seven

Caleb

I wasn’t really gonna tell everyone in this damn place that I’d gone to juvie, but seeing Maggie on this let’s-share-absolutely-everything kick pisses me off. This Re-START program is a bunch of crap. They think talking about the accident will miraculously fix everything. I have news for Damon and everyone else involved. Nothing will fix my shitty life. Nothing will erase the past two years. Nothing will change the fact that I’ve got no friends or family left. I’m just living … surviving, really.

Finding Maggie in an intense conversation with Matt made me want to grab the guy’s shirt and pick a fight with him. The guy is cool, unlike that tool Lenny, but when I moved in closer and found Maggie confiding in him, my veins fired up.

I scan the room and eye a bullhorn by the front door.

“Caleb, don’t,” Maggie says.

I ignore her as I cross the room and pick up the bullhorn. I click the siren switch. An obnoxiously loud, piercing shriek echoes throughout the building—a good thing, because everyone immediately has their attention focused on me.

I bring the bullhorn to my lips. “I’ve got something to say,” I bellow into the mouthpiece.

Damon is standing in line with a tray full of food. I expect him to run up to me and grab the bullhorn out of my hand, but he doesn’t. Instead, he puts down his tray and nods for me to continue.

“I drove home drunk from a high school party,” I say, my voice sounding foreign to me as the words flow out through the bullhorn. “I hit a girl, and left her lying in the street not knowing if she was dead or alive. I was a jock, a guy who’d probably get a wrestling scholarship to college and I didn’t want to screw that up. So I ditched her. In the end, I was busted and went to jail for a year.”

I unclick the sound button. The place is silent. I can imagine what I must look like … the cool high school jock boy who screwed up and is now whining about it. Nobody is gonna feel sorry for me, not that I want or expect them to.

When I look over at Maggie, she shakes her head and turns her back on me. She’s shutting me out once again, but I don’t care.

I press the talk button again. “When I came out of jail, I got involved with my victim.”

More than a few teens in the room go wide-eyed at this new piece of information. They’re whispering in shock and pointing at me.

“We kissed, we fooled around … she snuck me in her house and we slept together. People warned me not to get involved with her, but I did. Biggest mistake of my life.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as Maggie slides off the bench and heads for the swinging doors. Good ol’ Matt follows her.

“Maggie!” I say through the bullhorn. She flinches and stops in her tracks. “You want to add something? I skipped the part when we were in Mrs. Reynolds’ gazebo.”

I follow Maggie, who thinks that talking is better than keeping your mouth shut. I hope I’ve changed her mind, and she realizes that living in La-La Land is better than facing reality.

“That’s the girl I’m talking about,” I say, pointing.

“Shut up, Caleb,” she hisses at me.

I hand her the bullhorn. “Truth hurts, huh?”