I didn’t wait for him to walk away this time, couldn’t stomach watching him get in the car with Kim. I put my car in gear and left, driving until I hit the town line. I sat there for hours, parked in the breakdown lane with my flashers on, literally feet away from a new town … a new life.
Nobody stopped to help me. Not one cop or Good Samaritan pulled over to see if I needed help. Funny how I could sit here for two hours and seventeen minutes and not one of the hundreds of people who drove by thought to stop. Yet spend two seconds acting weird in the high school cafeteria and you were suddenly the object of everybody’s attention.
A thousand thoughts flew through my mind about Molly and what my sister had unintentionally set into motion. I knew Maddy was sorry for what she’d done. I could feel it in my heart, saw it in the tears she’d tried to hide the night of Alex’s party. And I’d taken away her chance to apologize to Molly.
The emptiness I’d been struggling to overcome settled around me like a dark, unwavering cloud. My sister, my best friend, the one who shared my birthday, was gone. Forever. And it was there on the side of the road, as I raged in my car, screamed and cried and cursed my sister for leaving me, that I finally embraced the pain and made my decision.
I turned the car around in the middle of the road and drove, without thinking, back to school, back to the two people I wanted to apologize to first.
The school parking lot was full. I could either wedge my car between the Dumpster and the buses-only zone in front of the school or park way over on the other side of the fields. The Dumpster-buses-only spot worked; I wasn’t planning on being here long anyway.
I didn’t bother to sign myself in. The front office had probably already marked me absent. By the time the school secretary got around to calling my parents this afternoon, it’d be too late. By then, they would know the truth.
It was noon, and the hallways were crowded with kids at their lockers swapping out books for their next class or going to lunch. The fact that I was wearing the same clothes as yesterday didn’t go unnoticed. I could see people pointing as clearly as I heard their hushed comments. My hair was pulled into a messy ponytail, and what little was left of yesterday’s makeup was smudged. I didn’t care. I was done pretending. I was done trying to fit in. I was … done.
The cafeteria doors were closed, the roar of noise inside barely audible from the hall. But I knew they were there.
It went dead silent the minute I walked in, one hundred and twenty-nine senior heads and a handful of underclassmen turning in my direction. I didn’t have to waste time trying to find them, they’d be in their assigned sections of hell. Molly was at the end of Maddy’s table, a safe three empty chairs between her and everybody else. Alex was sitting there, too, Maddy’s friends crowded around him and Jenna cozying up to his side.
Alex pushed Jenna away when I walked in, the color draining from his face. Dismay—no, fear was what I saw in his expression, pure fear. “Maddy,” he called out, his eyes signaling me over.
I shook my head and walked toward Molly. I’d get to Alex, but not yet. Molly had been kind to me, extending her friendship and an offer to help. Because of that, she was going to be first.
Alex was up and out of his seat the minute he realized I wasn’t going to quietly retreat to the hall and wait for him. “This isn’t what I call laying low,” he said.
I actually laughed at his words, a distorted chuckle that took even me by surprise. “I’m not trying to lay low, Alex.” I’m trying to fix what I did, I finished silently to myself. “I’m sorry I took Maddy from you, sorry I can’t be the girl you used to know, you used to love.”
“Let me take you home. We can talk about this there.”
“No, I don’t want to talk about it.” Not anymore.