Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig

Author:Caleb Roehrig
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250085627
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

SEVENTEEN

THE REST OF the night was surreal. The atmosphere in the house was supercharged by my admission, and while I was constantly aware of the almost shocking relief of finally not having to edit myself—of not having to think twice about every statement that left my mouth, fearing I would betray myself with a slip of the tongue—I was also painfully aware of the stilted way my parents were behaving around me; the three of us were trying so hard to act normal around one another that nothing felt normal. The roller coaster went up and then down as the realization crept over me that I was going to have to get to know my own parents all over again, to forge a brand-new “normal” after fifteen years of struggling to be comfortable in my own skin, and the same would be true with all of my friends. The thought was both exhausting and a little scary.

Once the detectives were gone, their intimidation fading into memory, I was able to let go of the fear that had first gripped me when they’d implied that I was a suspect. My alibi was solid, and anyone I knew—no matter what they thought of me after learning my secret—would tell the cops I could never hurt January. Not ever, for any reason. But when at last I went to bed, all I could seem to think about was that she had been pregnant. With child. Expecting. Enceinte. Who was the father? The idea that she might have been planning to claim that I was disturbed me even more than all the lies she’d told her friends about me. Would she really have done that? Conned me, used me as a cover rather than taking me into her confidence?

On the other hand, I hadn’t trusted her with my own difficult secret, and mine would only have effected temporary upheaval in our lives. I hoped. I couldn’t begin to imagine what she must have been going through, how scared she must have been.

Had she really known? And for how long? She’d been in real distress, that night in the barn. I could see it so clearly now, looking back; the emotion I’d mistaken for frustrated desire had actually been desperation. I had been her last hope. But why? Why had she felt the need to conceal the identity of the guy who’d gotten her pregnant?

Unless the truth would’ve caused an even greater shitstorm than if she’d succeeded in passing the baby off as mine. And when I’d turned her down? If I knew January at all, a take-no-prisoners girl who stepped in the middle of fistfights and once threatened her meth-head lumberjack stepbrother with a freaking bread knife, she would have gone straight to the would-be father and confronted him.

And after that, she’d disappeared.

* * *

The next day was Halloween, and ironically the first day I was going to set foot in the halls of Riverside High without my mask. When I hadn’t been dwelling

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