48

I took the bus Monday morning. Finn was never going to drive me anywhere again.

I didn’t see him in the cafeteria first period. Didn’t actually go to the cafeteria. Went to the library. The Genocide Awareness table was gone. Nothing had taken its place. Tried to fall asleep in a corner where no one could find me. Couldn’t sleep. Counted the holes in the ceiling tiles, decided they were probably made of a chemical that was causing cancer to bloom in my lungs.

Each tile had 103 holes.

I trudged through the day. Classroom. Locker. Hall. Classroom. Caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the tall windows along the corridor to the B wing. I was shuffling, books weighing down my arms. Defeated, like a zombie who’d been dragged from the grave and bitten, but who didn’t feel the hunger yet. Wasn’t quite assimilated into the hivemind of delirium.

Ms. Benedetti stopped me in the hall, complained about playing phone tag with Dad, and shoved SAT paperwork into my hands, babbling away about the need to shift my paradigm and look over the next horizon. I threw the paperwork away as soon as she was out of sight. In English, Brandon Something pegged me with spitballs every time Ms. Rogak turned her back. I picked them out of my hair before she noticed. I really didn’t care enough to do anything else. Found out in gym class that Gracie had gone home sick. I told the aide that I was going to puke and spent the next two periods staring at the tiles above the cot in the nurse’s office. They were smaller than the ones in the library. Maybe they didn’t leak as much cancer.

I had let down my shields, that was the problem. The crazy inside Dad had infected me, weakened me so that when Finn smiled, I’d been vulnerable. I’d dropped my shields and let myself pretend that somebody like Finn would want to be with somebody like me.

I was an idiot.

In history, Mr. Diaz misstated so many facts about the issues that led to the Civil War that I was sure he was baiting me. He stopped me when I was headed out the door at the end of the period to ask if I was okay.

“I’m fine,” I told him.

* * *

I was first in line when the bus pulled in. Took the seat on the left, two rows from the back. Stared at the zombies on the sidewalk dramatically reciting their lines, stalking to the edges of their stages, playing at life.

Looking out the window, I wondered how many of those kids had parents who were losing it, or parents who were gone, taken off without a forwarding address, or parents who had buried themselves alive, who could argue and chop wood and make asses of themselves without being fully conscious. How many of them believed what they were saying when they blathered on about what college they’d go to and what they’d major in and how much they’d earn and what car they’d buy? They repeated that stuff over and over like an incantation that, if pronounced exactly right, would open the door to the life of their dreams. If they looked at their parents, at their crankiness and their therapy and their prescriptions and their ragged collections of kids, step-kids, half-kids, quarter-kids, and the habits that had started in secret but now owned them, body and soul, then they might curse that spell.

And then what?

Despite my best intentions, I was beginning to understand how my dad saw the world. The shadows haunting every living thing. The secrets inside the lies wrapped in bullshit. Even Gracie’s box of mints was beginning to make sense.

“Excuse me?” a voice said. “Can I sit here?”

I turned to say no, but he was already sitting down.

Finnegan Trouble Ramos.

I opened my mouth, but he put his finger on my lips.

“Shh,” he said. “Please. Let me say this before I chicken out again, okay? First, I’m sorry I didn’t call or text you or show up this morning.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple dropping down and bouncing up like a basketball.

“I really like you, Hayley Kincain. I want to be with you as much as I can. I get that it’s weird at your house, scary maybe, and your dad can be a jerk. You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to, but it kills me because you are so beautiful and smart and awesome and I don’t want anything to be scary for you, I just want—”

He paused for a breath.

I reached out and put my hand at the back of his neck; I pulled myself close to him and I kissed him until everything that hurt inside me melted into a pool of black water so deep I couldn’t touch the bottom. As long as I was touching him, I wouldn’t drown.