guard to the local police, and from there, it’s only another tiny step to interview rooms, lawyers, eternal damnation, and — worst of all — my father.
“Meg, come on.” Bliss taps on my window. “She’ll rat us out anyway if she gets caught.”
I roll it down. “Jolene doesn’t want our help,” I repeat. “She’s said so about a dozen times tonight. We’ll only get in the way!”
“So you’re just going to sit here?” Bliss demands.
“No . . .” I search for an excuse, a reason why it’s not pathetic to leave her to her own fate. Or, better yet, drive far away. Then I stop. Why should I be the one making excuses? I’m the only one thinking clearly here.
“You know what? Screw Jolene,” I tell her, my frustration surging. “She chose to break in there, not me. Why should I be the one to risk everything because of her stupid mistakes?”
Bliss looks at me in shock. “Because you’re part of the team.”
“What team?” I can’t believe her, trying to pull this after everything she’s said. “We’ve spent less than four hours with one another. I bet you both don’t even know my last name!”
“So what?” She glares at me, suddenly fierce. “We’re in this together, Meg, at least for tonight, so why don’t you step up for once and actually do something?” She pauses, giving me a familiar bitchy stare. “That’s right, I forgot — you don’t actually do anything. Hey, good luck with that.”
Before I can defend my desire not to acquire a criminal record before I graduate, Bliss turns her back and trots toward the complex. Her white dress flutters like a ghost in the shadows until finally, she’s swallowed up by the dark, and I’m left here alone.
Again.
I sit in silence, seething at their utter stupidity. Does Bliss really want to risk her entire future on this stupid stunt? Because I know for certain that getting mixed up in whatever Jolene is doing will wreck our permanent records forever. It’s crazy and dangerous, and the kind of thing you don’t even ask your best friend to help with, but I’m supposed to jump at the chance when I don’t even like them?
I get out of the car.
“You’re losing your mind,” I whisper to myself, hurrying after her down the dark street. My shoes clatter against the pavement, and even the distant sounds of traffic from the highway make me flinch. “Certifiably, undeniably losing your mind.” It’s one thing to be waiting behind the safety of central locks, but out here, the air is thick and still, and every shadow could be concealing some terrible fate.
But despite every reason I have to turn and flee — put the car into drive, and leave Jolene and Bliss to their much-deserved fates — some new urge is driving me on, forcing me to put one foot in front of the other and bring myself closer to impending doom.
Because Bliss was right. I gave up.
I tried at first. God, I tried. When the grief finally eased a little, and I could make it through the day without wanting to weep, I wanted nothing more than to wrap myself in friendship, in some kind of human warmth. So I went out for those clubs and extracurriculars, stayed late for committee meetings, and signed up for the charity drives. I made awkward conversation with study partners, laughed along with bad jokes and inane lunchroom gossip. But it never stuck. Maybe they could sense my desperation, or maybe I’d spent too long as the miserable loner, but either way, nobody looked me in the eye, no one asked me what I thought, nobody invited me along to their mall trips or movie nights — no matter how hard I tried. Even the memory of it drains me: working so hard, all day, all the time; getting nothing more than a basic acknowledgment of your own existence in return. So I stayed invisible, and slowly, that willpower just ebbed away.
But it wasn’t my fault.
At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself all this time. Bad luck and timing, that’s all it was. My life could be so different if only Mom hadn’t died, leaving me reeling for that all-important freshman year; if I’d had different classes, been on a different bus route, been assigned a locker next to somebody else . . .
The possibilities are endless and reassuring, but for the first time, I have to wonder if they’re wrong, just a lie I