Exhale (13 page)

I enjoyed reading. My Kindle was filled with books. All of them were recent novels though, novels involving some sort of paranormal aspect or at least targeted toward young adults. They weren’t full of large words and written in a language I couldn’t understand.

“He’s staring at you again,” Missy nudged me with her elbow. “Don’t look yet, I’ll tell you when.” My insides tingled as I struggled not to shift my eyes in Derek’s direction. “When,” Missy whispered, bumping me with her elbow again.

I flicked my eyes to the front desk of the library where Derek had been sitting when I’d first walked in, checking back in others’ books; he’d just resumed flipping pages in the magazine he was looking at.  I wondered what he was thinking about. Why he kept staring me. A shiver of excitement slithered through me, causing my heart rate to spike slightly.

“Why did he even take Library Science? That’s such a lame class,” Missy grumbled.

I shrugged a shoulder and shifted my gaze back to my computer screen before he caught me staring. “Maybe because it’s an easy class?”

“Eh, too boring for me. So, what’s going on between you two? Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you guys are finally acknowledging each other in the halls again,” Missy said, flashing me a sinful grin. “Are you guys going to hook up again, or are you just going to keep pretending that you both don’t want to jump each other?”

My jaw slacked. “Blunt much?”

“Oh please, it’s the truth and you know it.” She smacked my arm and rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know about that,” I scoffed, my cheeks flaming bright red.

“Can you say
denial
?”

“Anyway…” I dragged the word out. “Have you found anyone to write your project on?”

Missy’s piercing blue eyes fixated on me. “Mmmhmm, that’s what I thought.” She huffed and shifted her eyes back to her computer screen. “Change the subject, that’s fine. No, I haven’t found anyone. Think Mrs. Preston would mind if I wrote my report on my favorite new genre instead?”

“You have a favorite genre?” I asked, my eyes bugging out slightly.

Missy was not a reader. Any large amount of reading we had to do, she would put her “fail proof” system to work—read the first, middle, and last paragraph of every page. Sometimes, if that was too much reading, she’d cut the paragraphs in half and only read a few sentences from the beginning, middle, and the end of every page. It generally depended on whatever mood she was in or if she had a date or something of equal importance going on.

“Yep.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “What?”

“Why are you acting like it’s such a big deal? Contrary to popular belief, I actually know how to read.”

“And…?”

“I don’t really know what you would call it…erotica, I guess.  And no, I don’t mean the trashy little paperbacks that have covers with women dressed in Victorian-looking clothes and guys with long, shaggy hair.” Her lips turned downward and her nose crinkled as if she smelled something disgusting. “I’m talking about the new age erotica stuff like
Fifty Shades of Grey
.”

I didn’t have to think long, I knew exactly what book she was talking about without her even having to say the author’s name, because we had just been looking at that entire series in Wal-Mart together about a week ago.

“Are you serious?  Mrs. Preston would flip if you wrote about E. L. James. And when did you even read that book?”

“Mom bought all three. She devoured them in like three days. Since then, she and my dad have been going at it like rabbits,” she said, obviously without gaining a mental image of her parents like I did. Yuck. “I figured they must be really good and that I might learn something from reading them.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me in a suggestive manner and her lips twisted into that devious smile of hers once more.

“And?” I prompted.

“And what?”

“Did you learn anything?” I whispered as my neck and cheeks grew warm. Sex was not something I was comfortable talking about.

Missy flipped a few of her blonde ringlets over her shoulder. “Of course, I did. Wanna borrow them and use some of the moves you learn on lover boy over there?” She pointed in Derek’s general direction.

“Nope,” I said, making the P pop. I wanted to read them, maybe, but I definitely would not be using anything in any of those books on Derek.

“Suit yourself.”

After class, I gathered up my stuff and exited the Computer Lab with Missy at my side. I spotted Derek standing at the edge of Mrs. Meeks’ desk. His eyes shifted my way; I smiled and waved, but got no response out of him.

“Ouch, I figured you’d at least get a freaking smile. What the heck is his deal?” Missy asked as we rounded the plate-glass wall that separated the library from the hall.

My heart sunk to my stomach. I knew exactly what his problem was. “I finally told him what Kyle said to me that night.”

“So? Wasn’t that obvious to everyone?”

“True,” I picked at my cuticles as we walked. “But that added in with everything else that happened that night, kind of makes me feel like being with Derek is somehow disrespectful to Kyle, especially since he’s gone.”

“And you told him that?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, my god, no wonder he’s acting like such a dick,” Missy said, tossing her hands in the air dramatically. “Why didn’t you tell me you felt like this sooner? I would have snapped you back to reality in no time.”

I shrugged my shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“Well just stop! You cannot think like that!” Missy slapped my arm with the back of her hand roughly. “Whatever happens between you and Derek is not disrespectful at all to Kyle, because he knew how you felt about him. He probably always did. He was just trying to see how far he could push you, I bet. Kyle only acted the way he did that night, because he was pissed you chose Derek over him and it was displayed right in front of his face. If he were still alive, he’d more than likely be over it by now.”

“You really think so?”

“Of course!” Missy smiled. “So why don’t you stop torturing the poor boy and start drawing him back in?” She nodded over her shoulder in Derek’s general direction.

I laughed. “I’ll think about it.”

For the remainder of the day, all I did was think about what Missy had said. I thought about it from every angle and each time, no matter how I created the scenario or what Missy had said, being with Derek still seemed wrong to me. Maybe, it was because more time needed to pass, or maybe it was simply that I needed Derek—the one person who knew Kyle better than me—to tell me that it was okay for us to be together, that Kyle wouldn’t have hated me forever for it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As soon as school let out, I did something I rarely did on afternoons when I didn’t have to work—I went straight home. The day had been exhausting and nothing sounded better than curling up on the sofa with a bowlful of cherry-vanilla ice cream and watching reruns of insanely dramatic reality TV shows.

