Falling into Place(45)

Liz stared at the screen. Her mother’s words echoed through her head: love you. People threw them around so easily, as if they were nothing, as if they meant nothing.

She stood and popped Jake’s game out of the Xbox, cracked it in half, and went to clean her room. Liz didn’t want to leave any clues behind, and if anyone saw the state of her room, the accident story would be considerably less believable.



CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO


Hopes and Fears


Liz’s mother has noticed Liam.

She had been wondering where Liz’s boyfriend was when she remembered the boy who had been sitting near the window since yesterday afternoon. She doesn’t know that Liam was the one who called the police, or what he has to do with Liz, or even his name. She only knows that he has been sitting in the same place for a very long time.

So she buys him a cup of coffee.

Liam has his hood pulled down over his head, and his eyes are closed. Monica wonders briefly if he and Liz are dating, which would explain why Jake Derrick has not come, and why this boy has been here all night and all day. He’s a nice-looking boy, very different from the other boys that Liz has brought home over the years, and she hopes that this one stays.

Monica sets down the coffee and begins to walk away, but Liam’s quiet “Thank you” makes her stop, turn, and look at him again. A lump rises in her throat as he watches her; she can see clearly that he wants to ask for news but is too afraid of the answer. So Monica tries to smile and fails utterly, and then she walks away, leaving Liam with a crappy cup of coffee.



CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE


Tact, Or Lack Thereof


While Liam sips his coffee, a group of Liz’s less-than-friends, more-than-acquaintances plays cards on the other side of the waiting room.

“Jacobsen was such a bitch about it,” one of them says. “Dude, he gave us homework. Yeah, like I’m going to do homework tonight. Liz is dying, and he expects us to memorize all of the irregulars in the preterit tense?”

“Yeah, Macmillan still made us take our test in AP Physics. ‘It’s a college course’ and all that shit,” says someone, laying down a nine of clubs.

Across the table, someone sighs. “Damn it. I fold.”

“And then,” Nine of Clubs continues, “she started talking about the physics of car crashes. Like, what the hell? Ever heard of f*cking tact?”

He says it rather loudly. The few people who sit waiting for someone other than Liz Emerson look tempted to ask him the same question.

“Eliezer didn’t make us do anything.” His name is Thomas Bane, and he and Liz had a brief fling earlier this year while she was on a break from Jake. “I think the guy was crying in the back room.”

“Or he was with Mr. Stephens. Doing something else in the back room.”

This, however, apparently crosses a line. Every head turns to glare at the speaker, and Thomas Bane says, “Dude. Not the time.”

They fall silent, staring at the cards. For a moment, I wonder if Liz was wrong. Maybe people really are less selfish in the face of pain.

Then someone else sighs.

“Damn,” he says. “I fold too.”



CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR


Twenty-Four Minutes Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car


She remembered the Emily Dickinson poem stenciled on the wall of the English room. She could see it as she drove, black words against a yellowing wall:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain.

But she had, hadn’t she? She had lived in vain. Second semester of sophomore year had just started. All of the winter teams were beginning to prepare for state tournaments, and spring athletes were getting in shape for their seasons. Julia had a dentist appointment that day, and when Liz finished her weight training, Kennie was still in dance practice. Liz stood alone in the gym lobby, scrolling through her messages, trying to tune out the echoing hoots of the basketball team as they finished their drills.

When she looked up again, half the boys had left, and the other half were huddled in a corner, laughing.

Liz heard the word queer and walked toward them. When she got closer, she realized that the solid mass of boy was not, in fact, a solid mass, but a number of sweaty, tall, laughing *s surrounding Veronica Strauss.