Anything but Ordinary(64)

Gabby gave her a sad smile. “What’s done is done.”

Bryce began to respond, but Gabby held up a hand. Bryce stayed silent.

“I wasn’t marrying Greg to hurt you, but I did. I see that now. And I’m sorry about that, too.”

Bryce shook her head. “We both ended up getting hurt, I think.”

Gabby responded with a nod, her hands still folded. Neither of them said a word for a long time. Cars came and went. The door opened and shut. Bryce wondered if that was all. She wondered if Gabby would leave now. This could be the last time she ever saw Gabby. The girl whose laughter filled up even the largest room. The thought of ending things like this made Bryce squirm with pain.

“Can we…” Bryce finally spoke up. “Start over?”

Gabby’s head tilted. She thought for a moment, her eyes bright. Her hands flattened on the table. “I think so,” she said with a smile.

Bryce raised her eyebrows, breaking into disbelieving laughter. “Really?”

Gabby shrugged. “You know I can’t hold grudges.” She broke off a piece of Bryce’s scone and popped it into her mouth. “Besides, something tells me it wouldn’t have worked out anyway with Greg,” she said with a bitter smile. “Guess where our dear friend is now?”

“I don’t know,” Bryce said, leaning forward. He hadn’t contacted her.

“Me neither,” Gabby said, nodding at the look of surprise on Bryce’s face. “Right?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“He took his grandmother’s old van and all his camping stuff. He won’t answer anyone’s calls.”

Bryce rolled her eyes. He had dreamed of new inventions and trips to space and questions like whether colors could match up with sounds. Maybe he was better off sailing from one new landscape to another.

Gabby laughed and Bryce joined in. As her shoulders heaved, she fought to conceal the pain shooting through her chest. These days, Bryce got a little dose of pain every time she did anything besides sitting. She shrugged it off. Her heart was soaring.

“He wasn’t ready for either of us,” Gabby said thoughtfully, their laughter fading.

Bryce lifted her iced tea in agreement, then told Gabby about Carter and the “senior prom,” and her night out with Sydney, minus the vision and the blood.

Gabby said they could go out whenever she came back to visit, but she was leaving tomorrow for D.C.

“You’re going, then?” Bryce had allowed herself to hope that now that Gabby was back, she’d be there with her until the very end.

“I sure am,” Gabby answered. “I won’t be able to start until second semester, but this way I can get my bearings before I start school.”

“You’re going to live there all by yourself?”

Gabby looked at Bryce as if she should know the answer. “You told me I could do it! Don’t go back on me now.”

“Of course not,” Bryce pushed out. “I just wondered if things might have changed.…”

“Well.” Gabby paused, smiling to herself. “I don’t want to bring up the past again, but…sometimes when something bad happens in a place, you want to get away from it as soon as it happens. You know?”

“Yeah,” Bryce said, swallowing tears. No tears. Not today.

She hadn’t gotten to know the grown-up Gabby for long, but Bryce knew she’d do well up there. She had a way of winning people over, of making them feel good about themselves without even trying. She was smart enough that she’d move up in her class. She’d ace her exams, and then she’d meet someone at a function, and they’d give her a job on the spot because of the way she carried herself, like she already knew she’d been chosen for it.

She was the girl who could rock a tiara at a club and consume a three-hundred-page novel in a day. She was the girl who could lift herself out of the muck and forgive a betrayal from her closest friend, just like that.

Bryce wrapped her arms around Gabby and held her tight until she moved to go.

She held Bryce’s hands for a squeeze, and turned to the door. “See you soon, Bry! I’ll call you from D.C.”

The door chimed closed.

Bryce watched Gabby through the wall made of windows for the last time. Through the leaf-filled parking lot, into her black VW, seat belt on, checking her mirrors.

Maybe Bryce would see her again. Not in Nashville, Tennessee, but maybe.

Gabby reversed and pulled away.

Maybe somewhere else, Bryce thought.





ryce looked in the mirror. Her hair had grown to the middle of her back. It’s my twenty-third birthday. Weird. She tried it aloud.

“It’s my twenty-third birthday.”

Bryce had pledged not to think about her death a month ago, but she couldn’t help it. She thought about it today.

Well, there actually wasn’t much to think about. It hadn’t come, that was the main point. Four weeks had passed since the night Carter told her; then five weeks had passed. Now the month of September was long gone.

Bryce was still getting headaches and becoming short of breath, but she had trained herself to take everything slow. Nobody expected her to be fast anymore, anyway, so it was easy to lie low. She remembered to bring everything she needed from downstairs up the stairs in one trip. She took a lot of hot baths. Sydney had stopped going out every night once school started, so Bryce didn’t need to make any excuses for why she was staying in.