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“Of course.”
___
I flee the house without breakfast, opting instead to stop and get myself a breakfast croissant on my way to school. I eat it in the car, gazing up at the looming school building and thinking it has never looked so intimidating before.
It’s not until I’m on my way in and I realize Landon’s parking spot is empty that the feeling shifts.
I’m running a little behind since I stopped to buy myself breakfast, but presumably Landon ate whatever Antonia made for breakfast.
He should be here by now.
I don’t know what it means that he isn’t, but it makes my stomach hurt.
The prospect ofseeing himmade my stomach hurt, too, so maybe a stomachache was inevitable today.
I feel better knowing where he is, though.
As I enter the building, I pull my phone out of my purse to make sure I don’t have any texts from Mom. My thoughts go to catastrophic places. Something happened to him, or somehow Hayden found out what happened even though I know that’s unlikely.
Unless he caught Landon leaving my room.
I fell asleep with Landon still inside me, and I have no memory of him leaving, so I have no idea what happened.
My heart flips over when I see a text notification, but plummets when I see who it’s from.
Javi sent me another picture of the ocean, this time with a brighter sky since it’s later in the morning than when he goes for his runs.
I feel a pinch of guilt looking at it, but I don’t have the time or mental energy to deal with that right now. I know I should be exhausted since I barely slept last night, but I feel wired, bordering on jittery, when I check in on the book drive to make sure everything is on track.
The nervous energy helps keep me awake, but makes it harder to focus on classes today. My focus is especially shaken when the first class I’m supposed to have with Landon starts and he still isn’t here.
I check my phone again but there’s still nothing, so I shoot my mom an innocuous text about my club meeting after school and wait to see what she says.
Of course,she chooses today to be busy.
I don’t get to check her return text until after class, but her response is just, “got it. Have fun!”
“Ugh,” I mutter, looking down at my phone on the way to lunch.
Hannah catches up to me for the first time since she walked me through cleaning my stupid sheets this morning. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I murmur, slipping my phone back into my purse. I try to ignore her paying extra close attention to me, but it’s like walking outside and trying to ignore the sun. “I’m fine,” I say shortly. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even know what ‘it’ is.”
“Okay,” she says easily. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” Without dwelling on it, she looks ahead down the hall. “Are we eating in the cafeteria?"
I nod. Then, despite saying I didn’t want to talk about it, I add, “I don’t think he’s at school today. He wasn’t in class.”
She shakes her head. “He wasn’t in the class we usually have together, either.”
Sighing, I try my best not to care, and hate when the very first thought to spring to mind is… “Do you have any classes with Brittany?”
I told Landon the one sure way to blow things up like they’ve never been blown up before, and he loves to detonate things.
While I did it to protect us if there was ever going to be an us, to protecthimbecause I know deep down, I’m the one keeping his life together, I knew the risks of handing the nuke codes over to someone as volatile as Landon.
But I meant what I said, and I hope he knows that. I wasn’t running my mouth to cast a certain inflated impression of my badassery; I was delivering information that is crucial to our survival.
If he does the one thing I warned him about the very next day, the gloves are coming off. One-way alliance over. I won’t protect him anymore, and he won’t make it another week without me.
