He put the phone to his ear and said hello. Caitlin watched him for a moment, not sure if he’d actually received a call or not. But would Josh really fake a phone call to get out of going to the cemetery with her?
He did hate it, though. He’d come only once since Taylor died. Anytime after that, he said he was busy . . . or that the flowers aggravated his allergies . . . or that it was too rainy . . . or any other excuse he could think of. Caitlin thought again of the brief flash of—what was that, annoyance?—that had passed across Josh’s face at the soccer field when she mentioned Taylor’s name. He had that reaction a lot, if Caitlin was honest with herself. But she couldn’t figure out how to ask him what he was feeling—they didn’t have that sort of relationship. Before Taylor died, they hadn’t needed to. But now she wished she could talk to him about it. Even just a little.
Josh said a few more things into the phone, and finally, Caitlin slapped her arms to her sides and crossed the parking lot without him. She could do the walk to her brother’s grave blindfolded: twenty paces from the car, left for thirty-three paces, and then down a little aisle next to a gravestone with a statue of a German shepherd on top of it. Tommy Maroney, who died at an appropriate age of eighty-five, had raised German shepherd champions.
And there it was: TAYLOR ANTHONY MARTELL-LEWIS. He died two days after his fifteenth birthday.
“Hey,” she said softly, pausing to kick off a few dried leaves from the grave. “Sorry it’s been a couple weeks. I’ve been busy. And this crazy ankle kept me off my feet.” She held up her leg for him to see.
A gust of wind kicked up, blowing her hair into her face. Caitlin took a breath. “So I guess you heard?” she said softly. “I mean, who knows? Maybe you’ve . . . seen Nolan, wherever you are now. Although I seriously hope not.” She stared at her fingers. “Look, I don’t know what you can see up there, wherever you are, and maybe you saw me . . . with him . . . that night. But I did it for you. He couldn’t get away with it.”
She paused, just like she always did, pretending that Taylor, who was always so thoughtful and introspective, was taking a moment to let this sink in. Then she cleared her throat again. “I don’t feel bad for what happened, though. And I don’t agree with what Mom said. It wasn’t enough for Nolan to live with what happened. He needed to pay.”
If he could still speak, Caitlin was sure Taylor would second her opinion that what happened to Nolan was karma. When she came home from practice one day to find a suicide note on Taylor’s bedroom door, she’d been blindsided. Later that same night, Caitlin had gone into his room, which still smelled like him, and found a journal sitting in plain view on the bed: Reasons Death Is Better Than School, it was called. She’d opened to the first page. September 17: Someone put a bag of dog poop in my locker. Have a feeling it was N. September 30: N and his buddies stole my clothes during gym and stuffed them in the toilet. I smelled like bleach all afternoon. October 8: Girls laughing at me in bio today. Turns out someone wrote a letter to Casey Ryan, the hottest girl in my class, and signed my name on it.
The worst part of it was that Caitlin hadn’t even seen it happening . . . and they went to the same school. She’d been too busy with soccer and Josh to worry. Taylor never came to her, either. He never complained during family dinners or on weekends. He just . . . endured it, until he broke.
Hot tears pricked her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she choked out, staring at her brother’s grave, the guilt washing over her anew. “I wish I’d known. I wish I hadn’t been so selfish.”
“Cate?”
Caitlin jumped and looked over. A tall guy in rumpled skinny jeans and a gray T-shirt was walking toward her. For a moment, she thought he was Josh, but then she realized he was Jeremy Friday—Josh’s younger brother.
“H-hey,” she said. “W-what are you doing here?”
Jeremy gave her a sad smile. “Probably the same thing you are.”
Caitlin blinked. Right. Jeremy and Taylor had been friends. Whenever the families had dinner together, they’d disappear and play video games for hours.
Jeremy crouched down next to Taylor’s headstone and positioned a tiny figurine on the top. “There you go, buddy,” he said softly. He moved to the back of the headstone and plucked several more figures from the ground. Though they were faded and muddy, he propped them back up next to the new one. Caitlin had always wondered who brought those figurines.
“Is that a character from Dragon Ball Z?” she said.
Jeremy glanced at her. “How did you know that?”
She felt her cheeks redden. “I might have watched an episode or fifty with Taylor. Just to keep him company or whatever.”