Текст книги "As Dead As It Gets"

Автор книги: Katie Alender

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

THE NEXT DAY, I went to the Wingspan office before school started. Elliot was already there, wearing her prinCeTon sweatshirt.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“How many different college sweatshirts do you own?” I asked.

“Not sure. Fifteen?” She shrugged. “I’m nurturing my aspirational self.”

Um, okay.

She glanced up from the layout she was marking on. “You have the cheerleader shoot tomorrow morning, right?”

I nodded, looking at the intricate color-coded schedule on the whiteboard.

“Did you ever find the janitors to get the Dumpsters moved?”

“Oh, no.” I slapped a hand to my forehead and sat down. “I totally forgot.”

“Never mind,” Elliot said. “I’ll take care of it.”

“No, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry. I should have been more specific.”

“I can do it,” I said. “Their office is that little shed out by the field, right?”

She shrugged. “I don’t mind getting some fresh air.”

“Are you sure?”

“You know how most people say ‘no offense,’ but they secretly hope it does offend you? I swear I’m not doing that.” She capped her red pen and set it down. “No offense, Alexis, but you look terrible lately. I’d rather you just relax a little than start passing out during photo shoots.”

There was never any changing Elliot’s mind, so I nodded.

“So…Chad said you had a little ‘episode’ the other day.” From the way she went back to her layout and the carefully measured tone of her voice, it seemed like she was intent on not making a big deal out of it. “Of course, Chad’s a busybody, so I wouldn’t put it past him to exaggerate.”

I shook my head and let my finger trace the edge of a desk. “He probably didn’t exaggerate,” I said. “If having me on staff makes people uncomfortable, then I’ll quit.”

Elliot practically threw her pen down. Her eyes were fiery and her voice was almost a growl. “Did he say that to you?”

“What? Chad? No, no—he was pretty nice, actually. Weirdly nice.”

She sat back and relaxed.

“It’s my own idea,” I said. “I know a lot of people at school know things about me—or think they do—and I don’t want it to be uncomfortable for you.”

“Alexis, can I give you some unsolicited advice?”

“If I say yes, that would make it solicited, right?”

She grinned. “Smart. Yes. So listen. You’re a fantastic photographer.”

“Thanks.”

She waved me off. “You’re talented. You’re smart. You’re funny. You can put up with Chad. Therefore, you are a good person.”

“Well, I—”

“Hush. I didn’t start my advice yet. Here it is: Find the people who treat you the way you deserve to be treated. Tell everyone else to go to hell. And don’t look back.”

I sighed.

“Do you believe in God? I believe in God. And I think God makes people exactly who He wants them to be.”

I blinked. “I—I don’t know if I believe or not—”

Elliot shook her head. “You’re missing the point.”

No doubt. “Which is…?”

“Which is, get over it. Forgive yourself. Stop assuming that you deserve the worst of everything.”

I dragged my finger in a circle on the desk. “Easier said than done.”

“Easy?” she repeated, raising her eyebrows. “Who wants easy? Easy’s boring. Now, I have to get back to work. You go take a nap in the library or something.”

I sighed again. “Thanks. I think maybe—”

“Don’t think, grasshopper,” she said. “Gut, remember?”

I’d promised Jared I would come over after school, but I made a detour first—to the small brick house near Redmond High.

I parked on the street, a few houses away, and got out of the car, my camera hanging around my neck. I tweaked the exposure way down and started taking pictures, expecting to see the girl in the purple dress.

The white light did hold a quivering, jittering figure—but not the girl.

It was a man. A boy, actually—a football player.

Held tightly in his left hand was a trophy. I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—get close enough to see what it said, but I zoomed in on the figurine on top of the gold pedestal: a football player cradling a ball under one arm.

The ghost was carrying something—just like the girl with her roses.

A second superghost?

He hovered about a foot over the sidewalk, looking in the direction of the high school, with an expression of pure rage on his face—forehead furrowed, teeth gritted. He had short, slicked-back hair, and his uniform looked oddly old-fashioned. His shoes were simple no-name black cleats. If I had to guess, I’d say he died in the 1960s.

