What You Left Me by Bridget Morrissey

Author:Bridget Morrissey [Morrissey, Bridget]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2018-03-21T18:30:00+00:00

19

The doors swing out into a dark, expansive gym, skylights projecting moonlit shadows onto the squeaking lacquered floor. Basketball hoops hang from the ceiling, and banners decorate the whitewashed walls, detailing a select few of the tens of thousands that have laughed, cried, cheated, and lied their way through the many activities forced upon them in this space. Still the kids come back day after day, year after year. Even on nights like these—where laser lights cut across the floor in jagged patterns, x-ing over bodies swaying near the beat that booms from the speakers—they come by choice.

It’s the Winter Formal.

Brooke searches the crowd for her date. She can’t remember where she left him or why they’ve separated. Then again, he hasn’t been much of a date at all. Not that she’d expected much. Though she did expect more than a wilted corsage from the grocery store and one obligatory slow dance at the start of the night.

Cutting in and out of the bodies—there must be hundreds—she wonders how it is she managed to find people to befriend in a school so large the gym can barely be navigated. Sweat has become an unavoidable accessory.

Frustrated, she frees herself of trying. Wherever her date went is somewhere he’d rather be. Why bother sharing the night with her? Apparently that’s not why you ask Brooke Delgado to a dance. You ask her to get nice pictures and a healthy pat on the back from your friends. You ask her for the story, not for the company.

Apparently.

It’s exhausting caring this much. Brooke pulls her shoes off her feet and holds them in her hands. Piece by piece, her expectations shift. If the only company she has is herself, she doesn’t need to wear six-inch heels and pretend to have perfect posture. Her shoulders round forward as her bare feet strike the linoleum. Careful tears trickle down her cheeks. She will not let this ruin her night. She will give herself a few minutes to be bothered, then go back and force herself to have fun.

She wanders down a dark hallway, stopping and sitting when she finds a place far enough away that she can no longer hear the thrum of music pulsing from the gym. In this stillness a peace washes over her. She likes her own company.

It’s his loss. And her friends’ loss. They haven’t even tried to find her. Or bothered to notice that she’s looked sour and miserable most of the night.

“Brooke?”

Marty appears from around the corner. His white dress shirt is half untucked and his hair’s a little longer than usual. The dance-hall body heat means the gel no longer holds it out of his face, so a strand flops on his forehead. He seems effortless and relaxed. Handsomer than she ever realized. She’s so used to seeing him in baggy T-shirts and Cubs hats. But maybe she hasn’t been seeing him at all.

Has she been asleep on Martin McGee this whole time?

Quickly, she brushes the tears from her cheeks.

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