Every Last Breath

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  lingering and some moving on as if they didn’t even notice me standing there, which was okay in a way, because I was used to being a ghost.

  But I wasn’t supposed to be a ghost anymore. Christ—that was the whole point of being here. My hand fluttered to the strap of my bag and, mouth dry, I forced my legs to move.

  First big step was joining the wave of people, slipping in beside them and focusing on the blond ponytail of the girl in front of me. My gaze dipped. She was wearing a jean skirt and sandals. Bright orange, strappy gladiator-style sandals. They were cute. I could tell her that. Strike up a conversation.

  I said nothing.

  Her legs were toned, as if she was a runner like Rosa. The girl in front of me had gorgeous legs. Mine were the equivalent of twigs, much like my arms. When I was younger, I remembered being told I’d blow away in a strong gust of wind. Not much had changed.

  And I really needed to stop staring at her legs.

  Lifting my gaze, my eyes collided with a boy next to me. Sleep clung to his expression. He didn’t smile or frown or do anything other than turn his attention back to the cell phone he held in his hand. I wasn’t even sure if he saw me.

  The morning air was warm, but the moment I stepped into the near frigid school, I was grateful for the thin cardigan I’d carefully paired with the tank top and jeans.

  From the entrance, everyone spread out in different directions. Smaller students who were roughly around my height, but were definitely much younger, speed-walked over the red and blue Viking painted on the floor, their book bags thumping off their backs as they dodged taller and broader bodies. Others walked like zombies, gaits slow and almost roaming aimlessly. I was somewhere in the middle, moving at a normal pace, average.

  But there were some who raced toward others, hugging them and laughing. I guessed they were friends who hadn’t seen each other over the summer break or maybe they were just really excitable people. Either way, I stared at them as I walked. Seeing them reminded me of Ainsley. Like me, she’d been homeschooled—still was—but if she wasn’t, I imagined we’d be like them right now, hopping toward one another, grinning and excited. Normal.

  Ainsley was probably still in bed.

  I took the stairwell at the end of the wide hall, near the entrance to the crowded cafeteria. Even being close to the lunch room had my heart thumping. I didn’t even want to think about that right now, because I might end up in that corner again.

  My locker was on the second floor, middle of the hall, number two-three-four. I found it with no problem, and hey, it opened on the first try. Twisting at the waist, I pulled out a binder I was using for my classes in the afternoon and dropped it on the top shelf, knowing that I was going to be collecting massive textbooks today.

  The locker beside mine slammed shut and my chin jerked up. A tall girl with tiny braids all over her head flashed a quick smile in my direction. “Hey.”

  By the time I got my tongue to form that one, stupid little word, she’d already spun and was halfway down the hall, and I was murmuring at air. Feeling about ten kinds of slow, I rolled my eyes and closed my locker door. Turning around, my gaze landed on the back of a guy heading in the opposite direction.

  I don’t even know why or how I ended up looking at him. Maybe it was because he was a good head taller than anyone around him. Like a total creeper, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from him. He had wavy hair, somewhere between blond and brown, and it was cut short against the nape of his bronzed neck, but was longer on the top. I wondered if it flopped on his forehead, and there was an unsteady tug at my chest that made me think of a boy I used to know years ago, whose hair always did that—fell forward. A boy it kind of hurt my chest to think about.

  His shoulders were broad under a black T-shirt, biceps defined in a way that made me think of someone who either played sports or did a lot of labor. His jeans were faded, but not in the expensive way. I knew the difference between name-brand jeans that looked well-worn and jeans that were simply old and on their last wear. He carried a single notebook in his hand, and even from where I stood, the notebook looked about as old as his pants did.

  Something weird wiggled in my chest, a feeling of familiarity, and as I stood in front of my locker, I let myself think something I hadn’t allowed myself to really consider.

  I might actually know some of the people here. Kids I’d grown up with, slept in the same house with. Maybe they wouldn’t remember me. It had been four years since I’d seen any of them, but I’d remember them and I especially remembered him.

  * * *

  Most of my classes were AP, and I blended right in, taking my seat in the back. No one talked to me. Not until before lunch, at the start of English, when a dark-haired girl with sloe-colored eyes sat in the empty seat across from me.

