Every time I think I’ve experienced the worst day yet, there is a new winner.
Just to make my humiliation complete, Hudson appears to join their little group. He’s wearing his football uniform, but it’s not yet caked in dirt, which means he’s heading over to practice. I’m sure he wanted to see the look on my face as I experienced the locker of shaving cream. Hell, for all I know, he’s the one who cut the lock. I doubt Kenzie did that herself.
“What’s going on?” he says, his pale blue eyes looking right at me for a change.
Kenzie snickers. “Addie is having some issues. Anyway, we better get to practice.”
Hudson is staring in my direction, a frown on his face. Through most of elementary school, he got bullied pretty badly. I remember once on the playground, after a morning of rain, the ground was all muddy, and some kids pushed him so that he fell face down in the mud. He didn’t fight back though. He just took it, like he always did. I was the one who helped him up and took him to the bathroom to get cleaned up after.
To my surprise, instead of joining Kenzie, Hudson walks over to where I’m standing in front of my shaving cream–filled locker. For a moment, I get the urge to throw my arms around his padded shoulders for the hug he would have given me before our whole friendship fell apart. “Addie? What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I mumble. “I just need to get this cleaned up.”
His eyes rake over the gallons of shaving cream in my locker. “Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
He glances over to where Kenzie and her friends are standing, then looks back at me. “Let me help you get it cleaned up.”
These are literally the most words Hudson has said to me in months. He means well, but he has to realize that he can’t help me clean up my locker. Kenzie won’t allow it.
Sure enough, Kenzie’s voice calls out, “Hudson! We have to get to practice!”
“You should go,” I tell him. “Your girlfriend is going to be mad at you.”
His eyes darken. “She’s not my boss. I’m going to help you.”
“Hudson!” She doesn’t come closer to us, but her sharp voice fills the hallway. “We’re going to be late if you don’t come right now!”
“Screw her,” he mumbles under his breath. “Come on. We can get this done quickly.”
I look over at Kenzie, who seems nothing short of furious. She broke into my locker and vandalized it, and I haven’t even done anything to her to deserve it. I can’t imagine what hell she’ll bring down on me for hijacking her boyfriend.
“Listen,” I say, “you’ve got practice. You should go.”
“No,” he says firmly. “I’m going to help you. I want to.”
“Except you’re making it worse.”
He jerks his head back. He was trying to be a good guy and help an old friend, but he has to realize I’m right. Kenzie is getting angrier by the second, and if I let him help me, there will be retribution. As painful as it will be to clean this up by myself, it’s better this way.
“Addie…” he says.
“Really. Go to practice. You’ve done enough.”
Hudson doesn’t look happy about it, but he obligingly turns around to join Kenzie. Although before he disappears down the hallway, he turns around to look at me one last time. And he looks so sad.
That surprises me. I mean, Hudson is now one of the most popular kids in school. His life is infinitely better than it was when it was just us two losers hanging out together. But for a moment, I wonder if he misses when it was just the two of us. I wonder if he misses me as much as I miss him.
But we’re never going to be able to be friends again. Things will never be the way they used to be between the two of us.
Not since Hudson helped me kill my father.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Twenty-Eight
ADDIE
I END up grabbing a lot of paper towels.
The best thing would be if I could figure out how to get a hose and spray down the entire locker. I grabbed most of my books from the bottom of the locker, and I formed a little stack on the floor. For the most part, they seem to have survived the shaving cream, so there’s that.
It would’ve been easier if Hudson were helping me. Of course it would be. It almost killed me to have to send him away, especially since he was extending the first olive branch since it all went down nearly a year ago.
I will never forget that day. The best and worst day of my life.
As I clean out the shaving cream from my locker, I close my eyes and remember the evening my father stumbled home drunk for the zillionth time. It wasn’t even that late, but of course, it didn’t matter. My dad could be drunk at two in the afternoon.
Hudson was at my house studying. We often studied together, although now he had football practice and on top of that a part-time job, but whenever he could, he came by. Hudson’s strongest subject was math and weakest was English, the reverse from me, so we tried to help each other.
He looked alarmed when we heard my father yelling downstairs. I remember telling him, Just ignore it. He’ll probably pass out soon.
But that wasn’t what happened.
My father bounded up the stairs of our house, yelling and screaming. And when he found Hudson in my room with the door closed, he was livid. Despite the fact that he knew we were friends, we were clearly studying, and Hudson had been coming around since we were little kids, he started yelling about how I was a slut and Hudson was taking advantage of his daughter. And he just wouldn’t stop.
It was Hudson who finally stood up to him. He had been working out for football for nearly a year and a half, and he had grown over the summer and was now taller than my father. He stood over him and said in a low growl, You can’t talk to Addie like that.
Anyone with common sense would have backed down at that point, but not a guy who had recently downed a bottle of whiskey. Hudson was only making him angrier.
The two of them kept shouting at each other in the hallway. It was my father who shoved Hudson first, right in his chest. I don’t know what Hudson would have done next. I don’t know if he had it in him to punch my father in the face, even though his hand was already balling into a fist.
As it turned out, though, I was the one who shoved my father back.
I didn’t even realize how close we were to the stairwell. I was as surprised as anyone when he stumbled hard backward and then went tumbling down the stairs. Hudson and I both flinched when we heard the sickening thump at the bottom of the stairs. We raced down the steps and found my father lying in a crumpled pile, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle.
Hudson was freaking out. I saw him endure years of bullying and never shed a tear, but this was the first time he looked like he might cry. He’s dead, Addie! We killed him!
I wasn’t absolutely sure he was dead, but I wasn’t going to get close enough to him to find out. And I wasn’t going to take the heat for giving him exactly what he deserved.
We have to get out of here, I told Hudson.
He stared at me, blinking his watery eyes. What are you talking about? We have to call the police. Or…or an ambulance…
You want to go to jail?
I had to drag Hudson out the back door. We took the shortcut from my house to his back door, and ten minutes later, we were safely locked in his bedroom. I tried my best to stay calm, but Hudson continued freaking out. This is wrong, he kept saying. We have to tell someone what happened. We have to call the police, Addie.
Of course, only an hour later, my mom came home from her shift at the hospital and found my father lying dead at the bottom of the stairs. There was no evidence of foul play, and his blood alcohol level made it clear that he had lost his balance at the top of the stairs and taken a tragic fall. And as far as anyone knew, Hudson and I were together in his room studying the whole evening. So nobody ever found out about our roles in his death.