CHAPTER TWELVE
W
ho knew physical therapy would come in handy? When the office called home to inform my parents about the after-school detention and found out about my PT appointment, the admin tossed the entire idea of detention out.
Not rescheduled, tossed.
Of course, my dad had been none too pleased, but I’d deal with that fire after my forty minutes of hell with Dr. Blakely. By the end, I planned to adopt a thoroughly exhausted and bedraggled appearance for sympathy points.
“Between you and me,” Mrs. Handy began, making a big production of wadding up the slip and tossing it in the trash after explaining why I could leave with the rest of the masses, “it’s a bunch of baloney.
You were just in a coma. Mr. Watkins can pick on someone else.
You have more important things occupying your time, I’m sure.
My uncle underwent two brain surgeries. He said it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to recover from, so Bill can stuff—”
“Mrs. Handy,” the principal scolded, having wandered out of his office.
“Sorry, David, but that man just gets me going.”
He smiled at her before shifting his gaze to me.
“As it so happens, I agree with Mrs. Handy—not necessarily about her assessment of a colleague” —he tempered when he saw her triumphant smile— “but that you have bigger issues than needing to spend your time sitting in detention. That’s why I called you down.
I wanted to inform you personally that we didn’t add anything to your permanent record, and you are officially excused from having to attend detention.
In fact, tomorrow, I’d like you to come here instead of history to work with your guidance counselor.
We’ll explore alternative classes we can get you into for first period. Okay?”
My reply came out delayed because I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. “Oh, okay. Yes! Thank you, Mr. Richards.”
“Of course, Willa. Now, you better get to your appointment.”
I didn’t linger to give him a chance to change his mind. The halls took little time to empty after the final bell, apart from a few stragglers. I hitched my backpack around and fished out my phone.
ME: Sorry. It looks like you’ll be suffering through detention alone today.
It didn’t take long to receive a reply.
MANUEL: What? Really?
ME: Yep. Mrs. Handy called me down to the office to explain about dropping it.
MANUEL: Don’t take this the wrong way, but why?
ME: When they called home to let my parents know, they found out about my physical therapy appointment and had a change of heart.
MANUEL: Okay, not exactly a free pass I can copy without getting into a coma ?
ME: Lol, afraid not! Sorry, not sorry. If you get detention from Watkins, they might let it slide. I get the feeling Mrs. Handy doesn’t like him much.
MANUEL: Huh. Good to know. I can use that. So Mr. Watkins is an ass, like I said.
ME: Yeah, they are letting me change my schedule, so I won’t have him anymore.
MANUEL: Good. I heard about what happened from some friends in your class. Watkins was way out of line. At lunch, Dale said he tried to explain what your computer did, but Watkins just thought he was covering for you too.
ME: That was really nice. He didn’t have to do that. He doesn’t even know me.
MANUEL: Nah, I’d have done the same thing. Anyone would have.
ME: Still, will you tell him I said thank you? I don’t know if I share any other classes with him.
MANUEL: Of course, no problem.
MANUEL: BUT…
MANUEL: I want something in return.
I bit my lip, staring at the screen for a long time. Up ahead, the guys stood around the Jeep. It’d quickly become a routine they didn’t seem inclined to give up.
MANUEL: I want you to promise you’ll think about my words earlier.
MANUEL: You can’t blame yourself.
Did he intend to say that, or something else? I texted a quick promise and wished him good luck before closing the app.
“That your dad?” Ralph asked when I reached them.
“Oh, no.” I pocketed my phone. “It was a friend. I slipped detention, and he didn’t. I was letting him know so he wouldn’t worry.”
“That was nice of you.” Kolton’s tone held a lot of meaning to it—pointed meaning.
Why wouldn’t it? My fingers worked fine to text Manuel, but the ones who’d been there through thick and thin got ignored.
Yeah, I was a grade A bitch.
I braced myself. “I’ve been a bad friend—an awful friend. You guys were there through so much, and the way I handled things after the accident is unforgivable.”
Ralph stuffed his hands into his jeans. “I wouldn’t say ‘unforgiveable.’”
“No, it’s true.”
Kolton sighed, his squared shoulders losing some of their rigidity. “Willa, Ralph’s right. You’re under a fuck ton of pressure.”
