“Okay,” he said, uncertain. He eyed us both again before continuing down the hall.
I started to follow him, but then changed my mind and turned back to Justin. “I’ll give you one more day. One. Think you can remember that?”
Done with him, I spun around again and walked away.
twenty-three
Senior Year
CHEMISTRY HAS BECOME MY FAVORITE CLASS. Not because I like the material, but because it’s the only class where I feel like I’m on the verge of fitting in again. And it’s all due to Noelle.
Every time we have a lab or group project, she always chooses to work with me. Since she acts so normal and friendly around me, more of my classmates have been following suit. In this class, I’m not the girl everyone’s afraid to talk to for fear of saying the wrong thing. Having a friend makes me more accessible; if someone as nice and cool as Noelle feels comfortable around me, then maybe I’m okay after all.
If only I could convince myself of this. Months of agonizing grief and guilt have made me question every good thing that comes my way.
“Noelle,” I say during chemistry class on Wednesday. We’re supposed to be filling out a worksheet, but Mr. Haggerty (aka Mr. Clean) is outside in the hall gabbing with another teacher and everyone’s taking advantage of his absence to talk. “Do you know about me?”
She stops doodling on the worksheet and gives me a baffled look. “What do you mean?”
“Do you know about—” Uneasy, I concentrate on a scratch on the table, running my finger over it. “Do you know what happened with Ethan’s sister? How she was killed?”
Noelle’s eyes go wide and she blinks at me once before looking away. “Oh. Uh, yeah. I saw a few newspaper articles online. And Hunter told me about it too. The real story, I mean, not what some of the idiots around here think happened.”
Several emotions hit me at once and I can’t tell which is most powerful—relief or surprise or embarrassment. Of course she’s heard the rumors. “Everyone else knows too? Kel and Corey and Julia? The real story, I mean?”
She nods.
“So you knew about me all this time and you still . . .”
“Still what?” she says when I let the thought trail off. “Still wanted to be friends with you? Why wouldn’t I? You’re not a sociopath.” Her pale face flushes pink. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so crass. My mom’s always telling me to stop being crass. It’s just—I see how some people treat you around here, like they think you have no business walking the halls like everyone else. As if what happened to you couldn’t happen to any one of them. And I’ve always been the type to root for the underdog, so—” She turns even redder and covers her face with her hands. “Sorry,” she repeats. “Not that you’re a dog. I’m just going to stop talking now.”
I grab my pencil and start doodling on my side of the sheet. “You mean you felt sorry for me.”
“No.” She drops her hands, looking horrified. “I wanted to be friends with you because I like you. To be honest, Ethan’s talked about you so much since I met him, I felt like I knew you even before you came back to school.”
My pencil halts right in the middle of sketching a five-point star. “Really?”
“Really. And not stuff about what happened with you and his sister either. He talked about you. What you were like, you know, before. How amazing he thought you were. And at the end of summer, when he found out you were back in town . . .” She picks up her pencil again and fills in the rest of my star. “He was freaked, Dara. Not because he didn’t want to see you, but because he wasn’t sure if you wanted to see him. He was convinced you thought he hated you.”
“I did,” I say, swallowing hard. Knowing these things about Ethan makes me feel sad and frustrated, like I missed out on something good I didn’t even know I had.
“Well, let me assure you, that boy has never hated you. Even when he couldn’t forgive you, he still didn’t hate you. I’m glad you guys were able to move past everything and be friends again.” She nudges me with her elbow. “Or should I say friends with benefits? I hear Corey walked in on you two after band practice on Saturday. That couch is pretty comfortable, right? Hunter and I get a lot of use out of it too.”
I manage to smile thinly in response, even though my brain is stuck on something else she said. Even when he couldn’t forgive you . . . What does she mean? What exactly has Ethan told his friends that he hasn’t told me?
All this time, I assumed he meant it when he said he didn’t blame me for Aubrey’s death. But hearing this makes me wonder if there’s something to my parents’ suspicions, after all.
Maybe, buried so deep he doesn’t even fully realize it, Ethan is angrier at me than he lets on.
My mother recently instated a rule that we all must do something together, as a family, every Friday evening. Like our mandatory family dinners, these evenings feel forced and unnatural. Tonight, it’s a kid-friendly movie in the living room, but I’m having trouble following the plot. I feel restless and distracted, and for the first time since Aubrey died, I’m not even trying to keep still. It’s like my body suddenly needs to make up for all those months of inertness.
About halfway through the movie, my phone vibrates with a text from Ethan. You free?
Kind of, I type back.
Free enough to come out? I’m right outside your house.
I want to go to the window and peek through the curtains, but that would arouse suspicion, so I don’t. Instead, I text Be right there and stand up. My mother looks at me.
“I’m going out for a couple of hours.”
She frowns. “Dara, it’s family time.”
In order to have family time, you need to feel like a family, I want to reply, but that would probably set my father off again, so I say, “I know, but I forgot I made plans to go for a drive with Ethan. Sorry.”
Dad’s face twitches, but he doesn’t say anything. Tobias doesn’t even glance away from the TV, and Mom sighs like I just ruined her life. I take that as permission.
“I won’t be late,” I promise as I head for the front door. I throw on my coat and leave before anyone has time to change their minds.
I fully expect to see Ethan’s car when I get outside, so I’m surprised when it’s nowhere on my street. As I’m about to pull out my phone and text him, he steps out from behind the neighbor’s tree and scares the hell out of me.
“Damn it, Ethan,” I say as he wraps his arms around me, pulling me against his cold body. My heart races, partly from the scare and partly from his proximity. “I thought you meant you were picking me up in your car so we could go for a drive.”
“My car’s low on gas, so I’m picking you up for a walk instead.”
“You walked here from your house?” Aubrey and I used to walk to each other’s houses whenever our parents were unavailable to drive us, so I know it takes about fifteen minutes at a brisk pace. “Wasn’t it cold?”