Magnolia Read online

  “Ask—ask me what?” I stammer.

  He hesitates before answering. “What’s the deal with you and Patrick Hughes?”

  It takes me several seconds to find my voice. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean . . . Patrick is my friend and all. I just . . . I figured I should ask what’s going on with you two before I . . . well, before we do something we might regret.”

  I blink several times, trying to figure out what he’s talking about. And then it hits me. “Oh my God. Are you saying that . . . I cheated on him? With you?”

  “I just wanted to make sure. If y’all are serious, well . . .” He trails off with a shrug.

  “We’re . . . I don’t even know. We’ve only gone out a couple of times.” I shake my head. “God, Ryder, why’d you even have to bring him up?”

  I haven’t even thought about Patrick, not once since I saw him last. I definitely wasn’t thinking about him when Ryder and I were making out. And I’m pretty sure I was about to break off whatever we had going, anyway.

  But now . . . now I feel guilty, like some kind of slut or something. I’m so angry with myself—angry and ashamed. And Ryder . . . I can only imagine what he thinks about me now. “Maybe you should sleep upstairs,” I say.

  “Okay.” His voice is soft, placating. “If that’s what you want.”

  I nod. “It’s probably for the best.”

  But it isn’t what I want, not really. And . . . okay, I know it sounds stupid, but I want him to realize that. I want him to try to convince me otherwise. I want him to tell me he’s sorry that he brought it up, that he understands things are a little fuzzy with me and Patrick, that it doesn’t matter anyway. That he wants to be here, with me.

  But he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.

  ACT II

  Scene 11

  I blink several times, turning to shield my eyes from the blinding sun streaming in through the windows. With a groan, I drag a pillow over my eyes. I’m vaguely aware of something wet on my ankle, and I sit up sharply to find Sadie at my feet, licking my exposed skin sticking out from the sheets.

  “How late did I sleep?” I mumble, reaching for my cell on the bedside table.

  It’s 10:37 a.m. Wow. My phone still has no bars, of course. And now the battery’s about dead too. Oh joy.

  I shove aside the tangled sheets and rise, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I better take the dogs out. I don’t even bother to get dressed—I’m still in my sleep shorts and tank top, but it’s not like I’m trying to impress anyone. Specifically Ryder.

  I briefly wonder where he is. I went to bed right after he left me in the bathroom last night. Not that I fell asleep right away. Oh, no. That would have been way too easy. Instead, I lay there for hours on end, listening to him move around upstairs. Right now there’s no sound coming from above. Maybe he left. I hope he left. I’m too embarrassed to face him.

  But he hasn’t. When I take the dogs out, I find him clearing the debris off our cars.

  “Hey,” he calls out. “I think your car is fine. You’ve got some dents and a crack in the windshield, but nothing major.” He tosses a leafy branch toward a big pile behind him.

  Okay, so we’re back to pretending that nothing happened. Good. I’m down with that. “What about your Durango?”

  “She’s pretty banged up. Gonna need some bodywork and a whole new windshield.”

  “She?”

  He looks at me blankly. “What?”

  “You called it a ‘she,’ ” I point out.

  “Oh. Right.” Color creeps into his cheeks. “Dana Durango.”

  “You named your car Dana?”

  He just shrugs.

  “Oookay. You need any help?”

  “Nah, I’m just about done here.” He pauses, eyeing me sharply. “You sleep well?”

  “Yeah, I was out like a light,” I lie, refusing to give him the satisfaction. “You?”

  He shrugs. “It was awfully warm up there.”

  “Huh,” is all I say.

  “Did you eat breakfast?” he asks.

  “Not yet. I will as soon as I take the dogs in. What about you?”

  “Nah. I was waiting for you. Just let me clean up, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

  “Sounds good.” Okay, we are just so awkward now. This is crazy. I can’t even imagine sitting across the kitchen table from him, trying to make small talk. This is painful enough as it is.

