Sara (13 page)

I didn't even know how I was going to bring him up without pissing Glenn off.

“Hey, Tony.” Glenn smiled as I walked toward his car. He slid down off the trunk. “You need a ride home?”

I grinned back at him. “Yeah.”

He clicked the doors unlocked and I got in on the passenger side. As I was sliding the seat belt on, he said, “What did Coach want?”

I shrugged. “He just wanted to know if Zack had said anything to me yesterday, you know. About…” I let my voice trail off.

“Yeah, I wondered if he did it because I kicked his ass yesterday.” He turned the key in the ignition. The radio blared, and he turned it down quickly. “I'm not sorry I punched him, you know.”

“You did break his nose,” I replied.

“You heard what he said to me,” he said, shifting the car into reverse and backing out of the spot. “He deserved to get punched, and I won't pretend I'm sorry I hit him even if he did hang himself. That wasn't my fault.”

“But you aren't sorry he's dead?”

He stopped the car and looked at me. “I didn't want him to die, Tony. I didn't want Noah to die, either. But I'm not going to pretend that I'm sad, either. I'm not sad that no one's going to write
faggot
on my locker anymore, or
Glenn Lockhart sucks dick
on my desk, or call me
cocksucker
or
fag
or any of that shit anymore. Because I'm not.” He slammed the car into drive and looked out the windshield. “They weren't nice guys, Tony. You can't say that they were.”

“They treated you pretty shitty, yeah.”

“I saw Randy talking to you,” he said as he stopped at the road, checking both ways before turning right. “What did he want?”

“Just to talk.”

“Yeah?” He looked over at me, a smug look on his face. “I don't suppose he wanted you to talk to me, did he? About his so-called apology?” He laughed, and it really wasn't a pleasant sound. “You know what that's about, right? He wants me to help him with trig. We have a test on Thursday and he's not getting it, so now he wants the fag's help.” He spat the last words out. “Well,
fuck
him. He can flunk trig for all I care. If he wants help he can get it somewhere else.”

“He didn't tell me that part.”

“Yeah, I didn't think so.” Glenn started speeding up. “He makes me fucking sick to my stomach. When I needed him, where was he? Oh, yeah, hanging out with Zack and Noah and posting shit about me online! Some fucking friend he turned out to be. Well,
fuck
him.”

I didn't answer because I didn't know what to say.

I also felt guilty.

“I'm tired of being used by people.” He scowled, and then laughed. “Love to be a fly on the wall when he flunks trig and his parents find out! Good enough for them, anyway, homophobic assholes.”

“His parents are homophobic?” It didn't surprise me. “How do you know?”

“His mother said something to my dad at the game on Friday night, the bitch.” We were coming up to the four way stop where we'd turn left to go to my house. “She's lucky Sara wasn't around!”

“Sara?”

“Yeah, she's great, isn't she?” He grinned. “She sees right through everyone's bullshit and tells it like it is. She'd have given that bitch Mrs. Froelich an earful, you can be sure of that!”

“What does she tell you about me?” I asked carefully.

“Oh, she likes you.” He grinned at me. “She kind of thinks you're hot. No accounting for taste, but there you go.”

I smiled back at him, even though my heart froze a little bit. “Well, that's nice to hear.”

“You're my best friend, Tony,” he said seriously. “You're like a brother to me.”

I smiled back at him, and then looked at the road. “Slow down, pal, that light's red.”

“Oh, shit.” He pressed down on the brakes, and a look of terror crossed his face. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“The brakes—they aren't working!”

“Oh shit!” I looked ahead to the intersection. A pickup truck was coming from the right, going pretty damned fast. “Turn the car off! Put it in neutral or something!”

“I'll have to beat that truck!” he shouted.

The car sailed into the intersection. Everything was going in slow motion. I saw the truck, right on top of us. I saw the face of the driver clearly. His eyes were wide open, and his mouth was open as though he was screaming. I began to yell, I could hear Glenn screaming, and then the truck hit us. The car went up into the air and flipped over. I heard something else before everything went black.

When I came to, I was in the hospital. I had a leg elevated and in a cast, my ribs were bandaged, and my left arm was in a cast. The doctor told me I had a concussion and was lucky to have survived. I wanted to ask about Glenn, but somehow couldn't get the words out. When I finally asked my mother, she said that he was fine, a few cuts and bruises, but he was fine. I closed my eyes.

But the one thing I couldn't get out of my mind was the feeling that I was now out of the way—which was what
she
wanted.

Something terrible was going to happen, and I couldn't stop it.

The last thing I heard when the car started to roll was Sara's laughter.

This year is cursed
, Laney Norton thought as she watched the scoreboard clock tick down the final seconds to halftime. As the teams ran off the field, she went through the motions—clapping, smiling, a high kick or two with her right leg, and shouting. She wasn't the only one going through the motions—the rest of the cheerleading squad for Southern Heights seemed lackadaisical and out of it.

It wasn't just them, either. The bleachers were half-empty, and the crowd was listless. Even the pep club seemed down—and they were always loud and boisterous. The team itself wasn't playing well. Last year, they'd blown Paducah Springs right off the field. Tonight, though, they just kept blowing it. They'd fumbled three times, and thrown an interception in the end zone. They were only ahead 7–0.

“Maybe we should have forfeited the game,” Janis Newberry muttered darkly. Janis was a pretty sophomore, with shoulder-length dark hair and braces on her teeth. Laney had never liked her, but had to admit she had a point. Laney didn't feel much like cheering, and the pep rally during last period had been a downer more than anything else. Two players had died and another was hospitalized.

