Abandon

by Meg Cabot

  By the time I finally realized there are no handsome princes — that it was all up to me…that it had always been up to me — it was too late.

  Hannah was dead.

  And unlike me, she was never coming back.

  Broke the deep lethargy within my head

  A heavy thunder, so that I upstarted,

  Like to a person who by force is wakened.

  DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto IV

  In a way, I’m grateful to Mr. Mueller, who started teaching at the Westport Academy for Girls last year, when I was a junior. He gave me the one thing I was beginning to think I’d never have: that interest outside of academics in which to “engage” that Mrs. Keeler recommended my parents find for me after the accident.

  Mr. Mueller skyrocketed to instant popularity with both the student body and their parents at the Westport Academy for Girls after being hired as the new basketball coach and taking the team to the state finals.

  As if that were not enough, he also began offering free private tutoring sessions after school for his “special” students…even those of us who, like me, had been moved to all “alternative” classes, thanks to what had finally been diagnosed as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, predominantly inattentiveness.

  Of course, being the only young, good-looking male instructor at a K–12 girls’ school — not to mention an athletic coach — Mr. Mueller probably would have been popular anyway.

  But the free tutoring helped.

  I seemed to be the only person in the entire school who was suspicious of Mr. Mueller and his motives right from the start. Maybe it was because one of my dad’s favorite expressions was “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” No one is that self-sacrificing, especially when all he’s getting out of it is homemade cookies from his students’ grateful moms.

  It was only when a crumb from one of those cookies fell onto my bare knee as Mr. Mueller was bent over my desk, helping me with a particularly difficult algebra problem during class one day, that I first noticed anything strange about him, aside from his stunningly good looks and apparent overabundance of free time.

  “Oops,” Mr. Mueller said, pressing the crumb into my knee with his finger. He then lifted his finger to his mouth and sucked the piece of cookie off it. Then he smiled down at me. “Sorry about that!”

  Maybe a girl who hadn’t died and then ended up getting followed around by a disturbingly large, silver-eyed guy who’d once tried to force her to live with him might have said to herself only Huh. That guy must really like cookies.

  I, however, felt as if I’d been given an electric shock.

  And not in a romantic Oh, he touched me! kind of way. Other girls in my class might have been sighing over him, but I definitely did not like Mr. Mueller, nor did I want him touching me. I did not even want him touching cookie crumbs that might have fallen upon me.

  It wasn’t until I got home that afternoon that I saw it.

  Mr. Mueller just touched Pierce Oliviera’s bare knee, then licked his finger. HOT!!!!!!

  This was followed by tons of comments on the various social networking sites to which this remark was posted, such as She’s so lucky and What did she do to deserve THAT? and Who the hell is Pierce Oliviera?

  These remarks actually managed to sink through the thick glass of my coffin. They made me feel uncomfortable, not only because they raised old demons (I had been managing successfully to avoid any trips to the guidance office lately), but because then Mr. Mueller asked — in front of everyone — a day or two later, if I’d like to start coming in for some private tutoring sessions.

  Things only went downhill from there.

  Mr. Mueller just asked Pierce Oliviera if she wants private tutoring! She’s so lucky! He’s SO hot!!!!

  “I don’t understand,” Mom said. “Mr. Mueller told me at his parent-teacher conference with me that he offered to tutor you because you’re behind in so many of your classes, and you said no. Why would you do that?”

  “I already have tutors,” I said. I did, too. Dad made sure I had tutors for nearly every subject. Not that it helped. You had to care for tutors to make a difference.

  “But Mr. Mueller seems so nice,” Mom would say.

  I should have said something then. Mom, I should have said. Mr. Mueller isn’t nice.

  The problem was, she wouldn’t have believed me. That the guy gave me the creeps wasn’t proof of anything.

  Especially since Mom wasn’t the only one who thought Mr. Mueller was God’s gift to the Westport Academy for Girls. All the moms were giving their daughters cards and tins of homemade cookies to present to Mr. Mueller to show how much they appreciated him, and basketball season was long over.

