by Maisy Morgan
When the bell rang, he noticed Draco and Hannah practically bolted from the classroom. It was only then that he realized they were both avoiding him. He huffed. If they couldn’t handle him having friends other than just them, he felt he didn’t need them. Then again, it didn’t feel quite right walking to his locker on his own after the last bell. Would Hannah be waiting for him by their lockers? He found himself dragging his feet through the halls.
Up ahead, he smiled to see that Hannah and Draco were still by the lockers. Perhaps they did wait for him after all? He was just about to call out to them when he caught sight of Kara and Stacey—they too were standing near the lockers. His first thought was to come up behind Kara and surprise her a smidge, but he caught wind of the conversation the three of them were having. “You heard what I said; stop talking to her,” Stacey snarled. “I don’t think Becky could have made it any more obvious that she’s not interested.”
Draco’s face was bright pink, and he was looking down at his feet as he spoke to Stacey. “I just said hello,” he said softly.
“Well, don’t,” Stacey said. “You think she wants the whole school finding out she made out with you? No offense, Draco, but you’re kind of a loser.”
“Seriously?” Hannah piped up quickly, glaring up at them both from her chair. “You two are the only losers around here. Come on, Draco.”
Kara stuck out her foot, preventing Hannah from turning her wheelchair. “You’re really one to talk, Hannah,” Kara sneered. “I know you both only hang out with Tripp because you think he makes you cooler. You realize you’re the ones bringing him down, right?”
“Move your foot, or I’ll roll right over you,” Hannah warned.
“Just stay away from my boyfriend,” Kara told her. “Believe me; he’s not interested in you. Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on in your head, and let me tell you something—no one is interested in having a girlfriend they’ve got to take care of. Tripp’s got better things to do than push you to the car loop every afternoon.”
“I can take care of myself just fine,” Hannah said, positively fuming. “And at least I don’t have to date a guy three years younger than me to make myself feel like boys are dying to get after me. Pretty sure he’s only interested in you because he thinks you’re easy, and if that’s the kind of guy he is, believe me, you can have him.”
Kara moved her foot, but she looked irate over Hannah’s easy comment. Stacey called after Hannah. “You better watch it, Hannah,” Stacey sang. “You need to get yourself a more pleasant personality—because every guy in school is already going to be turned off because you’re a stuck-up little crippled girl! I bet you die alone. You’ve got too much baggage already!”
Tripp stood frozen in his stance. He watched Draco and Hannah dip down the back hallway, and Stacey and Kara turned towards one another giggling like they had just achieved some high form of triumph. He felt furious. He stormed down the hallway towards them, and Stacey spotted him. She smiled and tapped Kara’s shoulder and nodded in his direction. Kara spun around, and her face lit up. “Tripp, I was wondering when you were going to get here,” she said, reaching out for him.
He grabbed her hand and flung it away. “Where do you two get off?” he asked, his voice almost groggy from the anger he was now feeling.
“Huh?” Kara questioned, looking stunned.
“What? You didn’t think I heard all that?” Tripp asked, and Kara’s cheeks flushed. “What is wrong with you?” he questioned. “Move away from my locker. I’ve got to get my books.” They stepped aside, but they didn’t go anywhere—like they were waiting for him to say more. He was at a loss for words, and he had to redo his locker numbers twice to get the door to open. He shoveled books into his backpack and then flung it over his shoulder, slamming the locker door shut. “They’re my friends,” he said under his breath, eyeing Kara.
“They started it,” Kara declared and crossed her arms. “They’ve had a problem with me since day one, and you know it.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I should have listened to them,” Tripp said.
Kara’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be stupid,” she said and then smiled brightly. “I’ll apologize or whatever if it’ll make you feel better. It’s not like I said anything that wasn’t true. Draco is a little creepy, you know. He keeps trying to talk to Becky, and she doesn’t want anything to do with him. And Hannah keeps trying to flirt with you, and it’s so… pathetic…”
Tripp shook his head. “You’re pathetic. You have to bring her down just to make yourself feel like you’re something. Forget you, Kara. I’m done.” He started to walk away, but he felt her reach out and grab his sleeve.
