One Small Thing(13)

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Macy asks for what feels like the thousandth time.

“Yep,” I answer as brightly as possible. The lunchroom’s familiar buzz isn’t settling my nerves like I’d hoped. Instead, I keep wondering how many of those conversations are about me. I’m not blind to the fact that there was a shit ton of head turning when I entered.

“You didn’t stay in the nurse’s office very long,” Scarlett says quietly. “I would’ve lain in there all day.”

“He shouldn’t even be here,” Macy insists. “Like why isn’t he at Lexington Public or Lincoln?”

“The mayor lives in Grove Heights and that’s Darling school district,” Yvonne, one of my other friends, points out.

A voice of reason. I throw her a small relieved smile. She frowns in return, as if smiling is not permitted at a time like this, so I let my gaze fall back onto my unappealing salad.

“The mayor should open enroll him into Lex. Isn’t that where all the delinquents hang out?” Macy asks.

“There was that huge drug bust in the parking lot last year,” Yvonne confirms. “Their quarterback got sent to juvie.”

“Do you think Charlie and him were in the same cell?” Macy’s tone is scandalized, but she leans forward, elbows on the table, anxious for more gossip.

“Wow. I never thought of that,” Yvonne says.

The table falls silent as they all contemplate this possible turn of events. I shove some wilted lettuce in my mouth and pray that we change the subject.

I’m Charles Donnelly. And I’m sorry.

His rough words keep running through my mind and I’m not trying very hard to shut them out. It’s like when you have a song stuck in your head and you force yourself to listen to it a hundred times until you get so sick of it you never want to hear it again. I’m forcing myself to think about Chase’s—no, Charlie’s—words, to picture his ashen, pained expression when he realized who I was. Maybe if I think about it long and hard enough, I can make sense of what happened without wanting to puke my guts out.

“He is...hot, though, don’t you think?” Macy says in a hushed voice.

Scarlett gasps. “Oh my God, Macy.”

“I’m just saying. He’s hot and you’re all lying if you deny it.” Macy pouts, sitting back in her lunchroom chair.

I hunch over my salad and hope that my friends can’t see my reddened cheeks. I thought he was hot, too. Saturday night, I thought he was the best-looking guy I’d ever laid eyes on. I still do, and that makes me even sicker. I set down my fork and try to breathe through the layer of bile coating my throat.

“He’s not hot. He’s gross. He killed someone,” Yvonne says in disgust.

“Not someone.” Scarlett’s voice rises. “Lizzie’s sister. He killed Lizzie’s sister.”

She’s loud enough that conversation stops at the tables next to ours. I want to slide under the table. I thought my worst day of school was the one where Michelle Harvey spilled her apple juice in my lap during third grade and then Colin Riley ran around telling everyone I’d peed myself. No, the worst day of school was the day they held the memorial for Rachel here. That was definitely the worst. I didn’t cry and everyone eyed me with suspicion. Like I should’ve been curled up in a ball on the ground, comatose with grief and unable to function.

Anxiously, I change the subject. “So does the Calc homework look hard?” I ask Scarlett.

Thankfully she picks up on my distress immediately. “No. She only assigned five problems and they were all review.”

“Great.”

“Do you want to go over them tonight?” she offers. “We can IM.”

“Nah, I think I’m going to do them right when I get home and then go to bed. I have a headache.”

“Of course you do,” Macy coos. She pulls my head onto her shoulder. “You should stay home tomorrow, too.”

I will if it’s going to be like this.

*

I sleepwalk through my final classes of the day. Word has spread like fire throughout the school. It reminds me of the first day of high school when everyone whispered behind their hands, “There goes the dead girl’s sister.”

I shove my earbuds in the minute the last bell rings and blast my music so loud that it hurts. I keep them on, not pulling them out until the bus rolls past the drop. Wearily, I trudge to my front door.

Mom is waiting inside, concern etched into her face and her taut frame. I run a shaky hand through my hair. I’m not up for this. Not one bit.

“How was your day?” She tries to reach for my backpack.

I jerk out of her reach and drop the backpack onto my section of the mudroom bench. Rachel’s space is completely empty, of course. Mom keeps it that way as if Rachel’s going to show up one day and need a place to put her shoes and coats.

“How do you think it was?” From the worry in her eyes, I know she’s heard about Charlie Donnelly’s appearance at school. “Did you know he was going to Darling High?”

She hesitates, only for a beat, and a rush of anger spirals through me.

“Oh my God, you totally knew,” I accuse. My parents knew he was back in town and they hadn’t said a single word to me about it?