  Mr. Mueller would always beam with pleasure when he’d find these on his desk, and say chidingly (but really, you could tell he was delighted), “Girls! You didn’t have to do this!”

  Until my ex–best friend, Hannah Chang — who’d really filled out over the summer that we hadn’t been speaking and who’d become the Westport Academy for Girls basketball team’s star player and one of the most enthusiastic attendees of Mr. Mueller’s private tutoring sessions — left a note on his desk that actually made him frown.

  I know because Hannah was in the study hall I had with Mr. Mueller and sat at the desk in front of mine. I’d watched her write the note, then leave it for him. I’d even watched as Mr. Mueller opened it.

  He hadn’t beamed with pleasure because of it, though.

  Not that I’d thought anything of this. Hannah left notes on Mr. Mueller’s desk all the time. They were always elaborately folded and decorated with tiny heart stickers. On my birthday, Hannah had even left me a note, on special stationery that had horses all over it. I’d found it when I sat down at my desk.

  Happy Birthday, Pierce! Hannah had written in her big loopy cursive. She’d drawn a picture of a dancing cupcake with a candle on top. Have a great one! Love, Hannah.

  Even as cut off as I’d made myself from the rest of the world back then — What’s the point? was my attitude. We’re all just going to die and then not be let on the boat — I couldn’t help but be a little touched. Hannah might not have treated her horse, Double Dare, as well as I thought she should have.

  But Hannah cared about people. And because she cared, she made people care about her.

  Hadn’t I heard that somewhere before?

  Anyway, in spite of her having called me crazy back in the tenth grade, I still liked Hannah Chang.

  Which is why I will always blame myself for what happened to her.

  I was having breakfast with my mom the morning after I saw Hannah leave the note for Mr. Mueller. Mom, who was reading the local paper, suddenly gave a little cry, then covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Mom?” I looked at her curiously over my herbal tea. My neurologist had warned me not to self-medicate with caffeine, because of my bad dreams and insomnia. Mom joked that if my dad ever stopped self-medicating with caffeine, the world would become a much less dangerous place. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” she said, lowering the paper. Only it wasn’t nothing. Because her face was pale.

  “Mom,” I said. “What is it? Tell me.”

  “It’s just…” It was obvious that the last thing in the world she wanted to do was tell me.

  It was also obvious that she knew she had to.

  “It’s just that it says a girl named Hannah Chang died of a drug overdose last night,” Mom said, holding up the paper. “But I’m sure it’s not the same Hannah Chang —”

  I choked on the sip of tea I’d taken. When I was through coughing, I said, “Let me see that.”

  Local Girl Dies in Apparent Suicide, the article on the front page of our town paper screamed. Hannah’s face, smiling in her school uniform, stared up at me.

  Mom hadn’t seen Hannah in nearly two years, because of my retreating into my glass coffin since the accident. Hannah had changed a lot during that time.

 
“It’s her,” I said, my chest constricting. “It’s Hannah.”

  “She can’t have done it on purpose,” Mom murmured, stroking my hair as I stared down at the photo. “It says it was sleeping pills. Maybe she took one and then was so sleepy she forgot, and accidentally took some more. I’m sure she didn’t mean to kill herself.”

  I was just as sure that she had. Girls like Hannah Chang didn’t accidentally take too many sleeping pills.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, giving her a quick hug as I stood up. “But I gotta go or I’ll be late.”

  “Pierce,” Mom said, looking at me nervously. “Are you all right? It’s okay if you want to stay home today. I know you and Hannah haven’t been close since…well, the accident. But you two were best friends once…”

  “It’s all right,” I said automatically. “I’m fine.”

  I went to the garage to get on my bike to ride to school. Dad had bought me a BMW convertible for my sixteenth birthday, thinking it would be incentive for me to get my act together and pass the driving test to get my license.