Mom’s car sat parked in the driveway when I pulled in. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten today must have been one of her off days at the hospital. This totally screwed up my plans of ice cream before dinner and hogging the remote.

“You’re home early,” Mom said as soon as I stepped through the front door. She sat curled up at the edge of the couch in a pair of sweats and my dad’s oversized T-shirt, cradling a cup of coffee in her hands, and the overpowering smell of Lysol tickled my nose. She’d been cleaning all day. “Bad day?”

“Kind of,” I admitted without giving any details, knowing that if I had lied she would have known anyway and pressed for the truth.

“Anything you want to talk about?” she asked over the rim of her coffee cup, eyeing me.

“Not really, no.”

“Okay…” She dragged the word out as though waiting on me to give in and tell her exactly what was bothering me. I didn’t. “We’re having dinner tonight next door.”

My stomach rolled. “What, why? It’s not even Sunday, and we’re having dinner with them on Thursday too for Thanksgiving, right?” I asked, remembering Derek’s odd behavior from school.

I didn’t want to go, they had to let me out of this dinner.

“Yes.” She nodded. “Didn’t Derek talk to you at school today?”

Of course not, when did Derek ever talk to me lately? “No, was he supposed to?”

Mom shrugged her shoulder and took another sip of coffee. “I guess it doesn’t matter really, I just figured he’d mention something to you today.”

“Mention something about what?” I scowled.

She inhaled deeply and set her cup on the coffee table. “We’re going to help Darlene and Tim with packing up Kyle’s room.”

Cold hands squeezed my windpipe. How could his parents do that? How could they pack up his things so soon? Weren’t they worried that they would forget him without his things around to remind them? And then it hit me, that was why Derek had been staring at me in the computer lab, and that was why he had been acting so strange. An ache entered my throat as I thought about him and how this must make him feel.

“Why?” I asked, curling my lip, unable to keep the disgust from the situation from entering my tone. “Why do they want to do that?”

Mom reached out and draped an arm over my shoulder, pulling me in closer to her. I could feel tears pooling in my eyes as I rested my head on her chest. “Because they feel like it’s time. Life moves on, Katie, even in times when we don’t want it to the most. With every inhale, we have to exhale, that can apply to life sometimes too, we have to take in just as much as we have to let go.” Her hand brushed against my forearm softly. “I’m sure Kyle would want you there to help support Derek tonight.”

“I don’t know about that,” I muttered, wiping the pooling tears free from my eyes. I doubted Kyle would have wanted me anywhere near Derek, let alone us together in his bedroom.

“Why do you say that? The three of you were all so close; of course he’d want you there for Derek, to help him through this.”

My chest caved in at her words and I closed my eyes and sighed. The desire to open up and tell her about everything—that night, the kiss, how I was the reason why Derek and Kyle had been fighting—pulsated through me. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to see the disappointment in her eyes when she realized what I had done—how I had come between two brothers and friendships that had lasted since birth.

“Listen, sweetheart, if this is really something you don’t feel comfortable doing that’s fine. You don’t have to. I just figured you might want to be there for Derek this time,” she said in that tone that only a mother knows how to use so well, the one that turns certain words into little daggers of guilt precisely aimed at your heart.

I couldn’t breathe. There was dullness, a heaviness that entered my chest, making it hard for my lungs to fill completely. I hated the fact that I had let my own guilt and fears of disrespecting Kyle stand in the way of being what I was to Derek before any of this had ever occurred—a friend—during a time when he needed me the most. I’d dropped the ball and only thought of myself while I had holed myself up in my bedroom for days at a time, hidden away from the world. I’d wished so many times that I could go back to that moment and be there for him like I should have been, because if I had, then we wouldn’t be the way that we are now—virtually nothing.

The truth of my mother’s words about inhaling, exhaling, and life rained down on me then, and I realized that in life you had to go forward because you couldn’t go back. I needed to do this. I needed to be there for Derek this time.

“I’ll go,” I finally said, deciding I couldn’t let Derek down again. If Kyle was watching over us or listening in, he would just have to understand that.

Mom squeezed me tightly in her arms. “I’m glad.”

I returned her hug and then stood, headed to the bathroom for some toilet paper to blow my nose.  Tonight was going to be difficult, there was no denying that, but I owed it to Derek’s and my friendship to be there for him. It was the right thing to do.

* * * *

Dinner was uncomfortable. The weight of clearing out Kyle’s bedroom pressed down upon us all in a nearly crippling way. Conversations were short and to the point. No one laughed or even cracked the hint of a smile. The entire mood was ominous, especially during the dinner cleanup, because we all knew what would occur after.

“Well, Darlene and I would like to thank you guys for coming over tonight and helping us with this,” Tim said, snaking his arm around his wife’s waist and drawing her in closer to his side.

I bit my thumbnail and avoided any and all eye contact while my parents said the expected
it’s no problem at all
,
we’re glad to be here
bits.

“We’re doing this tonight not because we want to forget Kyle,” Darlene said, her eyes shifting to Derek briefly as she spoke, and I wondered if they already had this conversation earlier. “But because we’ve all accepted the fact that he’s not coming back. Ever.” Her gaze grew unfocused, like she was speaking at the air rather than all of us present. The ache I had felt in my throat earlier swelled. “This will solidify that and allow us a form of closure. Especially me, because I just can’t continue to look at his room like that…it tricks me into thinking that he’s coming back.” Her voice broke and her hand flew to her mouth as though her fingertips alone could keep in all the sobs that wanted to escape.