“You did.” I’m an idiot. We both know it.
“It seemed like more than just the punch, though. You looked upset. Was it Gideon?” There’s concern in his voice, but Gideon’s name comes out like it tastes bitter.
“I’m fine.” My face heats up, so I lean toward the window. I remember how Peter looked at me in the restaurant, the thrill I felt when his lips brushed mine and how, for a few seconds, I forgot about Gideon Hollander altogether.
Could I let go of Gideon and be happy with Peter? Maybe I could be content with Peter’s eyes, his deep laugh, those lips. If nothing else, he’s been my friend and savior since Gideon disappeared. I should try to fix this.
I twist around, an apology forming in the back of my throat. But Peter’s eyes are blank and focused on the road. His hand no longer reaches out to caress my aching head.
So that’s it then. Peter caught a glimpse of the real me—pathetically infatuated, hopelessly destructive. Sometimes lethal. After tonight, I’ll never hear from him again. It’s just as well. I doubt I could handle opening myself up to another person and getting rejected anyway.
Peter drops me off at home early enough that some of the lights are still on. I slip into my room and tumble onto the bed. I barely manage to kick off my pumps with my toes, leaving my dress and makeup untouched. Then, shutting my eyes so that the swiveling of the world around me becomes the swiveling of my own brain, I allow the darkness to take me.
That night, I dream that termites have infested the hobbit house, covering the wood walls in decay. The little creeping things made a home here in our absence. When I try to inspect the damage, my foot crashes straight through the rotted floor. The bugs crawl from their honeycombed walls toward me. My foot won’t budge. Frantically, I look around for Gideon to pull me out. To help me fix this.
But he’s gone.
25
The next week drags on in the wake of my Sadie Hawkins catastrophe. Emily seems shocked I even took a sip of alcohol. I don’t tell her about Gideon, just that I felt experimental and everything ended awkwardly with Peter—who might never want to talk to me again.
It turns out though, Peter does want to talk to me at school. I’m not sure how or why he’s forgiven my behavior. Apparently, he likes wild, vomiting, dancing wrecks. Emily’s problems put things in perspective. She nearly withdrew from school, but Peter and I convinced her to press on. We help to keep the media and the bullies away.
Nothing fills the crater Gideon left behind, but having two solid friends—one who needs me desperately and one who clearly wants to be more than friends—at least cuts down its size. It permits me to slip through the days without needing to curl up into a ball in the darkness of my room.
But my mistakes are never far from my mind. News coverage of the Melody Davenport case comes at me like a blizzard. I try to avoid the television and the newspapers, which my parents always leave strewn about the kitchen table, forcing me to avert my eyes. But I still get pelted with updates and occasional visits from the detectives, leaving me anxious and restless.
Seth is facing trial. It’s months away, but everyone is certain he did it. The town of Maribel can’t forget how he was always lurking around, watching girls. And that hair investigators lifted from the trunk of his car and his lack of an alibi are stacked against him.
Still, I get flickers of doubt every time I remember the old Seth. I can’t help wondering about Melody’s necklace, and if the cops found it tangled among the books at Seth’s place. Sure, he could’ve tossed it into the water along with her body.
But I wish I knew for certain.
Emily and Peter take my mind off these unsettling thoughts when I let them. Other times, Peter in particular is a little too perceptive.
“You must’ve known Melody Davenport pretty well, being in volleyball together,” he says offhandedly as we sit eating our lunches in the indoor courtyard. Gideon and Gracie just passed by and I pretended not to notice, focusing intently on my sandwich.
I shrug. “We were only on varsity together for a year. We obviously spoke. She was quite a volleyball player.”
Peter nods. “What about her sister?”
I know it’s unintentional, but he’s getting a rise out of me. I take a deep breath. “She’s nice, too. I don’t really know her, though. She doesn’t play volleyball. Plus, she’s a grade below us.”
“Right.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh, nothing.”
But he says it like he wants to say more, and is restraining himself. I know I’m in the clear with the cops. They have Seth. Still, my heart races and I can’t control the nervous tapping of my feet against the concrete.
“You sure?” I anxiously squish my peanut butter and jelly sandwich between two fingers.
“Yeah.” He’s staring down at his cafeteria burrito. “Well, I guess I’m asking because you’re always looking at her. Or is it at Gideon?”
I choke on my sandwich. The sticky peanut butter becomes lodged in my throat. I cough and then spit out, “It’s no secret we’re—we were friends, Peter.”
“It’s not more than that?” His narrow green eyes finally meet mine, crackling with a fervid spark.
“What are you talking about?”
“Friends don’t look at each other the way you look at him.”
I don’t blink for a long beat. How could he presume to read my feelings? How could he know anything about me? It doesn’t matter if he’s dead-on about Gideon. One kiss at a dance doesn’t give him the right to call me on it. I grit my teeth, fury settling into a scorching sensation in my cheeks and a pounding in my head, like nails being driven in slowly.
“You don’t know how I look at my friends,” I snap, standing up, “because you’re not one.” I wad up my half-eaten lunch and hurl it into a trash can, then bolt down the hallway in a white-hot rage in search of Emily, leaving Peter sitting stunned.
By the time I make it to the end of the hallway, regret already needles its way through the blinding wrath.
* * *
The next morning, I wake up groggy. I spent most of the night obsessing over the way I treated Peter, who’s been nothing but nice to me. Before bed, Emily called to cheer me up. She said I should just apologize—that only someone who really liked me would worry about another guy.
Still, I should probably leave Peter alone. Even Emily should stay far away from me. Everyone I touch gets burned.
I enter the kitchen in a zombie state, with half-shut eyes and rigid limbs. Two steps in, I hear rustling. Asher is seated at the kitchen table, steaming mug in hand. He’s reading the morning paper.