Spencer leaned toward me and whispered. "Some of us think maybe she didn't really do it. Maybe someone else killed her and the suicide thing is a cover up."
"You watch too much CSI," I said.
"No, really. I mean, didn't she go out with Bradley right before she died? Maybe he did it. I heard the principal called him into his office to talk about—"
I'd ground the lead of my pencil nearly down to a stump. I should have realized everyone at school would be wondering about Haylee and Bradley. They'd been seen in public together at the dance. No wonder Bradley was hiding. "Do the proof," I said.
Spencer just could not get the hint. "Or maybe her parents did it. I mean, why would Haylee—"
"Shut up," I said. "Her parents had nothing to do with it. This was Haylee's choice, okay?" I gripped my pencil even harder, so hard I was afraid it might splinter in my hand. Then at least I could go to the nurse.
Did I really feel that way? Did I really blame Haylee for what she'd done? I wasn't sure. But I was certain I didn't want to hash those feelings out with Spencer.
My hands went cold. The only person I wanted to talk about it with was Haylee.
Spencer went on like I hadn't even spoken. "Maybe—"
Lynette Handley reached from behind Spencer and whacked him on the back of the head.
Spencer rubbed the back of his hair. "Hey! What's that for?"
Lynette glared at him. "Spencer, why are you such a dickwad?"
At least I wasn't the only one he was pissing off.
He looked at her all wide-eyed. "What'd I do?"
"You're freaking clueless. Leave her alone."
I hunched my shoulders over my paper, trying to focus on the diagram in front of me. The numbers slipped in and out of my mind like they were coated in Vaseline. I dug my nails into the paint on my pencil.
Christmas break couldn't come fast enough.
As I finished the proof, I could feel Spencer looking at my paper over my shoulder. He scrawled something down on his own paper. I was pretty sure my answer was wrong, so copying wasn't going to help him. I heard the lead on his pencil—my pencil—snap, and he leaned over to me again. "Got a sharpener?"
"No."
Spencer got up, jammed my pencil into the wall-sharpener, and wound the handle around, grinding away. I'd be lucky if I got it back with more than a stub left.
I lifted my head to find Mr. Craig sitting at his desk, studying me. When I met his eyes, he smiled. I thought about smiling back, so he'd think I was okay and leave me alone, but the corners of my mouth felt like they were tacked down.
Spencer plunked himself back down in Haylee's seat, and started to open his mouth. If he said one more thing to me, I was going to put my pencil right through his eye. Spencer was always annoying, but he'd never provoked me to violence before, which meant I was being more pissy than normal. I wondered if "bitch" was one of the stages of grief.
I stood up out of my seat before Spencer could get more than a syllable out of his mouth, and marched over to Mr. Craig's desk. "Can I go to the bathroom?" I asked.
Mr. Craig looked up at me. "How are you doing?"
"Fine." Fine was my new best friend. The magical F word that really meant I don't want to talk about it, but didn't sound as rude.
"Have you thought about seeing the counselor?"
"I just want to go to the bathroom."
Mr. Craig nodded. "Take the pass."
I walked out the door without saying anything to Spencer, grabbing the hall pass on my way—a toilet seat, complete with lid. I think Mr. Craig did that so nobody would steal it. It's pretty hard to lose something that tacky.
I kept my eyes glued to the floor, following the ugly rows of green and orange tiles, lining my feet up so that I stepped directly in the center of each square. I was so intent on it that I didn't register that someone was calling my name until I'd already passed him.
"Kira? Hello?"
I whirled around.
Nick stood in the middle of the hall, waving. "Hey," he said. "How's it going?" His eyes flicked to the toilet seat.
"Hall pass," I said. But I twisted it around behind my back, so he wouldn't stare.
"Mr. Craig?"
So it was infamous. "Yeah," I said. "Geometry. What are you doing?"
