Aftermath(30)

It’s a concert tour tee, and I can’t help taking a closer look. Maybe she was a Green Day groupie back in her college days. Or even a secret ATF fan. That makes me laugh, and I turn the shirt around…

It’s not for a band. It’s a fake tour T-shirt for the bubonic plague. I bought it at a Comic-Con with Jesse.

“Hey, Luka. Got you something.”

He unfolds it and bursts out laughing.

I drop the shirt and run from the apartment.

Skye

I’m at the tiny market a few doors down. I’ve spent the last ten minutes trying to sternly talk myself into returning to the apartment.

No one planted Luka’s T-shirt. Mae rescued it. He wore that tee at least once a month, and I wonder now if that was for me. It was more my sense of humor than his. But he never said so, never stuffed it in the back of his closet. He wore it just as proudly as he’d worn the badly braided bracelets I made him at summer camp when I was nine. Mae must have seen the shirt, taken it as a favorite of his and forgotten to remove it from that closet before I moved in.

It’s a logical explanation, but I still can’t bring myself to go back. I need to wait for Mae.

I can’t stay in the market much longer – the clerk is already eyeing me like she wants to search my pockets for stolen beets and broccoli. I go on my phone to find a nearby cafe. I’ll get a caramel latte and hang out on my laptop until Mae comes home.

My Internet search locates two coffeehouses just as the market clerk heads over with a supercilious “May I help you?”

I give her a “No thanks” and head for the doors. The nearest cafe is barely a block away. The second isn’t much farther, if the first seems like the kind that treats teens like tech-savvy vagrants, holing up in a corner with a coffee and thinking that entitles them to two hours of free Wi-Fi.

I push open the door and step out of the market, my gaze sweeping the street and —

I stop. I stare. I tell myself I’m seeing wrong. I want to be seeing wrong.

There’s a figure tucked into a doorway across from Mae’s building. He thinks he’s hidden, both by the shadows and his pulled-up hood. He’s not hidden. Not from me. One glimpse of his profile, and it’s like when I first spotted him Monday, a fleeting look that was enough even after three years.

Jesse stands across the road from Mae’s building. His gaze is fixed on the doorway. The one that leads to our condo.

I want to pretend it’s coincidence. He isn’t waiting for me to get back from his place and walk inside the condo and see his handiwork and maybe, if he’s lucky, come tearing through the front door, properly spooked. No, that’s not it at all. Just coincidence.

He takes his cell phone from his pocket. Hits buttons. Puts it away.

“Is there a problem?”

The clerk’s voice makes me jump, and I realize I’m in the market doorway. I back inside quickly and say, “Sorry. I just… I’m new here. I thought I saw a coffee place earlier, but now I’m confused. Is the shop left or right?”

The clerk sniffs, says, “I don’t drink coffee,” and retreats into the store.

I pretend to study the map on my cell while I figure out what to do.

Confront Jesse.

It’s daytime. It’s a major street. It’s safe.

Yes, confront him.

I caught you. I see you. I’m not fooled.

My cell phone screen flashes. An incoming text from a number I don’t recognize: You shouldn’t eat so much chocolate, Skye. You never know where it’ll end up. Hips, zits, all kinds of places.

My heart pounds, and I send back: Who is this?

My message sits, sits, sits… Then an exclamation mark appears, telling me it couldn’t be delivered.

Then another message comes. It’s a video. When I see that first, my gut goes cold. Then I read the message: Leanna wasn’t the only kid who died that day. I don’t know if you ever met her, but this one should be a familiar face.

I hit Play before I can stop myself. The screen fills with a close-up of a nose. Then it pulls back to show a tongue sticking out, as a voice shouts, “Selfie shots aren’t enough for you, huh? You need selfie videos,” and the camera keeps drawing back to show a wide grin as a voice says, “Guess who won MVP? Again.” The trophy appears and the face pulls back farther, and it’s Jamil.

Even as his friends jeer and tease him, he grins into the camera, and it’s not the grin I remember – that full-of-himself jerk one. He looks like Jesse, after he beat me in a footrace, an honest grin of pride and —

The clip ends and the screen fills with a pan of an empty school hall. There’s blood on the wall —

I jab the Stop button.

I take a moment, my eyes closed. Then I look across the road. Jesse is still there. He’s watching the condo building door again, but only a moment ago he was on his phone.

No. He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t.

I just watched him do something on his phone, and then I got the text. Followed by a video of his brother.

It must have been him. So why do I keep making excuses?

Because it’s Jesse. The first boy I fell for, and not in that distant-crush way, a guy in class you think is really cute. I got to know Jesse, became friends with him – good friends – and then I fell for him, and it wasn’t until I came back to Riverside that I realized how big an impression he made on me.