“You got your phone back?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I’m only allowed to use it between nine and ten, and only after I’ve finished practice and homework.” She paused for a millisecond before shifting to the main reason she was calling. “Did you talk to him? How did it go?”
Feeling better now, I settled in, fulfilled my best-friend duty, and told her everything. Well, almost everything. I left out the part about the tree house, even though not mentioning it filled me with guilt. But at the same time I wanted to keep those moments for myself, stashing them away in the tiny, secret drawer in my brain only I could open.
nine
Senior Year
I’VE GOTTEN INTO THE HABIT OF LINGERING IN classrooms after the dismissal bell. Pointed looks from teachers, silently urging me to hurry the hell up so they can go home, are better than navigating crowded hallways and overhearing people laugh and make plans for their weekends. I always feel most like an outsider at the end of the week.
Mrs. Tippet, my math teacher, clears her throat loudly as I stand beside my desk on Friday afternoon, slowly gathering my notes together. I’m the last one to leave, as usual.
“Enjoy your weekend,” she says when I finally start moving toward the door.
“You too,” I mumble.
The mob in the hallway has thinned out considerably by the time I reach my locker. The place always clears out extra fast on Fridays. I used to clear out fast too, back when I looked forward to weekends. Back when I had friends and a social life. Something else I hadn’t anticipated about coming back here—the loneliness. I wasn’t exactly popular before, but people thought I was fun and generally liked being around me. I miss that sense of acceptance.
That’s what I’m thinking about when I open my locker and a folded sheet of white paper falls out—my former social life. So it takes a moment to sink in that I’ve received another anonymous delivery.
My heart seizes as I unfold it, expecting more crude stick figures, but it’s something even worse. Someone has photocopied two rectangular sections of newspaper, placed side by side on the sheet. I know immediately what they are. One is an article on Aubrey’s death that was published in our local newspaper on June 12, the day after it happened. The other is her obituary.
My eyes land on the obituary first. I’ve seen it before, of course, but seeing it again now sends a jolt through me. My brain registers only fragments of sentences—“deeply saddened” . . . “sudden passing” . . . “always in our hearts”—because all I can really see is the picture at the top. It’s a school photo, polished and posed, but it still looks like Aubrey. Her dark curly hair fills the frame, and she’s smiling the way she always did in pictures—tight and closemouthed—like she was trying to hide crooked teeth even though she’d worn braces at thirteen and her teeth were straight and perfect.
My gaze skips over to the news article. I’ve read this one before. I’ve read all of them, over and over, but this one sticks out because it was the first of several published that week.
TEEN DIES AFTER BEING HIT BY TRUCK
A Hadfield High student was struck and killed by a pickup truck on Tuesday morning. The incident happened on Fulham Road in Hyde Creek at about 11:30 a.m. Police have not yet disclosed the name of the student, but several sources have identified her as 16-year-old Aubrey McCrae.
Hyde Creek Police Staff Sgt. Peter Blakely told reporters that witnesses at the scene saw two girls “messing around” on the sidewalk when the incident occurred. Investigators are looking into the possibility that horseplay led to McCrae tripping and falling into the path of the truck. She was run over and died at the scene.
All final exams at Hadfield High are canceled today, but the school will remain open for students who wish to come in and speak to the team of grief counselors on hand.
Horseplay. Such a dumb term. It makes me think of when I was little, perching on my dad’s back as he crawled around the floor, giving me “horsey rides.” Or playing with Tobias, swinging him around until we were both too dizzy to stand. I never, ever thought it would be used in a newspaper article to explain how my playful pushing resulted in my best friend lying under a truck.
Luckily, no one needs to worry about my “horseplaying” anymore. Now I keep my hands to myself. Now I am a statue.
I look up from the paper and glance around, but the hallway is still empty. Whoever is putting these in my locker isn’t interested in sticking around to see my reaction. They don’t want to be known. I consider taking the paper down to the office and shoving it under Mr. Lind’s nose, but that won’t solve anything. What can the principal do about it? Set up surveillance in the hall? Hold an assembly and ask the culprit to come forward?
I’d rather get the passive-aggressive locker mail.
Instead of scrunching it up and tossing it in the trash like the last note, I take out an unused green notebook and place it neatly inside. I’m not sure why I want to keep it. Maybe because I don’t have the heart to destroy an image of Aubrey’s face, even if it is being used to hurt me.
Outside, the sky is the bruised shade of an impending thunderstorm. I start walking, fast. Now that I take the long way home, bypassing the shortcut path leading to Fulham Road, there’s a good chance I’ll be drenched by the time I reach my house.
The clouds open up as I cross over to Bartlett, the street that takes me around Fulham and turns what could be an eight-minute walk home into a twenty-two-minute one. But I don’t mind. I yank the hood of my sweatshirt over my hair and keep walking, so entranced by the polka-dot pattern the raindrops are making on the sidewalk, I don’t notice the car pulling up beside me until I hear my name.
I jump like someone shot me and spin around, startled to see an old silver Saturn idling at the curb. Even more surprising is that Ethan’s sitting in the driver’s seat.
“Need a lift?” he says, leaning his head out the window.
I’m so surprised, I respond with the first thing that enters my brain: “You drive?”
He gives me an odd look. “Yeah, I’ve been legally allowed to operate a motor vehicle since last April, so no need to act so horrified. My driving record is spotless.” A fat drop of rain splashes off his forehead and he ducks his head back inside. “Come on. It’s pouring.”
I stand still for a moment, hesitant and dripping, then circle around to the passenger seat and climb in. The inside is blessedly warm and dry.
“I didn’t mean to act horrified,” I say, buckling myself in. “I just . . . I don’t know.”
He merges back onto the road. “No, I get it. I’m still that skinny little kid who’s afraid of his own shadow, right?”