Nick waved a paper at me. "Taking the roll to the office." Nick was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a digital clock on it. As I watched, the design shifted, ticking off the seconds. I blinked. What looked like a logo was actually a glowing digital clock embedded in the cotton.
Then I realized I was totally staring at Nick's pecs. That's why I couldn't wear shirts like that. I'd be giving guys license to look at my chest.
Nick looked down at his shirt and smiled. "Awesome, huh?"
Yes, I thought, that's totally the reason I'm staring. "How does it work?"
Nick stepped close to me. He pulled a battery pack out of his pocket. A plastic cord ran up into the hem.
I tugged on the pack, and the outline of the cord tensed under his shirt.
He smiled as my hand brushed his, and I got so lost in his eyes that I nearly fell over.
I looked up at the ceiling, keeping my feet planted on the floor. "How do you wash it?" I asked.
Great, Kira. Let's talk about laundry. That didn't make me the most boring girl in history.
"It's detachable," Nick said. "Hey, after you left the reception, my mom and I went through some more of Haylee's room looking for the journal."
Oh, no. Oh no, no, no. I tried to smile casually, but I was pretty sure it came out as a menacing grimace. "Did you find it?"
He shook his head. "Not yet. We were just trying to do Aunt Hazel a favor, so she wouldn't have to do it. But I felt pretty creepy going through Haylee's stuff."
If Haylee hadn't already died literally, she would have died figuratively from having a guy dig around in her room, cousin or no. "Maybe I could help you look sometime," I said.
Nick shook his head. "Hazel said she wanted to do it, though I don't really see why. It's depressing in there."
Ugh. There went my chance. If I couldn't get in there to help, I at least needed to distract them. "Maybe Haylee threw the journal out," I said. My cheeks burned, which was what I was pretty sure my soul was going to do as a punishment for this lie. "You know, since she planned this, I guess."
"Maybe," Nick said. And as he stared at his Vans, I knew he was thinking about those last hours of Haylee's life, about what she must have been thinking. He had to be asking the same question I was.
If she thought about this ahead of time, why didn't she talk to me?
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Don't be," Nick said. His hand hesitated in the air, then dropped to his side.
The number of ways this boy could not touch me was truly astounding.
We looked at each other for a moment, and finally Nick said, "Are you okay?"
The hall was so silent, you could have heard his clock tick, if it hadn't been digital. Did he mean right now, or in general? Either way, that question had both a million answers, and none. I went with the F word. "Fine, I guess."
He nodded, even though I was pretty sure he knew that I wasn't. "We could talk sometime, if you want."
If only I could stop spouting lies long enough to carry on a normal conversation. "Maybe," I said.
Nick cringed a little. "I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to."
"No, I do," I said, cutting him off. "I didn't mean to say that I didn't. I just—"
"I'll call you later, then, okay?"
He'd call me later. Nick Harbourne would call me later. "Okay," I said.
Nick gave me a half-wave, then turned and walked down the hall.
Smooth, Kira. A truly brilliant performance. No doubt Nick would be dreaming about me, now.
In his weirdest nightmares.
I stomped the rest of the way to the bathroom. Before, running in to Nick was easy enough. I'd never needed an excuse to see him—I could
just tag along whenever his family got together with Haylee's. I was practically another cousin. Maybe we weren't friends exactly, but he didn't seem to be repulsed by spending time with me. Things were normal. I knew how to handle normal.
I shoved open the bathroom doors. Now talking to Nick felt like stepping into one of Haylee's plays, only I didn't know my blocking or my lines.
I splashed cold water on my face, and gripped the edge of the sink. I needed to process this, to parse every detail of what he said. Later, when I told the story to—
Oh.
Oh, no. No, no, no.
How could I forget even for a moment? I would never, never tell this story.
There was no one to tell.
