LITMIR.BIZ

      12

      I’m in a pretty bad mood when Olivia finds me, and she takes one look at my face and wordlessly hands me a rubber band. Olivia’s mom is a worrier who had a pretty messed-up childhood, and she always wears a rubber band around one wrist so that when she feels a burst of worry or a bad memory coming on, she can snap it against her skin and remind herself that she’s here.

      I put the rubber band on and give it a good yank. It stings—a lot—but I don’t feel better. I already know I’m here. I already know what’s on my mind.

      Anger.

      I’m starting to get scared at how angry I am, though. At how, when I try to find a way out, even for a second, I can’t.

      I snap the rubber band again as Olivia opens her locker. Still nothing. I do it again, and again, and then the band breaks, falls off my wrist and to the floor.

      I stare at it. Someone steps right on it, and then it’s gone, trampled off down the hall.

      I look at my wrist. There’s a red welt on it.

      My mother has marks on her skin from the tubes and needles. She has to be turned and moved so her skin won’t get sores.

      “Okay, that clearly didn’t work,” Olivia says, grabbing my arm as she closes her locker door. “Come on, we gotta get you to your locker before classes start.”

      “I left my books in Dan’s car,” I say, and look around as Olivia says something about finding a notebook for me to take to class.

      I see people walking by. Fast, slow, laughing, frowning. So normal. I hate that too.

      And then I see Caleb Harrison standing by a locker, staring at me. I see him look at my wrist, at my face, and I can’t see anyone walking by anymore.

      He saw me yesterday. He saw me with Mom yesterday.

      He knows something’s wrong with me.

      “Here,” Olivia says, sticking a notebook into my hands just as the bell rings. “See you later.”

      I nod. What happened to Mom isn’t a secret, but the whole baby thing never really got much attention. I thought it would—I thought it would pull in the nighttime reporters, the ones who are seen on TV everywhere—but it didn’t. There were a couple of things locally, sandwiched in between stories about allegations surrounding the governor, but that was it.

      “Death...and life,” they always said, like my mother and what happened to her could be boiled down into three words and a pause.

      Some people in my classes said they were sorry or asked how I felt, but that was right after it happened, and when I didn’t break down and scream, when I kept coming to school, things went back to how they’d always been. Who was applying where, who needed what SAT score, who was going to hire someone to help them write their entrance essay and who was stressing out and how badly it would screw their grades.