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“Hey,youaren’t supposed to be snooping,” I told him while rocking against his side, feeling more animated than I had in days. I could still imagine his little figure crouched at my bedside, hands searching for his “bouncy ball” underneath. “What were you even looking for?”
“I heard you telling Mom you had a brochure for a college you wanted to go to. I wanted to find it.”
“Why?”
Jamie shrugged his little shoulders, resuming his kicking. The steadythump-thumpof his feet almost became lulling, and I let the conversation go, a thread blowing away in a wind. “Why is it different?” he asked after a moment, going back to our previous conversation.
“He did something bad,” I said, the words almost acidic on my tongue. I didn’t want to say them. Confessing them to my little brother felt like a disservice to Harry. I didn’t want Jamie to think poorly of Harry, but there was no dodging the truth.
Jamie thought about that for a moment. “Is he sorry?”
“What?”
“Is he sorry?” he repeated, shifting his weight on the bed.
Was he sorry? My first instinct was to laugh. “It’s not that simple, Jamie.”
His body slumped forward before he pushed to his feet. “Well, I guess I kept your secret about making out with him in the backyard for nothing.”
“Whoa, wait! You saw that?” My eyes grew wide, practically bugging out of my head. “You didn’t say anything.”
His mouth quirked to the side, almost sadly. “You didn’t either. You lied.” Jamie paused at my bedroom door, hand gripping the handle. “Is that different too?”
Jamie shut the door before I had a chance to respond, leaving me staring at the knob with an ever-growing pit in my stomach. After a moment of silence, his final words hanging in the air, I fell back onto my bed. The ceiling hadn’t changed since I’d last looked at it, and the swollen feeling in my chest hadn’t either.Is that different too?
It was all varying shades of different. Lying about a kiss wasn’t as bad as lying about an alter ego, but that wasn’t as bad as lying about a crime. Then again, he hadn’t lied—he just never told me. That was the worst.
I’d gotten my cell phone back Friday morning, which would’ve surprised me if I’d cared more. When I came out of the bathroom from my morning shower to find it on my bed, I barely had a twinge of emotion.
Except maybe apprehension, for a few different reasons. Why had they given it back to me? After everything that happened, I thought they’d have taken it back to the store or something by now.
And then the other reason for the apprehension, of course.
Had Harry texted?
I’d tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter, but that was stupid. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. So, with all the determination I had left, I’d moved toward the bed and lifted the screen. I powered it on and waited for any notifications to come in.
It took me ten minutes to accept that all the notifications had come in and Harry hadn’t texted.
Addy had, though. She’d sent me the video from the concert, and a few texts after that. Margot, too, had sent a message, completely oblivious to the whole situation. Instead, she merely asked:
So did your parents bury you in your yard?
A part of me wished.
I had no energy left to text back either of them. So, setting my cell on the nightstand, I went back to staring vacantly at nothing, all my thoughts circling like a Harry Russo-themed merry-go-round.
And that was how Mom found me hours later when she got home from work. She poked her head into my bedroom, face all business, like always. “You’ve got some letters. From colleges and a few scholarship boards.”
It was one of thelastthings I wanted to talk about. Possibly ever. I rolled onto my back and glared at the ceiling, wishing I’d locked my door. “What do they say?”
“How would I know?” she asked, and strangely enough, her voice almost sounded gentle.
“We both know you already opened them.”
“I didn’t, actually.” Mom’s voice came closer, and her face edged into my peripheral. She held the envelopes to me, seals unbroken. “They’re yours to open.”
There were three of them between her fingers, one logo visible.Castleton.Despite my grim mood, I took the envelopes anyway.