  But of course it hadn’t worked. I’d taken the written exam forty-two times already online. I’d never passed.

  Because I wasn’t all right. In so many ways.

  Hannah’s horse stationery and heart stickers and being star of the basketball team and never forgetting a birthday and pretending evil spirits would possess your soul if you didn’t hold your breath when you went by the graveyard — all those things had just been window dressing to disguise the fact that underneath, she wasn’t all right, either.

  But it had been enough to trick me. So much that I’d missed the fact that the whole time she’d been sitting there in front of me, something had been going on in Hannah’s life that was so awful, it had made her swallow a handful of pills and turn herself into a sleeping princess. Permanently.

  How could I have been that disengaged?

  By the time I got to school, everyone knew what had happened to Hannah. They were all talking about her as if they’d been her best friend once, and they’d sat behind her in study hall. Everyone was speculating about why she’d done it. Their whispers sounded like screams to me, because normally I wore earbuds in the hallway to block out all the noise, which only seemed to increase the buzzing I usually felt in my head.

  But that day, I took them out. I had to listen, I told myself. I owed at least that much to Hannah. I had to find out what had happened to her.

  All I heard, however, was people asking exactly the same question I was asking myself: How could a girl who seemed as sweet and as happy as Hannah Chang have gone home from school the day before and overdosed?

  Where was she now? I wondered. Was she all right? Was she one of the lucky ones who’d been able to get on the right boat, the one that took people to a better place? Or was she still standing, cold and damp, in that other line, waiting for that other boat, on that awful beach?

  I didn’t know. I realized I might never know.

  But there was something I could find out:

  Why.

  That day, for the first time in more than a year, instead of spending my time between classes in the safety of my coffin, ignoring everyone, with my earbuds tucked in, I took them out and joined all the gossipy girls who hung at the vending machines outside the gym.

  I put my money in and bought the most caffeinated drink I could find, in spite of my neurologist’s warning. I had decided it was time to stop being scared and start being dangerous, like my dad.

  I cracked the soda open and downed it while I stood there listening to them speculate about why Hannah had done it.

  I drank a second soda more slowly on my way to class — earbuds out — as I tried to remember everything from the last hour I’d seen Hannah alive. Had she seemed upset? Had she seemed sad?

  And most important: What had she written on that note to Mr. Mueller, the one she’d left on his desk, the one that had made him frown?

  Hearts. I remembered that. The paper she’d used to write the note to Mr. Mueller had been covered with hearts.

  And love. I thought I’d seen her write the word love.

  Why. Was that one of the words? Why couldn’t I have paid more attention to things that actually mattered?

  Don’t. Had that been one of the words? As in, don’t even bother, Pierce. You’re as crazy as they all say you are.

  When I got to study hall, I could hardly stand to look at her desk, let alone Mr. Mueller’s pale, sad face. Trying to engage had left me feeling raw. I hadn’t done it in over a year. Now I could see why: Engaging was incredibly taxing. How did people do it all day, every day?

  I slid into my seat, careful not to look anywhere but down, in case the sight of Hannah’s empty desk unhinged me.

  That’s how I happened to see a pair of shoes. Mr. Mueller’s black loafers, the ones with the tassels on them.

  “Pierce,” Mr. Mueller said in a low voice. “Can I talk to you? I need to ask you a special favor.”

  Trying not to think about his shoes — because of course that was a completely ridiculous thing to focus on at a time like this — I lifted my gaze to meet his.

  “Yes, Mr. Mueller?” I asked.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard the sad news about Hannah Chang,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I did.”

  “Well, the administration is really worried about copycat attempts,” he said to me in this conversational tone. Like we were the same age. Like we were equals. This was why so many girls adored Mr. Mueller. Because he never “talked down” to us. “Often when one student kills herself, other students get the idea to try it.…You’ve seen how people are putting flowers at her locker.”

