“What did I do?” I ask, even though I know by now they saw me outside with Ethan. They were probably watching for me, checking to see how I got home after being gone for hours with Noelle or at the library or whatever fabricated story I told them before leaving the house earlier.
“Where have you been all afternoon?” Mom’s tone is careful, curious. She’s going to do the interrogation, obviously. It’s always been like that. Mom asks the questions and doles out the punishments while Dad stands quietly beside her, backing her up and occasionally acting as the peacemaker. Only now, instead of looking like he feels sorry for me, it seems like he wants to yell at me, but is afraid to start because he might never stop.
Screw it. May as well give him a reason.
“I was over on Cambridge Drive, listening to Ethan’s band practice.”
The worry wrinkle appears between Mom’s eyes. “Ethan is in a band?”
“Yeah. They’re really good.”
She glances at Dad, but he doesn’t meet her eyes. His head is lowered, jaw muscles working like he’s grinding his molars into powder. Mom sighs and refocuses on me.
“I thought we decided spending time with Ethan was a bad idea.”
“You decided.”
Dad glances up, surprised by the bitterness in my voice. But he doesn’t call me on it, so I keep talking.
“He’s not holding me back, or whatever it is you’re worried about. I thought you’d be happy I’m getting out of the house and spending time with friends again.”
Mom shakes her head. “Dara, that’s not the point. Ethan’s a good kid, but maybe he’s not the best person for you to be leaning on right now.”
“Why not?” The shakiness in my body has been replaced with adrenaline. I’m sick of them treating me like I’m made of delicate tissue—one little tear and I’m ruined forever. “Tell me, please, what is so damn terrible about the idea of me hanging out with Ethan.”
They stare at me for a long moment. I’ve clearly surprised them. This is the most life I’ve shown in well over a year.
Mom places a hand on Dad’s knee and leans toward me. “Okay. I’m just going to say this straight out. It’s his parents.”
“His parents? What are you talking about?”
“Shortly after the accident, when you were . . .” She flicks a glance toward the ceiling and my bedroom, where I’d holed up for days on end, dazed with grief. “Your father and I went to the McCraes’ house to apologize in person for everything that happened.”
“You did?” I say, still confused about where she’s going with this. I look at Dad for clues, but he’s glowering at the floor again. “What did they say?”
“They—”
“They told us to go away,” Dad cuts in, lifting his head to look at me. “And then they threatened us with legal action if you ever tried to contact any of them again.”
The adrenaline drains out of me, leaving me exhausted. “Was this before or after they charged me with criminal negligence?”
“Before,” Mom replies. “But I think they would have done that even if we hadn’t shown up there.”
I sit quietly for a minute, my mind spinning. Had Ethan’s parents read the letter I’d mailed to their house the day after the funeral, even though it was addressed to him? Was it the last straw for them? Maybe they threw it away before Ethan could see it. Before he could read the three lines that had taken me hours to write: Ethan, I know sorry will never be good enough, but I am. You have every right to hate me. I wish it had been me instead.
I meant every word of that letter, and the thought of them keeping it from him pisses me off.
“Why didn’t you guys tell me this before?” I ask, my annoyance seeping into my voice.
“Because we didn’t want to add to your stress over starting school,” Mom says. “Also, it wasn’t really an issue then. You two weren’t even in contact. But now . . .”
“What? You think his parents will try to do something if they find out he’s been hanging out with me?”
Mom’s throat moves as she swallows. “They were just so hell-bent on making you pay for what happened. Anger like that doesn’t just disappear, Dara. And how do you know Ethan isn’t still angry too? He didn’t get in touch with you once while you lived with Lydia and Jared, right? Why is he back in your life all of a sudden?”
Now it’s my turn to stare. What is she getting at? “He wants to be friends,” I say, remembering the feel of his arms around me, the softness of his T-shirt against my cheek. No one who hugged me like that could be mad at me. Or if he is, he’s doing a damn good job of hiding it. “Ethan is nothing like his parents, okay? He doesn’t blame me for what happened.”
