“No.” Mattie said it quickly. “Please, no. I don’t want them here.”
“Can I ask why?” His aunt sat down in the chair next to his bed. She crossed her legs and folded her hands over her knees. Mattie wondered when she’d become so perceptive.
“Because I’m fine,” Mattie said. “I mean, look at me. I’m good. And because we both know my mother likes to make a bigger deal out of things than necessary.”
His aunt looked at him sternly, her fingers tapping on her lips, and then her face split into a smile. “I’ll give you that. Your mother does like to make something of a scene. Well, okay. Let me step out to call and let them know you’re okay.”
Mattie nodded. “Thanks.” His aunt pushed herself of out the chair and disappeared into the hallway, leaving Mattie alone with his thoughts.
And his guilt.
He had kissed Ivy. Tonight. And why? For what? Nothing was going to ever happen with Ivy. He liked her, sure. He actually liked Ivy a lot. Behind her mean girl exterior, she was actually pretty decent. And she was beautiful, sure—he was definitely attracted to her. But he could never be with her—because every time he saw her, he saw Stratford’s lifeless body.
Murder was not a foundation on which great romances were built, unless you were Dexter or something.
And there was Mattie’s other . . . transgression.
Well.
It had been a party.
A party he was supposed to go to with Derrick.
But Derrick called five minutes before he was supposed to be at Mattie’s house to pick him up, and he said he was sick. Only Derrick didn’t sound sick. He told Mattie he needed to stay in. That he’d catch up with him tomorrow.
“Okay,” Mattie had said. “I hope you feel better.”
Derrick had coughed, twice. “Thanks.”
But Mattie had a feeling, a dark, twisted feeling, deep in his gut, and it was reaching up to curl around his heart. And he decided to go to the party anyway, to see if Derrick was there.
So he’d walked in. Without Derrick.
It was a vacation home near the woods, one that had been boarded up for some time. The entire place had the strange, sick smell of spilled beer and vomit that had never been properly cleaned up. Instead of carpet, the living room had AstroTurf. Loud music pounded through the house, rattling the glass in the window frames. A shattered television was perched precariously on a skinny bookshelf never meant to serve as a TV stand.
It had not been Mattie’s scene.
Jayla, a girl he halfway knew from his history class, got him a shot called “Panty Dropper” that was a pale red and tasted like fruit punch. He took two. He hated the party already.
And then Jayla had started doing this weird dance, out of nowhere. Like she was trying to distract him.
So he’d turned around. And he saw Derrick, his shoulders hunched, tiptoeing through the crowd like he was trying not to be seen.
“Derrick!” Mattie shouted. “Hey!”
But Jayla had grabbed on to him and spun him back to face her. “Space!” she had said, waving her hand in front of his face like she was trying to hypnotize him. “Give the boy some space!”
Mattie’s heart had crumbled into a million pieces.
She poured two more shots, spilling the liquid all over the counter. She clicked her glass against his, and they took them together. It left a burning trail down Mattie’s throat, like a race car in a movie that left flames in its tread marks.
“What’s in these?” Derrick asked. He frowned at the orange cooler someone had probably jacked from the football field.
“Kool-Aid and Everclear!” She pulled an empty glass bottle from the counter and shook it at him. “Do you want another?”
He had needed another.
(And another after that.)
His memory got fuzzy about the whole thing then, but somehow, he’d ended up in the backyard with Jayla and there had been some sort of tree house and there had definitely been kissing and probably, if he was honest with himself, something else.
And that was the first time he cheated on Derrick.
He had tried to rationalize it. Tried to say that Derrick had lied to him. Derrick was hiding from him. But what was wrong with a little space? And why hadn’t Mattie just given it to him? But no. He’d gotten trashed . . . and Mattie never got trashed.
And instead of talking their problems out and trying to fix stuff, Mattie had cheated.
It was why he deserved to be punished.
And now he was. Whoever was in that truck—whoever was driving—had gotten awfully close to killing him. Maybe someone actually was trying to kill him. Maybe the truck had just missed.
His eyes burned, and before he realized it, tears were falling down his cheeks. Everything was coming apart and it was all some sort of giant karmic paycheck that the universe was cashing, all at once.