Total pages in book: 238
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
I cleaned my room, fixed up the kitchen again, and made cinnamon rolls, letting them bake as I sat at the table and completed all my homework, even the study guide for The Grapes of Wrath that wasn’t due for another week.
I packed up my school bag, dressed, and even put on some mascara before Martin arrived home to find life perfect again.
I wasn’t getting out of this situation. And I couldn’t kill him.
I had to survive, and just like last night when I told Damon that there was a tear in the membrane, I realized as the hours passed that it wasn’t going away.
Something had disconnected, and every memory of his hand across my face or his fist in my stomach over the years was like a dream happening to someone else.
I wasn’t there.
I wasn’t here now.
I didn’t have the energy to care about anything.
The morning classes came and went, and I wasn’t even sure if Will was in my first period, because the lecture seemed to end before I realized it had started.
I stared at my desk, the wrestling room playing in my head and something swelling in my heart but ripping it to shreds at the same time.
I was glad he had his friends. They loved him, and Will deserved to never be alone.
But I also hated the idea of anyone else but me making him happy.
Making Will happy was an amazing feeling.
I wished I could be the girl I was at the Cove every day, but it was gone. The weight had crushed that spark, and I couldn’t muster the energy to even try anymore.
“God, I’m not ready for basketball season to start,” Elle said, setting her lunch tray down next to me in line. “There are like two weeks where it overlaps with football, and we’ll be swamped.”
“Not me,” I muttered, moving down the line. “I quit band this morning.”
“What?”
I took some chicken tenders and ranch, not bothering to look at her.
“My grandmother is sick,” I explained quietly. “Or sicker, I mean. I’m needed at home now.”
I didn’t even bother to talk to the director in person. I emailed her, pretty confident my brother would agree that concentrating on my studies and my architectural projects would be a better use of my time.
The less I was at school—or games or on buses—the better.
“I’m going to go sit with Gabrielle today,” she said suddenly. “We have to talk about a… a project.”
She took her tray and walked past me, toward the cashier, and I didn’t look up or respond.
The one friend I might’ve had…
I didn’t care.
I paid, walked to an empty section of a table in the corner of the room, and sat down, slipping in my earbuds and turning on some music from the iPod hidden in my pocket.
I raised my eyes for a split second, immediately locking gazes with Damon. He sat twenty yards away at a circular table filled with his friends. Chaos went on around him, but he remained still and calm like the eye of the storm, the tears and rage from last night almost like they had never happened.
I’d been waiting for the guilt to start eating me up, but it didn’t. The worry sat there, but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it now, and I wasn’t sure I would’ve done anything differently if I could go back to last night. He had as much to lose, and he was sloppy. There was probably evidence of him all over her.
Somehow, I felt more in control not caring than I ever did.
Dropping my eyes, I opened my milk and my ranch, starting to eat as “Army of Me” played in my ears, but then the air around me started vibrating, and I heard a different beat in my ears.
Pulling out the earbuds, I looked up and saw Will on top of his lunch table.
His friends sat or stood, looking up at him and laughing as he started dancing to some pop 80s or 90s tune, stripping off his school jacket as his shirt and tie hung on him like a god.
He was going to look amazing in a suit someday.
He jumped off the table, moving around the room as students hooted and howled, and he looked like…
I laughed under my breath, a smile spreading across my face.
He looked like Jean-Claude Van Damme in Kickboxer.
Hang around more and maybe you’ll find out.
The smile slowly fell, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. This was for me.
Needles pricked my throat, watching him dance and loving the smile on his face.
I flashed my gaze to Damon again, seeing that he wasn’t looking at me anymore. His head was turned and his eyes fixated on another table. I followed his gaze, seeing Winter Ashby and Erika Fane sitting and eating, surrounded by other kids.