The Truths We Make (House of Poe #1)

11. Antique Pages

Antique Pages

Summer, 14 years before

W ater droplets fling onto the page, blurring words I’m trying to read. I cup my hands around the cover, desperate to keep it dry.

“Paxton! Stop! This is a first edition. You cannot waterlog a Neruda first edition!” I squeal, equal parts irritation and elation.

Bringing a book to beach day with the boys was asking for trouble, I knew, but with summer winding down and my first year AP English reading due, I had no other option. I needed to finish in the next week, or I would start already behind. And I couldn’t let Madeline and Mom down like that. But I was also a teenager, and the long days winding down called me outside. That, and the two teen boys who wouldn’t take no for an answer. They were a bigger force than nature could hope to be.

“Eve! Put the book down. We’re at the lake. It’s the last week of summer. Madeline cannot expect you to study yourself into the ground before you’ve even landed on the shore.” He throws his hands onto the top of the rolling surface, sending another smattering of water my way.

His eyes snag on someone behind me. “Oliver! Grab her and throw her in here!”

Sun-warmed hands slide into the crook of my arms, and I lurch forward, throwing my book into the safety of the towels .

“Oliver! No! Don’t!” The high pitch of my protest causes Paxton to shudder in laughter, his arms and legs pumping through the lake and silt as he jogs into position to help his brother.

Oliver’s laugh is changing into the deeper husk of age. His breath sends gooseflesh across my arms as he lowers his voice into a deep whisper I’m only starting to get used to.

“C’mon, Eve. You’ve hardly hung out with us all summer. Give us just an afternoon and I promise, we’ll let you read into the morning,” he says.

I sigh, knowing I lost this fight the moment I came down here with them. I stop fighting, letting all my weight go into Oliver’s arms. They may have convinced me to play, but I would never make it easy on them. His soft grunt brings a smirk to my lips.

“Paxton! She’s gone dead weight! Help me, dammit!” he grumbles.

Pax is already shooting out of the water to grab me. At the last moment, I try to make a dash for it, catching them both by surprise. It’s not enough to escape their clamoring hands. Oliver’s wrap around my chest and a thrill I barely understand pierces through the fun. I throw my head back and laugh anyway, even as it all comes into sharper focus. Even where hesitancy is creeping in. Paxton blasts through the moment, hauling me up by my hips, taking my feet clean off the ground. They’re carrying me now like a giant jump rope as the water laps at their calves.

“Boys! You didn’t start the party without us already, did you?” A female voice calls.

I can’t turn my head to see who it is, but I know. My stomach sinks as several feet slap their way towards us. Paxton laughs, swinging my legs back and forth.

“Perfect timing, Al! We were just about to christen the waters. You ready?” he asks Oliver.

Oliver responds by matching his swing and my whole body is in motion. My hands flail in a last-ditch effort.

“Wait, guys. No! Don’t…”

I don’t get to finish my plea. I sail through the air, arms and legs swimming before I even touch the lake. And then I am consumed. The water soaks into me, sucking the last bit of sunshine from my skin. I let myself drift, suspended in the blue, letting the silence and darkness of it put me at ease. Tiny bubbles float out from my lips, up to the surface, before popping. A hand juts down around me, the water beading at its presence, the peace shattered by its grasping.

I find the foot it’s attached to and wrap my fingers around its heel, pulling it deeper into the water. The hand reels out of the water and his face plunges in next to mine. Oliver’s black curls are weightless, his smile bright and bubbling. He opens his eyes to look at me and we’re locked together in the tide. He reaches out, twining our hands together. Time is fathomless. I could stay wrapped in this watery haven forever.

My lungs start to burn and before I can protest, Oliver is hauling me up behind him to the surface. My head pops up just behind his and we are gasping for oxygen, smiling and sputtering, as our feet find purchase.

“Oliver! Can you help me? Matt, June, and Paxton just left me to set up the picnic stuff by myself!”

