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I froze, not knowing what to say.
“He said he hadn’t heard from you?” she stated, allowing the air to release from my lungs a little. “Anyway, he requested if I talked to you to have you reach out. I won’t, though, if you don’t want me to.”
Why Dad even bothered when he didn’t care I didn’t know. “I’d prefer not. I ghosted him for a reason. I need time to deal with everything.”
“Gotcha. I’m sure Royal will be talking to you about it too. I saw him talking to your dad outside the school the other day. I assumed he was asking about you.”
“What did Royal say? I mean.” I paused, wrestling my hair around. “Did you hear anything?”
“Not really. Want me to ask?”
Asking would only open up more bullshit, and deep down, I really didn’t care about what was exchanged between him and my dad. They were both irrelevant to me.
As irrelevant as Maywood Heights.
*
“You know computer usage is limited to one hour, right?”
Beanie Boy no longer wore his beanie, his head a wash of thick curls as dark and umber-toned as his eyes. He looked different today, less get-the-fuck-out-of-my-library and more evening cafe in his acid-wash jeans and dark sweater. He pushed the sleeves up his golden arms. “Just want to make sure you know.”
I apparently had a time Nazi on my hands, but I guess I had been here an hour or… four. I supposed I got wrapped up with what I’d been doing.
My nod firm, Beanie Boy finally stopped eyeing me long enough to go back to returning books on the shelves. He reserved judgment for me the moment he noticed my return to the library, and though I didn’t blame him considering our first interaction, it still sucked. I wasn’t a thief. At least not generally.
Shaking my head, I went back to the computer, planning to wrap things up. I’d been searching news articles about my sister, which led me down a total rabbit hole considering how many there’d been. I’d been surprised by that, my sister’s story well traveled. I guess I ignored a lot of those initial publications when they came out. I’d been too raw, too hurt, and though things hadn’t gotten much better, I wanted to see my sister’s face again. I wanted to see her happy and bright, and that offset some of the, quite frankly, bullshit the media spewed about my sister and what happened on the night in question. They didn’t really know what happened, but they sure as hell believed they did. My sister having too much to drink that night turned into a news story about a young teen with drugs in her system and a night of mistakes. Those mistakes had cost her the young life she had, and each publication only spiced the article up more. Some people didn’t even have her name right, all of this complete bullshit.
I too still had a lot of questions about that night, questions I hadn’t gotten to ask considering I wasn’t currently speaking to Royal. I wanted to know more about that girl that set everything off for my sister, and as far as I was concerned, what happened to Paige had been her fault. Paige may have gotten drunk and wandered some train tracks, but this girl had sent her there.
I guess she’s irrelevant too.
I couldn’t really do anything about her where I was right now, neither physically nor mentally. At the present, I was forced to figuratively let ghosts die, and my chest hurt, pained with every article I continued to read.
“Fucking tragic,” came from behind me, the library boy with his unruly hair and familiar sour expression. He kept that strong on me, tipping his chin from where he stood at the bookshelves. He’d been putting books away, his long reach toward the top of a shelf. “That news story? Crazy it made its way all the way here.”
“What do you mean?” I pushed back from the computer. He knew about this? What happened to my sister?
On the toes of his Converses, he returned to his feet, tugging down a shirt that revealed a clear sliver of abs. I didn’t know why, but that surprised me. Maybe because he was in here and not out with the land of the living on a Friday night. He shrugged. “What happened out there went down in my hometown.”
What the fuck?
“Your hometown?” I tried to sound aloof, but what were the fucking odds of that happening?
Library boy seemed c
asual about it, crossing long arms and lounging back against the shelves. He really was tall and didn’t even need a step stool to reach to the highest bookshelf. “Yeah. Crazy, right? Can’t believe that happened.”
“What do you know about it?” Aloof again. I had to be as to not raise suspicion. I didn’t know this guy, nor who he knew. Maywood Heights wasn’t huge, and we very well could know some of the same people if he was originally from there.
He frowned. “Not much. Just that a girl died on the train tracks. How did you come to know about it? Just searching the web?”
I nodded, his look passive when he bent to pick up more books. He’d been deliberately reshelving them around me on and off in the time I’d been here, and that I knew. He had his eye on me, this boy.
“Anyway, yeah, it was messed up,” he said. “Not surprising considering where I lived. People there are on a different level of drama and craziness. Needless to say, I was happy I got out when I did.”
I didn’t like what he said in regards to my sister, but I couldn’t disagree with him about all the drama in Maywood Heights. I’d been the target of enough myself, and I hadn’t even been there a full semester.
“Why did you leave?” I asked, and he turned, books in his hands.