  I finish up with the dogs and take them back inside, doing my best to clean off their muddy feet before I set them free. I’m going to have to mop the floors after breakfast, I realize. There’s muddy paw prints from one end of the house to the other. And now that there’s actually sunlight streaming in through the broken living room window, I can see that I didn’t get all the blood up.

  What a mess.

  Hurrying into the kitchen, I dump food into the dogs’ and cats’ bowls and then head back to my parents’ room to get my cell phone. As soon as we’re done eating, I’m going to have to go sit out in the car for a little bit and charge it. I need it fully powered once the signal comes back—if it ever comes back.

  I glance down at the screen as I retrieve it from the bedside table and hit the on button just for kicks. And . . . oh my God! The bars are back! My pulse begins to race as little notification thingies start popping up on my screen. Missed calls. Voicemail messages.

  Hallelujah!

  Clutching it in one hand, I sit on the bed and scroll through the list of missed calls. Twenty-seven missed calls from my parents. Twenty-seven? What the heck? I guess they’ve been trying to call me for days, not realizing the service was out. And there’s two missed calls from Lucy, both in the past ten minutes. I click over to my voice mail. There’s just two messages, one from my dad’s cell and one from Lucy.

  “Jemma,” comes my dad’s voice, “call me the minute you get this, okay?” That’s it; nothing else. He sounds off, a little strained or something. What does that mean? Just that he’s frustrated he can’t reach me? Or . . . or . . . My heart takes off at a gallop, my breath coming fast as my thoughts move into a dangerous direction.

  Please let Nan be okay. Please, please, please.

  I take a deep, calming breath and hit play for the second message.

  “Jemma, it’s Luce.” She sounds like she’s crying. “My phone just came back on, and . . . oh my God, I heard the news. I’m so, so sorry. Call me if you need to talk, okay?”

  What? What the hell does that mean? What news? Why is she sorry?

  Panic surges through my veins, making me breathless.

  I need to talk to my dad—now. My hand shaking, I press my dad’s number. I feel sick, like I’m about to puke as I listen to it ring. Once, twice, three times. Then it goes to voice mail. I try my mom’s number. Same thing.

  Shit. Tears burn behind my eyelids. I rise on trembling legs and head for the bathroom, sure I’m going to be sick now.

  Not Nan. No, no, no. She has to be okay.

  “Jemma?”

  Ryder’s moving through the house, looking for me, calling for me. I can’t answer. I can’t do anything but sink to the cold tile floor in front of the toilet, my phone still clutched in one clammy hand.

  He finds me there a few minutes later. “Jemma?” He peers down at me with drawn brows. “You okay?”

  All I can do is shake my head. I’m numb, paralyzed with fear. This can’t be happening.

  “What’s going on? Are you sick or something?”

  I try to answer, but nothing comes out except a strangled sob.

  He crouches down beside me. “Okay, you’re starting to scare me. What the hell’s going on, Jem?”

  I take several deep, gulping breaths and then hand him my phone. “Messages,” I manage to choke out. “Just listen.”

  He takes the cell from me and punches the screen before raising it to his ear. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to calm my breathing as I wait for him to finish listening.

  “We don’t know .
. . This could mean anything,” he says at last. “Did you call your dad back?”

  “No answer. Same with my mom. The battery’s about to die, anyway.”

  “Let me go get my cell. I’ll try my mom. You just . . . wait here. Give me a sec, okay?”

  I just nod.

  He’s gone for a while. I try to prepare myself, to brace for the news. But there’s no preparing yourself for something like this—not really. It was supposed to be routine surgery. I mean, brain surgery, yeah. But routine. The tumor wasn’t life threatening. At least, that’s what they said.

  But then I remember what Nan told me about Great-Grandma Cafferty. The surgery to remove the tumor was a success, but then she bled to death. A brain hemorrhage. That’s what killed her.

  No. I repeat the word over and over in my head like a mantra, refusing to believe that Nan’s anything but fine. She can’t be . . . gone. I would have felt it, would have somehow known.

  I haven’t eaten anything in hours, but it doesn’t matter. My stomach doesn’t care. Bile rises in my mouth, and I start to retch.