  I’d passed Hannah’s locker on my way to class. It was already piled high with bouquets of flowers and cards and stuffed animals. Especially stuffed horses.

  “Yes,” I said, swallowing hard.

  “The school’s not planning on doing a memorial service or anything,” Mr. Mueller went on. “They’ve already decided they don’t want to glamorize her death. They just want us to proceed like nothing happened.”

  Like nothing happened. I nodded. I could see that Mr. Mueller had decided not to shave that morning. He was sporting a little goatee. It made him look a bit like that handsome actor who played a doctor on that popular television show. The doctor on that show, I suddenly remembered, also often wore shoes with tassels on them. Why couldn’t I stop thinking about tassels?

  “So could you do me a favor,” he said in his “We’re such good friends” voice, “and move up a seat? I can’t really leave Hannah’s old desk empty like this. It makes it look like we’re memorializing her and supporting what she did. And we can’t really have that, now, can we?”

  I stared at him and the faux goatee he was growing. The next time I went to the city for one of my court-mandated lunches with Dad, I decided, I was going to go through his closet and take every pair of shoes he had with tassels on them and then donate them to the local men’s shelter. Even the Pradas. I never wanted to see another pair of men’s shoes with tassels on them again.

  “Sure, Mr. Mueller,” I said, forcing myself to smile. “I’ll sit in Hannah’s old desk.”

  Even though she hasn’t been dead for twenty-four hours, and it will be like saying she never existed at all.

  I got up from my seat and slid into Hannah’s. It felt the way I imagined being in someone else’s coffin would.

  “Thanks,” Mr. Mueller said, grinning down at me in a relieved way. “Thanks for being so understanding, Pierce.”

  It was funny that he said that. Because the moment I slid into Hannah’s desk, I did understand. I looked down at the diamond nestled inside my blouse and saw that it had turned as black as that time in the jewelry shop.

  And suddenly, I remembered the words I’d seen Hannah writing on her note to Mr. Mueller. Just like that.

  Maybe it was because I was sitting in her desk. Maybe it was because of all the caffeine. Maybe it was becaus
e of the necklace. I don’t know.

  But suddenly, I understood…everything.

  Okay, well, maybe not everything. But why Mr. Mueller had always repulsed me so much, anyway.

  “Of course…” I swallowed hard again. ”You must know why she did it, don’t you, Mr. Mueller?”

  Mr. Mueller, who’d been on his way back up to his desk, froze. The bell had rung by this time, but everyone was still talking and milling around. No one else heard me, or was even paying attention.

  That’s the thing, I was starting to notice, now that I’d finally lifted the lid to my coffin and was beginning to look around outside it. People don’t really pay attention, do they?

  Of course, I was just as guilty of this as everyone else.

  “Why she did it?” Mr. Mueller turned around to look at me, his hazel eyes wide. He was smiling, still in a friendly way. “No, I don’t. Of course, she was a bit of a…troubled girl.”

  Troubled. Right. If he thought Hannah was troubled, he better start running. Now.

  Because I was going to make trouble like he’d never imagined in his wildest dreams.

  “But she left you a note yesterday,” I said, widening my eyes innocently. “I saw it. I saw you read it.“

  I watched him carefully. Everything depended on how Mr. Mueller would react.

  “Oh, that,” Mr. Mueller said. He didn’t skip a beat. “That was nothing important.” He shrugged. “You know Hannah. Always leaving funny notes. I wish I’d known that one was going to be her last. I might have saved it. Instead, I threw it into the recycling bin.” He pointed to the blue bin next to his desk. Paper only, the sticker on its side read. I could see from where I sat that the bin was empty. “It’s probably on its way to some paper recycling plant in New Jersey by now. Oh, well.”

  Then he went up to the front of the room to take attendance. When he got to the place where Hannah’s name would have been, he skipped right over it, like it had never been there at all. And no one said a word. Not even me. Not then, anyway.