Ally McVie. Who was always destined to end up with Matt Mason but couldn't help loving Oliver Poe. Even when it wasn’t accepted. The Poes were a legacy and a powerful family, but the wealthy can still be a bunch of snobs, especially with only daughters.

Ally’s parents would never entertain her dating Oliver. He too seeped in the passionate pursuit of creating. Of naming the emotions most are too scared to face, losing himself in death and grief and heartbreak, writing stories some adults couldn’t bear. Too entrenched in his family name. In embracing the familiarity of power and pain. Of exploring the world in all its morbidity, regardless of how it looked to those who hid behind pleasantries. And being different scared them.

While the wants and goals change as we grow up, where boys become desirable and dating consumes entire social circles, the rules of popularity and acceptance shift little. Regardless of Oliver’s wealth, there were some things money couldn’t buy—and that included respectability amongst the closed minded. Which was fine by me, even if that meant Oliver stayed out of reach for us all.

“On my way, Al!” Oliver calls back.

He gives me one more smile, hesitating for only a second when my hand slips from his. He waves me up after him. I know I should go. Be the buffer. More and more, it felt like that’s what I’d become for the boys. The chain-link fence to keep them separate from the world. Not that I minded keeping others out, I just wanted to be let in, too .

I slip out of the water after him, dripping from my shorts and bikini top, hat and sunglasses, forgotten somewhere in the towels before I was thrown in. Ally is unpacking a large beach blanket from a backpack filled with bottles and snacks. Oliver jumps in to grab one end of the blanket as they lay it flat. Ally smiles up at him, one of her hundred-watt grins, that makes my stomach sour.

“Thanks, Oli! At least there’s one gentleman left in all of Boston!” she giggles.

Oliver’s cheeks tint pink as he nods. The silence stretching between them makes me squirm. I shouldn’t be here, and by the look on Ally’s face when she glances my way, she couldn’t agree more.

“I’m just going to go find Paxton…” I point over my shoulder toward the dock where the boys and June are taking turns jumping in.

Oliver snaps his eyes to me, startled. Before I can move past him, he’s already jumping into action, shouting over his shoulder to me.

“Race you there, Eve!”

Now it’s just me and Ally staring after Oliver’s backside. I take a step to follow him when the scoff at my side stops me dead.

“Figures,” she spits.

I should stay silent. Nothing good will come of asking what she means. But the itching to know forces the words from my mouth.

“What does?” I ask.

“Him. You. That you say jump, and the Poe boys are already guessing how high you want them. Eventually, they’ll learn. They’ll drop you like the bad habit you are, Evangaline Pierce.” Her eyes gleam, fingers delicately placed on her hip. “You might have them fooled with your innocent, wide-eyed act, but I see right through to your tattered family bones, and no one will want you like you want them. No one .” Her hands slide off her hips, satisfied that she’s hit home and continues unpacking her bag, as if nothing has happened.

My mouth has gone slack. It’s not that I haven’t heard the whispers. That my classmates don’t talk about the girl riding the coattails of the Poes. That the families who come over to visit don’t whisper about the help’s daughter. It’s that my father’s letter the Paxton forced on me just this week is burning a hole in my book’s pages, almost an exact match to her words, imploring me to come home. No one can love you like family, Puddin’, it reads while holding the place of my favorite love poem. An irony that this morning I found hilarious .

Now the humor sinks like stones to my feet.

“Eve! You lost! You know the drill!” Oliver bellows from the edge of the dock.

He’s waiting for me, arms crossed, hair still glistening beneath the sun. I turn to find Ally already staring, smiling.

“Go along,” she says, waving me away. “What’s a flame without their biggest fan?”

I hate her. But I love them. So, I turn and walk away, practicing lifting my lips into a curve until it’s almost real by the time I reach them.

“Alright, loser, let’s hear it! Give us that poetry speak, woman!” Paxton howls.

They’re all ears, waiting to see what I’ll recite. Hanging on words not yet spoken. My mind is on the letter. On the poison Ally has dumped into my head. I’m too full of panic and doubt to remember anything else.

