The church is SRO. Most of Castle Rock High School is there—teachers and students alike; even Frankie Stone is there, smirking in the back pew—and Gwendy hates them all for showing up. None of them even liked Olive when she was alive. None of them even knew her.
Yeah, like I did, Gwendy thinks. But at least I did something about it. There’s that. No one else will jump from those stairs. Ever.
Walking from the gravesite back to her parents’ car after the service, someone calls out to her. She turns and sees Olive’s father.
Mr. Kepnes is a short man, barrel-chested, with rosy cheeks and kind eyes. Gwendy has always adored him and shared a special bond with Olive’s father, perhaps because they once shared the burden of being overweight, or perhaps because Mr. Kepnes is one of the sweetest people Gwendy has ever known.
She held it together pretty well during the funeral service, but now, with Olive’s father approaching, arms outstretched, Gwendy loses it and begins to sob.
“It’s okay, honey,” Mr. Kepnes says, wrapping her up in a bear hug. “It’s okay.”
Gwendy vehemently shakes her head. “It’s not…” Her face is a mess of tears and snot. She wipes it with her sleeve.
“Listen to me.” Mr. Kepnes leans down and makes sure Gwendy is looking at him. It’s wrong for the father to be comforting the friend—the ex-friend—but that is exactly what he’s doing. “It has to be okay. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but it has to be. Got it?”
Gwendy nods her head and whispers, “Got it.” She just wants to go home.
“You were her best friend in the world, Gwendy. Maybe in a couple weeks, you can come see us at the house. We can all sit down and have some lunch and talk. I think Olive would’ve liked that.”
It’s too much, and Gwendy can no longer bear it. She pulls away and flees for the car, her apologetic parents trailing behind her.
The final two days of school are canceled because of the tragedy. Gwendy spends most of the next week on the den sofa buried beneath a blanket. She has many bad dreams—the worst of them featuring a man in a black suit and black hat, shiny silver coins where his eyes should be—and often cries out in her sleep. She’s afraid of what she might say during these nightmares. She’s afraid her parents might overhear.
Eventually, the fever breaks and Gwendy reenters the world. She spends the majority of her summer vacation working as much as she can at the snack bar. When she’s not working, she’s jogging the sunbaked roads of Castle Rock or locked inside her bedroom listening to music. Anything to keep her mind busy.
The button box stays hidden in the back of the closet. Gwendy still thinks about it—boy, does she—but she wants nothing to do with it anymore. Not the chocolate treats, not the silver coins, and most of all, not the goddamn buttons. Most days, she hates the box and everything it reminds her of, and she fantasizes about getting rid of it. Crushing it with a sledgehammer or wrapping it up in a blanket and driving it out to the dump.
But she knows she can’t do that. What if someone else finds it? What if someone else pushes one of the buttons?
She leaves it there in the dark shadows of her closet, growing cobwebs and gathering dust. Let the damn thing rot for all I care, she thinks.
24
Gwendy is sunbathing in the back yard, listening to Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band on a Sony Walkman, when Mrs. Peterson comes outside carrying a glass of ice water. Her mother hands Gwendy the glass and sits down on the end of the lawn chair.
“You doing okay, honey?”
Gwendy slips off the headphones and takes a drink. “I’m fine.”
Mrs. Peterson gives her a look.
“Okay, maybe not fine, but I’m doing better.”
“I hope so.” She gives Gwendy’s leg a squeeze. “You know we’re here if you ever want to talk. About anything.”
“I know.”
“You’re just so quiet all the time. We worry about you.”
“I… have a lot on my mind.”
“Still not ready to call Mr. Kepnes back?”
Gwendy doesn’t answer, only shakes her head.
Mrs. Peterson gets up from the lawn chair. “Just remember one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“It will get better. It always does.”
It’s pretty much what Olive’s father said. Gwendy hopes it’s true, but she has her doubts.
“Hey, mom?”
Mrs. Peterson stops and turns around.
“I love you.”
25
As it turns out, Mr. Kepnes was wrong and Mrs. Peterson was right. Things are not okay, but they do get better.
Gwendy meets a boy.
His name is Harry Streeter. He’s eighteen years old, tall and handsome and funny. He’s new to Castle Rock (his family just moved in a couple weeks ago as a result of his father’s job transfer), and if it’s not a genuine case of Love At First Sight, it’s pretty close.
Gwendy is behind the counter at the snack bar, hustling tubs of buttered popcorn, Laffy Taffy, Pop Rocks, and soda by the gallon, when Harry walks in with his younger brother. She notices him right away, and he notices her. When it’s his turn to order, the spark jumps and neither of them can manage a complete sentence.
Harry returns the next night, by himself this time, even though The Amityville Horror and Phantasm are still playing, and once again he waits his turn in line. This time, along with a small popcorn and soda, he asks Gwendy for her phone number.
He calls the next afternoon, and that evening picks her up in a candy-apple red Mustang convertible. With his blond hair and blue eyes, he looks like a movie star. They go bowling and have pizza on their first date, skating at the Gates Falls Roller Rink on their second, and after that they are inseparable. Picnics at Castle Lake, day trips into Portland to visit museums and the big shopping mall, movies, walks. They even jog together, keeping in perfect step.
By the time school starts, Gwendy is wearing Harry’s school ring on a silver chain around her neck and trying to figure out how to talk to her mother about birth control. (This talk won’t happen until the school year is almost two months old, but when it does, Gwendy is relieved to find that her mother is not only understanding, she even calls and makes the doctor’s appointment for her—go, Mom.)
There are other changes, too. Much to the dismay of the coaching staff and her teammates, Gwendy decides to skip her senior season on the girls’ soccer team. Her heart just isn’t in it. Besides, Harry isn’t a jock, he’s a serious photographer, and this way they can spend more time together.
Gwendy can’t remember ever being this happy. The button box still surfaces in her thoughts from time to time, but it’s almost as if the whole thing was a dream from her childhood. Mr. Farris. The chocolate treats. The silver dollars. The red button. Was any of it real?
Running, however, is not negotiable. When indoor track season rolls around in late November, Gwendy is ready to rock and roll. Harry is there on the sidelines for every meet, snapping pix and cheering her on. Despite training most of the summer and into the fall, Gwendy finishes a disappointing fourth in Counties and doesn’t qualify for States for the first time in her high school career. She also brings home two B’s on her semester-ending report card in December. On the third morning of Christmas break, Gwendy wakes up and shuffles to the hallway bathroom to take her morning pee. When she’s finished, she uses her right foot to slide the scale out from underneath the bathroom vanity, and she steps onto it. Her instincts are right: she has gained six pounds.