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A handful of people laugh, but most of them are afraid to react at all. I’m in the latter group. I think Mr. Ames realizes now exactly who is standing next to him because he’s also too shocked to react. Devon grins before strutting down the aisle, stopping at the desk behind me.
“Get the fuck out of my seat,” he says to Sofia. I hear her scramble to gather her things and find a new spot, and he slides into his old seat.
We’re starting a new section today, so Ames turns down the lights and puts the slides up on the smartboard. I don’t think anyone is paying attention to what’s going on in the front of the room—they’re watching him, whispering. I can hear my heart beating in my ears.
I feel Devon’s breath hot on my neck before he speaks.
“I gotta ask—how do you sleep at night, Ally? How do you live with yourself?”
“I don’t sleep,” I tell him over my shoulder. It’s not a lie. He knows me, so surely he can see it. “Devon—”
“No.”
When the lights are back on, he gives us the theme for the Fall Art Fair: Identity/Secret Self.
Secretis the only self I have, but most of them aren’t really things I can put on display. Not that it matters—the art fair isn’t until the very end of the month. I’ll be gone by then.
I do have something, though, that I’ve been working on I could finish and submit. I wonder if they’d display it after I leave, and it could serve as a farewell of sorts. There aren’t many people I’d want to say goodbye to, but there are a few who have made the days a little easier in small ways that maybe they didn’t even think mattered—that maybe they didn’t even notice—but I did, and it mattered to me.
I wait in my seat after the bell rings. I half-expect him to wait for me or try to speak to me, even if it’s just to yell at me or grab me by my throat again, but he doesn’t. He breezes past me like I’m nothing, but I’m glad to get another look at him, at least. I can still feel it—everything that ever was there, heavy in my gut.
He’s thinner now—I can tell. I recognize the shirt he’s wearing and remember the way it clung to his shoulders and chest before. His dark hair is buzzed close to his head. He wore a hat last night, and I’d been so shocked I didn’t even notice. He’s paler, too, and there are no more piercings on his face or ears.
I don’t see him again for the rest of the morning, but he’s all anyone talks about in the classroom or in the hallway.
At least he’s out. That’s a good thing, right? I should be happy about that—Iamhappy about that. And with the video they found, no one should think I had anything to do with it anymore.
As usual, I get to lunch early and slide into my seat at our table. Morgan goes through the line shortly after, and Audrey walks in a few minutes later with nothing but her phone in hand. Trevor sits next to me, and a few of the other basketball guys follow suit.
“Hey, beautiful,” he says, taking his seat.
I’ve entertained the idea of it for a while now—I’ve let him think that maybe we could be a couple, but only because I’m leaving soon, and no one likes to be alone. And it’s not like Trevor is a bad person. Maybe he isn’t exactly a good one, but he’s far more innocent than he’d like the rest of us to know, I’m sure, and that’s more than I can say about myself. He isn’t dangerous.
But nowhe’shere. And I can’t.
I don’t see him in the lunchroom, so maybe he isn’t on this schedule.
“How are you?” Morgan asks. “Are you doing okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I tell her.
“Devon was in my English class,” she adds. “It was the quietest that class has ever been. Everyone acted like they’d seen a ghost.”
“It was the same in art,” I tell her.
“You had a class with him? Did you talk to him?”
“No.”
“If he tries to fuck with you, you better tell me,” Trevor says. “It was sick what he did—trying to use you as an alibi or whatever.”
“He didn’t kill her, though,” I tell them. “You saw the video. It wasn’t him.”
“Yeah, well…I’m still not so sure,” Trevor says.
“We all saw him threaten her that same night, Ally,” Morgan adds. “You need to be careful. And what Coach did at the game last night…that was fucked up, too, by the way.”
“It’s fine. I get why she did it. Her family didn’t want me there.”
