When You Come Back to Me (Lost Boys #2) - Emma Scott Page 0,91
stupid hope that when I opened them, Holden would be lounging against my dresser with that irritatingly smug look on his face I loved so much.
He wasn’t there, and his absence was like a hole that had opened in me, empty and cold.
Flowers for Algernon lay open on my bed. I hadn’t read it until a few days ago, after the incident under the bleachers. That night, I’d picked it up and finished it within hours. Charlie, a man with a clinically low IQ, participates in an experiment to enhance his intelligence. His genius skyrockets, but the experiment slowly fails, and Charlie eventually sinks back into his old life.
“And he loses the love of his life.”
Holden had neglected to mention that when he gave me the book.
I sighed heavily and set it aside. My phone was silent. I’d have to pick up Violet in a few short hours, take pictures with her parents, then drive us here and do it again with Mom and Dad. I’d put my arm around Violet and smile as if we were a happy couple.
Outside my room, I heard Mom and Dad’s bedroom door close softly, followed by a muffled sob. I tore off the bed and found Amelia in the hallway, one hand pressed to her mouth, shoulders shaking.
“Hey,” I said, moving toward her.
She shook her head but let me wrap my arms around her. I held her as she sobbed quietly into my shirt. Mom’s scans had come back. Dad could hardly speak when he sat Amelia and me down at the kitchen table a few nights ago. The road was coming to an end. A few weeks at most. And this time, there wouldn’t be a miracle.
“Come on,” I said, leading Amelia into her room, next to mine. We sat on her bed surrounded by posters of BTS and Riverdale. Russian nesting dolls lined every windowsill and bookshelf.
“Mom’s napping.” Amelia sniffed. “Again. I went to talk to her, and she was already tired.” She lifted her tear-streaked face to me. “But she’s been sleeping all day. All day, River.”
“I know.”
There was nothing more to say. No words of comfort I could give her that I wasn’t begging for myself. We sat side by side, our hands in our laps, reality creeping toward us like shadows across the carpet as the sun set.
Finally, Amelia peered up at me. “Are you really going to Prom tonight?”
“You think I shouldn’t? You think I should stay with Mom?”
She shook her head, her dark hair falling in tangles around her shoulders. “I meant, you’re going with Violet?”
“Well…yes.”
Amelia huffed a breath and wiped her nose. “Do you know what I wanted to talk to Mom about?”
“No.”
“Everything. I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted a hundred conversations with her…all the ones we’re not going to have. I wanted to keep talking until we’d said everything there was to say in a lifetime so that I could… I could….” Tears choked her throat.
Say goodbye.
I started to put my arm around my sister, but she pushed it away.
“So what are you doing?” she demanded.
“I don’t understand.”
“Why are you bringing Violet over here and parading her in front of Mom instead of Holden?”
My stomach clenched as if my sister had gut-punched me. “How did you…?”
“I’ve known forever. Or suspected. Since that first dance you were supposed to go to. I saw you leave with Holden. With the silver hair? I didn’t think much of it at first, but then he came over that one day to drop off a book.”
“Flowers for Algernon,” I murmured.
Amelia nodded. “I knew then. The way he said your name… He tried to sound all casual, but he couldn’t do it. It was like he was glowing.”
“Glowing? No…”
“Yes,” Amelia said. “Not literally, duh. But I’ve seen you with your bonehead friends enough to know what regular friendship looks like. You and Holden?” She shook her head. “No chance.”
A thousand denials rose to my lips, but I swallowed them all down, suddenly on the verge of my own goddamn tears.
Amelia scooted closer to me on the bed. “Is he who you’ve been seeing all those late nights?”
I nodded.
Her small hand patted my arm. “Do you love him?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. But what can I do? I’m going to college.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“Violet,” I said with a harsh laugh. “Irony of ironies.”
“The same Violet you ditched at Homecoming and are going to Prom with this actual night?” Amelia made a face. “Wow. That is one understanding girl.”