AllFreeNovel
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Is he actually leaving her? Is he making a new life without us?
Is he leaving me with her?
Or is she leaving him? It sounded like my grandmother was trying to talk her out of something.
Where do I go when I come home for holidays? They don’t know me anymore. Do they even want me around—my mother forced to keep up appearances, and my father forced to support a family he no longer wants?
Jesus, do they even know I’m still here?
I rub my hands up and down my face, drifting down the hallway, past all our photos that my grandmother will keep up, because we look like a happy family, and my grandfather looks like a doting husband.
I drift, until I find my way upstairs and in my grandmother’s room, veering straight for the hidden cubby drawer in the mantel of her fireplace.
Reaching inside, I dig out the stack of letters I’d found there when I was eight that now make a lot more sense since Macon told me about Two Locks—the old, abandoned farm on Harley Creek my family owns where he said my grandmother hid her affair.
I stare at the stack—more than fifty letters probably—yellowed with age and secured with a white ribbon. At the time, I’d thought it was adult stuff. Letters were how old people communicated, thinking my grandmother was much older than she was and didn’t have a phone or some shit.
I never thought they were romantic gestures.
I hold the tattered envelopes, sifting to the bottom of the stack and take note of the postmarks and dates.
They start in 1983. They end in 2017.
Thirty-four years.
Carefully, I set them back in the cubby as something I don’t like winds through my stomach, making me feel like I’m in a place I don’t recognize. Surrounded by strangers.
I don’t want things to change. I won’t recognize my life, and I’ll be lost. Nausea rises up my throat, and I groan. I don’t like this feeling.
I want my father back. I want my mother and Mimi to be proud of me.
I want our life back together.
Without telling them that I’m leaving, I jump back in my car and think about going home—or to Liv—but in minutes, I’m in front of Wind House instead. The parking lot is empty, and Mrs. Gates’ car isn’t in the driveaway.
I park and drift past the door I usually come in during business hours, sneaking through my same window and down into the basement. I switch on the lights and look around, finding it empty and quiet, all the tables vacant and the tiny hum of the coolers making the only noise in the room.
Such a sharp place. Hard and cold, and I don’t know why I find it comforting.
I walk over and put my hands on the sterilized steel table Alli laid on all those weeks ago, images running through my head that she’s now ash. Gone.
Forever.
If she could go back, would she make the same choice? It makes sense to suffer for who you are rather than who you aren’t, but ultimately, nothing is as bad as dead, right?
There’s only so much a person can take. We all have a limit.
Without thinking, I hop up, sit on the table, and swing my legs over before laying my whole body down on the freezing metal table.
I settle my back in, molding myself to the surface, and rest my legs slightly apart with my hands at my sides.
Everyone that lays here is dead. They don’t get to stare up at the stark fluorescent lights and let it sink in that their shot is over. That was it.
I’ll be here someday. Done. Never to speak or love or kiss again.
What will I regret?
What if I’m alone?
“SO, I WAS kind of thinking,” I say quietly as students make their way into the women’s locker room. “I could cancel shopping with Megan and Chloe and go shopping with you instead?”
Clay sits on the bench, pulling on her sneakers and tying the laces. Her beautiful hair is flipped to one side as she leans over in her black leggings and sports bra.
She doesn’t answer.
“Clay?” I press.
“Shopping?” she repeats, not meeting my eyes.
I tighten my ponytail, looking around for eavesdroppers. “Dress shopping for prom?” I remind her. Did she even hear me?
She meets my eyes, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. “Oh, um…”
What the hell is wrong with her? I sent her a proper sexy pic of me last night, after the dumb one of me with my pasta, and she didn’t answer, and she’s barely made eye contact since we walked into school for our morning workout.
“Uh…” She swallows, standing up and avoiding my gaze. “I actually already have my dress.”
She has a dress… Okay, so what does that mean? I stare at her, her body language all wrong. What the hell happened between yesterday and today? She can’t go shopping with me?