“And you’re still dealing with stuff that you’re not letting anyone help you with,” Hunter added.
I hugged myself against the chill. “I see you guys, and I think of Ben. That’s not fair, but it is what it is, and when I think of Ben, there’s this sharp reminder that he’s not here, and I’m the reason why. Then the urge to distance myself rears its ugly head again because I’m radioactive.”
“Wait, like, literally? You’re the reason Ben isn’t here?” Kolton asked.
“No, not literally,” Ralph growled with exasperation. “She thinks it’s her fault.”
“How do you know it’s not?” I cried. The question scattered on the ground, sharp and jagged.
Be ye warned. This way, there be hazards.
Hunter navigated the landmines with professional ease. “Because, even if it was your stalker, even if, in his fucked up mind, you did something that got his attention, you didn’t ask for any of this. We aren’t into victim blaming, Willa, so none of this could be your fault.”
I nodded, hearing the words and understanding where he was coming from, but refusing to allow them to sink in. The pain of guilt felt necessary. “Manuel said as much too.”
“Manuel Cortez?” Kolton’s head tilted. He knew everyone. “The one who walked you to your Jeep yesterday?”
“Yes, him.”
“Huh. Wasn’t aware you two knew each other.”
My lips quirked at his grumbling tone. “Funny, Manuel mentioned the same thing about you guys and me. He called you my guard dogs.”
Ralph grinned, his dimples popping out. “You’re smiling like you think it’s funny.”
“Well…”
If the boot fits…
Hunter snorted. “We know you have your PT session. You should go.”
“Yes, but we expect you to fucking call us. Seriously. Call. Us. The second you’re home,” Kolton repeated and poked my forehead.
“Can you remember that? No getting in fights with your mom. No getting arrested just to get out of it. Short of death, there should be no excuses this time. I can’t handle the fucking emotional roller coasters anymore of working up a good grudge all night and then finding out the next morning that you were fucking justified. ”
“Okay,” I muttered, sotto voce.
Kolton snapped his fingers. “We can do a fucking conference call!”
“Okay,” I replied dutifully.
He pointed at me one last time. “I mean it. No excuses.”
“Dude, don’t jinx her,” Ralph protested. “Now she’ll definitely get pulled over for something.”
God, I hoped not.
If I never saw another cop, it would be too soon.
Hunter’s brows furrowed as if he could hear my thoughts, which was impossible. The cover-up meant every shred of evidence from my breakout at the psych ward to the cops finding me had vanished. My own parents didn’t even know about it.
And certainly nobody knew about the police stealing me from the paramedics after that for questioning about—not that I’d known it at first—Ben’s death.
No, no one knew those details, and they never would.
My muscles ached. Physical therapy always rocketed right to the top of the list of my top ten least favorite things, only slightly below spiders. To be honest, the sequence of dislikes largely depended on which was in my most immediate bubble of awareness at the time.
Like currently.
I sat inside the long abandoned tree house, desperately searching for a signal.
Only a dull twinge remained as a reminder of the hell my physical therapist had put me through, while on the other hand, no less than five big mother spiders had skittered out from dark corners, so at the time, spiders edged ahead of PT for least favorite thing.
Oh, wait, there.
The phone rang the second I realized there was service, and it nearly took a fifteen-foot drop to the ground because of it.
Of course, it certainly hadn’t helped that I’d willingly subjected myself to more handwriting.
Dr. Blakely lit up with glee when I mentioned getting extra practice, and she’d decided to run with it.
Even now, my hand cramped.
Luckily, it helped me keep hold of the phone at the last second. I swiped to answer. “Hello?”
“Hey,” Ralph’s warm voice greeted. “We couldn’t wait. I already got the others on the line. You’re on video call, Willa. That’s why we had you download the app.”
“What?” I yelped, pulling the screen away to check. “You said group call. No one mentioned we’d be using cameras!”
Only my face was in the frame, but I still glanced down self-consciously at my slightly bedraggled outfit.
Kolton snickered and called me out on it. “We can’t even see what you’re wearing… or not wearing.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Calm down.”
“I’m dressed,” I responded, unable to not comment despite knowing he’d been teasing me.
