I tore my eyes from Josh. I could handle the anger I’d seen in him at the burial and deal with the misplaced stares from my morbidly curious classmates, but what tore me apart was the agony I could feel radiating from Josh. I couldn’t take his pain away, not without telling him I was Ella, not without crushing Alex and my parents, not without going back on my promise to Maddy … the one that traded my life for hers. Either way, somebody lost.
“Maddy?” Alex repeated. “What are you doing here?” he asked as he physically backed me away from the locker and kicked it shut with his foot. “Why are you going through Ella’s locker?”
I shook my head, the physical motion jarring me back to the present. “Her stuff…” I said, not bothering to keep the emotion out of my voice. “Why is it still in there? Why has nobody cleaned it out?”
Alex looked past me to Josh as if somehow he had the answer. I watched the silent conversation play out between them, nothing more than an elaborate game of who was going to answer first. I’d never seen this before, never seen Josh hesitant to answer me, to talk to me. But then again, in his mind, in his reality, I was somebody completely different.
“Why?” I had to clear my throat, to swallow a mouthful of tears to get the words out. “Why is Ella’s stuff still in there?” I asked again.
“I couldn’t,” Josh said as he turned around and buried his face in his own locker rather than look at me.
“Couldn’t what?” I asked.
Josh ignored me, and I took a step toward him, wanting to demand an answer and soothe his grief at the same time. Alex stopped me, hooked his arm around my waist, and gently pulled me in to his chest.
“Your parents were going to do it. I offered to help. I thought it’d be easier for everybody if I cleaned it out myself and brought her stuff home in a box. I figured you could go through it when you were ready,” Alex told me.
“But—?” I asked when he paused.
“Josh wanted to do it himself. He promised me he’d have it done before you came back.”
I caught the forgiveness in Alex’s voice, knew he understood how hard this was for Josh. My guess was that that was why Alex had offered to clean out my locker in the first place—he wanted to spare Josh and my parents the pain of having to do it themselves.
I looked at my locker, then back to Josh. If it’d been him, if it was his locker that I’d been charged with clearing out, I’d have done the same thing: let everything he owned sit there undisturbed on some insane notion that he’d be back, that whatever had taken him from me was nothing more than an impossible nightmare I’d soon wake up from.
“I’ll do it,” I said as I yanked myself free of Alex’s hold and emptied the contents of my bag onto the floor. I’d need to make two trips to my car to get everything out, but if it saved Josh from having to do it himself, I’d gladly be late for my first class.
The top shelf was easily cleared off, the textbooks stacked next to me on the floor. I’d turn those in to the office, or the teachers, or whoever was responsible for collecting textbooks, once I got everything else cleaned out. I went for the door and was carefully trying to peel the tape off the pictures when Josh exploded.
“Leave it!” he shouted. I’d never heard such rage in Josh’s voice before or seen his body vibrate with such raw emotion. I stopped and looked at him, my hand still clutching the corner of a picture. “I. Said. Leave. It,” he repeated.
I nodded and let it go, took two steps back to give him some space. He looked like he was about ready to lose it.
We’d accumulated quite a crowd of spectators. Every available body in the school—teachers and students alike—was there, waiting to see what I’d do. At this point I didn’t care; they could grab some empty wall space and watch the show if that’s what they wanted.
“Let it go,” Alex whispered in my ear. “I’ll talk to Josh and ask your parents to help clear Ella’s locker out.”