At least he had eyes.

And this guy, unlike the girl in the purple dress, didn’t seem to notice me. His entire focus was directed toward the school. I cringed as another couple walked by. This time, the boy started hopping on one foot and saying, “Ow! Cramp! Ow, ow, ow, cramp!” as they passed the spot where the superghost stood.

I went closer and fired off a few more frames. Then I looked at my camera. Across the back of the boy’s jersey, I could make out his last name: CorCoran.

“Five minutes,” I said. “Ten. Then we can hang out.”

“Can’t you do this at home?” Jared asked.

I was sitting on his couch with his laptop balanced on my legs. “Mom’s laptop is the only computer in the house that gets internet. And she guards it like a junk-yard dog. But I’ll only be a minute. This is important.”

He tried to remove my hand from the keyboard. I shook him off and went back to typing. In the web browser, I searched for corcoran + redmond street.

It pulled up an address listing: RANDALL CORCORAN.

When I went on to search for Randall Corcoran, what came up was his prison record. His most recent jail time had ended less than two years ago—it was fairly safe to assume that he was the drunk guy Lydia had seen passed out inside the house. So he wasn’t dead.

Then who was the ghost? His football uniform had accents of green and yellow, like the girl’s cheerleading uniform. So I tried Corcoran dead Redmond high school.

And found: “Redmond High Holds Memorial Assembly for State Champ Quarterback Phil Corcoran.”

The article was dated 1965, and it was published in the Los Angeles Times, a much bigger newspaper than our local Surrey paper. Presumably this was a high-profile story because of Phil’s triumphant performance at the state championship. He’d been a senior, the star quarterback of the football team, when he died of injuries sustained in a car accident.

But something didn’t add up:

“We take tremendous comfort from the fact that Father Lopez was able to administer the Last Rites to Philip before he died,” the boy’s mother, Mrs. Joseph Corcoran, told the assem bled students. “He died in a state of deep peace. He knew he was going to a better place.”

Impossible.

Because people who die in a state of deep peace don’t become angry ghosts.

They just don’t.

“What are you looking at?” Jared asked, leaning over to look.

“Nothing,” I said.

He hovered at my shoulder, scanning the article. “I wonder if that’s the same Father Lopez from my school.”

He lifted the computer off my lap and went to his school’s website, clicking through a few screens to the headmaster’s bio page.

“Yeah,” he said. “Look. He was ordained in 1962 and served at Saint Viviana’s on the east side of Surrey. That’s right by Redmond High.”

Gears started turning in my head.

“But why are you looking at this?” Jared asked. “It’s pretty morbid.”

“I…” I didn’t have the faintest clue what to say. “One of my teachers was talking about this guy.”

“And now you know who he is. So do the rest later,” Jared said, head-butting my arm gently. “Spend time with me.”

“Come on,” I said. “Three more minutes.”

“No more minutes.” He wandered away. “Look, I’m going to go through your stuff. I’ll totally rearranging your obsessively organized book bag.…”

That actually sounded fine, if it would distract him. One of the perks of being obsessively organized is that chances to reorganize things are like little treats.

“I’m looking at your science book.…” He took it out and set it on the floor. “I’m going to read your English journal.…”

That was just a reading journal where we summarized what we were reading for class.

“Go ahead,” I said, turning back to the computer.

He was quiet for a minute—he really was looking through my stuff. I should have stopped him, but I needed the time for research.

“What is this?” Jared asked. He was staring at a piece of paper—the one with my drawing of the purple dress.

“Nothing,” I said, reaching out to take it back.

He whipped it away, holding me back with his other arm.

“Seriously, Jared, it’s just a stupid sketch.”

He finally took his eyes off of it. “Why did you draw this?”

“No reason. Just give it back, please.”

He smiled—but it was one of his fake smiles—and moved the paper a tiny bit closer to me. “I’ll trade it for a kiss.”