“Don't talk like that,” Candy admonished her.

“Whatevs,” Janis replied as the band started to march out onto the field. She made a face at both of them and flounced off, her pleated skirt bouncing as she joined some of her friends in the bleachers.

“I don't really feel like cheering,” Laney admitted as the band started playing a really bad version of the
Harry Potter
movie theme. She sat down on the cheerleaders' bench and dug into her purse for her brush.

“You didn't have to.” Candy sat down next to her, placing a hand on one of Laney's knees. “Everyone would have understood, you know.”

Laney bit her lip to keep from screaming. She was so sick of the looks, the murmurs, and the sympathy. She knew everyone thought she was being so brave, showing up for the game and cheering when she had to be so upset, so crushed.

She couldn't admit to even her closest friends that she wasn't, in fact, all
that
upset.

She couldn't tell anyone that she'd broken up with Noah right before the accident. That what she was feeling, more than anything else, was
guilt.

Definitely cursed
, she thought again. Candy was murmuring what was almost certainly sympathetic words, but she tuned them out.

It had all started, she figured, when Laura's parents were killed in that car accident. She bit her lower lip. When Laura moved away was when things started going haywire. First, Glenn decided he was gay, and then Laura's boyfriend, Noah, started coming over a lot.

She still couldn't completely accept that Glenn was gay. For one thing, they'd gotten pretty hot and heavy on their dates. She liked him—she liked him a lot, but she didn't love him. He was a cute guy, with his glasses and wavy chestnut brown hair and the crooked smile. His nose looked a little squashed—he told her he'd broken it playing football when he was a freshman and it healed that way. He had big, expressive brown eyes and a crazy sense of humor that could always make her laugh. But she never
loved
him, and that was the problem. She liked being around him, they always had fun, but when he pressed her to go further in their make-out sessions she held back.

She'd made
that
mistake before, and she wasn't going to make it again.

But without her lifelong best friend to talk to, she'd been lonely. When Laura moved away she felt like she'd had a leg amputated. She'd never realized how much time she'd spent with Laura.

And when Glenn came out, it was like being punched in the face.

She'd stared at the status update on Facebook in shock.
Gay? He can't be gay!

She'd automatically reached for her phone to call Laura—and then remembered Laura was off in the mountains in California, where her phone couldn't get service.

Then the messages started coming.

Everyone, it seemed, wanted to know what she thought about Glenn's big announcement. She didn't know what to say to anyone, how to respond. She'd always talked about everything with Laura—and Laura was gone. Her older sister, Mallory, home for the summer from Wichita State, was absolutely no help at all.

“How could you
not
know?” she'd sneered at her at the dinner table.

“Now, Mallory—” her mother had started, but Mallory cut her off.

“Come on, Mom, you and Dad can be expected not to notice but she
dated
him, so you know they probably at least kissed and got to second base—”

“Shut up!” she'd screamed, pushing her chair back from the table, her cheeks on fire with shame and embarrassment and anger. “Shut up shut up shut up shut up!”

She'd run out of the kitchen, out onto the front porch of the house, humiliated and embarrassed. Mallory had turned into quite a bitch in Wichita—but they'd never been close the way sisters were supposed to be anyway. And as she sat in the porch swing, she couldn't stop the tears coming. Mallory was just saying what everyone was thinking but wouldn't say to her.

How could you not know?

She hadn't, though. She'd had no idea Glenn was gay. She sat there, in the swing, crying and remembering everything, going over every time they were together in her mind, trying to see if there was any clue.

She couldn't remember one.

Maybe if I'd slept with him—

But she wouldn't go down that path.

And it was Noah who came to her rescue.

He'd driven up in his truck, sat down on the porch with her, put his arm around her, and held her while she cried. He was so kind, so sweet, so understanding. “Shh,” he'd said, kissing the top of her head while she cried. “It'll be okay, honey, it'll be fine, you just wait and see, it'll get better.”

She'd never seen this side of Noah before. Sure, he'd been going steady with her best friend since they were all freshmen, but she'd never gotten close to him. He was Laura's boyfriend and a part of her life because of that, but that was about all. Now she could see why Laura loved him so much—and Laura's leaving had torn him up inside. “Get me out of here,” she said. “Take me for a drive or something.”

They'd driven out to Lake Kahola, but not to the swimming hole where everyone always went. He drove around the lake, stopping in a secluded spot where there was no beach, where an abandoned-looking cabin's lawn ran all the way down to the water's edge. There was a weatherbeaten dock jutting out into the brown water, and they walked out to its end, sitting down and dangling their feet over the water. He put his arm around her when she started crying again. She'd felt stupid, but it had been bottled up inside for so long—her pain at Laura's leaving, her loneliness, this shocking news about Glenn—that she couldn't hold it in anymore. He started kissing her and she let him, and one thing led to another, and afterward, she felt so dirty and debased and ashamed that she thought about slipping into the water and sinking down to the bottom and never coming up again.

It was wrong, she knew it, but she couldn't stop herself.

Somehow Laura found out and sent her a blistering e-mail that practically set her computer screen on fire. She tried calling, sent e-mails, texts—but Laura never answered.

And she hated herself just a little bit more.

She knew she shouldn't keep seeing Noah, but it was easier to just go along with it. She avoided everyone else. She dreaded the start of school, when she would have to show up and be around people who judged her for sleeping with her best friend's boyfriend, people like her sister who thought she should have known her ex-boyfriend had been gay all along, mean people who joked that she'd done something to
turn
him gay.