Chapter 27
Mom barely spoke to me in the morning. She didn’t braid my hair like she always did, since I had nowhere to go. She knocked once on my door to tell me that she was leaving, but never poked her head in.
Which was probably a good thing. I wasn’t sure I could face her anyway, not after everything that happened yesterday, and after everything I found out.
My sadness and hollowness had been replaced with hot frustration toward her.
The fact that she was the one who got Hudson into the position he was in his freshman year—that it was her fault he was labeled as the Grim Reaper—was too much to confront right now.
And sooner or later, she’d forgive me for acting out.
She put her prized doll down now, but she’d pick me up again one day when she wanted me to attend Landon’s games or to take me to her Sunday teas, or just to flaunt us as a family.
If I kept my head down, the old family atmosphere could be salvageable.
The problem was that I couldn’t keep my head down and date Hudson at the same time.
When my thoughts traveled down that path, everything in me ached.
More than my ankle. It didn’t make any sense, the idea that three weeks could’ve changed me so much, but it had.
The taste of freedom was one that lingered in my soul, and there’d be no getting rid of it, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to taste it anymore.
Was that the part of me that my parents had fostered from years of training, years of pressure to behave in exactly the way they wanted? The part that only knew how to keep her head down and how to keep her mouth shut. The other part of me couldn’t even imagine changing anything.
Well, I would’ve taken the knife out of my backpack.
I texted Morgan throughout the entire school day, but she had no concrete answers for me in terms of Hudson.
Apparently, there were so many rumors going around that it was too hard to figure what was the truth, which for someone so obsessed with gossip, it was saying something that Morgan couldn’t get to the bottom of it.
I sat on the couch now, staring at the front door as if I could will Landon to walk through it.
It was four-twenty-one, which meant that he should be home any moment.
Any second. He would’ve seen Lacey at some point today, and he’d have answers for me, answers that would no doubt soothe the dread and anxiety that’d been swirling inside me like a storm.
He’d tell me everything was going to be okay.
If he ever got home from stupid football practice.
The door opened, but it wasn’t Landon—it was Dad.
“Hey, kid,” he said with a bit of tiredness in his voice, like seeing me exhausted him a little. “What are you doing out of your room?”
The sentence didn’t sound hostile—I took it as a white flag. “Stretching my ankle.”
“Be careful on it. Sprains can get bad if you push the healing process too fast.”
I looked down at my still-wrapped ankle where I had it propped on the ottoman before me. The ache today wasn’t as bad as it’d been yesterday, but it still throbbed each time I put pressure on it. “I’m being careful.”
Dad started toward the archway that led into the kitchen, pausing a little. “Gemma,” he began, readjusting his hold on his briefcase. “When your mother told me the truth about your buddy program, I was surprised.”
“Because you didn’t think your little girl would lie to you?”
“I didn’t think you’d ever put yourself through something like that. Especially with him.”
I clenched my jaw and dropped my gaze to my ankle again, staring at it bitterly. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“I’m not disappointed,” he said. “Not in the slightest.”
I lifted my chin, but he was already walking through the archway, leaving his words lingering in the air.
Before I had the chance to go after him, Landon came through the front door much less gracefully than Dad, bumping his shoulder pads on the frame and stifling a curse in the process.
All thoughts of Dad and his cryptic sentence were forgotten, and so was my ankle, because I shot to my feet.
“So?” I demanded, ignoring the twinge of pain. “What’s going on?”
“Give—me—” Landon shuffled into the house and kicked the door shut behind him a little too hard, causing it to slam. “—a second.”
“Landon.”
He kicked his sneakers off, tripping over one of them as he tried to step forward. “Just let me get through the door, Gemma—”
“Landon!”
With a huff, Landon dropped everything—his shoulder pads, his backpack, his jacket—and it piled at his feet with a loud thud. Dad called from the kitchen asking if everything was okay. “Everything’s fine, Dad,” Landon said, giving me an exasperated look. “Just all my stuff.”
“I don’t know why you bring that home with you every day,” Dad called back, but even from here, his grumble was clear. “Stinks up your whole room!”
