Chapter Thirty-Six
August stood outside Mrs. Deal’s classroom with his back against the wall, one boot hooked over the other, a stainless steel tumbler balanced in his hand and a paper shopping bag hanging from his fingers.
He looked unfairly beautiful standing there waiting for me like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like he belonged to me openly.
Somebody had tracked rainwater over the waxed tile floors, and the dampness carried the muddy scent of the football field all the way inside. August’s attention settled on me the second I rounded the corner.
His face softened immediately. That coral-coated expression did terrible things to me.
“Morning, Sin,” he said quietly, holding out the tumbler before I’d even reached him.
The coffee smell hit me first—sweet cream and cinnamon. I smiled despite myself and stepped close enough to press a quick kiss against his cheek. His skin was cold from standing near the exterior doors.
“Morning.”
He lifted the paper bag toward me. “I cleaned it for you.”
I peeked inside, finding the formal dress I’d left on his bathroom floor when Morgan had driven me to my house so I could change before church Sunday morning, folded neatly inside.
I took the bag carefully from his hands. Nobody had ever taken care of my things like that before. Nobody had ever treated something I’d made like it was valuable.
His fingers brushed mine as I took the bag, and for one reckless second I almost leaned into him right there in the middle of the hallway.
Then Mr. Hayward’s classroom door opened across from us. The sound made August’s hand fall away from the bag so quickly it was almost guilty.
Andy stepped out first. Everything inside me seized. His eyes landed immediately on the coffee in my hand. Then the shopping bag. Then August standing too close to me beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights.
Tension rolled across Andy’s shoulders so harshly I could practically hear it. Behind him, Mr. Hayward remained oblivious, balancing a stack of papers against his chest as he spoke in that warm distracted voice of his.
“I don’t want to have to report your grade to your coach, Mr. Spires. Just get the extra credit assignment to me before Friday.”
Andy gave a tight nod. “Yes sir.”
Mr. Hayward finally noticed me across the hall and smiled. “Ah, Lola. Maybe you can help him. You’ve got a great understanding of the tragedies.”
The tragedies. I nearly laughed at that.
Shakespearean heroes destroying themselves because they couldn’t outrun fate. Men mistaking love for ownership. Women drowning in their willingness to be subservient.
I didn’t tell Mr. Hayward that Andy and I had broken up yesterday afternoon beneath the magnolia tree in the church yard. Partly because Andy had cried afterward, quietly and angrily all at once, and something about exposing his humiliation in the middle of a school hallway felt cruel.
But mostly because I didn’t want August finding out like this. Not from overheard conversation and hallway tension and accidental humiliation. I wanted to tell him directly.
Andy finally met my eyes. His smile was practiced so perfectly it almost worked. “Morning.”
I forced my own practiced smile into place, a reflection that hurt to cast. This is what we would be now. Polite strangers, no longer pretending to be in love when we were really only each other’s life rafts. “Morning,” I echoed.
Mr. Hayward continued shuffling papers, still unaware he was standing in the middle of a slow-motion car wreck. “The paper’s only three pages, Andy. You’ll survive.”
Andy let out a low laugh that sounded nothing like amusement. “Yeah. I’ll survive.”
His gaze flicked once more to the coffee in my hands.
To August. To the paper bag. Then he nodded stiffly and started down the hallway.
I watched him go with guilt chewing holes through my stomach.
Not because I regretted ending things. I didn’t.
God, I didn’t. The relief afterward had been so enormous it had almost made me sick.
But Andy had loved me the only way he knew how—tiny bursts of passion spread thin with expectant smiles—and I wasn’t cruel enough not to mourn that a little.
When he disappeared around the corner, the silence beside me thickened. August stared after him for a beat too long before finally speaking.
“What was that?” His voice stayed calm, but I could hear the strain underneath it like wire pulled too tight.
“I’ll tell you after school,” I said softly.
August’s eyes finally moved to mine, searching my face so carefully it made my chest hurt. “Lola—”
“Please,” I begged.
He swallowed whatever he’d been about to say. That softness returned to his expression again, weaker this time. Wounded around the edges.
“Okay,” he said quietly.
Lunch felt wrong without Andy there.
Not quieter exactly—our cafeteria was never quiet.
The room still buzzed with hundreds of voices layered over the squeal of sneakers against tile and the metallic slam of lunch trays hitting trash cans.
Somebody near the vending machines was laughing hard enough to snort.
A teacher yelled half-heartedly at a sophomore for standing on a chair.
The smell of pizza grease and bleach hung thick in the cold air.
But there was a shape missing from the table that I didn’t know if I was allowed to miss.
Lindsey kept picking at the peeling edge of her nail polish instead of talking.