“Jared—”

He handed me the page, and when I’d folded it and slipped it back inside my bag, I felt hands on my ribs.

As soon as I turned back to him, our lips were pressed together.

Usually, kissing was a way to wipe the slate clean, to forget our petty arguments. But in that moment, a thought barged into my head like an uninvited guest: If Lydia showed up now, what would she say?

She would say he was distracting me. Trying to keep me from being mad about his jerkish, immature behavior.

I’m not going to lie. Kissing Jared could drive a girl to distraction in the best of circumstances. But when I was irritated, or thrown off guard, or made to feel dumb by his little I’m-going-through-your-stuff antics, I was extra susceptible.

And I couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew it.

Jared stood up and pulled me with him. He walked me into the foyer and pressed up against me, his breath coming in hot puffs against my neck. I found myself backed against the wall. Then I felt the soft touch of his hands on the skin of my stomach, his fingers trailing around to my back, leaving thin lines of sparking energy behind them.

“Want to go to my room?” he whispered.

To his room?

“No,” I said, dipping my head to escape his kisses. “I really need to do some more work right now.”

“Don’t worry about that,” he said, nibbling lightly on my neck.

Don’t worry about it? I tried to picture myself and Carter together—me telling Carter I had work to do and him telling me not to worry about it. And not in a cutesy way, either—in a way that meant that he really expected me to stop worrying or thinking about anything but standing there, making out with him—because it was what he wanted.

But what about what I wanted? What about the things that were important to me?

Suddenly, what I wanted was not to even be in that house.

“Wait,” I said, turning my head and setting my hands on his shoulders—firmly, but not quite pushing him away. “No.”

He stopped and looked at me questioningly.

“I’m going to go,” I said. “I really have a lot of work to do, and I’m not getting it done here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “You’re leaving? Because I don’t feel like watching you sit and use my computer and ignore me?”

Okay, yeah, it was his computer. But if he couldn’t find something else to do for a half hour while I worked on something that I’d made it really clear was important to me—

I mean, I could put up with it. I’d been putting up with it for nearly two months.

But why should I?

“Alexis,” Jared said sharply. “You’re acting like a child.”

Everything in my body that had been warm and tingly turned cold when I heard the edge in his voice.

I gave him a sideways glance. He was looking at me as if I were crazy.

“You know what I mean,” he said, softening. “Don’t overreact.”

I heard Elliot’s words in my head: Find the people who treat you the way you deserve to be treated. Tell everyone else to go to hell.

Forget this. I reached for my camera. “I’m not overreacting, Jared. I’m leaving.”

“Please don’t.”

“I have to.” I knelt to put the scattered books in my bag. “I’ll give you a call later…or tomorrow.”

But when I turned for the door, I found him standing squarely in my way.

A moment passed between us.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Can’t we behave like grown-ups?” His jaw trembled, like he was losing patience with me. “I don’t understand. Things were completely fine two minutes ago.”

Yeah, fine for him. Not for me.

“I am behaving like a grown-up,” I said. “I’m going to go get some work done. Like a grown-up.”

“You know what? Fine. Do it here. I don’t care. I’ll just find something else to do.” But he didn’t say it like he meant it. He said it like he wanted me to hear, in every word, how irrational I was being and how wrong I was.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, reaching behind him and putting my hand on the doorknob. “I’ll go to the library.”

He looked down at me, his expression businesslike. “I would really prefer it if you would be mature for once, Alexis.”

I stared at him. What would I do if he refused to move?

Don’t be paranoid, I told myself. He wouldn’t refuse to move.

Except…he didn’t move.

And then my phone rang, making us both jump. I grabbed it from my pocket and answered without checking the caller ID. I’d have happily had a heart-to-heart with Agent Hasan at that moment if it meant getting out of that house.

I was vividly aware that Jared was watching me, so I forced myself to play it cool. “Hello?”

“Alexis?”