  “Hi,” she said, smacking a thick notebook on the flat surface attached to the chair. “I hear Mr. Newberry is a real jerk. Take a look at the pictures.”

  My gaze flickered to the front of the classroom. Our teacher hadn’t arrived yet, but the chalkboard was lined with photos of famous authors. Shakespeare, Voltaire, Hemingway, Emerson and Thoreau were a few I recognized, and I probably wouldn’t recognize them if I didn’t have endless time on my hands.

  “All dudes, right?” she continued, and when I looked back at her, the tight black curls bounced as she shook her head. “My sister had him two years ago. She warned me that he basically thinks you need a dick to produce anything of literary value.”

  My eyes went wide.

  “So I’m thinking this class should be a lot of fun.” She grinned, flashing straight, white teeth. “By the way, I’m Keira Hart. I don’t remember you from last year. Not that I remember everyone, but I think I would’ve at least seen you.”

  Sweat covered my palms as she continued to stare at me from dark brown eyes. The question she was throwing out was simple. The answer was easy. My throat dried and I could feel heat creeping up my neck as the seconds ticked by.

  Use your words.

  My toes curled against the soft leather soles of my flip-flops. “I’m... I’m new.”

  There! I did it. I spoke. Take that, Dr. Taft. Words were totally my bitch. All right, perhaps I was exaggerating my accomplishment since I technically only spoke two words and repeated one, but whatever.

  Keira didn’t seem to notice my internal dumbassery. “That’s what I thought.” And then she waited, and for a moment, I didn’t get why she was looking at me so expectantly. Then I did.

  My name. She was probably waiting for my name. Air hissed in between my teeth. “I’m Mallory... Mallory Dodge.”

  “Cool.” She nodded as she rocked her curvy shoulders against the back of the chair. “Oh. Here he comes.”

  We didn’t talk again, but I was feeling pretty good about the sum total of seven words spoken, and I was totally going to count the repeat ones. This was, by far, so much better than middle school. I’d made it through four classes, spoken to someone, and even though Mr. Newberry spoke with an air of pretentiousness that even a newbie like me could pick up on, I was floating on a major accomplishment high.

  Then came lunch.

  For the most part, I was a complete fail at it.

  Nerves had twisted my stomach into knots, and even though I made it through the lunch line, all I grabbed was a banana and a bottle of water. There were so many people around me and so much noise—laughter, shouting and a constant low hum of conversation—that I was completely out of my element. Everyone was at the long square tables, huddled in groups. No one was really sitting alone from what I could see, and the smell of disinfectant and burnt food was overwhelming.

  As I left the cafeteria, I thought my gaze drifted over Keira sitting at a half-full table. For a second, I thought she saw me, but I hurried out into the somewhat quieter hall and kept going, passing a few kids lingering against the lockers and the faint scent of cigarettes that surrounded them. I rounded the corner, and at the last moment, avoided a head-on collision
with a boy not much taller than me.

  He stumbled to the side, bloodshot eyes widening out of surprise. A scent clung to him that at first I thought was smoke, but when I inhaled, it was something richer, earthy and thick.

  “Sorry, chula,” he murmured, and his eyes did a slow glide from the tips of my toes right back up to mine. He started to grin.

  At the end of the hall, a taller boy picked up his pace. “Jayden, where in the fuck you running off to, bro? We need to talk.”

  The guy I assumed was Jayden turned, rubbing a hand over his close-cropped dark hair as he muttered, “Mierda, hombre.”

  A door opened and a teacher stepped out, frowning as his gaze bounced between the two, and I figured it was time to get out of the hallway, because nothing about the taller boy’s face said he was happy or friendly, and the teacher sort of looked like he wanted to cut someone.

  I ended up in the library, playing Candy Crush on my cell phone until the bell rang, and I spent my next class—history—furious with myself, because it probably was Keira in the lunchroom and I could’ve approached her table. She seemed nice enough, but instead I hid in the library like a dork.