“And nothing Edgar or Dickinson. You’ve been too consumed by them, and I cannot hear another from either,” Oliver says, smiling, a jest over shared nights of reading.

His face lights the poem up for me, their melody on my lips before I can think better of it.

“ I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. ”

I know the moment the words leave my mouth that they’re a mistake. Everyone is looking at me, the lapping water the only sound. My single reprieve is that Ally is busy at the picnic area. Still, June will tell her. My face heats into a fever, eyes dancing anywhere but to Oliver’s. June giggles. Then his voice breaks in.

“ I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love, a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body, ” Paxton recites. “Neruda, right? Isn’t that the book you were squeaking about not getting wet before we tossed you in?”

Pax has saved me, taken the embarrassment and made it evaporate in a magic trick I’ll never learn. I nod my head, trying to hide the appreciation I feel, before running into a cannon ball jump, landing smack in the middle of them in the water. I burst from the depths, spitting droplets. I want to tell Paxton how much I love him in this moment with the way he’s staring at me, like he’s happy to hide all my secrets .

“You all know how to make a guy feel forgotten,” a boy calls out as feet pound the dock boards into a rattle.

“Tyler!” June squeals in a pitch that rivals any birds.

She swims to the ladder, scurrying up to flop herself into a big wet hug on Tyler’s still dressed chest. He laughs, squeezing her tight until he’s almost as soaked as she is.

Tyler Manetti is beautiful. Between the honey streaks that flow between his chestnut hair and his matching hazel eyes and skin, I have trouble looking away anytime he’s in a room. The best part is he’s a scholarship kid, kind of like me. His middle-class family lives four neighborhoods away, and he doesn’t flash brand names like it’s his job. If there is any boy, I could have a crush on, and act on it, it is Tyler. With the caveat that everyone loved him, and I was merely tolerated.

It was nice that when girls at school played MASH or asked who my secret crush was, I could say Tyler, and no one would gawk. They didn’t roll their eyes or taunt me, saying it was impossible. Not like they would with Oliver. Tyler was obtainable, and a catch. Occasionally, I even thought he might like me, too.

His roving gaze lands on me, and I feel my cheeks flush.

“Hey, Eve,” he says with a tiny wave that I return.

Water douses me as someone slaps it in my face. Paxton laughs and by the time I wipe it away, everyone is climbing out, up and onto the dock to join Tyler and June. I haul myself over and out just in time to watch as they set off toward the picnic area, June pulling Tyler behind her. His feet shuffle in obstinance as he looks back, throwing me an apologetic smile. I sigh and follow along, tracking Oliver’s backside as he slows his pace to allow me to catch up.

Ally sits in her low-slung lawn chair while a short top table is filled with snacks and drinks in front of her. Five other chairs surround it, leaving who the odd man out is glaringly obvious. My brow furrows in frustration while everyone else takes a seat. Paxton is the first to notice I’m still standing.

“Hey Ally,” he says, “we got another chair for Eve here?”

Ally looks distraught as she replies, “Oh no! I only brought six. I wasn’t sure if Tyler was going to show or not. Sorry, Eve!”

She is completely, utterly, not sorry.

“It’s fine. I can stand. Or sit on a towel. ”

I’m used to being left out. Even though Paxton and Oliver’s presence at school has all but stopped the bullying, they didn’t win me any friends. I have a few people I can talk to, who will eat lunch with me or be partners in class, but that is where it ends. Every interaction was just enough to fulfill the social contract the boys demanded. And everyone knew that if I wasn’t invited, they wouldn’t show either. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t take every opportunity to make sure I knew I wasn’t welcome.

“Nah, this is my fault for not responding to the texts. Eve, you can take my chair,” Tyler says.

I shrug him off with a smile. “Thanks, but I’m ok! Really.”

“Hmm. What if we… share it? You can sit with me. If you want to?” His voice still holds a polite, playful edge. Friendly. But I can see the pink lighting his cheeks and the nerves making him run his fingers through his hair in an act to keep them busy. He wants you to say yes. Butterflies steal through me, their wings not stopping even after seeing the death glare June is giving me.