It took me a second to place the voice. “Carter?”

A wave of irritation flashed through Jared’s eyes.

“Yeah, it’s me. Are you busy?”

“Um…” I looked at Jared. “No.”

“Okay. I have something for you. I mean, for you and the yearbook. I was thinking maybe I could run it over after dinner?”

“Where are you right now?” I asked.

“What? I’m home right now, but—”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll be right over.”

“Really? Are you sure? Okay,” Carter said. “If you want to. See you soon.”

“Yeah. Bye.” I slid the phone into my pocket.

Jared’s face had fallen; his mouth turned down at the corners, and all of the tension had gone out of his body, from his jaw to his shoulders to his hands. “Please, Alexis—can’t you stay? I’m really sorry. I know I can be a jerk. I’ve always liked being the center of attention.” He gave a weak half laugh. “I mean, my mom used to tell me I should have a spotlight installed in a hat so I could wear it around.”

I relaxed a little, taken aback by this first-ever mention of his mother. “Jared…what happened to your mom?”

“Happened to her?” He looked puzzled. “She’s in Colorado with my stepfather.”

Oh.

“So could you please just stay?”

Back up a second. If his mother was alive and well, then what was his pain, his baggage? I felt oddly like I’d been misled, although that wasn’t true at all. I’d just assumed. And obviously I’d assumed wrong.

So that meant there was something else he was hiding from me?

“No,” I said. “I can’t. We can talk later.”

I slipped around him and left, shutting the door behind me.

THE “SOMETHING” CARTER HAD FOR ME ended up being a vintage Surrey High sweatshirt that he’d seen at a garage sale.

“I mentioned it to Elliot,” he said, laying it out on the couch so I could see it, “and she said she thought it would be cool to have a picture of it in the yearbook. I think it’s from the forties.”

I stared down at the sweatshirt, trying to focus. But I couldn’t really get over the fact that I was standing in Carter’s house—in his living room—for the first time since October.

“It’s great,” I said.

“Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool.”

Since I’d just proclaimed it “great,” I thought it might be wise to actually take a look. It had really baggy sleeves and tight cuffs, and the neckline was so high and tight it seemed like it would choke you. There was a threadbare red S on the front with a small embroidered eagle above it.

“All right,” I said, scooping it up. “Thanks. I’ll get it back to you soon. Or Marley will.”

“No rush.” Carter followed me into the foyer. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

I shrugged. No need to tell him that the primary reason I’d agreed to come was that I wanted an excuse to get out of Jared’s house. “No problem.”

He brightened. “Thanks. So you’re really into yearbook, huh? That’s nice. I mean, I’m glad. They’re good people.”

I glanced around. “Where’s Zoe?”

“Um…” Carter stood awkwardly, with his hands shoved into his pockets. “She’s…home, I guess? I don’t really know.”

I reached for the doorknob. “Okay, see you later.”

“I’ll walk you out.” He hurried to open the door for me. Then he followed me to the driveway, where my car was parked next to his. “Is this yours?”

“Yeah, I got it for Christmas.”

He stood back and looked it over. “It’s really…brown.”

“Go ahead, say it,” I said. “It’s ugly.”

“I’d never say that.”

“Not out loud, at least.”

And then he was giving me that impish Carter look, and my heart felt like two pieces of Velcro being ripped apart.

“It drives,” I said. “That’s what matters.”

“Does it have a name?”

I opened the passenger door and set the sweatshirt on the front seat before I looked at him. “A name?”

“All cars have names.”

“Does yours?”

“Of course.”

It was a cool afternoon, and I was beginning to shiver. I hugged myself, thinking that it would be a great excuse for Carter to urge me to get into my car, if he was tired of talking to me.

But instead, he automatically took off his own sweatshirt. As he brought it near my shoulders, I flinched, and he stopped short.

The cold made me shake from my toes to the top of my head, but I said, “Don’t. Please.”

He nodded and backed off, looking abashed and a little disoriented. I felt the same way. Gestures like that had been second nature to us once, but now it was too personal, too much of a reminder of what we’d had.