  When I’m done, I rise on shaking legs and go to the sink, leaning heavily against the marble counter as I rinse my mouth with the bottle of water I’d left there.

  And then I see Ryder in the mirror, standing in the doorway behind me, his face slightly ashen. My stomach bottoms out, the ground swaying dangerously beneath my feet. I grip the counter so tightly that my knuckles go white. “No,” is all I say.

  “Nan’s fine. She’s okay.”

  Relief washes over me in rippling waves. I turn toward him, reaching out blindly.

  He takes me in his arms, steadying me. “The surgery went off without a hitch, my mom said. Nan’s having a little”—he taps his cheek—“some kind of facial paralysis now, but they think that’s temporary. She’ll be just fine, Jemma.”

  I nod, swallowing hard. Thank God. “But then . . . Lucy? What was she talking about?”

  Ryder takes a deep breath before he answers. “It’s Patrick,” he says haltingly.

  Patrick?

  “There’s been an accident. I’m so sorry, Jem.”

  * * *

  Patrick’s dead. I don’t know all the details yet, but it happened on Monday, a few hours after we’d been released from school. His car had hydroplaned and skidded off the road, then flipped over a guardrail into the swollen creek. His parents hadn’t even reported him missing till close to midnight that night. They hadn’t realized he was gone until then.

  Why Patrick would have gone out in that awful weather is anyone’s guess. But when they pulled the car out of the creek, they found a case of Schaefer Light beside him—with two empty bottles. So everyone’s speculating that he was out making a beer run, stocking up for the storm.

  It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes any sense.

  And all I can think about are those last words I spoke to him on Monday, just hours before the accident. He’d tried to apologize, and I had pretty much shut him down. I’d been annoyed with him. Impatient.

  Then . . . I’d pretty much pushed him entirely from my mind and gone and kissed Ryder without even giving Patrick a second thought. And now? I’d never have the chance to apologize. To make it up to him. To make it right with him.

  And here’s the worst part—when I first found out, I was so relieved that Nan was okay that that’s all I could focus on. That was all that mattered to me until a couple hours later when I talked to Lucy and Morgan and realized how upset they were. How upset they thought I was.

  Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Patrick and I were kinda-sorta going out. Yes, I was going to break up with him, but I hadn’t gotten around to it. After all, I figured there was no rush. We weren’t going anywhere during the storm. But after the storm, I was going to tell him that I thought we should go back to just being friends. That had been the plan.

  Everyone—all my friends, Ryder, even my parents—expected me to be devastated by the news. And I am devastated. I would be even if Patrick and I hadn’t gone out, hadn’t kissed a few times. After all, I’ve known him my whole life. We’ve been friends forever, part of the same social circle and all that. So yeah, this is definitely a blow.

  But it doesn’t feel like a “my boyfriend just died” kind of blow, and that makes me feel horrible. Shallow. Lower than the lowest snake in the grass.

  And here’s the thing—it’s obvious that Ryder shares my guilt. He’s been tiptoeing around me all day, unable to meet my eyes. I mean, they were friends too. Not best friends—not like him and Mason, or even him and Ben. But good enough friends that he’s hurting. And that kiss we shared—okay, it was more than just a kiss—is hanging there between us, the big, honking elephant in the room.

  The worst part is, I could use some comforting right about now. But from whom? Until Daddy arrives tomorrow—if he manages to get on a flight and if the flooding on the roads has receded enough for him to get through—I’m stuck here with no one but Ryder. And every time I look at him, even glance in his direction, the guilt returns with a vengeance, creating a crushing combination of sadness, grief, and remorse. It’s almost more than I can bear.

  I spent an hour or two behind the lens of my camera, filming the scene of destruction around here with new perspective. After all, it looks so different in the sunlight, against the backdrop of a blue sky—the damaged roof, the crushed Durango, the broken window, the demolished sleeping porch, the pile of rubble that used to be the barn. Not to mention the flooded creek banks and the tree trunks snapped in two, looking much like broken matchsticks stuck in the ground. There’s something savage about it.