One Week After
The hardness of the bench seats alone should have been enough to make me cry at Haylee's funeral, but my traitorous eyes stayed dry. As the minister droned on, my mother sniffled and tugged tissues from the mini-pack in her purse. Two rows ahead of me, I could see the girl who sat two tables away from us at lunch pawing at her eyes with her sleeve. In the front row, I could see Hazel crying into Aaron's shoulder. He turned once, to look at something behind me. His eyes were rimmed with red.
I tried not to blink through the service. If my eyes stayed open long enough, surely they'd start to water. But my mouth was parched. I was shriveling up like a raisin. My body might be seventy percent water, but not one drop of it collected in my eyes.
I wished I was Haylee. She cried at everything—movies, failed tests, imagined insults. Sometimes at nothing.
She didn't have to sit here, not knowing what to do next. She didn't have to face the next days—weeks, months, years—without her.
The funeral was easiest for the corpse.
Chapter Four
My last-period English class was the only other class I shared with Haylee, and I walked toward it as slowly as I could. The last thing I wanted to look at was another empty desk.
When I arrived, I found a seating chart on the white board. The chart on the board showed no empty seats. One of the desks in the room had been removed. Ms. Roxburg must not have wanted to look at Haylee's desk any more than I did. But this was worse than the empty desk: it had only been a week, and now Haylee's space would be not just empty, but erased.
The room was already full, so it wasn't hard to find my seat, on the opposite side of the classroom from where I used to sit. Bradley Johansen was supposed to sit directly in front of me, but his desk was empty.
When Ms. Roxburg walked to the front of the room to start class, Bradley's seat was still empty. He had to be avoiding me.
No, that was the kind of self-centered thinking Haylee always got trapped in. Bradley barely knew I existed—he wouldn't skip school just to avoid me. He might be sick.
Or maybe he'd done something cruel to Haylee, and he felt too guilty to come to school. Spencer said the principal had talked to him. Had he been suspended?
Unless he'd been expelled, or fled the country, he had to come back to school eventually. But what if he skipped the next two days, and didn't come back until after the break? I couldn't wait two and a half weeks to confront him.
I spent class staring at the back of Bradley's chair, as if I could will him into it. Before I knew it, the last bell was ringing. Ms. Roxburg must have noticed that I was dazed through her class, but she'd let it slide. I wondered how long my free pass to bad classroom behavior would last.
Hopefully a while, since I had no intention of writing that essay about Tess.
After school, I walked over to Haylee's house. This time I had my backpack, so I'd have someplace to put the journal. If it was true that Hazel was actively searching for it, I couldn't afford to leave it in the crawl space forever.
On a normal day I would have walked right in, even though Hazel hated it when I did that. Haylee didn't live here anymore, so I rang the doorbell. The Ricks had one of those tune doorbells—the kind you can set to play one of eight different songs. This time of year, Hazel set it to "Jingle Bells."
For a long minute I thought no one would answer the door, but then the curtains stirred in the front window and I saw Hazel peek out at me. She opened the door looking even worse than she had at the funeral. Before, the bright makeup made her features look painted on, but today she hadn't bothered to put any on, and her hair pulled back from her face in a tight bun, making her look pinched and faded.
"Hi, Kira," she said. She didn't step aside to let me in, like she would have if Haylee were home.
"Hey," I said. "Um, I'm here because I think I left something in Haylee's room a while ago. My math book. Can I go up to her room to check?"
"Oh," Hazel said. "I've already packed up her books and given them to the school. If yours was with them, they probably have it."
Hazel sure got right on that. That was like her, though. She couldn't stand leaving things undone.
"Do you think I can go up and look anyway?" I said. "Maybe you missed it. It wasn't with the others."
Hazel sighed. "I'm sorry," she said, already beginning to close the door. "Now really isn't a good time."
I bounced on the balls of my feet, like I was eight years old, asking for Haylee to come out to play. "I'll be quiet. I won't bother you at all."
Hazel's voice dropped. "Haylee's father stayed home from work," she said. "And he's really not up for visitors."
