“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I couldn’t stop the words from leaving my mouth.
“Language,” Ethan scolded immediately.
We then both tried talking at the same time before giving nervous laughs. I gestured for him to go first.
“What is this?” His voice was soft-- quiet enough so he couldn’t be overheard, and gentle enough to approach a tough subject.
I stared into his eyes and couldn’t look away. Despite the exhaustion etched on his face, his eyes were alive.
Ethan was waiting for me to respond, but I couldn’t find the right words. There were no right words.
“Look, if I ever did anything to make you uncomfortable or make you feel some type of way, I’m sorry. That was never my intention.”
I nodded.
“That being said,” Ethan continued. “I don’t think you wrote this.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “The faces are over the top, aren’t they?”
He laughed. “Well, that, and I’ve been your English teacher for over a month now and have seen a plethora of your papers. You don’t dot your i’s with circles.”
He had a point.
“Or hearts.” I pointed to the signature line, which had a rather large and obnoxiously scribbled heart over the I in Abigail.
“I’m glad you didn’t write this.”
I was too. I just wish I knew exactly what I had felt during that volunteer trip. I watched as he bent over, tucking the note in his briefcase. “So what do we do next?” I asked. “What are they going to do?”
He straightened up. “I’ll hold a conference with them. In the meantime, you have some things you need to figure out. I may not see everything, but I see a lot. Being the new kid is hard, and you’re caught in the middle of something.” I wished I could tell him what that something was, but I kept my mouth shut firmly. I didn’t trust myself not to tell him everything. I had waited for so long for someone I could be open with.
“You’re doing the right thing by being that friend everyone needs. I just don’t want you to get hurt.” Ethan leaned back in his seat and surveyed me.
After hearing those words, I wanted nothing more than to crawl into his arms and just cry. There was so much I wanted to say but couldn’t.
When he realized that, he stood up, putting an end to our conversation. He walked me to the door. “If you ever need to talk, you know where to find me.”
The door clicked shut behind me as I struggled to hold back tears. Once I was alone, I needed to let them out.
I grabbed my coat from my locker. When I slammed the door shut, Matt was there with the camera in my face. I wasn’t even surprised.
“Matt, cut the shit,” I implored weakly as I shrugged my backpack off and stuck it in front of my face, creating a barrier between him and me.
“You really want to be remembered as a potty mouth?” Matt made a tsk-tsk sound. “And a litterbug?” he chided, bringing up the comment from detention. “This won’t win you any gold stars with Mr. Nash. Do you want to talk about that relationship?”
“I don’t need any gold stars.” I walked quickly, reaching the stairs and taking them two at a time as I ignored his question, replacing it with my own. “What is you guys’ problem?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” He feigned ignorance. We were almost to the doors. I chanced a look from around my bag. He was fiddling with a few more buttons on the camera.
“Do you want to talk about your relationship with Mr. Nash?” he repeated himself.
“There is no relationship, and you know that. Seeing as how it was a fabricated letter, it makes sense that the whole story was fabricated. Do you guys wanna talk about who is behind that?”
“OK, sure.” Matt shrugged, keeping the camera steady. “Just so you know, we see a lot more than you people think we see. I’m here when you’re ready to share your side of the story.” I stopped in my tracks. How strange it was that his words almost mimicked Ethan’s, but with a completely different meaning.
“Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I stared straight into the camera. “But whatever you’re doing is garbage. Messing with people’s lives for some stupid project doesn’t win you any award or satisfaction except the satisfaction of knowing you’re going to end up hurting someone. And that’s a fact.”
“Perfect.” He clicked off his camera and tucked it into a camera bag. “You’re a natural.” He blew me a fake kiss and walked away.
Fall was there, and it wasn’t just the colors of the leaves that were beginning to show, it was the true colors of the people all around me. Apparently I hadn’t done a good enough job hiding my true feelings for Ethan, either.
CHAPTER 23
“Did you get your tickets yet?” Bailey was waving a sheet of bright orange fall festival tickets mere inches from my face. I had to whip my head back to avoid getting a paper cut.
“Not yet,” I stammered. “But I guess now is as good a time as ever to get one.” I hadn't originally planned on going to the Halloween Festival, and part of me was actually hoping that no one would notice my absence. Bailey, however, was surely doing her due diligence to make sure she had a “record turnout.” Apparently her meticulous planning looked good on college applications.
“Twenty-five dollars, please.” Bailey slid the sheet of tickets across the table towards me as she brushed her blonde hair out of her eyes and blinked expectantly.
I didn’t even tell her how many tickets I had wanted. I certainly didn’t want twenty-five dollars’ worth, but there I was, digging through my wallet for the lunch money I had for the week. I handed her thirty dollars and, instead of giving me change, she ripped off five additional tickets and added them to my pile.
I hovered awkwardly, but she was already waving at someone behind me.
“Great. Well, thanks,” I muttered as I walked away. She was resilient. A group of freshman girls were getting their tickets.
I was now up thirty tickets for an event I didn’t want to go to, and down thirty dollars for food for the week. I made my way over to the teachers’ lunch table. It was the only place where I truly felt comfortable.