  But then the battery died, and there’s no way to charge it except to sit in the car with the ignition running. And honestly? I’m not in the mood for that. So I’ve got Delilah in the waistband of my shorts and a bag full of empty cans from the recycling bin. I want to shoot stuff. It’s the only way I can clear my head and gain some perspective.

  I spy a stretch of splintered fence down near where the barn used to be. It’ll do in a pinch, I decide. It’s already ruined, so a few missed shots won’t hurt anything.

  I’ve got about an hour till the sun goes down. Plenty of time. Only problem is, it’s hard to shoot straight with tears rolling down your cheeks.

  I empty two magazines before I become aware of that feeling of being watched. I turn to find Ryder leaning against what’s left of the enormous old oak tree—stripped bare, the swing gone—watching me.

  The sadness in his eyes seems to mirror my own. Yet we can’t comfort each other, not now. Not anymore.

  I’ve lost more than Patrick as a result of the storm. I’ve lost something else, too—something I didn’t realize I had, didn’t even know that I wanted. For a fleeting moment, Ryder was my friend. Maybe more. And now? He’s not.

  When did my life turn into a tragedy?

  ACT III

  It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

  —William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

  ACT III

  Scene 1

  Two weeks later I’m sitting in homeroom, tapping my foot impatiently as I wait for special announcements to start. Usually, I hate homeroom, mostly because none of my friends are in the same one as me. But now . . . now I’m kind of glad for the alone time. Well, as “alone” as you can be with twenty-three other kids crowded around you, restless and impatient for lunch.

  But at least I don’t have to talk. Since the storm, I’ve been doing that retreat-into-myself thing a lot. I can’t help it. It’s not that I don’t appreciate my friends trying to comfort me—I do. I know they love me and that they’re doing their best to cheer me up. But everything’s just so messed up right now, you know?

  Nan’s home, and that’s great. She’s not quite herself, though. Mama says it’s the steroids. She has to take some really strong ones to keep the swelling down and all that. But they give her terrible insomnia and make her cranky. Really cranky. Like, snap at everyone for everything kind of cranky.
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  The storm cleanup’s been really hard on her too. Imagine just having brain surgery, and then coming home to contractors banging around all day long. So, yeah . . . she’s pretty testy. Unbearable, actually. And I feel totally awful for even thinking that, but it’s true.

  And then there was Patrick’s funeral. It was awful. Beyond awful. I guess he told his parents that we were going out, because they made an effort to include me in everything. They even asked me if I would speak at the service. I couldn’t say no.

  It was excruciating. I felt like a total fraud standing up there talking about him, pretending that we were way closer than we actually were. And his mother . . . well, she completely broke down halfway through the service. Who could blame her? What parent expects to bury their child? He was way too young to die, too vibrant to be extinguished like that. Luckily, the nature of his injuries made it impossible to have an open casket. Otherwise his parents would have insisted on it. I’m not sure I could have borne it. The only people I’ve known who’ve died have been old people. To see someone so young like that, looking so lifeless and unnatural, more like a wax doll than a real person . . .

  I shudder at the thought. Yet . . . now I’m left with this nagging feeling of not having closure, or something cliché like that. But it’s true. Every time I step out into the hallway at school, or into the cafeteria at lunch, I expect to see him. And then I remember . . . oh, wait, he’s gone. I’m never going to see him again. Ever. It just doesn’t compute. How can he be gone when the last time I saw him—right here at school, just after homeroom—he was perfectly fine?

  And Ryder . . . well, we haven’t spoken since the day Daddy came home. Not one word. But sometimes I feel his eyes following me, and I know he’s thinking that I’m the kind of girl who kisses one boy while she’s dating another—one who’s out getting himself killed for a case of beer. But that’s not who I am—and not how it was. But how can I possibly explain it to him without seeming callous? “Oh, I was going to break up with him anyway.” I mean, he’s dead now. How convenient, right?