Cheeks burning, I glance around the crowded hallway. A couple of people are watching me curiously, like they’re trying to place me. Others whisper back and forth, eyes wide as they wait to see what I’ll do next. They know exactly who I am.
I start walking again, head down and long hair draped over my face, protective. My neck is sweating, and I feel like puking up the granola bar my mother made me eat on the way to school, but that’s okay. This is part of the reason I came back here, why I wanted to face all these people who know who I am and who Aubrey was and what happened to her.
Because they’ll never let me forget that my best friend fell into the path of an oncoming pickup truck and was crushed to death right in front of me.
And they definitely won’t let me forget that I’m the one who pushed her.
two
Sophomore Year
“DO YOU SEE HIM ANYWHERE?”
Aubrey stood on her tiptoes, adding a few inches of height to her tiny frame, and peered across the crowded cafeteria. Her features shifted into a familiar concerned expression—eyebrows bunched, front teeth clamped over bottom lip. I called it her mother-hen face.
“Aubrey.” I hooked my fingers into the strap of her backpack and dragged her toward the food line. “He’s fourteen now. A freshman. He can take care of himself.”
We took our place in line and she glanced around again, brown eyes scanning the room for a moment before returning to rest on me. She shrugged. “You know what he’s like.”
I nodded. Yes, I knew what her brother was like—shy, sensitive, a lamb in a den of lions. But I also knew what Aubrey was like. She was fiercely protective, even though Ethan had grown about a foot over the summer and no longer needed his big sister to look out for him.
We shifted forward in line.
“Maybe I should text him,” Aubrey said, twisting her long dark hair into a side braid.
“Maybe you should leave him alone and let him make friends during his first week of high school.”
She unwound her braid and raised one dark eyebrow. We both knew Ethan had trouble making friends. That was why he’d been sitting with us for the past two days. “Maybe my best friend should stop acting like such a beeyotch.”
I stood perfectly straight and glared down at her, pretending to try to intimidate her with my stature; judging from the way Aubrey smirked at me, it wasn’t working. I was already five-eight at fifteen; my six-five father liked to tease me that I’d be taller than him one day. My mother, almost as short as Aubrey, said I was “tall like a supermodel,” which always made me laugh. Supermodels were also super skinny and super beautiful, two qualities I super lacked.
Aubrey paused in her search long enough for us to buy slices of pizza and squeeze into a table near the cafeteria entrance. Then she continued to keep watch, her leg jiggling against the table as she absently nibbled her crust. Unlike me, Aubrey only fidgeted when she was worried. I was never still, not even when I slept.
“Is there still hazing for freshmen?” Aubrey asked, pizza slice sagging in her hand. “Is that a real thing or just something that happens on TV?”
Okay, she was being ridiculous. Ethan was only one grade below us. My brother, Tobias, was seven and I didn’t fuss over him nearly as much. Then again, Tobias and I had the type of parents who worried and cared and hugged. Aubrey and Ethan had the kind who chose work over fun and only paid attention when someone screwed up. Growing up with detached parents had forced Aubrey into the nurturer role, and Ethan into someone who needed nurturing.
But we all had to grow up sometime.
“Would you relax?” I glanced over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of buzzed dark hair and one pale, bony arm. Seconds later, the rest of Ethan followed, his gangly body emerging through a cluster of seniors. “See?” I said to Aubrey, jerking my chin toward him. “He hasn’t been stuffed into a Dumpster after all.”
Aubrey’s eyes zeroed in on her brother’s face, which looked unusually red, even from here. As he drew closer and saw us watching him, the shade deepened to overripe tomato.
“Where have you been?” Aubrey demanded as Ethan sat down across from her. “Are you okay? Do you need your inhaler?”
“I’m fine.” His eyes—wide and dark brown like his sister’s—flicked toward me for a moment. His skin was slowly returning to its usual paleness, but his behavior still seemed off. “And so is my breathing.”
Aubrey’s mother-hen face relaxed somewhat and she pushed the slice of pizza she’d bought him across the table. Ethan rolled his right shoulder as if working out a kink as he took a large bite.
“What’s wrong with your shoulder?” I asked him.
Aubrey glanced up quickly, concern flooding her features again.
“Nothing,” he muttered through a mouthful of cheese.
We stared at him, suspicious, until the tomato-red flush returned to his cheeks.
“I hurt it,” he said, swallowing. “In gym.”
Aubrey’s eyes narrowed into slits. “You didn’t have gym this morning.”
He shrugged, the movement causing him to wince. “I’m fine,” he repeated, finishing off his lunch.
Liar. I tilted around in my chair and looked at him. “Who was it?”
Anger flashed in his eyes, and I knew I was on the right track. I noticed what went on in the halls of Hadfield High. Juniors were the most likely culprits, probably because sophomores were still low on the food chain and seniors had better things to do than torture freshmen. But even though the school year had barely begun, a few obnoxious juniors had already made cruelty into a sport. Mostly they were all talk, lobbing insults as you walked by, but sometimes—if they were extra bored or if one of them felt like showing off—they took things further. And Ethan—skinny, quiet Ethan—was perfect fodder for idiots like them.
“Who was what?” Aubrey asked, her gaze bouncing between us.
Ethan sighed and craned his neck toward the table by the window, where the junior jerks in question shoved food into their mouths like they’d never learned table manners. “The one in the red shirt who looks like he should’ve graduated five years ago.”
I knew exactly who he meant. Wyatt Greer, king of obnoxious assholes. Last year, he’d tripped some kid in the auditorium, causing him to fall and break his nose.
“He hurt you?” Aubrey’s coloring rose to rival Ethan’s. “What did he do?”
Ethan turned back around, his left hand reaching up to massage his shoulder. “Punted me into a locker. By accident, of course. He even said he was sorry.”
“Accident, my foot.”
“Someone should slam Wyatt Greer into a locker,” I said, glaring over there as I sipped my cranberry juice. “See how he likes it.”
“He’s like two hundred pounds,” Ethan pointed out. “He wouldn’t budge.”
“True.” My gaze lowered to my orange plastic cafeteria tray. “It would probably work better if something slammed into him.”
“Like a truck?” Aubrey said, huffing out a breath.
“We’re not that lucky.” I removed the paper plate containing my leftover pizza crust and picked up the tray, testing its flexibility. It was pretty solid. Not easily breakable.