I wasn't a visitor. He was my coach; I was practically his second daughter. I'd been calling him by his first name for years. But that didn't stop Hazel from closing the door in my face.
Three Weeks Before
When cross-country ended, Haylee and I started walking home together again. On a Tuesday, Ms. Roxburg stopped me to discuss an in-class essay I'd faked my way through based on Haylee's description of the first few chapters of Tess. Haylee went ahead to my locker, but came back to meet me at the classroom door with a scowl on her face.
"What's up?" I asked.
Haylee gave me a look to end all looks. "You have to see this," she said. "I have no words."
She marched me down the hallway and around the corner. There, square on my locker, were Bradley Johansen and Fiona Gil, her legs wrapped around his waist, and his hands on either side of her, pinning her to the locker door. Their heads tilted to opposite sides, and their lips locked together like Lincoln Logs. Fiona's skirt had slid all the way up to the top of her thighs, and only Bradley's torso blocked our view of the underwear I sincerely hoped she was wearing.
"Ew," I said.
Haylee sighed.
I walked up three lockers away and cleared my throat, but I don't think they could hear me over the sound of the sucking of their own faces.
I mentally counted through the books in my locker. There wasn't anything in there I had to have. But when I looked back at Haylee, I found her shrinking against the opposite bank of lockers.
No one did that to my best friend.
I moved even closer and knocked on Karen Tran's locker, right next to mine.
Fiona's eyes popped open, and she had to turn her face ninety degrees to separate herself from Bradley.
"Move," I said.
Fiona's legs dropped to the ground, and Bradley took a step back. He glanced at me, only then seeming to notice my presence. "Sorry, Kira," he said. He pulled Fiona away from my locker by her tank-top strap, revealing a full cup of her bra as he led her toward the door to the parking lot.
I looked at my locker. I was sure this wasn't the first time someone had copped a feel against it, but I still didn't want to touch it.
Haylee crossed the hallway and slammed her back against Karen's locker, propping herself at a forty-five degree angle to the floor with her feet.
"Can you believe that?" she asked.
"No," I said. I didn't see how anyone could do anything so intimate in the halls of the school. By the end of the day, they always smelled like six flavors of BO. Not exactly a turn on.
But when I looked at Haylee, she was staring dreamily off into sp
ace. She turned to me, and gave me a half-smile. "He could kiss me like that anytime."
Chapter Five
The first night of winter break, I could smell Mom making hot chocolate—the good kind with real chocolate that she melted on the stove. She was probably hoping the aroma would beckon to me. I wanted to fight it, but the pull of steamy chocolate was too strong. I let my feet carry me into the kitchen.
Mom was still in her work clothes—black slacks and an off-white collared blouse. She'd wound her orange chiffon scarf around the back of one of the kitchen chairs. She smiled at me as I stood in the doorway, and pointed to bottles of flavoring on the counter.
"Mocha or mint?" she asked. "Or something else?"
I scrutinized the bottles. "Hazelnut?"
"Hazelnut it is."
Mom stirred the chocolate, watching it carefully. She'd put the flavoring in at the very end, since it didn't need to cook.
"Do you want to go see a movie tomorrow?" she asked without looking up at me.
"I don't know," I said. Mom liked to go to movies about women who got cancer or whose mothers had nervous breakdowns. I couldn't do it. Even a mindless disaster movie would feature too much death.
"I just thought," Mom said, still stirring, "that it might get your mind off things."
If people wanted to get my mind off things, they'd stop reminding me to get my mind off them. Besides, I wasn't entirely sure I should. If your best friend died, that seemed like the sort of thing that ought to stay on your mind for a while.
"We could even go tonight, if you want," Mom said. She pulled out two mugs and poured in the chocolate, followed by flavoring. She had to shake the hazelnut bottle to squeeze out the last drops. "It's not a school night."
I shrugged. "I think I'm going to practice."
"At night?" Mom asked, blowing on the top of her drink. "The neighbors don't like that."
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