“Are you sure?” Dad asks.
The way they’re looking at me, like I’m some kind of delusional mental case, makes me want to scream. They haven’t spoken to Ethan in ages; they have no idea what his intentions are or how he feels about me. “No,” I bite out. “You’re totally right. He’s manipulating me into trusting him. And then, when I least expect it, he’s going to lure me out on the street and push me in front of a truck in revenge.”
My father’s face becomes a deep shade of purple and he springs off the couch, pointing a finger at me. “Don’t you ever speak to us that way. We’re just trying to help you.”
The resentment I’ve been nursing for the past few weeks spills over and suddenly I’m standing too. “What do you care, Dad? You didn’t even want me to come home, remember?”
That shuts him up. It shuts everyone up, for a moment. The only sound in the room is Dad’s loud, angry breathing. I’ve seen him furious before, like the time someone behind us was texting and slammed into the back of our truck, but his fury has never, ever been directed at me. I’m not sure what to do with it.
“Okay.” Mom stands up slowly and touches Dad’s arm. “Let’s all take a breath. Screaming at each other isn’t going to solve anything. That’s why I think we need to sit down calmly with Dr. Lemke and work through this.”
“Dr. Lemke isn’t magical,” I snap at her. “He can’t fix everything.”
I can sense my father gearing up toward another outburst, but I don’t stick around to hear it. Instead, I escape to my room and almost trip over Tobias at the top of the stairs, where he’s obviously been stationed for the past several minutes, eavesdropping. He looks at me the way he always does now—like he’s scared of me—but I don’t stick around for that either. I close myself up in my room, stick in my earbuds, and numb my brain with sound.
eighteen
Sophomore Year
“HEY, GUYS! GUESS WHAT?” PAIGE SQUEEZED between Aubrey and me as we headed toward the cafeteria. Ethan, who’d been walking on my other side, ducked behind me to avoid colliding with a trash can.
“What?” I said, grabbing Ethan’s arm and pulling him back beside me.
“My mom and stepdad are going out of town this weekend.”
“And?” Aubrey prompted.
“And . . .” She smacked her gum for a few seconds to create suspense. “I’m having a party Saturday night. One last blowout before we have to start studying for finals.”
Aubrey frowned. “Your parents are leaving you alone in the house?”
Leave it to Aubrey to focus on the practicalities.
“No. My brother will be there.”
“He won’t mind you having a party?”
Paige shrugged. “He doesn’t care. I think I can even convince him to buy us liquor.”
“He won’t tell your parents?” Aubrey asked as we entered the cafeteria. Immediately, she scanned the room for Justin. Things with her parents hadn’t changed, but Justin had kept his word to me and stopped avoiding her at school. They weren’t back together, but they’d been talking a lot more lately. He seemed open to working things out with her, which made me wonder if I’d imagined him checking me out at Home Depot. I hoped so.
“No way,” Paige said confidently. “Believe me, I have some dirt on my brother I
can totally use as blackmail material.”
I didn’t even want to know. “So is this our invitation?”
“Of course, dork. Aubrey, you can invite Justin. It’s for juniors too. I think some seniors might even show up.” She paused and looked at Ethan, her eyes carefully assessing him like he was an interesting new addition to the cafeteria she just now noticed. “You come too, Ethan. You’re tall enough to pass as a sophomore.”
Red blotches appeared on Ethan’s cheeks. “Oh, uh, maybe. Yeah.”
Paige smiled, waved, and jogged off to join Travis by the vending machines. Aubrey, Ethan, and I continued to the food line.
“You are going, right?” I asked Aubrey, recognizing the pinched look on her face. Already, she was worrying about getting caught at a party filled with underage drinkers.
“I guess so.” She stood on her tiptoes, craning her neck to see over the crowd. I knew she’d spotted Justin when her face relaxed into a slight smile. “I’ll be back,” she told us before darting into the crowd.
I peered at Ethan. “Are you actually going or did you just say you were because you think Paige is cute?”
