I eye him playfully, arching an eyebrow. “So you didn’t mean what you said?”
He lifts his ball cap and runs a hand through his hair. “I . . . well, yeah. I did.” He leans over and before I can utter a sarcastic remark about him even reading Nicholas Sparks his lips are on mine and the kiss is so powerful and full of life I have to remember to breathe.
38
Colter and I are walking out to my car when I realize Dean wasn’t in school today. I forgot to drive by his house this morning on the way to school. I pause in front of the parking lot and my body almost drops to the ground. He wasn’t in class today. How could I forget to check? I search my mind for what he was like yesterday. Was he more sad than normal? Did he have a look in his eye? Why didn’t I pay attention? I’ve been too busy making out with Colter to be there for Dean.
Maybe he’s just sick. He could be sick.
“What’s wrong?” Colter asks, getting into his front seat and buckling his seat belt.
I stand by his window and try not to show my worry. “I’m fine. Just a big test tomorrow.” I lean over and give him a quick kiss, but he grabs the back of my head when I try to separate and he deepens the kiss. Kissing him is an escape into the perfect world where Happy Ellery lives in peace, but I can’t think about that right now. “I love kissing you, but—” I mumble into his lips.
He smiles against my mouth. “Then don’t stop.”
We kiss for a few seconds more then I pull away and he groans. “I’m sorry. I have to study.” I glance around the parking lot when I say it so I’m not lying right to his face.
“Okay. Yeah, I have to get to work anyway. Call me tonight?”
“Sure. Have fun,” I say, trying to fake a smile.
He smiles and I’m lost in him again. “Always.”
I rush to Tasty’s and cup my eyes on the glass to see inside. The lights are off, but it’s four in the afternoon. It should be open right now. Maybe they have a meeting. He has to be here. He has to. My pulse jerks around like it’s on a string being pulled from behind me. I knock on the door. Two times, three. I lean into the glass again and squint to see if anyone is in the room. Okay, no one’s here. Maybe they just closed for inventory or something. A small ripple of dread slithers up my body. I run to my car and get in, slamming the door and pressing the gas. I head down to Baker Street where Dean lives.
He didn’t. He couldn’t have already.
It’s probably nothing.
You know it’s not nothing.
Before I get to his house I see the blue and red lights flash in the distance. I can’t tell whose house they’re in front of. That same feeling jams itself into my throat, the dread, the wanting to be wrong about it all. I drive slowly toward Dean’s house. I pass the white house with the blue shutters we used to ring the doorbell of and run away. I glance over at the tree where Jackson first taught us to climb. My breath comes out intermittently, like puffs out of an air gun. My foot slips off the gas as I near his house.
The lights are coming from his driveway.
Red and blue cover my vision and make me momentarily blind. I park my car and run up the road toward his house on rubber legs. The echo of my feet on the pavement sounds like an earthquake. My breathing is strained. I have to stop and bend over to catch my breath. I reach the driveway and I see Dean’s dad, tears flooding his face. I look for his mom.
Maybe something happened to his mom. He wouldn’t today.
Are you an idiot?
Yes, he would.
Why am I so angry? This is what he wanted. But this isn’t what you wanted.
His mom emerges from the front door being held up by another woman who’s lightly stroking her hair. I frantically look for Dean.
He’s not here.
He did it.
He killed himself.
Oh, God.
I get the sensation of spinning in a circle. When I was little I would spin in circles until I fell down, and I loved it. Now I don’t want to feel that. I don’t want that out-of-control feeling in me. I turn toward Dean’s dad and his tear-filled eyes lock with mine and there’s so much in them—fear, devastation, loss. He shakes his head slowly and walks toward me. I frantically look beside me for a place to run to, but he gets here too soon. The panic in my body has reached a threshold. I want to melt into the ground. I don’t want to hear what he’s going to say.
You know what he’s going to say.
But I don’t want to hear the words.
“Ellery. Oh, God. Maybe you should go.”
I close my hands into fists to keep from moving them. “What’s going on? Where’s Dean?”
He purses his lips together and wipes away the stray tears. His eyes grow wide and he looks in the distance above me like he can see Dean’s soul. “I don’t know how it . . . he just . . . God. I had no idea.”
“About what?” I ask, knowing the answer, knowing how cruel it is to ask him at a time like this, but I have to know.
His gaze settles on me. “How sick he was.”