The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(77)

She shouldn’t have tried to walk so far. With every step, her core seized up. She kept moving, breathed through it as Miss Celeste had taught her to do, knowing she had underestimated the power of this pain.

“Emma Fleed!”

Emma turned toward the older woman’s voice, a familiar rasp that she could not exactly place. Neither could she place the image of the woman rushing toward her—fat and freckled with frizzed red hair, enrobed in a peacock-printed blouse whose wispy arms fanned out like wings. But when Emma saw the ribbon pinned to the woman’s blouse—royal blue, positioned just above her heart—she knew.

The pain at her core cooled to dread. She had known Tristan Bloch’s mother in middle school—she came to school so often that everyone had—but hadn’t said a word to her since Tristan jumped from the bridge. She wondered if Mrs. Bloch blamed her—Emma’s name was on the Facebook page, she had thought the comments were funny, she had been only thirteen years old.

“How are you feeling, hon?” Tristan’s mother’s face up close was broad and furred with translucent hairs. Her eyes were naked blue and needed liner; they had the gloss of tears though she wasn’t crying. “I read about what happened.”

Tristan’s mother’s breath smelled of the dregs of black tea and honey. Emma imagined her alone at a broad kitchen table, the mug between her palms. She forced herself to smile, to speak. “Okay. Thanks.”

All around them people were stopping and staring, but Tristan’s mother went on—Emma guessed she was used to it. “Should you really be trying to walk this soon, sweetheart? What did the doctors say? How are your parents holding up? I’ve been leaving messages for your mom, wondering if there’s anything at all that I can do….”

Tristan’s mother’s voice seemed to be growing louder. Emma was desperate to run. Instead she hunched on her crutches, the supports biting into her armpits, and leaned on her right hip with her left foot cocked, her toe just grazing the ground. She shifted back and the hot knives stabbed at her core. She gripped the metal handles of her crutches, bearing her weight in her shoulders. As Tristan’s mother talked, Emma glanced over her shoulder. Everyone in Mill Valley, it seemed, had crammed into this crush of checkout lines—where was her father?

Tristan’s mother worried her eyebrows, tilted her head. “Oh, honey,” she said. Her eyes traced Emma from head to toe, and Emma tried to read the expression on her face. Judgment? No. Pity. The face that everyone had made for Tristan Bloch, after he was dead.

Emma leaned on her left crutch and yanked up her tank top, which had dipped to reveal a slice of hot-pink bra. Needles of pain all over. Then Tristan’s mother reached out, closed her plump, dry palm over Emma’s fist. Her skin was unbearably soft.

Instinctively Emma pulled back, but Tristan’s mother gripped her harder. Insisted on the intimacy. Shaking Emma’s knuckles for emphasis, she said, “If you need someone to talk to, a friend, if you need anything—”

Emma glanced around, looking anywhere but into Tristan’s mother’s pitying, pitiable face. Accidentally she caught the eye of a man her dad’s age who hovered behind the candy display, and on his scruffed face a smile flickered to life. A sickness centered in her gut and pulsed out. Did he know? Had he seen?

Emma was still trapped by Tristan’s mother when Ryan Harbinger strode through the automated doors. Nick Brickston shuffled in behind him. She wondered where Damon Flintov was before remembering. Juvie. She tried to conjure it: jumpsuits, steel bars, bulletproof glass. But it was an unimaginable thing—like falling off the face of the earth. Had she been the one to push him over?

The boys came nearer. Emma pulled away from Tristan’s mother. “I have to—I have to go,” she said.

“Are you okay?” Tristan’s mother said. “Are you sure?”

Emma hobbled back as fast as she was able. “I’m—thank you. I’m sorry.”

She turned, and found herself face-to-face with Ryan. Behind him, Nick trained his gaze on the floor.

“Hey,” she said.

“Oh,” Ryan said. “Hey.”

“What are you guys doing here?”

“They took my car. It won’t last, they don’t want to drive my ass around. I thought you were—”

“I was. They just let me out. I’m going—”

“Cool. How are you—”

“I’m heading home now. We just stopped to get some—”

“That’s good.”

“My dad’s here, somewhere—”

“Yeah. Oh.” Ryan glanced over his shoulder.

“Do you think—?”

“Um. Yo. I’ve got a—” Ryan pulled his phone from his pocket and scanned the screen. “Yeah, sorry. We gotta go.” He nodded to Nick, who nodded back. “I hope you, you know, feel better, or whatever,” Ryan said. Then they turned and walked away.

This hurt, and yet she understood. They did not want to be associated with her suffering. They did not want to be reminded. Two weeks earlier, she might have done the same thing. It was something she might have done, for example, to Tristan Bloch, whose love note to Cally Broderick and the Facebook comments they’d all made about it had been so riotously funny up until the moment that they weren’t.