She’d done that with me and Gus DePrio when we were in fifth grade and she’d decided he should be her boyfriend instead of mine. How stupid are guys that they fall for the same crap they did when we were ten?
Patrick’s mouth twitched at the corners, and then he was smiling. Really smiling, and suddenly I felt like I had to look away. But I couldn’t.
“Amy,” he said, and Patrick’s voice is—it’s different.
It’s deep, this low rumble, but it’s not loud. He speaks so quietly, like everything is a secret. Like you’re the only 207
person he wants listening. “About the other day and Julia’s locker—I know I disappeared when the bell rang.” He glanced away, looking back out the window. “I shouldn’t have done that. I just . . . my parents—my mother— she’s got so much to deal with already. But that’s not—I still should have stayed, and I’m sorry I didn’t.”
I shrugged and stared at the table. Him saying my name made me feel weird. Him saying Julia’s name made me feel weird. Him talking to me made me feel weird.
“Did it make you feel better, getting rid of everything people wanted to tell her?”
“What?” I looked at him. He wasn’t looking out the window anymore. He was looking at me.
“I didn’t—it wasn’t like that. Nothing anyone said was real. It was just stuff they thought they should say or that their friends said.”
As soon as I said it, I realized how stupid it sounded.
How false. Lots of people knew Julia, liked her, and their missing her was real. I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to. I felt my face heat up.
“I did it for her.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Can you at least walk by her locker now?”
“Shut up,” I said, standing up and grabbing my stuff, and my voice sounded strange, crackly and raw. I walked 208
out of the library, across campus, home. When I got there, I smiled and told my parents I’d had a great time.
I haven’t walked by Julia’s locker since I fixed it. I thought I’d be able to, but I can’t. I don’t . . . I don’t think what I did to it was for her. I think it was for me.
But fixing her locker didn’t make me feel better. It didn’t make Julia being gone easier to bear.
209
144 days
J —
Laurie’s back. I saw her this afternoon. I wasn’t going to say anything about her dad, but she looked really tired and sad and I felt . . . well, I actually felt sorry for her.
“I hope your father’s okay,” I said as I sat down, and she said, “He’s much better, thank you.” When I looked at her she looked back at me steadily, and I saw that although her father might be better now, he wouldn’t be for long, and before I knew it, I’d told her everything about the day I visited the cemetery. Even the stuff about your mom.
“It sounds like it was very intense.”
I nodded.
“What about the things she said to you?”
I shrugged.
210
“Do you think Julia would say them?”
“No. She wasn’t like that. She would never—forget it.” Typical Laurie not getting it, not seeing who you were. “There’s some other stuff I have to tell you too.”
I told her what I’d realized that night, about how drinking was my choice. It felt so great to finally tell her, to point out something she hadn’t seen, but do you know what she said?
“Good.”
That was it? Good? “But you said—you asked me all that stuff about Julia and me. You implied things.”
“Did I?”
I glared at her.
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “What do you think choice means in terms of everything we’ve been discussing here?”
“What do you mean?”
She clicked her pen. “You made choices. Presumably Julia did too, right?”
“Duh.”
“Did she ever make ones that you didn’t agree with?
Or that hurt you?”
I looked down. My hands were knotted into fi sts on my lap. I forced them to relax. I stared at my fi ngers.
