All the Rage(49)

“How’d it go?” he asks.

I think of Leon and how much he must hate me now, when I see a flash of blond hair, a girl on the road. I twist in my seat and it’s—not her. Again. And I don’t know what about it is worse than what happened at the lake, but it is. It is. I duck my head and wipe at my face. Todd reaches over, his hand against the back of my neck long enough for a reassuring squeeze, which makes it harder to stop crying.

“I didn’t sign out from the search,” I say.

“You need to go back?”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to worry about it.”





i need leon to know I’m sorry.

I don’t need his forgiveness. I don’t believe in forgiveness. I think if you hurt someone, it becomes a part of you both. Each of you just has to live with it and the person you hurt gets to decide if they want to give you the chance to do it again. If they do and you’re a good person, you won’t make the same mistakes. Just whole new ones. I grab my phone from my nightstand. I could text it out, but that doesn’t seem right. I hurt Leon to his face so the least I can do is apologize to it.

But first, there’s school.

I get dressed. I stare at myself in the mirror, at my dry and flaking lips. My nails are fine but this isn’t. I pick off pieces of dead skin and then rub a toothbrush across my mouth until it’s smooth. I wash my face and apply my lipstick one layer at a time and then I’m ready. I tie my hair back and wonder how Penny’s mornings start now. They still start, don’t they?

When I come downstairs, there’s breakfast waiting for me. A piece of peanut butter and jam toast, cut into thin strips. It was all I ate, every morning, the entire summer I was nine and back then, I called the strips “fingers.” Peanut butter and jam fingers. Comfort food.

“I wanted you to eat with us,” Mom says.

I don’t know who it’s comforting.

I nibble at the toast while Todd flips through the paper in the seat across from mine and Mom fries them up bacon and eggs. He slaps the paper down and taps it.

“It’s going to rain this week.”

“I don’t believe it,” Mom says.

“It’s right here in the Grebe News, though, so you gotta.”

She sets his breakfast in front of him and then rests her hand on top of his head. Todd gets hold of it before she can move to fix her own plate. He brings her hand to his mouth.

“Love you, Alice,” he murmurs, easy as that.

Mom catches my eye and there’s something guilty on her face, like this is something I should have had in front of me all my life. Todd is different from my father. Dad was thirsty, not given to great displays of affection, like his father and his father’s father before him. A long line of self-indulgent men who couldn’t give love but lived to take it, which isn’t the same as receiving it. They were all in so much pain and that’s always the perfect excuse.

“Next week, they’ll probably put in something about the search party,” I say.

“Probably,” Todd agrees.

Mom settles in with us. “Maybe you could take the night off and we could have some mother-daughter time. Go shopping, end the day at the Ibis McDonald’s or something.”

“What’s Todd going to do?”

“Wither and die,” he says dryly. He reaches across the table and scruffs up my hair. “Seriously? What the hell kind of question was that?”

“I just want to spend some time with you,” Mom says.

“Maybe the weekend? I’m trying to prove to Tracey I’m reliable right now, after…” I trail off. “And I just took yesterday off for the search.”

“Before the weekend would be better.”

I study her. “What’s going on?”

“Just do your mother a favor and humor her.”

“Okay. Before the weekend,” I say but I really have to go to Swan’s tonight, to see Leon and try to untangle that mess. “It can’t be today, though.”

I take my time on the walk to school because I’m in no hurry for an aftermath. The air is as sweltering as it ever is. Hard to picture it raining. Hard to picture it any other season but this one, which isn’t even the season it’s supposed to be, really.

The street is quiet for the first half of the walk, but soon the hard, rhythmic sound of feet hitting pavement is at my back. I glance over my shoulder and Leanne Howard is jogging my way. She’s wearing a black shirt and shorts, accented with bolts of neon to tell the world she’s doing this for the exercise and not because she’s being chased. I move off the sidewalk so she can pass, but she breaks when she reaches me, hunching over to catch her breath.

“Whew.” She gasps, straightening, wiping the lower part of her sweaty face on the collar of her shirt. “It’s too hot for this, isn’t it?”

“You’re crazy,” I say.

“Well, it’s maintenance.” She squints at me. “How are you, Romy?”

“I’m headed to school.”

“Mind if I walk with you?”

“Free country.”

But I don’t like it. Leanne falls into step with me. I take her in. She’s young, but she has the same kind of lines Coach Prewitt does, I think. I wouldn’t f*ck with her.