Getting Schooled (Getting Some #1)(60)

The tears come then, scalding and heavy behind my eyelids. And my lungs swell with too much feeling. Because David’s not a bad kid, not even a little. He’s a good kid . . . who did a really bad thing. And he doesn’t even know why.

And that’s so much harder. So much sadder.

“I didn’t . . . I didn’t think they’d break my heart.”

And I sob, the grief of all that’s happened breaking loose and flowing from me.

Garrett pulls me against him, pressing my face against his shoulder, rubbing my back and kissing my hair.

“Yeah. Yeah, they’ll do that too.”



~



The next morning I walk into the auditorium and am met by thirty somber, dejected faces. The news about David turning himself in, that he’s sitting in a jail cell at this very moment, has already torn its way through the school. I put my bag down on a chair in the front row, and my rib cage is filled with concrete.

“We have to finish blocking today. Turn to scene seventeen in your scripts.”

For a moment, none of them move. They just look at me.

“That’s it?” Michael asks quietly. “That’s all you’re gonna say?”

I clear my throat, fumbling with the pages of the script in my hands. “Um . . . Bradley, you’re the understudy for Seymour. You need to start learning those lines. I’ll have to pick someone from one of the other theater classes to play the dentist.”

“No.” Layla stands up, her voice unusually firm. “I’m not doing this with him. I’m not kissing him.”

Bradley scoffs. “I don’t want to swap spit with you either, loser.”

“Shut up, dickface!”

“Screw you!”

“Stop it!” I slap the script down on the chair. “Don’t do this.”

“What about David?” Simone asks softly. “Don’t you care about him at all?”

The quiet question slices me to the bone. And all the sorrow that I locked down, locked up tight last night, crests, threatening to spill over.

“The show must go on.” I look at each of their sad little faces. “Have you ever heard that expression? It’s true—in theater and in life. The show is bigger than any of us—bigger than you or me . . . or David. He can’t be a part of this anymore, but we’ll go on and do it without him.”

Toby stares like he’s never seen me before. “That’s cold, Miss Carpenter.”

“Life is cold, Toby.”

And I try, I try so hard to be cold—to be strong. But my eyes burn and my heart aches.

“Life is going to knock you down, every one of you. Some way, at some time, something unexpected is going to come and hit you right in the knees. Knock the wind out of you.”

Memories of me and Garrett wash through me, saturate me—submerge me in the remembered feeling of my whole world being turned upside down and shaken out.

“And I wish I could protect you from it.” My voice cracks. “I would do that for you—for each of you if I could.” I shake my head. “But I can’t.”

I wipe at the moisture filling my eyes, breathing deeply. “So, if I teach you nothing else this year—let it be this: the show goes on. You have to go on, because life goes on. Even when you’re hurting, even when it’s hard—you have to pick yourself up, lean on the people around you . . . and go on.”

They’re still and subdued for several long moments after that. Absorbing the words.

“I’ll do it.” Michael raises his hand. “I can do David’s part. I already know the blocking and lines.” He shrugs, smiling self-deprecatingly, adjusting his glasses. “I’m practically the real-life Seymour anyway.”

My smile to Michael is grateful . . . and proud. I glance at Layla. “Are you okay with that?”

She looks at Michael, and then her eyes rise to me. “Yeah. Yeah, that works for me.”

“Good.” I nod. “Okay . . . scene seventeen.”

And together . . . we go on.





Chapter Eighteen


Garrett





“What the hell do you mean you didn’t put up a tree?”

We’d gone to Foster’s cut-down-your-own-tree Tree Farm this afternoon and spotted a nice eight-foot Douglas fir for Callie’s parents’ house. Then Callie kissed me next to it, one thing led to another—and later we walked out of there with the tree and soaked jackets and pine needles in our hair from getting busy in the new-fallen snow.

Now we’re strolling down Main Street, checking out the tables of baked goods and crafts at the annual Lakeside Christmas Bazaar—talking about her holidays in San Diego. She glances sideways at me from beneath her red knit hat—the tip of her nose all cute and pink from the cold. Makes me want to bite it.

“Well, it was just me—seemed like a lot of work for one person. I put out a table tree.”

“A table tree?” I’m disgusted. “What a sad little life you had. Thank God you’ve got me now to rescue you from it.”

She rolls her eyes. Then tugs me over to a table of graphic novels based on the classics. She buys The Count of Monte Cristo and a few others for David. I’m taking Callie down to visit him tomorrow—three days before Christmas—at the Jamesburg Home for Boys. She’s talked to him on the phone a few times and he seems like he’s doing okay—sitting tight while his public defender negotiates a plea deal for him.