Right Behind You by Gail Giles

Author:Gail Giles
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: JUV039030, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780316040716
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2008-10-31T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

GO AGAIN

Dad was right. The next day was a horror show on lots of levels. Inside my head and out. The morning was quiet outside my head. Inside my head were steel drums and screeching things. A madman playing a violin? I hung over the toilet for a good part of the morning, too. Between heaves, I heard Dad and Carrie whispering. It sounded urgent.

Carrie brought me juice and aspirin when she figured I could hold something down. “So you punched the self-destruct button?” She stood with her arms crossed over her body. Not a good sign.

“I did. Just like the shrink said I would.”

I took the aspirin with one swallow of the juice. I put the glass on my nightstand. “I don’t think any more juice is a good idea right now.”

“I kind of think hangovers are poetic justice,” Car-rie said.

The grim details of my heaving came to mind in full color. “Justice, maybe. But I can’t find any poetry.”

“Try not to stay in bed all day.” Carrie turned to leave.

“Carrie, I think there’s going to be collateral damage that goes along with what I did last night. I’m sorry.”

She tried for a smile. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. It was a long time ago, in another place. These people know you as someone completely different. Let’s hope for the best.”

Hope started to collapse a few hours later. Usually my phone rang constantly on Sundays. Today it didn’t ring until three. Dave.

“Hey, Dave.”

“Hey.”

It was the first time he hadn’t called me “Siberia” when I answered the phone. He didn’t call me anything.

“I sorta need to talk to you,” Dave said.

“That’s sorta what you’re doing,” I said, going for cool and missing by light-years.

“Face time. Private face time.”

“Sure, come on by,” I said. I knew what was coming, and I would make it as easy for him as I could. Dave had been good to me from minute one, and I had lied to him from that same minute.

I waited on the porch until he drove up.

Dave waved me over to the car. “Hey.”

“You can still call me Siberia.”

Uncomfortable silence.

“Can we sit in my car to talk?”

I slid into the seat of his Jeep Cherokee.

“Was it true?” Dave gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white. “Or were you just drunk and . . . I don’t know . . . spouting shit to keep the B’s from killing each other?”

He wouldn’t look at me, but his voice begged me to give him an answer he could live with.

I pushed my hands under my thighs and my head back against the headrest. “You know the answer, Dave. Don’t make me lie to you any more than I have.”

He released the wheel and rubbed his hands against his face, then against his jeans. He didn’t know it, but The Frown had taught me well. He was wiping me away.

“You . . . you’ve been lying to me since we met?” He banged the steering wheel with his fist, then looked out his window, still unable to look at me.

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