“Tripp?” she beckoned, sounding sad.
He yanked his arm away. “Don’t. We’re done. I don’t want to see you anymore. You’re just not worth it.”
Tripp turned a corner and he bolted down the hallway. He wanted to talk to Draco and Hannah before Hannah’s mom picked her up. He wound up in the front lobby just in time. “Hannah! Draco!” Tripp called out just as Draco was pushing Hannah through the front doors.
He held the door open for them and then followed them out into the front yard of the school. “What do you want?” Draco asked shortly.
“I heard what Kara said to you guys,” Tripp began. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”
“Give it a rest, Tripp,” Hannah snapped.
“I didn’t know she was going to do something like that,” Tripp said.
“Whatever, Tripp,” Draco said and continued pushing Hannah’s chair down the walkway.
“Guys,” he called out to them.
“Go away,” Hannah demanded. “Come on, Draco.”
Tripp stared. “I’ll call you later, Hannah,” he said.
“Rather you didn’t.”
Tripp frowned. “Fine. Whatever. Draco, are you coming?”
“Riding home with Hannah today,” Draco said.
“Oh,” Tripp said under his breath, realizing that Draco and Hannah were putting as much distance between him and them as possible. “Why?”
“We’re hanging out,” Draco said over his shoulder; Hannah was merely seated in her chair, her arms crossed while she pouted.
“Oh…” Tripp said, wondering only for a moment why he hadn’t been invited. They always hung out together. He watched them leave and realized then that he was going to miss the bus if he didn’t hurry. Tripp bolted through the school and down several hallways to the bus loop where he discovered that his own bus had already pulled away. “Great. That’s just perfect,” he grumbled and texted his grandmother.
She pinged back after a moment, telling him to wait by the carpool lane and that she would come and get him while Ella May watched the shop. Tripp walked around front and sat out on the curb where Draco and Hannah had left for an afternoon of hanging out without him. He slumped down in the grass, feeling sick to his stomach now. How mad were they? He hadn’t been the one to shout at them, to call them losers, to tell Hannah she was going to die alone because she was a cripple. He hadn’t done that, but then again…
He thought back to previous interactions that Draco and Hannah had had with his new groups of friends. They hadn’t been particularly friendly, and he wondered then, as he sat there alone on the curb, why he hadn’t noticed this before. He buried his face in his hands, shaking his head. Tripp kept checking his phone for the time; Brooks was at least a twenty-minute drive from the school. Student after student disappeared, and soon Tripp was sitting completely alone in front of the school.
Eventually, he spotted his grandmother’s van pulling up, and her wheels squeaked slightly as she came to a parking spot right in front of him. Tripp climbed into the passenger seat of the van, his eyes a bit red. “I had the worst afternoon,” his grandmother said. “We went and spoke with Jaden and Bradley again… it was just awful…”
“Oh?” Tripp asked.
“I hope I can trust that you won’t spread it around, but we found out some things,” s
he said, pulling out of the parking lot. “Apparently Bradley’s dad was beating him. I wish I had noticed something before. I mean, we had only met a few times here and there…”
Tripp’s stomach tightened. Bradley? He liked Bradley despite how the young man’s girlfriend had just acted. He had been trying to avoid looking directly at her, yet he couldn’t help but turn his head at this news. She noticed his red eyes immediately, and he tried to look away quickly. Mary wasn’t the type of woman to let something like this go. She pulled over into a parking spot rather than pulling out into the road. “Tripp? What’s wrong? Did something happen? Why did you miss the bus?”
“It’s nothing,” he tried to say, but that wasn’t going to be good enough for her. She sat in silence, staring at him, evidently not going to put the car into drive until he said something. “Kara and I broke up,” he said.
She frowned. “Tripp, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “You want to tell me what happened?”