A dark blue bedspread filled his background, along with a pillow showing some man posed in a basketball jersey. Kolton’s arm was propped behind him, making his biceps pop. His face glowed from his screen, looking paler than his normal golden tan.
Beside his tile, Ralph was driving some large piece of farm equipment, since he was often called to help on his family’s farm. The Buchanan’s basically owned all the agricultural land in the county, making them a big deal, even if they were still down-to-earth people.
Well, at least I assumed so, since their son was. The only time I’d met his parents was at the police station, so our meeting had been less than stellar.
The setting sun illuminated Ralph’s dark skin in deep orange hues.
Whereas Kolton appeared more ghostly, Ralph resembled an archangel, glowing with fire and grace, his chocolate eyes lit up like miniature twin suns.
He glanced over and winked, as if he’d caught me looking, even though he had no way of knowing I wasn’t looking at, say, Hunter’s empty frame, for example.
I recognized the walls of mismatched toolboxes, grimy, chipped oil drums, and big mechanical equipment of TJ’s Auto Shop.
Hunter had propped the phone on top of someone’s cherry red car.
A socket wrench lay haphazardly close to the camera.
As I watched, Hunter came into frame, wiping his grease-stained hands as he hunched over to join us.
His eyes narrowed. “Where are you at?” he questioned in lieu of a greeting.
The question brought both Ralph’s and Kolton’s phones closer to their respective faces as they, too, attempted to study what few details were illuminated by my phone.
It grew dark fast in the fall, and unlike Ralph, who was in the middle of a corn field, the sun couldn’t reach me as easily in the cover of the forest’s canopy, half the leaves missing or not.
I brought the phone closer to my face, filling the frame. “Somewhere private. We always get interrupted.”
“Oh, is it that kind of phone call?” Kolton lifted up from the bed, as if he meant to…
Sure enough, he set me down and moved until he filled the frame, head to waist, and then his hands toyed with the ends of his t-shirt—
My eyes widened, and I panned the screen away from me. “No, stop! Don’t take your shirt off!”
“Ah-ha! Caught you!” Kolton’s voice sounded so smug. “You’re in that tree house, aren’t you?”
Too late, I realized I’d turned the phone toward the window where they’d be able to see the treetops backlit by whatever dim sunlight filtered down.
Oh, I’d been played like a fiddle.
When their faces came back into view, none of them looked very impressed with my choice of venue, even if Kolton still wore a pleased as punch smugness for getting one over on me.
“Privacy,” I repeated. “There’s no privacy at my house. You’ve been there.”
Sharing a room with my younger brother as a senior in high school was such a sore point that I couldn’t mention it, even if they were well aware of the fact from that doomed sleepover.
Hunter grabbed the phone from where he’d propped it, giving me a dizzying sense of vertigo from the motion. “Go home. Now.”
“But I’m already out here,” I defended.
“We don’t care. You have a stalker that has already proven he’ll kill.”
Well, put like that…
Chills chased up my spine, and the shadows grew more sinister and darker. “After we talk.”
“No, we’ve done this dog and pony show. We’ll ask you questions, and you’ll dance around the answers.” Hunter arched a brow as if daring me to deny his statement. “And some half-assed answers aren’t worth you putting yourself at risk.”
“I’m not at risk…”
“Willa, he watched you close enough to know you were dating. It wasn’t like you posted it on any kind of social media.
He then tracked your boyfriend down and most likely sabotaged his truck.
He did the same to your Jeep on a random, unplanned milk run the first time you drove it. That means he watches your house.”
Oh.
As if my heart hadn’t leaped into triple speed, Hunter carried on. “What if he is watching your house right now? What if he saw you disappear into the woods and decided this was his chance to make a move? He could be right outside the damn tree house.”
My breath left me in a whoosh. The feeling of my lungs expanding signaled that air went in, but it felt like the oxygen couldn’t keep up with the sudden coursing speed of blood through my veins.
Sweat broke out on my skin, and my hands shook hard enough that I had a difficult time keeping a grip on the phone.
In fact, I couldn’t. Another cramp spasmed through my muscles—curse my handwriting practice—and this time, instead of helping, it hindered.
With my arm out the window to get reception, the phone slipped free.
“No!” I cried in a horrified gasp.