My Life After Now - By Jessica Verdi Page 0,26

and you’ve been acting really freaking weird since your little disappearing act last week.”

They’d noticed? “No, I haven’t!”

Max glared at me. “Okay, you’re right, weird isn’t the right word. Bitchy is more like it.”

I felt like I’d been slapped across the face. I stared at Max. He stared right back, unblinking. I kept waiting for Courtney to say something, to stick up for me, to tell Max he was overreacting. But neither of them said anything, and his last words hung heavy over our table.

“You know what, Max?” I said finally. “You really don’t understand anything, so just shut up.” Then I pushed out of my chair and stormed out of the lunchroom.

I rounded the corner, blood boiling, intending on spending the rest of the lunch period in the auditorium, and of course, that’s when I crashed right into Evan.

I dropped my bag, and books, pens, and makeup spilled everywhere.

“Oh. Sorry,” he said, helping me collect everything.

“It’s fine,” I said automatically, silently cursing the fates.

“Where are you going?”

“To the auditorium. Why?”

“Well, I was hoping we could eat lunch together,” he said.

I was so not in the mood for whatever this was. “Why?”

He handed me back my bag and squared his shoulders. “Because I decided to give you another chance.”

I swore silently.

“You do remember our conversation yesterday afternoon, right?” I said.

“Yeah. But I don’t accept.”

“It’s not your choice, Evan.”

“But why not? Who says you get to decide whether we get to be together or not?”

“Um, life? The world? That’s how these things work: if you don’t want to be with someone anymore, you get to decide that. Relationships are not democracies.” I hitched my bag further up onto my shoulder. “I have to go.”

I turned to leave, but Evan caught my wrist. “Lucy.”

“Let me go. Please, just…let me go.” I wriggled out of his grasp and continued down the hall, not looking back.

• • •

It was the day from hell. And it wasn’t over yet.

At least luck was on my side in one infinitesimal respect: we were working on act 2, scene 4 in rehearsal. That meant I didn’t have to have any on-stage interaction with Evan, Max, or Courtney. It was just me, Ty, and our Nurse and Benvolio. (Amazing how being around Ty suddenly didn’t seem that formidable compared with everything else.) But even so, the vibe of the whole rehearsal was horrible. Max and Courtney were obviously avoiding me. But what did they even have to be mad about? They weren’t the ones who’d been accused of being a bitch. Evan, on the other hand, wouldn’t leave me alone, even though he should have been the one avoiding me.

He was like a harpy, lingering around in the wings for any little break or moment where he could swoop in and try to get my attention. I spent the first part of the afternoon attempting to flat-out ignore him, and when that didn’t work, I switched to cutting him off as soon as he starting talking, with variations of “Go away, Evan.” But nothing worked. He was relentless.

The second rehearsal ended, I booked it out of there and went straight home, relieved to finally be free from all of it, if only until tomorrow.

I should have known that wouldn’t be the end of it. I was in the kitchen helping Dad with dinner when Evan showed up on my doorstep.

Papa answered the door; from the next room over, I heard their whole conversation.

“Hi, Evan,” Papa said.

“Hi, Mr. Freeman.”

“Oh, you can call me Seth.”

“Cool. Is Lucy around?”

I tried to wave at Papa, to get his attention and mime that I wasn’t here, but he didn’t see me. I still hadn’t told them that Evan and I had broken up, so Papa didn’t know that he was doing anything wrong when he invited Evan in for dinner.

They came into the kitchen together. “Did you know that Evan here has never had pizza on the grill before? We are going to have to fix that immediately,” Papa said. But his lighthearted demeanor faded when he saw my face. “You okay, Lu?”

I was gripping onto my knife so tightly my fingers were going numb. “Don’t you ever give up?” I said.

“I just want to talk to you,” Evan said.

I glanced at my dads, who were watching us in confusion. I wasn’t going to have this conversation in front of them. All I needed was yet more people hounding me about my seemingly nonexistent reason for breaking up with Evan.

“Fine. I’m going out,” I