She was working on it, though.
Joonie was doing okay. In trying to explain the whole mess of what happened at the hospital without outing me (which also probably would have made her look a little less than stable, anyway), she ended up inadvertently outing herself. Or maybe not so inadvertently. She seemed relieved. I understood the feeling. When she was released from the hospital, though, after all kinds of psych tests, evaluations, and counseling, her parents refused to let her come home. She ended up living in this sort of halfway house/group home. It was all right. I went to see her there every couple of weeks. A therapist, a nice woman named Joan Stafford, made house calls there on a regular basis, and Joonie said that helped. She’d missed too much school to graduate with our class, but with a few summer classes, she’d get her diploma. Once she turned eighteen in August, she was moving to New York to live with her middle sister, Elise, who, it turned out, had had her own reasons for attending Wellesley.
Graduation day, June 1, dawned bright and suffocatingly hot for so early in the summer. They set up the stage in the middle of the football field, causing me to voluntarily set foot on the playing field for the first time in four years. I kept expecting to get tackled. When Principal Brewster called Alona’s name and her mother stepped up to accept the diploma on her behalf, I couldn’t help but look around. No sign of Alona, though, not even when Principal Brewster revealed a sketch of the memorial plaque with her name that would be attached to the new bench in the Circle. It was our senior gift to the school, suggested anonymously by yours truly and funded by donations that Misty Evans had relentlessly pursued. Alona had wanted to be remembered in the style she was accustomed to, and now she would be.
I waited, shifting uncomfortably on my plastic chair and sweating under the polyester gown and the dress shirt my mother had insisted on, until my name was called.
“William James Killian.” Principal Brewster looked like he’d sucked down an entire lemon-tree orchard to get a look that sour. I loved it.
I left my chair, walked up the aisle, and ascended the steps. Behind the stage, Liesel, Eric, Jay, and a few others cheered wildly as I shook the superintendent’s hand and then Brewster’s. He handed me my diploma but kept my other hand captive in a crushing grip.
“I don’t know how you managed this, but I know something just isn’t right with you, boy.”
“Yes, sir,” I agreed cheerfully. “But I beat you and that’s all that matters to me.” I yanked my hand out of his grasp, switched my tassel to the other side of my cap right there in front of him, just to taunt him a little, and bounded down the stage and back to my seat, feeling lighter than I had in years.
“Glad to see you learned your lesson about playing well with others,” Alona said dryly in my ear. Her familiar light and flowery scent drifted over my shoulder.
I jolted and started to turn.
“No, no, don’t turn around,” she said impatiently. “You’re almost out of here. Don’t make a scene by talking to someone who isn’t there.”
“Where have you been?” I whispered, pretending to look through my program.
“You saw the light. You know where I’ve been.”
“But since then?” I muttered.
“I had some things to take care of.”
“Like what?”
“You’ll see.” She sounded positively gleeful. “Just keep watching. Things are about to get very interesting.”
“Are you back for good?”
She made a frustrated noise. “Just watch. Ask questions later.”
So, I watched. At first I didn’t even know what I was looking for. Then Principal Brewster called for Ben Rogers. My hands clenched into fists. For the last three weeks, I’d had to let him walk around, smirking like the ass that he was, because I couldn’t touch him. Not until after graduation. Well, graduation would be over in the next twenty minutes, and then I’d do my best to pound his face into the…
The first ripple of giggles from the audience as Ben walked up the side aisle tipped me off that something was up. The giggles turned into a roar of laughter and then hooting and hollering. Only when Ben drew even with my row could I see the source of the hoopla. A paper sign had been taped to the back of his gown, right at his shoulder blades. In big block letters, it read, I HAVE A TINY PENIS. WANT 2 SEE?
I laughed. “Awesome.”
Ben, completely bewildered, but accepting the added attention as his due, simply thrust his fist up in the air in a gesture of triumph as he climbed onto the stage. Yeah.
Behind me, Alona smothered a laugh. “What an ass.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said.
Next to me, Jillian Karson gave me a look and shifted her chair farther away. Whatever.
“Meet me after,” Alona said.
“Where?” I asked, prompting another glare from Jillian.
“You know where.”
By the time I could risk a casual glance behind me, she was gone.
After the ceremony, I made my way over to the bleachers and my mother. “I’m proud of you,” she said.
“Thanks.”
She hesitated. “Your dad … he’s proud of you, too, I’m sure, even if he can’t tell you that himself.”
I’d confessed to her my original suspicions about dad being Gloomy Gus a while ago and she’d tsked at me for thinking that my father would ever haunt me. She was right, of course. One way or another, my dad was gone and, I hoped, happy now in a way he couldn’t have been in life.
“Thanks, Ma.” I gave her a hug. “I need to go check on something. I’ll meet you back at the car?”
She nodded, and Sam, my mom’s boss at the diner and the only other person I’d invited to graduation, took her arm to help her down from the bleachers. I didn’t think she needed the help, but I suspected she liked it. And Sam, too. That was cool. He was a good guy.
I left the two of them behind and headed toward the main entrance of the school. On the way, I passed Ben Rogers, holding the sign that had been stuck to his back. “But it isn’t,” he insisted to anyone who would listen. Unfortunately, no one seemed to believe him.
As I approached the Circle, I could see Alona sitting on her bench, her long legs stretched out in the sun.
“So what happened to being nice?” I asked when I reached her.
She squinted up at me. “What, the thing with Ben?”
I snorted. “Yeah,‘the thing with Ben.’”
She shrugged. “Not my idea. It was Leanne’s. I heard about it when I visited Misty.”
“Misty?” I asked.
Her gaze barely flickered from mine. “She was my best friend forever, and she kept my secrets. I’m not going to let Chris get in the way of that.”
“Oh.” Quite a different song than she’d been singing before about their relationship, but maybe the round-trip visit into the golden light changed that … and her.
She shrugged. “Besides, Chris slobbers a little when he kisses. Ick.”
That startled a laugh out of me. No, same Alona.
“Anyway”—she looked at me with some exasperation—“when I was visiting Misty, I learned something interesting. Apparently, Leanne and Ben hooked up freshman year, and she never got over him dumping her. That’s why they refused to talk to each other.”
“She waited four years to get even?”
Alona grinned. “Never piss off the girl who sits behind you at graduation, especially if it’s Leanne Whitaker. That girl can hold a grudge like nobody’s business.”
We sat there in silence for a moment. “It was nice, though, for Lily, I mean,” I said.
“For all of them,” Alona corrected. “But, yeah, for Lily.”
“So,” I ventured, “you’re back.”
“Yep.”
“That’s a little unusual, I think.”
“Hmm.”