  Doubt settled over me like a too-heavy, coarse blanket. What if I couldn’t do this? What if I was always going to be this—whatever this was—for the rest of my life? Maybe school was a bad idea. College would’ve been different, less pressure to fit in, and I could’ve eased into it. My skin grew itchy by the time I headed to my final class, my heart rate probably somewhere near stroke territory, because my last period was the worst period ever in the history of ever, ever.

  Speech class.

  Otherwise known as Communications. When I’d registered for the school, I’d been feeling all kinds of brave while Carl and Rosa stared at me like I was half crazy. They said they could get me out of the class, even though it was a requirement at Lands High, but I’d had something to prove.

  Ugh.

  Now I wished I had employed some common sense and let them do whatever it was that would’ve gotten me excused, because this was a nightmare waiting to happen. When I saw the open door to the class on the third floor, it gaped at me, the room ultrabright inside.

  My steps faltered. A girl stepped around me, lips pursing when she checked me out, but I wanted to spin and flee. Get in the Honda. Go home. Be safe.

  Stay the same.

  No.

  Tightening my fingers around the strap of my bag, I forced myself forward, and it was like walking through knee-deep mud. Each step felt sluggish. Each breath I took wheezed in my lungs. Overhead lights twinkled and my ears were hypersensitive to the conversation around me, but I did it.

  My feet made it to the back row and my fingers were numb, knuckles white, as I dropped my bag on the floor beside my desk and slid into my seat. Busying myself with pulling out my notebook, I then gripped the edge of my desk.

  I was in speech class. I was here.

  I’d done it.

  Knuckles starting to ache, I loosened my death grip as I glanced at the door, sliding my damp hands across the top of the desk. The first thing I saw was the broad chest draped in black, then the well-formed biceps. And there was that tired notebook that looked seconds from falling apart, tapping against a worn denim-clad thigh.

  It was the boy from this morning, from the hallway.

  More than curious to see what he looked like from the front, I raised my lashes, but he had turned toward the door. A girl was coming in behind him; the expression on her face said he gave great full frontal, but he seemed to be looking at someone out in the hall, and he laughed. The girl got all googly-eyed.

  Tiny hairs rose all over my body. That laugh... It was deep, rich and somehow familiar. A shiver crept over my shoulders. That laugh...

  He was walking backward, and I was rather amazed that he didn’t trip over anything, actually somewhat envious of that fact. And then I realized he was heading toward the back, and holy crappers, there were two seats open, one on either side of me.

  He turned at the end of the desks, stepping behind the occupied chair, and my gaze tracked up narrow hips, over the stomach, up and up, and then I saw his face.

  I stopped breathing.

  My brain couldn’t perceive what I was seeing. It did not compute. I stared up at him, really saw him, saw a face that was familiar yet unknown to me, more mature than I remembered but still achingly beautiful. I knew him. Oh my God, I would know him anywhere, even if it had been four years and the last time I’d seen him, that last night that had been so horrible, had changed my life forever.

  I couldn’t move, couldn’t get enough air into my lungs and couldn’t believe this. My hands slipped off the desk, falling limply into my lap as he dipped into the seat next to me, his gaze on the open door, and his profile, the strong jaw that had only been hinted at the last time I’d seen him, tilting as his eyes moved over the front of the class. He looked like he did back then, but bigger and everything more...more defined. From the darker brows and thick lashes to the broad cheekbones and the slight scruff covering the curve of his jaw.

  Goodness, he’d grown up in the way I’d thought he would when I was twelve and started to really look at him, to see him as a boy.

  My heart was trying to claw itself out of my chest as lips—lips fuller than I remembered—tilted up, and a knot formed in my belly as the dimple formed in his right cheek. The only dimple he had. No matching set. Just one.

  Leaning back in the chair that seemed too small for him, he slowly turned his head toward me. Eyes that were brown with tiny flecks of gold met mine.

  Eyes I’d never forgotten, never really stopped thinking or dreaming about, and never stopped worrying about.

  The easy, almost lazy smile I’d seen a million times in person and in my head slipped off his face. His lips parted and a paleness seeped under the naturally tanned skin. Those eyes widened, the gold flecks seeming to expand. He recognized me; I had changed a lot since then, but still, recognition dawned in his features. He was moving again, leaning forward in his seat toward me.

  Don’t make a sound.

  “Mouse?” he breathed.