Tripp exhaled heavily to keep his eyes from watering. “She was a jerk,” Tripp said. “I walked up on her and Stacey saying some crap to Draco and Hannah. They told Draco that he was a loser and told him to stop talking to Becky because he was embarrassing. Then they made fun of Hannah—made fun of her wheelchair! They said some awful things, and it made me so angry! I broke up with Kara, and when I tried to talk to Draco and Hannah about it, they just… snubbed me.”
Mary sat, still staring back at him, letting the tidbit of information he had given her sink in before speaking. “I’m so sorry, Tripp,” she said.
“Kara was upset,” Tripp said. “It happened really quick, but I didn’t even think about breaking up with her. I don’t want to be with someone who treats people like that. But now Draco and Hannah are mad at me. They had this afternoon planned to hang out and didn’t even tell me about it, and I guess it was because they don’t like my new friends. I’m worried that Bradley isn’t going to want to talk to me now. I feel like I just lost two groups of friends in one blow.”
Mary smiled weakly at him. “I don’t think you lost Draco and Hannah,” she said. “I think you just need to be honest with them and apologize.”
“Apologize? For what?” Tripp snarled defensively.
“Honey, if you don’t know for what, I’m not sure if I’m going to be much help here,” Mary said, putting the car in reverse and pulling out of the parking spot.
Tripp slumped in his seat and let out a grunt in surrender. “I know,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I’ve been a real jerk too. I’ve been ignoring them to hang out with Bradley and his friends and with Kara… I should have realized what kind of person Kara was sooner. She was always a little cold towards Hannah, and I ignored it.”
“Maybe give them a little bit of space this evening and try talking to them about it tomorrow,” Mary suggested, and Tripp nodded in agreement. There was a long pause before she spoke again. “I need to confess something,” she said.
Tripp glanced sideways at her. “Oh?”
“The other night when you fell asleep on the couch, I looked at your phone,” Mary said, and she looked very bothered that she had done this. “I’ve just been worried about you lately with this new group of friends of yours. I had a bad feeling that something was up, and I looked through some messages you had with Kara. I’m really sorry, Tripp.”
Tripp’s felt his ears grow warm. “Oh… um… what did you see?”
Mary smirked. “What do you think?”
“I deleted them,” Tripp told her. “While I was waiting on you to pick me up…”
“Are you mad at me?” Mary asked.
“No,” Tripp said. “I shouldn’t have kept those pictures for as long as I did. Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”
“I suppose I just wanted you to realize on your own that it was inappropriate,” Mary said. “You really deleted them?”
“I really deleted them,” Tripp swore. “You can check my phone when we get back to the shop. I don’t care.” His grandmother exhaled deeply—evidently, this was something that had really been bothering her. “Um…” Tripp said cautiously. “Can we please talk about something else other than those pictures? It’s kind of… weird to talk to your grandma about that sort of thing.”
Mary laughed. “Okay, sure,” she said. “Everything is set up for Friday night, by the way.”
“Friday night?”
“For you to talk to your mom… if you still want to?”
Tripp smiled. “Yeah,” he said, having almost forgotten about this with all the drama of the afternoon. “Yeah, definitely.”
Chapter Twenty
The following morning, after dropping Tripp off at school and making sure Ella May was set and ready to go in the shop, Mary met with Preston just outside her home. The two of them had decided to get Bob and Lana, along with Darren and Nat, together to try to get a clearer understanding of the circumstances surrounding the buyout. The plan was for them to meet at the construction company’s office buildings.
“So, yesterday was a whirlwind,” Mary said as she sat herself upright in the passenger seat of Preston’s patrol car.
“You’re telling me,” he said. “I didn’t expect to find all that out about Bradley and his dad.”
“Yes, that was troubling, but that wasn’t exactly what I was referring to,” Mary said, and Preston glanced at her curiously. “Tripp missed the bus, so I had to drive all the way to the school. Turns out he got into it a bit with Hannah and Draco after he and Kara broke up over something she said to them.”