Emily sat slouched beside her with her arms crossed tight over her chest, eyes darting beneath heavy eyeliner as she watched me too carefully whenever she thought I wasn’t looking.
Jack stared into the distance with the exhausted expression of a man twice his age instead of freshly eighteen.
Nobody mentioned the breakup, even though I knew they knew. Nobody even said Andy’s name.
Morgan, oblivious, happily filled the empty space herself.
“I know it’s kinda lame to have birthday parties after like ten years old,” she said around a bite of fries, “but I thought it could be fun to have everyone over.”
Lindsey glanced up. “How old are you turning?”
“Seventeen,” Morgan said proudly.
Morgan kicked me lightly beneath the table. “Wyatt said he’d bring his projector thing so we can watch movies outside if the weather’s good, and Penelope said she has a few blow up mattresses she can bring if you guys want to stay the night.”
“The misfits?” I heard Lindsey cringe, but I didn’t hear Morgan’s response.
Her voice began to blur together, dissolving into the general cafeteria noise as my attention drifted toward the massive windows lining the far wall.
Rain clouds still hung low outside, gray and swollen over the campus. The student parking lot glittered wet beneath the weak sunlight. Cars sat packed together in uneven rows, their roofs reflecting silver.
That was when I noticed the boy.
Long dark hair. Dark green backpack slung over one shoulder. Layered clothing caked in mud.
He was bent awkwardly beside an old sedan near the back fence, shoving what looked like a wire hanger into the top corner of the driver’s side door.
I frowned. The boy jammed the wire harder into the doorframe. There was something strangely familiar about the slope of his shoulders. The frantic twitchiness in his movements. The way he kept glancing over his shoulder toward the road like a startled animal.
“Lola, are you going to come? I’ll need help setting up.” I blinked hard, dragged back into the cafeteria.
“Hm?”
“My party,” Morgan repeated, smiling uncertainly now. “Saturday.”
“Yeah. Of course.” The words came out automatic as I continued staring through the glass. “I’ll be there.”
Outside, the boy finally managed to pop the lock. The car door swung open. I stood so abruptly my chair legs screeched against the tile.
Emily’s head snapped toward me immediately. “Lola?”
“I gotta go.”
Nobody stopped me. Maybe because something in my voice sounded strange even to me.
I shoved through the cafeteria doors and hurried across the sidewalk, my tall brown boots pounding against the asphalt. My pulse thudded so violently in my throat it made me nauseous.
By the time I reached the parking lot the boy was leaning inside the car. The wind smelled like wet dirt and fertilizer from the farms surrounding campus.
I slowed as I crossed the lot. He held something small and white in his hand, hooking it carefully around the rearview mirror.
A rabbit foot keychain. White and filthy at the tip. Recognition hit me so hard it almost folded me in half.
“Shannon?” The name tore out of me before I could think better of it.
The boy jerked violently, banging his head against the doorframe with a loud thunk. “Fuck,” he hissed. Then he looked up.
Shannon O’Kinzy grinned wickedly.
His face looked thinner than before he vanished, cheekbones prominent beneath oily skin, dark circles bruised beneath his eyes. His hair had grown longer, curling damp around his ears and neck. But it was him. Entirely him.
Alive. Alive.
A laugh burst out of me halfway to a sob.
Shannon slammed the car door shut and backed away from it quickly. His green backpack bounced against his shoulder as he moved. For one surreal moment neither of us spoke. Then he winked at me.
Like this was some private joke between us. His voice came out low and teasing, “Told you I’d see you again.”
Before I could react, he turned and bolted across the parking lot.
“Shannon!”
He ignored me completely, sprinting across the narrow road dividing the school from the farmland beyond it. Tires honked angrily as he darted between cars. Mud splashed up the backs of his jeans.
I took a step forward instinctively. Another.
I could chase him.
I could scream for a teacher.
I could call the police. My hand even twitched toward the phone in my pocket. But then Andy’s voice echoed through my memory from the truck before Winter Formal: Maybe he’s got a good reason to run away, that’s nobody’s business but his.
Shannon reached the edge of the cornfield. The dead stalks swallowed him almost immediately, dry leaves rattling violently in the wind around his disappearing form. One second he was there. The next he was gone. Like the earth itself had opened and taken him back into the wild where he belonged.
I stood alone in the parking lot staring at the trembling rows of corn while a cold wind whipped my hair across my mouth.
Then I started laughing.
Wild, breathless laughter that bent me nearly double. Relief flooded through me so hard it hurt. Weeks and weeks of guilt loosened all at once inside my chest like rusted chains snapping free.
“I’ll see you later,” I laughed to myself.