Secrets And Lies

Chapter 15: Quade's secret

Taylor

      "Ryan, you're cutting it awfully close..." I said as we walked down the hall to the cafeteria. " You still haven't bought a homecoming dress...you could borrow one of my old ones, but we'd have to hem it..."

     Ryan stopped and turned around, making me crash into her.

    "What?" She bit her lip.

      I knew then that she hadn't even thought about it.

     "W.T.F, you forgot, didn't you?" I admonished my friend's lack of preparation.

     Every girl in school was buzzing about it. The dress shopping, the anxiety of the 'will he ask me?', and 'should we go for a limo, even though it wasn't prom?' "Homecoming is Saturday. You know as in the day after tomorrow." I reminded her.

       "I forgot all about it. With all the drama that had happened and this damn project, I haven't had a chance to breathe." She ran her hand through her hair. "I just won't go."

     "Stupidgirlsaywhat?" I said, running my words together.

"What?" She continued walking to the cafeteria, with me hot on her heels.

"Ryan, you have to go! We will find something tonight after practice."

     I don't know what is with her lately, but the Ryan that came back isn't the same Ryan that left. She would have had her dress several weeks in advance. As a freshman and sophomore, she was more excited than I was. Ryan had even volunteered us for the homecoming committee two years ago.  That version of her wouldn't stop talking with Sam or her brother as soon as I came in the room, like she had with Sam in the bathroom the first time we slept over since she came back. Or  last weekend when I had stayed over and she stopped talking to Quade as soon as I came into the kitchen. She was hiding something, something that went beyond her relationship with her mother.

     "God, I hate you. Why are we friends?" Ryan asked, sitting down at the table between Sam and Quade, who slid her lunch tray in front of her as usual.

       Quade was another person that wasn't acting like himself. He was far too broody. He had been avoiding me since Ryan had come home. I thought it had to do with his sister coming home, but it doesn't explain the secret conversations over the phone that would also end abruptly if anyone walked into the room.

     The day that I had stayed at the Fitzpatricks, waiting for Ryan to come home, I was looking forward to spending the day with Quade. I missed hanging out like we used to. But it wasn't the same. He kept to his side of the couch instead of sitting next to me. He didn't crack jokes at my lacking popcorn-making ability like he usually did. The guy didn't even bat an eye when I said I would make it. He ate the blackened kernels without a freaking word. We spent the whole time watching Lifetime movies, and he didn't comment on any of the outrageous plots like he usually did. When he excused himself in the middle of a movie to answer his cell phone, that was the last straw. I stomped up the stairs and hid in Ryan's room. Was he acting like a jerk because I had wanted him to tell me about the video and the argument we sort of had? Nothing made sense anymore.

       Even Ryan and Sam seemed just in the dark as I was. I didn't like it. I admit that I have trouble keeping gossip to myself. I know that I can keep something to myself if it was imperative. I already have. I've kept some of my family's secrets and my own secret for a long time because it would screw everything up if it got out. But they don't know that. If my friends didn't have that faith in me, I'd like to think that I had enough confidence in myself for all of us. I knew if they would tell me what was going on, I'd take their secrets to the grave. If it's big enough to have Ryan fleeing the country, I would have no choice but to keep it. But they needed to see things the way I did, and the only way to do that would be to prove it.