I wanted to smack her, hard, and tell her to wake up, go after Mel, grab life and live it like Julia did. I wanted to tell her that people like me and her aren’t really living at all. We’re just here. I was lucky. I got Julia, even if it wasn’t for as long as I thought. Even though I ruined it.
“We should go,” I said, and got up, dug around in my pockets and found the twenty, dropped it on the table.
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“That’s too much,” Caro said, but I was already gath-ering my stuff and heading for the door.
She came after me. I was heading away from the university, walking toward home and those stupid muffi ns, when she grabbed my arm.
“You have to come or Beth will destroy me,” she said, and in that moment I actually liked her. She didn’t pretend she wanted to pay me back for her breakfast or act like she cared about what she’d said. She told me the truth. She needed me to come with her because when she talked to Beth, she had to bitch about me being there so she could be safe.
So I went to the university library with her. Mel was already there, perched outside on the stairs waving his arms around like he was talking to someone even though he was alone. Caro let out a little sigh when we saw him.
“I bet if you tried, he could be yours by the end of the day,” I said.
“I don’t want him,” she said, and before I could laugh, added, “Oh. He’s not talking to himself. Patrick showed up. I didn’t think he would.”
Patrick was indeed there, sitting beside the huge book-drop bin, almost totally hidden from view. Inside, Mel said something about being closer to the reference databases as we grabbed a table by a window and near 205
a door, but it was obvious that wasn’t the reason why because Patrick practically threw himself into the chair closest to the window and then stared out it like he wanted to be gone.
I wondered if that was how I looked to other people.
How I acted. Maybe it should have bothered me, but it didn’t. Patrick looked uncomfortable with life, and I knew that feeling.
Mel sat across from him and next to me. Caro sat across from me. They didn’t talk at first, but within three minutes they were arguing and we’d been glared at by a couple of bleary-eyed students slumped over laptops.
After a while, they went off to look something up, still arguing, leaving me with Patrick.
It was just like being alone. He didn’t talk, and every time I glanced at him—Caro wanted me to look through a list of things she’d written down, and it was so boring—
he was staring out the window. Mel and Caro came back after a while, still arguing and clearly having a good time doing it because both of them were fighting back smiles as they talked.
“We can look at the other articles. I’m just asking you to—” Mel said.
“No, you were telling me there’s only one way to talk about the Mississippi River’s role in the book.”
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“I’m not. I swear! It’s just that Patrick worked really hard on the multimedia presentation and I don’t think we should ask him to change—”
“I can put in other stuff,” Patrick said without turning away from the window. “Just tell me what you want.”
Both Mel and Caro shut up for about thirty seconds before wandering off again, their hands almost, but not quite, touching. I swear, I could practically see sparks flying around them. It was sweet in a nauseating way, and I couldn’t help but wonder why Mel had hooked up with Beth when it was so clear he liked Caro more.
“She told him Caro hated him.”
I glanced over at Patrick. He was looking at me.
“Beth did, I mean,” he said.
I laughed because of course she did. Classic Beth.
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.
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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.
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“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.