I’l be just fine.
I wil .
that I never went back to see Tess. I got so caught up in my strange conversation with Eli that I …
I forgot about her.
I slink home, where Mom and Dad are waiting for me in the living room like they know what I’ve done.
Except they don’t, because when I come in they both say hel o, Mom’s voice as warm as ever, but strained, and Dad sounding—and looking—
far away.
For al that Mom said I reminded her of him the other day, right now he’s reminding me of Tess and how she was when she was out of public view and got upset, right down to how he’s staring like he’s not here, like we’re not here. Like Tess would sometimes do. Like she did when she found out about Claire, or when she came home from col ege before the accident.
At the time, I figured she was worried about her grades, but now I think about how Beth said Tess was going to move out, and wonder if Tess had lost another friendship, if Beth had done something Tess couldn’t bring herself to forgive.
“What’s wrong?” I ask Dad, and he blinks like he didn’t see me come in even though he’d said hel o.
“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” Mom says, glancing at me before she looks back at Dad, who glares at her so strongly that … wel , if I were her, I’d smack him.
“Nothing?” I say, my voice rising, and Mom looks back at me.
“Not now, Abby.”
“Not now? Are you—?”
“Go upstairs,” she says, in her voice that means “no arguing, or else,” and I stomp outside instead, slamming the door hard as I go.
Then I sneak over to the living room window, crouching down so they can’t see me.
“You know what the doctor said, Dave,” Mom says. “It’s not—it’s not that simple. Tess is—” She breaks off.
“I know,” Dad says, and there’s silence for a moment.
When Mom talks again, her voice is muffled, like she’s leaning into him. “I’m worried about Abby.”
I stiffen and press myself against the house, closer to the window.
“Abby?” Dad says. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Mom says. “And that’s the problem. I looked at her the other night, and she just—she reminded me so much of you when you first came back after John died. She’s so—she’s so quiet. So angry. So scared. But she hides it, or tries to, and Tess was always so—she was—”
I stand up then. I know what Tess was. So happy. So blah blah blah. So not me.
I head down the driveway and walk to Claire’s house. Al the lights are off, but Claire is sitting on her front porch, soaking her feet in what looks like a bucket.
“Is that a bucket?” I ask.
“Mom borrowed the footbath she got me for Christmas last week and I haven’t seen it since,” she says. “My guess is she said she thought it wasn’t working right and Daddy took it apart and it’s in pieces out back and she can’t bring herself to tel me yet.” She swishes her feet around in the water. I hear it splashing against the sides of the bucket. I pop open the gate and walk up to where she’s sitting.
“What’s going on with you and Eli?” she says. “Everyone was talking about how you ran out of the hospital and he fol owed you.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“No?”
“Nope. I didn’t run. I left. Quickly.”
She laughs. “So he did fol ow you.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like how you’re saying it. We were talking about Tess.”
“Oh,” she says. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why? What else are we going to talk about?”
“Wel , he’s beyond cute, for one thing.”
“Which is why he’s seeing Tess,” I say, and she leans back so she’s lying down, staring up at her porch ceiling.
“Why does Eli have to be Tess’s?”
“You’ve seen him,” I say. “Who else could he belong to? And besides, has anyone who ever saw her decided they’d rather spend time with me instead?”
“I’d rather hang out with you any day.”
“Ex–best friends don’t count.”