He smiled mysteriously.
“She has a boyfriend, you know,” I said in a mock-stern voice. Ethan didn’t go to parties, and he certainly didn’t talk to girls, unless I counted as one. It surprised me that he was even considering going.
“Don’t worry,” Ethan said as we shifted forward in line. “She’s not really my type, anyway.”
I turned to him, all set to ask what type he did like, when it suddenly hit me why Paige had looked at him like she’d never really noticed him before today. The change had been gradual, building over the past few months, but now it was glaringly obvious.
Ethan was starting to get cute.
Getting to the party on Saturday night involved some planning. My mother totally bought the watching-movies-at-Paige’s-house story and even offered to drive us over there, but I didn’t want her to get tipped off by loud music or extra cars in the driveway. Instead, Aubrey and Ethan came to my house first and then the three of us walked the short distance to Paige’s.
“When are your parents going to start letting you drive their cars?” I whined to Aubrey as the early-June wind tangled my hair, which I’d spent twenty minutes brushing to perfection. “You’ve had your license for ages now.”
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe when I’m ninety and on my deathbed.”
“They don’t trust her,” Ethan put in. “They think she might get a taste of freedom and never come back.”
“Maybe they’re right,” Aubrey mumbled as we turned onto Paige’s street.
Right away, I was relieved we hadn’t let my mom drop us off. Cars spilled out of the driveway and lined the curbs, and some guy was walking across the lawn with a six-pack in each hand. Aubrey and I exchanged a here-we-go look and followed beer guy up to the front door.
Not bothering with the doorbell, we let ourselves in. Paige’s house was a medium-sized split-level, and it seemed like everyone was on the upper floor, hanging out in the kitchen and living room. The three of us headed up there, shouldering through the mass of sweaty bodies. I recognized a lot of people from our class, but there were older people too, juniors and seniors who didn’t discriminate when parent-free houses and copious amounts of alcohol were in play.
“There’s another fridge in the garage,” Paige was telling the guy who’d carried in the six-packs as we squeezed into the kitchen. She spotted us and grinned. “Hey, guys! You made it.”
I reached out to hug her, careful not to flatten her perfectly curled hair. She wore a tiny skirt and an even tinier sparkly tank top, the type of outfit that would look borderline obscene on me. Paige’s natural skinniness—along with Aubrey’s petite figure—always made me feel extra bulky when we all hung out together. I hated being the tallest and most well-endowed of my friends.
“You guys want a drink?” Paige asked as Travis sidled up beside her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He greeted us with a nod, his eyes glassy and unfocused. Clearly, he’d been taking advantage of the party supplies.
“Um . . .” I glanced behind me to discover two pairs of dark brown eyes locked on my face. Aubrey had that pinched expression again, and Ethan seemed curious, like he was waiting to see if I’d cave under peer pressure even though I’d told them on the walk over I was definitely not going to drink.
“No, thanks,” Aubrey answered for all three of us, then caught Travis’s eye. “Have you seen Justin?”
“Downstairs,” he said with a smirk. “He’s working his way through a case of Bud.”
Aubrey sighed. Apparently, before they started dating, Justin used to get hammered with the junior jerks almost every weekend, and sometimes he still did. Aubrey hated it.
“I’d better get down there,” she told me, turning in the direction of the stairs. “He’s probably waiting for me.”
Or maybe, I thought, he was drowning himself in beer because he didn’t want to see her or get back together with her or any of the other things Aubrey was hoping for tonight. “Find us later,” I called after her as she left the kitchen.
“Should we go downstairs too?” Ethan asked.
“Nah.” I shook my head. “Let’s give them some distance.”
Relieved, he leaned back against the counter, his gaze following a trio of sophomore girls in tight jeans as they passed by the threshold to the kitchen. I nudged him with my elbow and he looked back at me, wide-eyed and innocent.
“What?” he said.
