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I reach for her arm with both hands and yank, sending her over my head and onto her back in the middle of the rose garden. I twist, attempting to scramble to my feet. I have to get out of here before I make another mistake, but Lily grips my ankle and I fall hard to my knees, scraping my hands against the cement. I kick at her, hitting her square in the face, and she lets me go.
I run.
Thane. I have to find Thane.
It’s still lunch and the past few days he’s been hanging out in the cafeteria. What are the chances he’s there today?
I head inside Emerson in search of him, but the bell rings and the hall fills with students. It’s hard to move in the crowd, and the skin on my hands and knees stings as I’m jostled about like a ship on a stormy sea.
Someone grabs my arm and pulls me. I’m about to rip myself free when I realize it’s Shy. He looks down at my shirt—it’s then I realize I’ve been holding my bloodied hands to my white top. I meet his gaze. His jaw is set tight.
“What happened?” he demands. I want to ask why he seems so worried—his kind hurt me far worse, but now is not the time.
“Please,” I try to pull away, but he moves his arms on either side of my shoulders.
“Anora, who did this to you?”
“No one! I fell!”
He frowns and releases me. “We both know that’s not true.”
We do? Had he witnessed my standoff with Vera? His eyes drop again, roving, reading my injuries as if they were a map.
That’s when the chorus begins—a haunting refrain of shrieks and screams.
Oh no. I’m too late.
Shy hurries past me and pushes through the crowd gathering at the entrance of Emerson. I follow after him. I want to reach for him and keep him inside, prevent him from seeing what’s happened.
Shy steps outside and twists. His whole body goes rigid and his eyes widen but in a hard way, like ice. His jaw and throat work as if he’s swallowing a scream. I’m not sure how long he stands there, but the sound of a camera snapping draws his attention. I’ve never seen someone move so fast—he snatches the phone from a student nearby, deletes the photo and slams it into the concrete.
“What the hell, man?” the kid demands.
Shy’s response is to lift his fist.
“Shy, no!” I reach for his hand and he stops but doesn’t relax, and his piercing eyes survey the crowd. He says, “This doesn’t belong on your fucking phones. It doesn’t belong on that fucking website.”
His voice sounds different, stripped. When he looks at me, it’s at my hand wrapped around his arm. I release him and step away, hyper aware that behind me is a gruesome scene. The knowledge is solid, like a wall closing in. I’m losing my ability to breathe. My chest feels tight. I will have to look. I can’t go back inside without seeing her.
Shy convinces me to turn—not with anything he says, but with the look he gives. It’s the look of someone whose heart has broken.
If he has to face this, I do, too.
But as I start to turn, he reaches for me and pulls me to him, holding my head against his chest. His lips move toward my ear and he whispers, “Don’t look.”
Guilt slams through me, piercing every part of me—head and heart and stomach and feet. I’m tethered by it, held to the Earth by it weight.
This can't be happening.
The crowd is made to disperse, and everyone’s directed into the auditorium and offered counseling until their parents can pick them up. I’m called to the Administration Office and made to wait until my mom shows up. When she arrives, she sits beside me in the hard, wooden chairs.
“Anora, honey, are you okay?” she asks, gripping my hands in hers. My palms sting, scored from the cement. It’s a reminder of the interaction I had with Lily before I ran away, before she climbed to the roof of Emerson Hall and jumped. I should have stayed. Even fighting her, I could have ensured she remained alive.
Now she is dead.
Mom looks down at our clasped hands and notices the scraps. “Anora, what happened?”
She reaches into her purse and withdraws a pack of tissues just as we’re called into Mr. Rivera’s office.
