The only thing I understood was that I had never felt so violated. Not when Decker kissed me on a dare, not when Troy grabbed my arm and left a bruise, not even when I sat cowering in the back of a funeral home. Now. With my mother, who I used to trust implicitly. This was the worst.
I threw up in the bathroom. Sad thing is, I didn’t even try. I just stood there under scalding water letting the entire day sink in, from seeing Troy take the woman’s pills to watching that old lady’s house to fighting at the movie theater to hiding in the back of the funeral home to escaping in the car with Decker to Mom forcing pills down my throat—and suddenly I couldn’t keep anything inside.
So I never did take that medicine. But I think some of it stuck, because I got really sleepy. My eyelids were heavy, and I stumbled dizzily around my room. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to sleep because of Troy. I could feel him lingering outside. I just knew he was watching me. From down the block or behind the bushes across the street or in plain sight in the middle of our road. So I checked the lock on my window. I pulled the shades down tight and stuck scissors underneath my pillow. Every car rumbling down the street sounded like his. Every rattle of the window was him trying to get in.
I fell asleep with one hand on the scissors and woke up the next morning in the same position. It was a miracle I hadn’t hurt myself. Mom threw open the door without knocking, smiling like she hadn’t turned on me the night before. “Phone call,” she said.
“Tell him I’ll call him back,” I said. Because it was either Troy, whom I wouldn’t call back, or Decker, whom I would once I figured out what to say.
“It’s not a him.”
I scrambled for the phone. “Where’ve you been, Delaney?”
“Hey, Janna.” I rubbed the grogginess from my eyes. “What’s up?”
“Just calling to see how you did in precalc.”
“You got your grades?”
“Yesterday. Didn’t you?”
“I’ll call you back.”
I ran down the hall, flew down the steps, and plastered a fake smile on my face just like Mom’s. “Did my grades come?”
Mom was ironing in front of the news. “Yes, honey, they came yesterday.” She still hadn’t looked at me. Not a good sign.
“Well?”
“All As, one B.”
“What? A B? Let me see.” She walked briskly in and out of the office like everything was fine. Maybe Mom’s vision was going. Maybe she was making a joke. But there it was, the curve of the B, a blemish in the uniform column of straight-lined letters.
“I don’t believe it.” I sat on the edge of the couch, my eyes boring into the paper. “I don’t fucking believe it.” She didn’t correct my language.
I walked back to my room, still carrying my report card. I dreaded returning Janna’s call, but if I didn’t, she’d know something was wrong anyway. “I got a B in precalc,” I told her.
“That’s good!” she said after a pause.
I let out a low laugh. “For you.”
“No, Delaney, for you. You almost died. You were in a coma. You still got a B.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No, no, I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. I just thought I aced the exam. Thanks for helping me study, by the way. I guess it could’ve been worse.” What had happened? Did my brain now lack the ability to even know when it didn’t know something? Was that the part that got damaged? Where was self-awareness on the brain scan?
“Listen,” she said. “Me and Carson are heading to Johnny’s for lunch. Why don’t you come? I haven’t seen you in a while. Okay?”
“I’ll see you there,” I said. I had to get out of this house. And I could really use a friend.
Barring an academic implosion by Janna, I now wouldn’t be valedictorian. I picked the phone up again to call Decker, to vent, to listen while he made a joke or told me it didn’t matter or said something to make me feel better—but I didn’t. That part of us was gone. The casualness, the ease, the simple friendship. Suddenly, I was keeping things from him. And I knew he was doing the same thing.
I borrowed Mom’s car with permission. I parked in the same lot I had run through the afternoon before and stared out my windshield at the pizzeria. I felt a very faint tugging toward the assisted living facility, as was expected. But over that, there was something stronger. Something much stronger coming from the strip of stores in front of me. Like death was waiting for me. Like it was still circling around me but couldn’t quite find me because, like Troy had said, I wasn’t really alive anymore.
In a small town, chances were I’d know who the dying person was. Not personally, probably, since I kept my distance from the elderly, but it’d be someone’s grandparent or someone’s neighbor or someone’s uncle’s cousin. Two degrees of separation at the most. And then I’d have to know that one of our teachers was terminally ill or Janna was going to lose a grandparent or Tara was going to lose her neighbor. And even though I didn’t like Tara, I didn’t want her to lose anyone either.
So I was paralyzed in my car. Couldn’t go home. Couldn’t go to Decker’s. Couldn’t go anywhere. Too much of a coward to go in the pizzeria. Grow a spine. Okay, I’d go in, I just wouldn’t look. I plodded through the snowy parking lot and pushed my way into the crowded restaurant. The smell of grease and pepperoni should’ve been able to distract me. I kept my head mostly down and listened instead. Carson was easy to pick out. He was loud and energetic and laughed spontaneously in the middle of his own sentences. I headed in that direction, to the booth along the right wall.
I felt like crap. Judging from the way Janna and Carson looked at me and then at each other, I looked like I felt. And then I froze in the middle of the store. People hurried around me, carrying pizzas to their tables, dumping plates into the garbage, pulling spare chairs over to already full tables. I couldn’t take another step. Because the pull was coming from them. From Janna and Carson Levine. From a seventeen-year-old girl and her eighteen-year-old brother. From the girl who held my hand in the hospital and the boy who gave me my first real kiss. My friends.
One of them was going to die.
Chapter 14
“Hey, Delaney,” Janna called, tilting her head to the side. “You all right?”
I couldn’t move. By now, other people were looking at me. Carson mumbled something to his sister. Janna stood and pulled at a few of her curls, straightening them and letting them recoil again. “Um . . .” She walked over to me and put her arm around my waist. “Earth to Delaney,” she whispered in my ear. “People are looking at you kinda funny.”
I sunk into her with relief, because it wasn’t her. It wasn’t the girl who declared her friendship to me. But then my stomach clenched and my knees buckled. Because if it wasn’t her, it was Carson. Carson who kissed me on the couch. Carson who broke a window and stole a rope to rescue me. Carson who was smiling at me like we shared a private joke. “You look like you can use some food,” Janna said. I walked with her to the table and slid onto the bench beside her.
I picked up a slice and bit, barely tasting, and chewed methodically. I registered the crunch and the heat and the grease sliding down my throat, which was not at all as delightful as usual but kind of nauseating instead. And all the while I looked at Carson, who didn’t look sick in the least. He inhaled three slices of garlic-drenched pizza.
“What do you think, Delaney. Too much garlic? Is it bad for my image?” He threw his head back and laughed.
“Always his image,” Janna said, pressing a folded napkin on top of her slice, soaking up the puddled grease.
“Don’t act like you don’t care, Janna.” He turned to me and talked with his mouth full. “She’s going to the salon after this. Trying to tame the ’fro.”
Janna held her hands protectively over her head. “It’s not ‘taming.’ It’s ‘relaxing.’”