“The doctors lie,” she said. The words were clipped, cold, and filled with something ugly that felt familiar to me. “What do you mean?”
Kelsi stared out toward the parking lot. “My mom never smoked a cigarette in her life. So how does a person who hasn’t smoked, and has hardly ever been around smokers, die of lung cancer?”
I looked at her, surprised. “She never smoked?”
“No.” She took another drag off her cigarette. “So what’s the point anyhow? I mean, if you can do everything right and then still die of lung cancer, why bother?”
I wanted to tell her not to smoke, that it was bad for her, and stupid, too, but this hardly seemed like the time.
“And you know what the best part is?” Kelsi continued. “It could be hereditary. So yeah, there’s a higher chance that I’ll get it, because my mom had it. So what the hell?”
“Yeah, but smoking doesn’t seem like the answer,” I said. I eyed her cigarette warily, trying to understand her mixed-up feelings. It was probably a little similar to having a dad who always buckled up and always drove the speed limit and then got killed in a car accident that never should have happened. “Life just isn’t fair sometimes,” I added, more to myself than to her.
“Yeah, thanks for telling me,” she said sarcastically. “I hadn’t noticed.” She dropped her cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with the toe of her sneaker. “So,” she said, “you wanna skip or what?”
I stared at her. “You mean, like, now?”
Kelsi rolled her eyes. “You can’t be perfect all the time,” she said. “Besides, do you really think we’re going to get in trouble? Seriously. We’re the kids all the teachers feel sorry for.”
Kelsi had a point. All those teachers who had buzzed around me with fake, cheerful smiles, telling me that they wanted to help if there was anything they could do, would probably look the other way if I was caught, wouldn’t they?
“Okay,” I said after a minute. I took a deep breath and tried to tell myself this was something I had to do to help Kelsi. “Let’s go.”
And for the first time that week, a small smile appeared on Kelsi’s face.
chapter 7
As we pulled out of the school lot, Kelsi fiddled with the radio distractedly. It made me a little nervous that she wasn’t paying enough attention. Then again, I always felt uneasy in cars since the accident.
Once we’d driven for a few minutes, she rolled the windows down and turned the stereo up. The new Star Beck song was on. The wind whipped through my hair, getting colder as Kelsi picked up speed. We were approaching the interstate, and I wondered if we were going to get on. Cape Cod was just to the south, over the Bourne Bridge. If we headed north, we’d be in Boston in under an hour, and honestly, my mom would probably kill me if she found out.
“Where are we going?” I finally shouted over the wind and music.
Kelsi didn’t answer, and I wasn’t sure she had heard me. Then she said, “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
I shrugged. The on-ramp for the interstate was coming up, but Kelsi zoomed right past it, shooting toward Milton Park, where my mom used to take me and Logan to play when we were kids. Kelsi pulled in, but instead of parking, she looped slowly around in the lot and headed back the way we came.
We drove a few minutes more in silence until we were back on Summer Street. I wasn’t paying attention until Kelsi suddenly slowed and made a hard right into a parking lot I’d managed to avoid all year.
I froze in my seat. “What are we doing here?” I asked, all my nerves on edge. I hoped that she was just turning around, like she had at Milton Park. But instead, she pulled neatly into a parking space in the nearly deserted lot.
She cut the ignition and climbed out of the car, pulling her cigarettes out of her pocket.
I stayed in the car, glued to my seat. My limbs felt stiff and uncooperative, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted them to do anyhow.
We were at St. Joseph’s Cemetery, a place I hadn’t set foot in since my dad’s funeral. It was a pretty place, really, with lots of rolling green hills and chirping birds and squirrels running around like nothing was wrong. Sunlight trickled down beautifully in little patches through the leaves of the lush, overgrown oak trees that dotted the property. But it was impossible to see it as a nice, peaceful place. I hadn’t wanted to see it at all, in fact, and deliberately turned away every time I passed it.
My mom went every Sunday morning to lay flowers on Dad’s gravestone. Sometimes, early on, Logan had gone with her, although now he was usually too busy with Sydney. Tanner went occasionally too.