How to Save a Life(17)

He frowned at my cold words. “I’ll miss you, Evan. If you go, I’ll miss you, but I think it’s best. So they can’t hurt you anymore.”

I clutched the steering wheel in both hands until my knuckles turned white under the red rawness from my fight with Merle. “Get. Out.”

I could feel Garrett’s hurt wafting over me and nearly broke.

“Why are you being mean to me?” he cried, his voice trembling. “Evan…?”

I couldn’t do it. But I had to do it. To protect him. It was safer if he hated me too.

The car behind us honked. I reached across Garrett and threw open his door, then faced forward again, not looking at him. “Get out of the goddamn truck.”

Garrett wrangled his backpack and climbed out of the truck’s cab. He stood for a moment, staring at me, challenging me. I muttered a curse and reached across to shut the door, but he was quicker. Garrett slammed it shut, his face full of hurt and anger, then turned and stomped toward his school.

The look in his eye hurt almost as bad as the pain of my burnt note.

Good, I thought, watching him storm away. Better for him.

I didn’t have the luxury of wondering if it was better for me.





That morning, I noticed the jocks were being extra shitty to Evan. I had perfect vantage from my locker, which was on the same bank as Shane Salinger’s. I watched the scrawny little * mutter something to Jared, Merle, and the others as Evan walked by, his head down, shoulders hunched, hands jammed in the front pockets of his jeans.

“But Merle took care of it,” I heard Shane say, louder.

Merle Salinger made a fist in one hand and slammed it into the palm of his other meaningfully.

Jared’s eyes widened and he laughed. “Had a little campfire in your driveway this morning, eh, Freakshow?” he called.

Evan ignored him, but I saw him level a blue-eyed glare at Shane that could have frozen all of hell’s nine circles. Shane recoiled, fumbling his cane a little, then eased up as Evan continued on.

I was supposed to meet Jared at recess but I ditched him. Blew him off at lunch too. In Western Civ, he shot me a questioning look. I turned away, showing him the wall of hair over my face, which put Evan in my direct line of sight. His head was bowed, eyes down, shoulders hunched looking as if he wanted to dive into his book. I saw a smear of dried blood under his nose. The knuckles on the hand closest to me looked red and swollen. He’d been in a fight.

Who? Probably that meatloaf of a brother, Merle. Or maybe one of the other jocks. Maybe Jared. Jared tried to get my attention again and I gave him the finger. His eyes widened then he shook his head, disappointed, but his lips curled in warning. I knew the rumors would begin immediately. Slut. Whore. Cocktease.

I heaved a sigh. Breakups can be so messy.

I spent the rest of the class wishing Evan would look my way, just once. But it was clear he was having a monumentally awful day. He wouldn’t look at me, or anywhere but down for that matter. It was as if last night hadn’t happened.

Can you blame him? You were a total bitch.

I looked down at my desk, hiding behind my hair, hiding behind excuses. Evan scared me last night in the worst possible way. I thought he was trying to drown himself. Still, I felt kind of guilty for going nuclear on him. He got enough of that shit everywhere else without me piling on.

Toward the end of class, I noticed Evan was hiding a book under some papers and reading while Mr. Albertine droned about the birthplace of Democracy.

“Hey,” I whispered, going for friendly. I probably looked like Wednesday Addams attempting a smile, like in that movie.

Evan glanced at me for a second, his eyes dull and heavy. He nodded once in greeting and went back to his book.

“What are you reading?”

He kept his head down, eyes on the page, as he moved the paper enough to show me the book was The Count of Monte Cristo.

“Missed that one. Any good?”

“Yes,” he whispered, still not looking at me.

“What’s it about?”

“A prison break.”

I didn’t have to dig too deep to find the subtext. Evan already told me he wanted out of Planerville. Whatever had happened to him today didn’t do much to change his mind.

I wanted to ask him about his bloody nose and why his brothers were such *s to him. I wanted to hear it straight from him, not via the high school grapevine. I wanted, I realized, to know him more, and that wasn’t like me. I didn’t reach out.

The bell rang and Evan gathered his stuff with lightning alacrity and left without a word or a look back.

That night, I lay in bed with my journal on my stomach, tapping a ballpoint against my lip while Ms. P’s love poem assignment clanged around my head.

A love poem.

Me.

She’d have better results asking a mortician to write about the birth of a baby. Love was the wrong end of my expertise spectrum. Death, loss, loneliness—those were my forte. Love was something that belonged in my grayed-out past. Like someone I used to know well, but lost touch with over time. I can’t remember their face anymore, or their voice, or what it meant to share the same space.

I started to write a few lines along that thread but it was too depressing. Ms. P didn’t want a blackened, rotting version of love. She wanted the real deal.

Summer school was starting to sound inevitable.