I shook my head, forcing him to the topic at hand. “So? What’s going on with Hudson?”
“The rumors going around school are kind of all over the place,” he said, moving to sit on the chair nearest the door.
It was normally the chair Mom sat in, and he looked like a giant in it.
“Some people are saying Hudson pulled the knife on you, on the bus driver, on the superintendent himself—other people are saying that someone threw the knife down by Hudson just to get him in trouble.”
“But is he?” I knotted my fingers together, squeezing. “In trouble?”
Landon let out a breath, but finally, he nodded. “Lacey said that Superintendent Filmore gave him an option of withdrawing from Brentwood on his own accord or being expelled—which would obviously look a lot worse on his transcripts. She said it wasn’t really a choice.”
I let out a breath as if it’d been punched from me, reeling for several seconds, unable to inhale. “He dropped out?”
“Lacey said he told them that it was his knife out of his pocket,” Landon told me. “Not that it came out of your bag. He said he was the one who dropped it.”
The disbelief snapped in an instant, transforming from shock and horror to anger.
It burned hot underneath my skin, and I was almost surprised with how quickly it’d come on, and how fierce it’d been.
Of course he’d lie about it. Of course he would.
Hudson and I were one and the same at times, weren’t we?
Both of us backing down when faced with opposition.
Both of us playing the part of the role we were forced into.
But I wasn’t going to let it fly.
After dinner—which was delivered to me in my room once again, because Mom was still pursuing the silent treatment and only giving me messages through Landon—I knew what I was going to do.
The previous night, Mom and Dad left me alone in my room, never once poking their heads in.
I wasn’t sure if that would still be the case tonight, but I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t sit back.
Gemma
I’m going to the bridge at Lookout Ledge tonight at 8.
Please come meet me.
I’m going to wait there until you show up.
The ledge of the bridge was much colder than it’d been Saturday when I’d sat at this very spot with Hudson, and I shivered with each gust of late September wind that brushed through the tops of the trees.
The sun was setting in the sky, looking much like it had on my birthday, with beautiful colors comforting me when nothing else could.
The pinks and purples and yellows blended together beautifully, even when everything else was falling apart.
He’ll come, I thought to myself, clutching the edge of the bridge. My nails scraped on the rough surface. He’ll come, he’ll come. He will.
My body shook, but it wasn’t just from the cold. The pressure building in my body had me trembling like I would soon explode.
I probably shouldn’t have been sitting so close to the edge with as shaky as I was, but I wasn’t going to move.
I wasn’t going to move until Hudson showed.
As I waited for him, I practiced all the things I could say, knowing that I needed to at least try and keep my cool, but I wasn’t sure how possible it was going to be.
The idea of being calm in the mess I found myself in was almost laughable.
The pink sky faded to purple, the temperature dropping. He’d come.
Sooner or later, Mom and Dad would discover I was missing.
The old rebellious side of me reared its head, hoping it would be sooner.
That part wanted Mom to walk into my room and discover the open window.
It wanted Mom to realize that despite the shame she’d tried pouring into me, I was still going to make my own choices.
The other part, though, deeply hoped I could make it home before she found my empty room.
The purple sky bled into indigo.
I looked down the direction of the bridge he’d come in, but there was nothing. No one walking toward me, not even a shadow of a person. Nothing.
The current racing down my skin zapped, and I swung my legs over the edge of the bridge, landing in the roadway.
Fine. If he wasn’t going to come to me, I’d go to him.
Did he think I wouldn’t? To hell with getting back before Mom found me gone—if that’s what would happen, so be it. I wasn’t going to let him ignore me.
Right as I set off in the direction of where Vista Villas was—even though it was easily a forty-five-minute walk—headlights swept over the bridge.
I edged onto the shoulder, but the vehicle slowed as it approached me.
It was a van I didn’t recognize, one that was a faded, peeling blue color that probably looked gorgeous in its heyday.
Despite its dated appearance, the tires looked brand new, and the bumper was bright and shiny, as if it’d been recently replaced.
And the headlights were mega bright, enough that I had to lift my hand to shield the glare as it blared directly into my eyes.