“Well, he’s late today. What should we do?”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not even the real receptionist. Maybe everyone should just go home.”
“And if Stratford shows up after?”
“Your funeral.” She grinned at him.
There was that word again. He forced himself to smile back. He hated that word. “Funeral.” Would anyone show up to Stratford’s? Did anyone even care that he was gone? He couldn’t imagine Stratford had a family.
“Maybe I’ll go back for a little bit just in case,” Cade said.
“Cool. Have a good night, okay?” She smiled at him. “Fingers crossed that your professor doesn’t show up. You look like you could use a night off.”
Cade felt self-conscious. Was he wearing his stress so obviously? Like Mattie?
The receptionist winked at him. And then she was gone.
For some weird reason, she reminded Cade of his sister.
Ivy
Monday, June 15
“Mattie!” Ivy waved him over. “Hey!”
“Hey,” he said.
The other students walked around them like nothing was wrong. Like there couldn’t possibly be an evil explanation for why Stratford hadn’t shown. Like their lives hadn’t changed at all, other than a lucky break.
Ivy had heard them laughing on the way out. High-fiving. And she wished, more than anything, that she was one of them. That she could just be glad that Stratford hadn’t showed. Like she hadn’t been silently praying for him to impossibly appear in the doorway in one of his tattered blazers, angry and foul-breathed and ready to fail them all.
“Pretty cool we didn’t have class, huh?” Mattie asked. She shot him a half smile. She knew what he was trying to do. Act normal. Fit in.
Be like everyone else.
“Cool,” Ivy agreed dully. Together, they watched until the other students had climbed into their cars or onto their bikes and left, filing out of the parking lot like ants.
The others—Kinley and Tyler and Cade—didn’t so much as look at them when they walked out. Of course, Ivy didn’t want to look at anyone. Except maybe Mattie.
“Where’s your bike?” Ivy asked.
“I walked,” Mattie said. He didn’t quite meet her eyes.
“That’s way too far, Mattie. Seriously?”
He shrugged. “I guess I needed to blow off some steam.”
“Well, that’s crazy. Let me give you a ride home, okay?” Ivy put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Mattie. Get in. I’m not going to let you walk all the way back.”
“Okay.” Mattie followed Ivy to her hybrid Honda CR-Z. He opened the back door and shrugged off his backpack, tossing it into the seat.
He settled into the passenger side and breathed in deeply. “If I had this car,” he said, rubbing the dashboard, “I’d drive every single day.”
Ivy shrugged. “I don’t know. I hate driving. I don’t want the responsibility.” She turned the key. “I had this sort of nice Jetta, but my parents got tired of me relying on everyone else for a ride and leaving my car everywhere, and so they decided that if I had a better car then I’d want to drive, you know?”
“Did it work?” Mattie asked.
Ivy blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Well, I feel guiltier, but no, not completely.” She looked back and froze.
Her stomach went odd and cold, like she’d drank an entire bucket of ice water.
“What?” Mattie asked. “What is it?”
He turned back.
“It’s the car,” Ivy whispered.
The car from that night.
The rusted, screwed-up one that had turned into the parking lot as they left. Ivy could see it was a faint brown at one point, but now was smeared with rust.
The car chugged into the spot next to them, and the window rolled down.
“Hey!” said the woman driving. She rested one wrist on the wheel and leaned out, and Mattie rolled down his window. Ivy watched his face go pale and ghostly.
“Hi,” Ivy said, leaning over, pasting on a fake happiness. “Can I help you with something?”
The woman paused. She was older—perhaps sixty—and her hair was a wiry nest of brown and gray. Her teeth were a sick yellow color, like she’d been smoking all her life . . . and from the smell rolling out of the car through the open window, she had.
She was clothed in a gray-white tee that had been through the wash too many times.
“Maybe you can,” the woman said. “I’m Delilah Stratford. I’m just stopping by on my way back from the grocery store. I don’t suppose you’ve seen my husband?”
Ivy coughed. The ice-bucket feeling in her stomach surged and roiled. Stratford was married? Someone had actually looked at the man as they stood at the altar and agreed to love him forever? The knowledge was strange and powerful, and it struck her hard.
Stratford had family. A wife. He wasn’t the solitary type she’d imagined.