People to Follow by Olivia Worley

Author:Olivia Worley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

24

LOGAN

When they lift Zane’s body, his arm lolls to the side, the one with the tattoo of the I Ching hexagrams that I used to think were a sign of how wise he was. An old soul. Both of us. That’s what he used to say, when his hand lingered a little too long on the small of my back, blurring the line between thrilling and wrong.

Wise. I almost laugh. Zane’s tattoos never made him wise. Just a culture-appropriating dickhead.

As they move him to the back patio, I don’t watch. I sit on the floor, hugging my knees to my chest and staring at the spot where he died. I stay that way until everyone comes back in.

“Where is he?” I ask.

“Under the awning,” Kira says. “Out of the rain.”

The room is heavy and silent except for thunder rumbling overhead. What is there to say for someone who may not deserve mourning?

“I think we should keep looking for the gun,” Corinne says.

We’re not going to find it. Already, I know. Still, we turn the house upside down. We go through all the bags again, searching every room, every drawer, under every cushion. We search until night falls, the storm clouds rolling over us as the whole island turns from purple-gray to blue-black, like a bruise in reverse. We search and search until we do what we should have done hours ago: give up and make dinner.

As the rest of us sit with our sad plain pasta at the kitchen table, Aaron stares out the window, watching Graham. He’s been out on the front terrace since before they moved Zane, bent over his guitar. Rain falls, just a drizzle for now, but the clouds threaten worse.

“Where the hell is he hiding it?” Aaron wonders. “There’s no way it’s not him.”

Graham’s voice floats through the window, raspy and thin. It’s the kind of singing voice that isn’t necessarily good, but hard to stop listening to, emotion rubbing it raw. Back at the Bounce House, it annoyed me so much, his nonstop singing. Now, though, it feels like an old nostalgic song, the kind you sing along to, drunk and warm.

“We already looked through his stuff,” I say. “He didn’t have it.”

“Neither did anyone else,” Aaron argues. “But the gun’s still missing, isn’t it?”

I try to imagine Graham sneaking into the closet, stashing the gun. The thing is, I can believe it. Even before everything went to shit, Graham has always been anxious, the kind of guy who likes to know the earthquake-safety plan and where all the emergency exits are. But if Graham has the gun, then we can relax. Because as scared as he may be, I don’t think he has it in him to actually shoot.

But then I never knew my friends as well as I thought, did I?

Thunder rips through the sky, and the rain starts to pick up, wind whistling against the window.

The front door swings open, and we all jump. Graham walks in, his guitar case strapped to his back.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.