I snorted and ran my hand over my hair, trying to smooth out the tangles the wind had made. It probably looked like a rat’s nest. “Nothing.” I patted his head, surprised at how high I had to reach to get to it. We were officially the same height. “I’m gonna go fix my hair. Stay out of trouble while I’m gone, okay?”
“Can’t make any promises.”
I wagged a finger at him and edged out of the kitchen. The hallway leading to the bathroom was mobbed with sweaty bodies, and it took at least ten minutes for my turn to arrive. Ethan was probably wondering about me.
Or not. When I got back to the kitchen, he was nowhere to be seen. I turned and started in the other direction, occasionally smiling at people I knew. As I entered the living room, a hand shot out and seized my arm.
“Dara!” shouted Levi Mosley. Without letting go of me, he turned to Shane Dobbs, who was standing next to him, and said, “She’ll do anything if you dare her first.”
“Excuse me?” I pulled my arm out of his grasp.
“Relax,” he said, digging in the front pocket of his hoodie and pulling out two handfuls of packaged, premixed shots, the kind I’d seen near the liquor store checkout when I went there with my dad. “Everyone thinks these are nasty. I dare you to down one without making a face or spitting it out.”
I bit my lip, hesitating. Aubrey would be pissed if I drank after assuring her I wasn’t going to, and my parents would kill me if I came home with my breath reeking of liquor. But damn it, a dare was a dare. I took one of the shots out of his hands and peeled back the aluminum seal without even reading the label first. Then, after throwing a quick glance behind me to make sure Aubrey and Ethan weren’t anywhere in the vicinity, I tipped the shot into my mouth.
It tasted like lemons and cough syrup and burned my throat like acid. Still, I used every ounce of willpower I had to swallow and keep my face perfectly smooth. Levi and Shane were watching me carefully, eyes twinkling like they were expecting me to hurl any second. When I didn’t, they looked at each other and laughed.
“Told you,” Levi said while Shane appraised me, his gaze settling on my chest.
Eyes watering, I handed the empty shot back to Levi and shoved back into the kitchen, heading straight for the fridge. I needed something to get this sour taste out of my mouth. Something cold, sweet, and fizzy. But the only drinks in there were milk and orange juice and bottled water, none of which would do much to cleanse my taste buds. Then I rem
embered Paige’s parents kept an ample supply of Coke cans in the garage fridge.
I expected to find Aubrey when I got downstairs, but she wasn’t there. Justin was, though, sprawled on the family room couch with a can of beer. A few of the junior jerks—including Wyatt—surrounded him, guzzling their own beers while they pulverized animated zombies with game controllers. I walked past them without saying hello and down the short hallway that led to the garage.
Away from all the voices and laughter and pounding music, this section of the house felt eerily quiet. I squinted as I entered the bright garage, which, for as long as I’d known Paige, had never actually held a car. Her parents used it for storage, mostly. One entire wall consisted of metal shelves stacked high with labeled boxes, while the rest of the space was taken up by a workbench with tools hanging on pegboard above it, bicycles, a chest freezer, and what I’d come in there for—the extra fridge. I made a beeline for it, desperate to rinse the nasty bitterness from my tongue.
I grabbed a Coke and immediately popped it open, sipping it as I closed the fridge door. The crisp sweetness cut the sour aftertaste within seconds, and the scorched feeling in my throat and stomach finally abated.
Someone had propped open the garage door with a toolbox, allowing for an unobstructed path to the beer fridge, so I didn’t realize Justin had followed me inside until he actually spoke.
“Whatcha doin’?”
I jumped, almost choking on a mouthful of Coke, and whirled around. Justin was moving toward me, his gait slow and deliberate like he was trying to remember how to walk straight. He couldn’t possibly have come for more beer. It looked as though he was well past his limit.
“Getting a drink.” I held up my can as proof, then added, “Where’s Aubrey?”
He came to a stop in front of me, his entire body swaying slightly to the left. “That’s not a drink, Dare-ya,” he said, ignoring my question. His bleary gaze traveled down my body, pausing at my cleavage before continuing to the can in my hand. “You need a real drink.”
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