My head is nodding. “Ok.”

I’m walking towards him, round the table, past both boys. Before I can make it to Tyler, an arm swings around my waist and pulls me down into someone’s lap. My stumble into the chair is not graceful and I’m pretty sure I slap a shoulder against my elbow trying to gain balance. At first, I’m not sure if my fall is an accident or intentional, until I hear the voice rumble through my back.

“Eve can share with me. I mean, we share a house and books and chairs, all the time. No need to make you uncomfortable, Tyler.”

“ Oliver, you’re being ridiculous, ” I scold, wiggling a bit to show my dislike of his bossiness, but not enough to break myself free.

Oliver’s arm squeezes at my hips, then stays firmly locked, making it impossible for me to escape. Time feels like it’s slowing down. Gravity shoves on all of my organs and I’m positive I weigh a thousand pounds. A million. Oliver and I have always been close, but as age and hormones have caught up with us, things changed. Touches were more careful. Casual affection less public. After too many teases of ‘liking’ each other, and death glares from Madeline, we became more restrained.

But this… this was something new. It felt like a claiming. For Tyler. For me. While part of me is outraged that he would even dare try to control me, another newer part of me craves it. Makes me want to stare down everyone here and show them I’m more than just a tagalong. By the looks of it, they might already know. Both girls are staring daggers, and a chill sweeps down my spine at the look Ally has in her eyes. I look around to see Tyler’s face fall, if only for a moment, before he shoots us a dashing grin again.

“Alright man,” he says, clapping his hands together. “What else do you have on the agenda for today’s outing, Ally Cat?”

She doesn’t take her eyes off Oliver’s hand at my waist as she replies.

“Well, I thought we’d do some truth or dare. Except for every truth or dare you refuse to do, you lose a piece of clothing. Strip truth or dare. To keep us all honest.”

Her canines look feral in the sun. I look down and realize all I have on is my bikini and a pair of shorts. Three articles of clothing, while everyone else has put on a few layers. I’m in trouble.

“I’ll go first,” Ally continues. “Eve, truth or dare?”

I know no matter what I pick, her request will be brutal. I glance between the faces all staring at me now, Oliver’s warm hand light around my middle, an anchor trapping me here.

“Dare,” I say.

She smirks. “I dare you to kiss one person in this circle right now.”

My palms sweat as my neck bursts into flames. She has me. There’s no one here I can choose without consequence. If I kiss Paxton or Oliver, I’ll never hear the end of it at school for the rest of the year. Not to mention the backlash I’d get at home from the two of them. Especially if they thought it meant something. Matt is firmly off limits. If Oliver would piss off Ally, Matt would cause her to put a hit on me, damn what either of the boys said.

I can’t kiss either of the girls, even as a saving grace for not wanting to choose between the boys. I can only imagine the rumors they’d spread. Locker rooms before gym would never be the same. And Tyler. Sweet, beautiful, crush-worthy Tyler. Oliver’s fisting fingers, that lightly graze my hips as he places them on the arms of his chair, are enough of a reason. Even if we can be nothing more than friends, it’s obvious from this little show that he doesn’t want me to have a crush on Tyler, either. Not to mention how June will feel about the boy she likes locking lips with me.

But what other choice do I have?

“OK. If it has to be someone here, I pick… Tyler,” I say quietly.

Oliver’s whole body stiffens. I do my best to ignore him and the fact that he’s no longer trying to hold me back. I smile shyly up at Tyler, who is looking straight at me as I stand up from Oliver’s lap and lean over the table towards him. He mirrors my every move, long limbs missing the cheese plate as his hands bend with him to keep his shoulders steady as he puts his face level with mine.

This is it. The moment I get my first kiss. I wanted this to be different, to be special. A hidden moment between me and a boy who loves me. Or at the very least, I knew liked me. Instead, I get this pieced together, fabricated one where the girl who hates me most has put me between the ones I care about. She’s forged everything about this and even as my heart picks up as I lean down, my excitement stays buried underneath the humility.

