Path of Destruction (Broken Heartland, #2)(35)
With all the changes, it felt good to just have a friend. Someone who understood. The friends she had thought she had had all shown their true colors, and Hayden was just about the only person she trusted. As much as she trusted him, she still hadn’t told him a thing about Kyle Mason, or Brantley Cooper, for that matter. Not that there was much to tell about Brantley.
“I volunteered to help rebuild the church in Hope’s Grove just to get away from my dad. How messed up is that? Me, volunteering for manual labor. It’s hard to believe, right?”
“Not that hard,” Cami told him. “You’ve got a good heart, Hay. I know you want to rebuild that church for your grandpa.”
“When did you get so smart, Cami-girl?”
“I have my moments,” she joked. “So you’re going to Hope’s Grove on Monday?”
“Yeah. I gotta get out of this house for a while and I really do want to help rebuild the place. Why?”
“I thought maybe I could catch a ride. We’re coming home tomorrow and there’s a little boutique there that has some really cute vintage stuff I want to look at.” She covered the truth with a lie that she knew he wouldn’t question. Hayden’s fashion sense was spot-on for a guy, but when it came to female clothes shopping, he had little interest.
The truth was that since the tornado had hit, there had been a grief counselor on call at the small-town clinic Monday through Wednesday. She’d read about it in a copy of the Calumet County Herald that had been sitting on a table during a social committee meeting a few weeks earlier.
The idea of making an appointment hadn’t been appealing at first, but maybe Hayden was right. Maybe what she needed to do was talk about how and what she was feeling. If she was going to take a step in that direction, she preferred her first time to be with a doctor that wasn’t on the Summit Bluffs Clinic payroll—and probably friends with her parents—as well as in a neutral location. She didn’t know many people from Hope’s Grove, and there was good chance she could fly in under the radar for her first therapy session.
“Sure thing,” Hayden agreed. “See you on Monday.”
Ella Jane tried. She really did. For the last two weeks before holiday break, she’d tried her hardest to listen to teachers droning on about thesis statements and proper citations and polynomials and catalysts and sulfuric acids. Yet first semester ended and she had three incompletes in core subjects. Her dad was super pissed, but her mom was… Well, Millie Mason wasn’t exactly living in the here and now. With each passing day, her gaze and attention drifted further from the present. EJ often caught her humming songs she used to sing when she and Kyle were children, while staring off into the distance or at family photo albums.
For as much energy as EJ had exerted forcing herself to show up, to stay still and attentive during class, nothing sank in. None of it mattered to her, no matter how many “You are ruining your life and everyone else’s in the process” speeches her dad gave.
When the vice principal had announced on the last day of school that there was no way out, no escaping the hell that was Summit Bluffs High School, Ella Jane had fled to the ladies’ room and thrown up her lunch. Her parents weren’t thrilled about it, but rumors were circulating about what this would mean for property values, and her dad had mentioned selling the house and moving to the city more than once. Of course. Because then he’d be closer to his girlfriend.
She wanted to talk to her mom about everything privately, but her mom mostly looked tired, exhausted actually. Every time the school called and her dad launched into another round of lectures on the importance of not throwing her life away, her mom’s hair seemed to get a little grayer. And when Brad Mason got really fired up, veins throbbing, face beaming red, typically because she just couldn’t muster up an acceptable explanation for why she couldn’t endure the inhumane torture that was mandatory grief counseling or Chem lab, he broke out the big guns.
“You would think, after what happened to your brother, that you would take life a little more seriously. Why are you making this so hard?”
That was when she would bail. Go to the ridge and stare at the horizon in hopes of finding some grand answer from the universe. When would she stop feeling like this? When would she feel normal again? Would a day come that she didn’t wake up feeling broken and empty all over?
No answers came at the ridge. At the end of the first week back after break, one did randomly appear in the Summit Bluffs High School parking lot though.
“Well, well. If it isn’t my favorite girl,” he’d said, stepping around from behind black SUV. “What brings you out here in the middle of the school day?”
Jarrod Kent was an athlete, but how he managed to stay eligible for sports when he skipped even more classes than EJ did was beyond her. Well, not completely beyond her. One thing she was learning was that there was certainly a different set of rules in Summit Bluffs. One that tended to be based on how much money certain families donated to the school and who had a parent on the school board versus how much a student actually showed up to class. Unfortunately for her, her family didn’t have the kind of money or connections that would allow her to receive straight A’s while getting stoned in the parking lot. But Kent’s must have.
“I left my homework in my truck,” she said evenly, glancing around to see if Hayden or Cooper were nearby. The two of them seemed to be on a tag team schedule of some sort, each of them managing to appear at the least convenient of times.