P.S. I Like You(70)

It seemed like the whole room let out a collective “Aww.”

“What are you going to do?” Isabel asked.

I was frozen, half ready to jump up and tackle Sasha, half ready to run out of the gym. My eyes darted to Cade. He had a confused smile on.

“I know,” Sasha continued, “Cute, right? Well, what many of you don’t know is that Cade’s dad left him and his family several years back. A tragedy really. And Lily wrote an amazing poem about it.”

This was a nightmare.

I hadn’t written Cade’s name on any of the pages but the one she’d already read in detention. She was assuming this song was about Cade. Assuming because of the other lyrics. Assuming because of all the notes I’d written in the margins. She was assuming because she wanted to hurt me … and probably him.

I shook my head at Cade and mouthed the words stop her. He was much closer to Sasha than I was. He was on the stage with her. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Sasha in horror. He seemed to be as frozen as I was. I couldn’t let this happen.

I stood and began working my way down the bleachers—through students and over backpacks. But Sasha was already reading my lyrics to “Left Behind” out loud. Cade’s very private life was now echoing through the suddenly completely silent gym.

By the time I was on the floor and heading toward the stage, she was reading the last two lines. My words were echoing through a gym full of people. People, I noticed, who seemed captivated by them. I stopped as Sasha finished. Now I stood in the middle of the basketball court alone, on the eye of our school mascot painted there—a bull.

“And there she is,” Sasha said, in the sweetest voice. “Everyone give her a hand. Come on up and accept your award, Lily.”

I did go up, because I wanted my notebook back, and I wanted to pull Cade out of there and explain everything. But it didn’t happen that way. When I’d climbed the five steps to the stage to the loud applause, Cade was gone.

“You are cruel,” I said to Sasha under my breath. I yanked my notebook out of her hands. “He didn’t deserve that.”

She smiled, pulled me into a hug and whispered. “You both did.”

She wanted me to react. Wanted me to punch her or shove her and have the whole school witness that I was a jerk who treated her poorly after she’d just showered me with praise. Plus, if I acted like this was a big deal, it would turn into a big deal. People would think she’d just exposed something about Cade that she shouldn’t have. I wouldn’t do that to him. So I smiled, said a wobbly “thank you” into the microphone, then walked as quickly as possible off the stage and outside where I searched in vain for Cade.

Over the next thirty minutes I sent him what felt like a hundred texts that all went something like:

She stole my book

I did not enter that into a contest.

I’m sorry.

Where are you?

Can we talk about this?

This was her revenge. You know it was. Please know I did not want this to happen.

He didn’t respond. Not to a single one. It was over. We were over before we’d ever begun.

I rounded the baseball field a second time, hoping he had shown up there sometime between me searching the boys’ locker room and the cafeteria kitchen. Then my phone buzzed. Hope shot through me until I saw the text was from Isabel.

Where are you?

Home plate, I responded, dejected.

She was there in minutes. “Should we beat her up now or later?” Isabel asked, her eyes flashing.

I pressed my palms to my temples. “I’m worried about him.”

“Don’t worry about him. He’ll be fine. It was a really good song, by the way. Everyone was talking about it.”

A small surge of pride went through me, the same one I had felt for a split second while standing in the middle of that gym, my words filling it. I pushed the feeling back down.

“Isabel,” I said, my voice breaking. “He’s kept this a huge secret and now the entire school knows because of me and my stupid lyrics.”

“Not because of you. Because of Sasha.”

“I should’ve never written about his life in the first place.”

“He stuck those notes all about his life under a desk!” Isabel pointed out. “Anybody could’ve gotten ahold of them. You could’ve been anyone, Lily, not you. Not kind, loyal, trustworthy you. He got lucky. This could’ve happened to him weeks ago because of his own doing.”

“But it didn’t. It happened now because of me.”

“Well, go explain that to him.”

I looked at my phone again. “He won’t answer me.”

“Then go find him.” She dug her keys out of her pocket and held them out for me. “I’ll have Gabriel pick me up.”

I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed the keys, hugged Isabel, and took off running.





I had been everywhere. Cade’s house, the kids’ baseball field at the park, In-N-Out, along with every other fast food restaurant I had ever seen him at in the past, as well as the ones where I hadn’t … he wasn’t anywhere. I was now just driving, looking around. Because he was obviously somewhere and it killed me that apparently I didn’t know him well enough to know where that somewhere was.

School was long out by now. I’d texted my sister earlier not to pick me up. Had he gone back to school for practice? Did he go somewhere to think? I drove home. Maybe he’d gone to my house. He liked my house.