What we’d lost.

“So,” I said through my chattering teeth. “What’s your car’s name?”

“Ayn Rand.”

I had to laugh. “Are you kidding?”

“No,” he said. “What, is that dumb?”

“It’s…unusual,” I said. “I don’t think you could call it dumb.”

He was watching me closely. “It’s good to see you smiling.”

I shrugged. “Only on the outside.”

He started to laugh, but then I think he realized it wasn’t a joke.

“Alexis. We’re…” He let the word fall. “I mean, Zoe and I—we’re breaking up.”

“Oh,” I said. But inside, I was all: OH. “Um…I’m sorry.”

His eyes sparkled. “I’m not sure I am. Anyway, I wanted to see you…I wanted to tell you.”

“Why?” I asked. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I just meant…why?

“I know you’re with Jared,” Carter said. “But I want you to know that if you ever need anything—or need to talk about anything—call me.”

Was I with Jared?

I felt like a swirling vortex had opened up under my feet.

Carter’s cell phone rang. He took it out of his pocket, and I saw the name on the screen: zoe perry. He started to put it away, but I waved him off. “No, go ahead. I’m leaving.”

After I’d sat down in the driver’s seat, I looked up to see that Carter was waiting for me to get settled so he could close the door for me. At the same time, he held the phone to his ear, listening patiently to whatever Zoe was squawking about.

I put my hands on the steering wheel, which had always been the signal for him to shut the car door. He did, and gave me a little wave before walking back to the house.

I turned the key, my heart aching like an open wound.

Two days later, and yet still somehow reeling from my conversation with Carter (it didn’t help that everyone at school was talking about his and Zoe’s breakup), I pulled into the Sacred Heart Academy lot and parked in a space marked welComed guesT. I assumed that meant me—even if I was uninvited.

I’d skipped sixth period, so their school day was still in session. As I walked to the main office, I could see random kids wandering around between classrooms. I felt the oddness of being a stranger in a strange school.

The front desk was staffed by a woman in a plain brown dress. She smiled at me. “Welcome. Can I help you?”

“Hi,” I said. “I know this is super, um, not planned, but I was wondering if Father Lopez is here today.”

She looked interested. “Yes, he’s here. Did you have an appointment to speak with him?”

“No,” I said, expecting to be turned away.

“All right.” She stood up. “Let me just go check and see if he’s available.”

I told her my name, not that he would know who I was, and waited, my whole body on pins and needles. A minute later she came back and pulled open the swinging wooden door.

“Come on through,” she said. “He’s got a few minutes to spare.”

I followed her to a small office with a high window and a giant desk. The man behind the desk—Father Lopez, I guessed—was old and bald, leaning over a book. A Bible. Yeah, I suppose that would make sense.

“Alexis? I’m Father Lopez. Nice to meet you.” He stood up and shook my hand. “Won’t you please have a seat?”

“Thanks for letting me come in,” I said.

“All guests are cherished, expected or otherwise,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

Um, yeah. Okay. I summoned all my nerve. “I have a really weird question. Do you remember a boy named Phil Corcoran?”

He narrowed his eyes.

“He was a football player,” I prompted. “He died in 1965?”

Father Lopez’s eyes lit up. “Goodness. Philip Corcoran. Yes, of course. Nice young man.”

“And do you know who Randall Corcoran is?”

He sat back and looked at me. For a minute I was afraid he was going to ask me a question in response to my question. But then he nodded. “Yes. The younger brother.”

Younger brother? Was Philip’s ghost haunting his brother—possessing him, causing him to commit the crimes that had landed him in jail? That was what had happened with Kasey…a ghost took over her body and made her do bad things—almost murder.

