

"I tried, but Jessie didn't want to hear it."

She nods solemnly. "That's understandable. I'm sure it's hard to have your best friend and your boyfriend betray you like that. It must hurt a lot. But I'm sure she'll come around eventually."

I shake my head. "You don't know Jessie," I tell her.

"I find it very hard to believe that you would ever have been friends with someone who would refuse to forgive someone else indefinitely, especially after that other person shows that they're really sorry. It's just not the type of person who I could see you surrounding yourself with."

I shake my head again. "Jessie's all about justice. If she doesn't feel like justice has been served, she will hold onto a grudge for as long as she needs to."

"And when do you think justice will be served?"

I shrug sadly. "Maybe never. It's an unforgiveable thing to do to someone."

Grace doesn't respond, just slides closer to me and rubs my shoulder. After a moment of that, she jumps up and runs to her desk. She opens a drawer and pulls out a sleeve of Oreos. "Here," she says, opening the package and handing me one of the cookies.

"Thanks." I take a bite of my cookie while Grace opens hers and starts to lick the filling. "I didn't know that you kept these in the room."

She pops one of the now clean cookies into her mouth. "They're for emergencies. And this seems like an emergency."

"Is it really that bad?" I ask, my worst fears confirmed.

"The situation? No, it's not nearly as bad as you seem to think it is. I'm talking about this." Her flattened palm scans my face again. "You should go check in the mirror."

I stand up and wander over to the mirror on the back of our bedroom door. At first, it is frightening. I don't recognize the face that I see. And then everything slowly clicks. It is my face, just with smeared mascara, tear streaks in my foundation, and lipstick that somehow got rubbed off half of my mouth. I remember thinking about how terrible I must look when I first started crying, but between telling Grace my story and walking barefoot through the campus, the inevitable state of my makeup somehow slipped my mind.

"Oh my god, I walked through campus like this?" I ask, horrified.

"I mean, your lipstick was fine until we got most of the way home and then you wiped it off with your hand. I don't even think you realized you were doing it."

"I didn't," I say. Tilting my head to the side, I step closer to the mirror and continue to examine my face. "Did other people notice?" I ask.

"Oh, I'm sure they noticed. You were hard to miss. But I don't think they cared."

"Huh," I reply, continuing to examine my face. And then I can't help it. I start laughing hysterically. All this time trying to blend in, to keep my secrets shut away, to appear fine, just fine. I thought that those things were keeping me safe. But tonight, I walked around looking like a mess, wearing my emotions on my sleeve, and no one cared.

I mean, maybe they did care. Maybe they cared a lot and Grace was just trying to make me feel better. But for the first time, I allow myself to entertain the thought that maybe other people don't assume the worst about me. Maybe I'm putting all this shame on myself.