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.