“Randy was a nice boy, too. Always looked up to his brother. Just devastated by his death. If I recall correctly, when Phil died, Randy started a campaign to have the graduation ceremony canceled at their high school. He went to the school board meeting to make his case. It didn’t work, and he got very angry. Dropped out of school. Went on to a life of some unhappiness, I think. I wonder if he’s still alive. I should look him up,” Father Lopez said, jotting a note down on a piece of paper. “See how he’s doing.”

“Okay,” I said.

“It was the last thing Phil would have wanted—Randy’s sad turn. But Randy wasn’t thinking that way.”

“What was the, ah, first thing Phil would have wanted?” I asked.

I’d meant my question literally—I was hoping for an answer like, Phil would have wanted someone to take good care of his prized Babe Ruth–autographed baseball.

But Father Lopez considered it with a philosophical look on his face. He turned to me and folded his hands. “What would you want? If you died, how would you want the people who care about you to feel?”

I squinted. “Um…sad?”

“Sad forever? To the point of not living their own lives? And always feeling guilt over what had happened?”

“No, of course not. Just for a little while. Not guilty, I mean—sad.”

“Exactly. You’d want them to remember you but keep going. I’ll never forget that school board meeting. Randy had brought his brother’s trophy with him, as a sort of visual aid. And when the superintendent refused his request, he threw the trophy to the floor.” Father Lopez leaned forward. “This was an object that was precious to him—Phil had given it to him before he died. And he was so filled with rage that he broke it.”

So if Randy was the one who was filled with rage, why was Phil’s ghost trapped on the sidewalk, hating on the Redmond High kids?

And why was Phil’s ghost holding his broken trophy? Was he mad at his brother for ruining it?

My head was starting to hurt. I stood up.

“I hope I’ve helped you,” Father Lopez said. “I’ll admit I’m curious, but…I hope you’ll come back if you have anything else you’d like to discuss.”

I was about to give him my standard Yeah, sure line. But something stopped me. I didn’t want to lie. So I just said, “Good-bye. Thanks again.”

I walked back through the hall toward the exit, studying the framed photographs that lined the walls, trying to see if I could sense any sameness between these kids and me—anything that bridged the gaping distance I felt from them and their privileged experiences. I saw a couple of ghosts, but not many. A Catholic school was too close to being a church, and ghosts don’t hang out in churches.

I glanced at one picture that had been taken at a dance.

And I froze, staring at the grinning brown-haired girl in the center of the photo—clearly alive, clearly not a ghost.

And clearly wearing the purple dress.

With my cell phone, I snapped a picture of the photo and booked it down the hall, practically hyperventilating. I ran to my car and sat in the driver’s seat, staring at the girl and the dress on my cracked screen, trying to make myself believe it was true.

I zoomed all the way in on her face, looking for a connection between the girl and the superghost. It wasn’t the ghost—this girl wasn’t blond.

So who was she?

There was a knock on my window, and I almost jumped out of my skin.

Megan was standing outside of my car.

In my shock, I stared at her for a few seconds before she made a “roll down the window” gesture. I hit the button, and the glass sank.

“Um…hi,” I said.

“Did you come here to complain?” she asked. “About Brother Ben?”

I set the phone in my lap. “No,” I said. “I swear—”

“It’s all right if you did,” she said.

I stared up at her.

She swallowed hard and looked directly into my eyes.

“I quit Brighter Path,” she said.

Something inside me leapt, like a unicorn jumping over a million rainbows. But I tried to stay calm. “Why?” I asked. “You liked it so much.”

“I did, kind of,” she said. “But only because it was safe. Or so I thought. But…it wasn’t real. Do you know what I mean? It was fake. It wasn’t really a brighter path. It was just a…box.”

I wanted to get out of the car and hug her until she turned blue. I wanted to turn on the radio and have a dance party.

“Besides.” She shook her head, looking disgusted. “The stuff he said to you—calling you a liar—and a thief? That really crossed a line. I mean, you can be rude, but you’re no thief.”

I froze, remembering the book of charms. “Um, actually…” I said, cringing, “there was one little thing.”

Megan looked stricken. Then, to my shock, she burst out laughing. “Oh my God, Lex! Are you serious? You stole something from him?”

