I’m in the middle of my fourth class of the day and I could not give less of a shit. The teacher is a total wack job. She’s up in the front of the room, flinging her arms around, and it’s like, Honey, could you please go run a brush through your hair? She’s riding a fine line between I-haven’t-washed-my-hair-in-five-days hipster and, like, straight-up homeless. I reach for my phone to text Jordan about it before I realize what I’m doing.
The chairs in here are super uncomfortable and really close together, even though we’re in a theater. You’d think that someone out there would’ve considered that it might be an issue. How the fuck are you supposed to get out of here if something goes wrong? There’s no way to escape.
My hands are trembling in my lap. A big part of me is thinking, Can I just get up and go home now, please? The day is going by so slow and feels so pointless. There’s something about the shrill ring of the bell; the classrooms with these tight rows of seats; the piercing, rabid laughs of the kids in the hallways that’s just too much. I have a headache.
I’m considering leaving—class, school, everything—when this tall, gangly kid flies in late and slams his body down into a nearby seat. I glance over, and even though he just got here, he appears properly awed by our teacher, like Jordan would have been. He laughs to himself and then glances at me for some reason, and I can’t help but smile in response. Everyone else in the room is so serious, and fuck if I wasn’t afraid I’d be the only person in this room who isn’t all Rah rah theater blah blah blah.
Random laughing kid looks surprised that I’m smiling, like he thinks I’m making fun of him or something. My cheeks heat up, and I wonder what I’ve just done wrong. I haven’t socialized much in the past eleven months; Lucy is like my second brain, and my parents…God knows if I even know how to interact with people anymore. Probably not.
I drop my eyes back to my lap and two thoughts pop into my head simultaneously: coming back to school sucks even more than I thought it would, and that random laughing guy is kind of cute.
* * *
—
I make sure to leave drama well after Laughing Boy, because I’ve already embarrassed myself enough for one millennium.
When I hit the hallway, I run smack into a wall of flesh. I flinch. My heart starts pounding. I want to take a hot shower and burn off the feeling of another human’s body on my own.
And then, when I see who I smashed into, I want to throw up: Miles Catalano. My ex-boyfriend. Literally the last person I wanted to see today, the person I hoped I’d never have to see again, except of course I knew he goes to this shitty school, and now so do I.
His eyes widen when he sees it’s me. He freezes mid-walk, and someone slams into his back, pushing him closer to me. His face is inches away.
Goddammit.
“Crap. God. Hi.” He pushes his wild curly hair off his face. “Jesus. May. Hey.”
If it were any other person or any other set of circumstances, I’d enjoy the monosyllabic nonsense falling out of his mouth, but right now I just want him to shut the fuck up and move on.
“Yep.” I take one step back from him and then another. “It’s May. Good to know your eyesight’s intact. K, cool, gotta go.” I swing around to escape, but the hallway is beyond crowded, thanks to all of us they’ve jammed in here from Carter, and I barely make it a foot before his hand clamps down on my shoulder.
“May. Wait.” My skin crawls at his voice.
“What!” I spin around, and I don’t care that I’m getting in his face or that I just screamed at him out of nowhere. I want him to let me go. If he was going to hold on to anything—anyone—couldn’t it have been motherfucking David Ecchles the morning of the shooting, when he walked by Miles on his way into the band room, carrying that big black duffel bag, and Miles glanced up from his locker and thought, That’s weird, he’s not in jazz band, but did nothing. Miles told me about that moment, sobbing, a few days after, the night of Jordan’s funeral.
I broke up with him on the spot. Told him the sight of his face made me sick.
That was when he decided to be an even bigger prick than I thought he could ever be. His eyes narrowed and he said that I was an idiot. That I had done so much worse. That he’d seen me talking to David Ecchles at Adam Neilson’s party the weekend before the shooting. He claimed we were sitting out by the pool, David’s head leaned toward mine like we were deep in a serious conversation.
I was so wasted that night I barely remember anything between getting to Adam’s house with Miles and waking up in my bed the next morning. I do remember that when we got to the party, Miles ran off with some of his soccer friends, leaving me alone. I remember that I found Chim in the kitchen doing shots and joined in. After that, my memory is beyond blurry—it’s a black hole. And I know that if you get too close to the edge of a black hole, it’ll pull you in and you’ll never escape.
Somehow, I allegedly made my way outside and was sitting by the pool when David found me. At least, that’s the Gospel According to Miles. But I don’t believe him. I would never have talked to David Ecchles. And Miles never bothered to mention it until that night, after I broke up with him. There’s no way David Ecchles would have been at any party—especially one at Adam’s house. Adam had always teased him mercilessly—basically made his life a living hell. David Ecchles didn’t go to parties. He didn’t get invited. There were always all these rumors about him—about the creepy poem he wrote in English class, about his home life, about the tattoo of a gun he had on his stomach. Sometimes I’d catch him starting at me in the halls. Something in his eyes always creeped me out—they had this flat, empty look in them, like he was part zombie.
In front of me, Miles has an expression on his face that’s something akin to pity. “Jesus, May. Relax. I’m just surprised to see you. I knew you were back, but…” He’s so uncomfortable. Good. I want nothing to do with him or with any of this. My hands ball into fists.
Over his shoulder, a security guard watches us. I force my hands to relax.
“Okay. Good talk.” This time I’m ready. I push past him into the crowd and let the flow of people take me farther and farther away.
* * *
—
It’s finally lunchtime, and all I want is to grab on to Lucy like the life raft she’s become and never let go. I walk through the swinging doors into the cafeteria to find her, but before I can get more than a couple steps inside, I’m hit by a cacophony of noises. There are people everywhere. Most I don’t recognize; they must be the original QA students. The ones who belong here. The ones who fit.
A person brushes by me and I find myself looking into the eyes of one of Jordan’s best friends, Brian Ramirez. Brian was in jazz band, too, but wasn’t a section leader. Wasn’t in practice that day.