“What do you mean, you won’t have to go to school next year?” Sully roars at the dinner table when Mom and Dad announce the plan. “Westill have to go to school next year! That’s so not fair!”
Church quietly shovels peas into his mouth.
“Sully!”Mom hisses. Neither of my brothers is allowed to complain about anything that happens because of my “meltdowns,” as Sully calls them, even if they’re joking, but I like it that Sully gets so upset. He makes this all feel like some goofy problem in a movie. It’ll get resolved with a neat little bow after an hour and a half of family fun.
Sully sinks in his chair with a sour look.
Something buzzes. Church pulls his phone out of his pocket.
“Oh, hey, look.” He passes it across the table to me. On it is a message from Lucy Warland.
“Why do you have Lucy Warland’s number?” I ask.
“Because she’s cool,” Church says. “Also because Sully didn’t want to ask for her number himself.”
Sully’s face turns red.
“She told me she’d send pictures from the graduation ceremony,” Church goes on.
Ah, graduation. That thing I achieved, and then refused to celebrate. Just knowing I never have to set foot in that high school again has made it easier to breathe. I bring up the picture full screen and find a ceremony hall full of my classmates, seated in neat rows of silky graduation robes. A line has formed on one side of the stage, where the graduates are ascending to take their diplomas from the principal.
Lucy snapped the shot as Wallace went up. I can see it as if the picture’s a video: Wallace sets his own deliberate pace up the steps and across the stage. His face is stoic, as always, because there are far too many people in the room and the more overloaded he is, the less expression he makes. He’s bigger than the principal. His hand dwarfs the smaller man’s. He takes his diploma and lumbers off the stage, and most of the crowd thinks he’s stupid, or a dumb jock, or nobody at all.
I know who he is. I know what he can do.
“Can I have my phone back now?”
I hand the phone to Church. Sully glares at me.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks. “You look like you swallowed a tire.”
“May I be excused?”
Mom blinks. “Sure. What for?”
“I need to go upstairs. To change. I was supposed to meet Wallace at his house after the ceremony.”
Mom and Dad look at each other. “We didn’t know about this,” Dad says.
“Sorry, I forgot to tell you.”
I hurry upstairs and look through my dresser for something nice to wear. Something actually nice, like one of the outfits Mom and Dad got me for Christmas. I fix my hair. Try to put on some makeup, fail, try again. “Warland” is so close to the end of the names they call—the ceremony must be over by now.
Mom and Dad let me leave without much fuss. I think they’re shocked to see me looking that nice and wearing makeup.
The Keeler house is empty when I arrive. I park along the curb and walk up to sit on the porch. The late-May night is warm, the sun halfway below the horizon in the distance. It’s been too long since I’ve been here. Wallace and I haven’t really spoken since the Olivia Kane letter, though we still eat lunch together at school. It’s too much trouble to break routine. I don’t know if the publisher’s offer to him still stands, and I don’t know if he expects me to show up on his doorstep one day—like I’m doing now—with those pages in hand.
I do know that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I have to make him understand this guilt festering inside me.
I wait fifteen minutes before a car pulls down the street and into the driveway.
The Keelers get out. Tim, Bren, and Lucy first. Then Vee. Wallace gets out of the back seat last, which means he must’vebeen sandwiched between Bren and Lucy. How the three of them managed to fit, I’ll never know.
“Oh, Eliza! We didn’t expect to see you here, hon!” Vee flies over and sweeps me up in a hug.
Lucy comes next, like friendliness is programmed into her DNA. Her million little braids have been replaced with smooth, straight locks. “Did you see the pictures I sent Church? I didn’t get very many, but he said he wantedsome,so ...”
“Yeah, I got them.”