“It was well-justified,” I said. “I swear.”

She was still laughing, shaking her head in disbelief. “Well, that doesn’t matter. He was still really wrong about a lot of things. You know, I just got tired of him talking about…my mom and…stuff.”

I didn’t want to say anything that might sound like “I told you so.”

Megan looked down at me. “So why’d you come here?”

“To talk to Father Lopez about something.” I didn’t elaborate. If she wanted a normal ghost-free life, I had to respect that.

She nodded and dragged a finger across the car door. “You keep your car as clean as your house, don’t you?”

“Naturally,” I said.

Her gaze bored into me. “Are you really having ghost problems?”

It took me a second to overcome my staunch deny all mind-set.

But I nodded and held up my phone to show her the zoomed-in picture of the girl wearing the dress. “Do you know who this is?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Marissa Hearst. She’s a senior. What about her?”

I pulled the phone back into the car. “Do you really want to know?”

Megan began to fidget with her little necktie. “Maybe not the whole story. But is there something simple I could ask her for you?”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she said, shrugging. “That’s not getting involved. It’s just…talking to someone.”

“If you could ask her where the dress came from,” I said, “that would be amazing.”

Megan reached for my phone and angled it to see through the cracks. “What dress? Okay, I see it. Jeez, what happened to your phone?”

I tucked it into the cup holder and gave her a small smile. “Do you really want to know?”

“Maybe I don’t,” she said, limping back a step from the car. “But I’ll find Marissa and let you know what she says, okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thank you. Seriously.”

“It’s nothing,” she said, giving me a wave and heading for the school entrance.

But it wasn’t “nothing” to me. It was practically everything.

I drove past Surrey High on my way home. The student parking lot was mostly empty, but I did see Elliot’s giant wood-paneled station wagon. Which meant she would be in the Wingspan office. Which meant I could stop by and offload the pictures of the sweatshirt for Chad, and not have to worry about getting up early the next morning to do it before school.

Elliot had her laptop open and was busily typing.

“Prop the door open, would you?” she said. “It’s the first warmish day in forever.”

So I propped the door and went to the computer with the card reader.

“So sorry about that rando Carter thing the other day,” Elliot said. “He could have just dropped the shirt off here. I think dating Zoe turned him insane.”

I spun around and looked at her. “Did you just say rando?”

“Yeah, why?”

“It just doesn’t sound like an Elliot word.”

“I claim all words,” she said. “I empower them by speaking them.”

I believed it. Someday, Elliot would be president of the United States and saying, “These rando stock market downturns are not going to shake our national spirit.”

“No worries about the shirt thing,” I said. “It’s pretty cool-looking. I got good pictures.”

“Hope it didn’t take you away from anything important.”

“Ha. No. Not really.…”

“Hm?”

“Just…a boy.”

She sniffed. “Sounds like you’re crazy about him.”

My laugh came out like a grunt. “Crazy is one word.”

“Remember what I said, Warren. Follow your gut.”

“Sometimes my gut’s pretty rando,” I said.

“Follow it anyway.”

What was it about Elliot that made me believe everything she said?

“But what if following my gut will hurt someone?”

She moved her laptop out of the way. “You mean the boy?”

I nodded.

“At the end of the day, you have to do what’s best for you. You can’t live for someone else. You can’t let your guilt define your life.”

“So…”

Her eyes sparkled. “So kick him to the curb.”

I laughed.

“Um…hey.” Elliot’s eyes suddenly went wide. She was looking over my shoulder.

I turned around.

Jared stood in the open doorway.

“Hello,” he said, his voice sounding oddly tight.

“Jared,” I said, getting up. “This is Elliot. Elliot, Jared.”

I watched them study each other and felt the full impact of Elliot’s lack of self-consciousness. She didn’t simper or fawn over Jared. She just nodded at him.

“Nice to meet you.” Her eyes lingered on him for a moment longer than necessary, and then she turned back to her work.