Ethan was already sitting there, focusing intently on the sandwich he was eating. I sat down next to him and he looked up, his face breaking into a smile while chewing.
He swallowed. “I see she got you, too.” He nodded towards his orange sheet of tickets that he was using as a placemat.
“Holy cow.” I laughed as I took out my lunch. “How many did she get you for?”
“Fifty dollars,” he said somberly. “But I actually paid sixty. It’s a good cause, so I can’t be too upset.”
That made me feel slightly better about mine.
“So are you going?” Chase piped up from across the table. I was glad he’d asked Ethan, because I had felt awkward around Ethan ever since detention a week ago.
“I’ll be there. Half chaperone, half attendee, full Batman.” He looked off into the distance and pretended to smooth out an invisible cape on his shoulders. I almost forgot that dressing up was encouraged for the event. I groaned.
“Not a fan of my Batman impression?” Ethan shrugged nonchalantly. “No one ever is.”
Chase chuckled at Ethan before going back to peeling the wrappers off his candy, which I noticed he did every day.
“No, it was great.” I laughed. “I just don’t know what I’m going to be yet.”
Ethan leaned in closer “Most guys wear their jerseys, and most girls just wear animal headbands. It’s not something you need to put an extraordinary amount of effort into.”
“I wish. I told Bailey I’d support her with all this carnival stuff, so I want to make sure that she approves.”
Ethan held my gaze for a moment, and I wondered if he knew that I’d figured out Bailey was the girl he had referenced when we were alone together in the car.
“Great,” he said without even seeming to skip a beat. “She’s been working hard on that, and I’m sure she�
�ll appreciate all the help she can get.”
The conversation quickly turned to school and how my final project was coming. I shared with him how helpful the new librarian had been.
“I’ve been meaning to meet her,” Ethan said thoughtfully. “I’ve been so busy I forgot after that staff email was sent out.”
“She’s very nice,” Chase said with a mouthful of candy. “I sat with her when neither of you was at the table last week.”
I felt a small tug at my heartstrings, sad for abandoning Chase. I wondered if he knew or cared that he was part of some sick documentary. I gave him a sincere smile, which he returned briefly before looking away. His cheeks flushed slightly.
“She’s actually lived in the area her whole life,” I continued, excited that I had something to share with the table, some knowledge that no one else had. “For my project, she gave me this article on this drunk driving crash that killed a 3-year-old a few years back. The next town over. Obviously I need to do more research, but I feel like it somehow ties in with the quote I got.” I was fiddled with a loose string on my lunch bag as I continued. I had the article somewhere and I wanted to get Ethan’s advice on it. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but I just think--”
“Abigail.” Miss Fry cleared her throat and I looked up. Chase was rocking back and forth in his seat, and Ethan had completely left the table. I had been so deep in thought that I hadn’t noticed him pushing back his chair. His sandwich was still there, half-eaten on top of the tickets.
“Sorry?”
Mrs. Fry gave a slight shake of her head no. “Let’s talk about this later.”
In the minute I had spent talking, the whole dynamic of the table had somehow changed. I had no clue what I had missed out on.
I raised my eyebrows to Chase, but he was deliberately avoiding my gaze. Ethan’s briefcase was gone. No one said anything until Chase got up. He carefully tidied up his own area and pushed his chair all the way in. I thought he was leaving before the bell rang, which was unlike him--he was a stickler for his routine. But then he made his way over to Ethan’s area, still avoiding my gaze. I watched as he took one of Ethan’s napkins and carefully brushed each crumb into his hand before making his way to the garbage to dump them all in.
Our eyes briefly met as he squirted a dab of hand sanitizer into his hands, rubbing them together slowly as if he was faced with a hard task that he was taking his time to prepare for. He then packed Ethan’s sandwich away in a plastic baggie, grabbed his stuff, and walked away without a word. I watched him as he left the lunchroom and headed up the stairs until he disappeared from sight. All the while, I wondered what the hell I had just missed out on.
I didn’t get the chance to ask the gym teacher, as the bell rang seconds later. All around me, the noise of kids putting away their lunch trays and picking up their backpacks did nothing to drown out the thoughts in my head.
When I reached Ethan’s door, I froze. Something bumped me from behind, hard.
“Jesus.” I turned around and was face to face with someone I didn’t recognize. Whoever it was shot me an angry look. “You coming or going?”
“No idea,” I said as he walked away. He wasn’t really looking for an answer anyways. I needed to just walk through those doors. Ethan wasn’t in there yet. Something, however, told me not to go inside. Students shuffled in around me, unaware of the debate I was having in my brain. I couldn’t do it. I headed towards the office instead.
Somewhere above me, the final bell rang. I was able to quickly get a yellow absent slip after claiming to have a horrible stomach ache, possibly food poisoning. No one questioned it, especially considering that the awful way I felt matched the way I looked. I doubled back to the library, where a few kids were sitting at the rows of computers. They all had headphones on, oblivious to the world.