“Whoa, poor kid,” Preston said. “Those first romances are rough. Kara was his first girlfriend, right?”
“Right,” Mary said, shaking her head. “At least, that’s what he’s told me. I managed to get a bit more out of him last night about exactly what happened. I opened up a carton of ice cream. He told me we weren’t on a sitcom and that he wasn’t going to open up over mint chocolate chip, but as soon as we made ourselves a bowl, he got a little chatty.”
“The ice cream thing really works, huh?”
Mary nudged him, shaking her head and laughing ever so slightly. “Every time,” she said. “Though I didn’t say it directly to him, I think Kara was intimidated by Hannah.”
“Really? You think so?” Preston asked.
“Oh, definitely,” Mary said. “I mean, I would be too. Imagine being a teenage girl and having your boyfriend’s best friend being a pretty girl who spends most of the day with him sitting right next to her in half their classes together and studying together and hanging out on the weekends together… as much as I hate to admit it, Kara might have just been… acting out of jealousy. Honestly… I didn’t think she was so bad.”
“What did she say to Hannah, exactly?”
“Some pretty awful things,” Mary said. “She and Stacey railed into her and Draco. Calling them losers and making fun of her wheelchair.”
“That’s pretty cruel,” Preston said. “You’re defending her?”
“Oh, heavens no,” Mary said. “I’m only saying that she’s just a kid who didn’t know how to handle her feelings of jealousy and insecurity. That’s all. Believe me; I’m glad the relationship is over.”
“This will be fun with her parents today then—you think she told them that Tripp broke up with her?” Preston asked.
“Maybe,” Mary said. “And if so, I doubt she told them why. I wouldn’t want to admit to my parents I had been making fun of a girl in a wheelchair.”
“Ooh, I didn’t even think about that,” Preston said. “You going to tell them if it comes up?”
“I mean, I’m not going to lie if they ask me, but I’m not going to offer up the information,” Mary said, and soon they were pulling up to the office building.
They entered and she could see that Nat and Lana had already arrived and had brought their husbands some breakfast. The four of them welcomed Preston and Mary politely and they pulled up some extra chairs in the breakroom for them. Mary caught herself continuously gl
ancing in Darren and Nat’s direction, quite curious about whether or not Kara had told her parents about the breakup.
“Well, Mary and I don’t want to be in your hair too long. I imagine you all have a lot of work to do with Ken gone and Jaden taking a few weeks off to mourn,” Preston said.
“We appreciate that,” Bob said, and his wife Lana nodded.
“But it’s really no trouble,” Lana added.
“Since we last spoke with each of you,” Preston began, “we have learned that Jaden was planning on divorcing Ken.”
They all instinctually stopped eating. “Oh?” Darren questioned. “Er… didn’t know she was planning on telling you all that. Figured she wanted it private.”
“We managed to uncover that ourselves,” Mary said.
“Oh,” Nat said, nervously fixing her hair. “Sorry we didn’t say anything. We just knew she was keeping that to herself.”
“I imagine,” Mary said. “And we’re aware that Ken didn’t know, but evidently you all did?”
The group exchanged glances. Preston leaned forward a bit in his seat, propping his elbows up. “Here is my question: Ken was a business partner. Why the plot to eradicate him from the business as opposed to Jaden? Wouldn’t getting rid of Jaden have been much easier if you weren’t up to the task of working with a divorced couple?”
There was a long pause. Darren and Bob exchanged glances for a moment. Eventually, Darren spoke. “The truth is, we all hated Ken.”
Mary bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at this. “Oh?” Preston asked. “Care to explain that a bit further? We are investigating the man’s murder, after all.”
“Hate might be a strong word,” Darren said. “I mean, we went into business together, the three of us and Jaden. He was a cool guy back then. Started this business twenty years ago—just celebrated that big anniversary over the summer. But things just started getting complicated with him as time went on.”