My lips barely touch his before I’m pulling away. A peck, no more than what I’ve given my mother as a child. Hardly a graze of skin on skin where I didn’t even take away the wetness of his mouth. Tyler is smiling, staring, still leaning toward me, almost as if he’s asking me for more. I’m embarrassed and feeling like a prude. This is nothing like the stories. No poetry or waxing of beauty and lust. But the crowd of teens around me oh and ah anyway at my lousy attempt. All except Oliver. I sit firmly back on his lap. To hell with the mockery.

“Ok! My turn,” I coo, eyes staring daggers at Ally.

I know I can hurt her, make her squirm, and embarrass her in front of both Matt and Oliver. I could ask about her parents’ messy affairs. How she feels about her father falling in love with the maid and the children he’s paid her off for. I could dare her to jump, fully clothed in the lake. Watch her perfect hair and makeup swirl into a puddle and take a photo before she can laugh it off. There are a million ways to highlight her insecurities. But I don’t.

“Paxton,” I say, clear and full of humor. “Time to pay the piper, golden boy! Truth or dare?”

He smiles, ready for me, hands folding and stretching to crack out his knuckles.

“Dare!”

Of course, he would choose the thrill.

“I dare you to climb this tree,” I say.

I don’t have time to add anymore before the others are groaning.

“Eve, that isn’t even a dare! He can do that in his sleep,” Matt says.

I roll my eyes at them, hating what they’ve reduced me to, but knowing I have to play along.

“ Naked, ” I retort.

Matt snorts on a laugh. “That’s more like it! ”

Everyone chuckles, and by the wink and big smile on Paxton’s face, he’s happy as a clam to oblige.

“Excuse me, ladies. Don’t want to be improper around young impressionable women,” he says as he strolls behind the enormous trunk, flashing us his swim shorts and tee shirt from the side as they come off.

“While he’s busy, I’ll go again,” Ally busts in. “Eve, truth or dare?”

“Eve’s already gone. Pick someone else,” Oliver grumbles.

“No. My game, my rules. Eve, truth or dare? ”

I sigh. “Truth.”

She smiles like she’s caught me, “Ok, it’s a two part-er. First, who is this love note from that I found in your towels? And second, why do they call you Puddin’?”

She’s laughing, each vowel catching on a ha as she tries to get the questions out. She’s waving the letter in the wind, unfolded and unsuspecting. If she’s read it, she knows it isn’t a love note. Not really. It’s the letter from my dad that Paxton stuffed in my book bag two days ago after he found it in the trash that he begged me to write back to.

One day, Eve, you’re going to wish you weren’t so full of this hate and fear. You’ve got to forgive him for you, or it’ll always haunt you, Paxton had pleaded, refusing to let me leave without it.

I’d listened, and was mulling over what he said, keeping the note as a bookmark until I’d made my decision. It was full of apologies. Of misspelled words and memories, things he thought might make me remember more than just our last time together. Things to prove he was, at one time, my dad, and that with time, he could change. That he wanted to.

He started calling me Puddin’ when I was two. Said I loved the stuff. Demanded it. After my first words of momma and dada came Puddin’. So, it just fit. Who I was to him. Who I’d always be. But right now, with Ally McVie smirking in my face, that nickname chortling out of her mouth, it was so far from who I wanted to be.

I stood up, body rigid with anger, tears of frustration imminent. I stomp over to where she sits, the letter still held out, and snatch it from her hands. I crumple it into nothing in my fist.

“The letter is from my father,” I say deadpan.

Then I remove my shorts, throwing them down in front of her. It may be a game, but I’ll be damned if this wretched girl is going to know a single thing more about this letter—or me. I give her one more solid look before reeling away in just my bikini to make the long walk home.

“Not cool, Al,” I hear Oliver say before he runs up next to me, wrapping a towel around my shoulders. “Need some company?”

I nod. I couldn’t imagine ever not needing Oliver’s loyalty in the face of so much pain.