I found the librarian sitting at her desk. She was engrossed in a book. Her wire-framed glasses had slipped down to the very edge of her nose, and for a moment I wondered if they’d fall.
She looked up as she sensed me, her glasses bouncing back into place. “Abigail, hello!” She cocked her head to the side as she studied me. I knew she was wondering why I wasn’t in class, but she didn’t ask.
She gestured for me to pull up a chair at a table nearby, which I did. “What brings you in?”
I flashed my yellow slip at her to prove I wasn’t breaking any sort of rules.
“Good. You’re not playing hooky.” Her shoulders visibly relaxed. I wasn’t sure if anyone playing hooky would have chosen the library as their place to go.
“I had a few questions about the article you showed me.”
“Shoot.” She spread her hands out, encouraging me to continue. “Although, I’m not entirely sure how much help I’ll be. I didn’t personally know the family.”
I sighed and leaned back in my chair. I wasn’t sure if she would have answers to any of my questions, but I needed to ask them anyway. Something was pushing me forward on this particular quest for information.
I felt a sharp intake of breath from the librarian. I immediately looked up to see what had caught her attention, and it took a second to process what I was seeing. Ethan was walking deliberately towards us. Shit. So much for trying to avoid him. Was he there to yank me back to class? Chastise me about not really being sick?
Instead, he ignored me and went straight for the librarian. He leaned in. His words were barely audible to me, but I caught the tail end.
“Brought the note in and said I was needed in the library to pick up some folders.” He finished his sentence, sliding a piece of folded-up paper towards her.
“I don’t have any papers for you, and I’m not sure who wrote you that note. Principal Medina…” She trailed off and her eyes widened as she read the note.
“The student who dropped it off definitely said it came from the librarian.” Mr. Nash looked around, still ignoring me. Whether it was intentional or accidental, I didn’t want to know.
“I’m sorry. I’m the only staff member here.” She was stuttering, as if the whole interaction somehow made her nervous. “We’re actually the only two people here, other than the typing class. I have no idea where that note came from.”
Ethan was backing up. “Fair enough. Perhaps I was mistaken.” He gave us a nod. “I’ll check with the office.” Just like that, he was walking back out the doors he just came from.
“Holy shit.”
I widened my eyes. The librarian had just sworn.
She apologized, and I didn’t know who wore the more shocked expression. I wondered if she was knocked speechless by Ethan’s good looks. She was roughly the same age as him.
“That’s him.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“That’s him. The one you were talking about.” The words were tumbling out of her mouth as if she couldn’t say them fast enough.
“Mr. Nash? He teaches English. I didn’t ask anything about him, I don’t--” I trailed off. My heart had sunk straight down. I even looked down at the floor, making sure that hadn’t literally happened, knowing just how fragile my life really was.
“Seriously?” I lowered my voice and leaned towards her, despite her being the only one within earshot. “Seriously?” I asked again. Luckily, she cut me off, because I felt like I would have kept repeating the word.
“I’d recognize him anywhere. Quite easy on the eyes. But the bags under his eyes have gone down, and he doesn’t have nearly as much facial hair.”
My brain wasn’t fully processing everything at once. Ethan was the man in the article. Ethan had a daughter. Not only that, Ethan had a daughter who had died. Where was she? Where was her heaven? I needed to find her. I needed to find Glen. I couldn’t sit there any longer. I pushed myself back from the table, knowing one thing for sure. If I had come back from a previous life, who could say the same thing hadn’t happened for Ethan’s daughter? She could be there right now. I looked around the library, half expecting her to appear.
She didn’t, but a loud blaring noise suddenly filled the room. I froze where I was. It was happening. The active shooter alarm was sounding already. Time had somehow jumped ahead to December.
The librarian gently touched my shoulder, bringing me out of the trance I was in.
“Are you okay? It’s just a fire drill.” Her eyes were full of concern.
I exhaled slowly. It wasn’t an active shooter drill. It wasn’t the day we were going to die.
“I’m fine.” I got up and followed her out of the library, focusing on the clicking of her heels instead of the alarm which was still causing the hair to stand up on the back of my neck.
We were almost to the exit when she turned towards me. All the color was drained from her face. “Can I tell you something?”
I nodded.
“I didn’t write that note.” She gulped. “But that note was written in my exact handwriting.”
CHAPTER 24
I had absolutely no appetite as I sat across from Dad, swirling the carrots and celery around with my spoon. Even the warmth from the chicken noodle soup did nothing for the chill that had settled over my body.
“Eat, please.” Dad was no longer reading his newspaper. Instead it was folded neatly next to him. I had no idea how long he had been staring at me. “You need to get better. If you’re not back by Monday, you’re going to need a doctor’s note.”
I forced down a bite of soup and flashed him a thumbs up.
“I feel like you’re three years old again.” He chuckled.
“Hey.” I put my spoon down as an idea struck me. “What kind of kid was I?”
“Just because you’re eighteen now doesn’t automatically make you not my kid anymore.” He reached across the table to put his hand on top of mine as he began to be lost in his memories, which were infinitely clearer than my own. “Determined,” he finally said.
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