He flushes. “Nothing. It was stupid. Matt’s a dick and I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I may have punched him, a little.”
“How do you punch someone a little?” I give him a half grin. “Kidding. I’m sure he deserved it. That guy is a jerk.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
He drums his fingers against the locker. “Anyway…yeah. I don’t know about you, but I had a pretty shitty day. I got a week of detention starting Monday. So I wanted to see if you maybe wanted to come over? Meet my sister? Hang out for a while?” He pauses, and must see the expression that crosses my face, the one that says No fucking way, because he adds, “My mom won’t be there. She never is. She’s at work like all day and night. She even sleeps in her office half the time, since they’re going to trial soon.” He barks a bitter laugh, which I get. When my Dad is working on a film, he lives on set and it’s like he forgets he has a family.
A thousand conflicting emotions hit me when I think about hanging out at Zach’s house. Her house. He thinks I’ve never been there, has no idea I’ve haunted his family in the night. He’s smiling at me with his big, innocent blue eyes, and I want to sink into them, I want some of that innocence for my own, so I say yes. I know it’s a terrible idea, maybe the worst idea, but I say yes anyway, because that’s what I do.
It’ll be on my tombstone, the one right next to Jordan’s. May McGintee: Ignored Her Gut Every Time. By then, Jordan’s will be covered in moss, will be weatherworn, but mine will be fresh and new.
* * *
—
I find Lucy and tell her she can take my car to practice tonight and I’ll pick it up from her tomorrow. She’s all I can’t wait to tell Conor about this. For a second, talking to Lucy, I trick myself into thinking this is normal and cute—our own little circle of friends, one big happy family. But then, as Zach and I walk to his car to meet Gwen, he tells me about what happened to her last weekend, and how terrible that girl Emery was. And then I remember who I am and who the Tellers are and what I did to them, and I wonder if it’s not that different from what Emery did, and the feeling bursts and a familiar hollowness crawls back in.
Gwen rides in the back, silent. She’s so tiny and young, with curly blond hair, and she looks like she wants to cry. My heart breaks a little for her.
Zach pulls the car into the driveway, and the outside of the house is so familiar that it’s almost like arriving home. I swallow hard and plaster on a smile. I don’t want to leave the safety of this car.
“Nice house! It’s beautiful!” I sound way too enthusiastic, like a freaking talk-show host. Zach probably thinks I’m losing my mind. I have to pull it together.
Gwen jets out of the car, leaving Zach and me sitting in silence. He looks almost as nervous as I feel. I can’t believe I’m about to do this—I can’t believe I agreed. This is actual insanity, although I currently can’t decide whether it’s more or less insane than going home to an empty house and torturing myself by thinking about those letters. I study Zach’s face out of the corner of my eye—the way his eyelashes curl up at the end, the pink of his bottom lip, his deep-blue eyes—and decide that it’s less. Much, much less.
I’m about to open my car door when he speaks. “So…there are a couple things I need to tell you about my dad….”
I pause in my exit, surprised. I’ve never considered Zach’s dad; I kind of forgot he has one. Before meeting Zach, I didn’t think about the fact that Michelle Teller had a family at all. In my head, it was always just me and her.
Zach continues, “He’s a little…Well, the past year, maybe more than that…he’s…” He