Dead to Me

I spent the whole walk to the auditorium trying to work out how much Sable actually knew, and my stomach had flipped itself inside out three times before I got there.

Turned out to be nothing. A bluff, or some half-truth she'd blown up bigger than it was, because when I finally caught her by the vending machines, all she had was gossip about a boy on the swim team that didn't connect to anything real. I almost laughed with relief, then remembered relief wasn't exactly the right feeling for any of this.

It didn't last. Gray found me ten minutes later in the parking lot, and one look told me the reprieve was already over.

"Explain something," he said. "Why does half the football team think you told Coach Reyes I've been faking injuries to skip two-a-days?"

"What? I never said that."

"That's the story going around. A month ago I'd have walked straight up to whoever started it and shut it down for you, no questions asked. That's what I do. That's what I've always done for you." His voice climbed, months of holding it in finally cracking open. "I don't get to do that anymore, do I? You made sure of that."

"Gray, I didn't start it."

"I don't even care who started it. I care that you turned into someone I don't recognize the second things got hard, and you won't tell me why." He dragged a hand through his hair. For one second I caught something under the anger, and it looked a lot more like grief. "I poured my heart out to you on that dock. Do you have any idea what that cost me? You let me believe it meant something to you too. Then you humiliated me in front of the whole school like it was nothing."

"It wasn't nothing."

"Then what was it? All you've done since summer is hurt me. Over and over. And some idiot part of me kept coming back because I thought you'd eventually tell me the truth." His eyes were wet. I'd never seen Gray Locke cry, not even at his mom's funeral. "I'm done. I mean it. Keep your secret. From now on, you're dead to me."

He walked away before I found a single word to say. I stood there with the sun beating down on my scalp, thinking, of all things, about the three or four strands of hair that had come out in the shower that morning. Maybe it was better this way. Maybe it would hurt less when the real ending came if he'd already stopped loving me first.

I almost believed that, walking back past the trophy case, past the auditorium doors propped open for rehearsal signups.

Then the hallway tilted.

The floor rushed up at some wrong angle. My vision narrowed to a pinhole of light before the edges went dark. Somebody shouted my name from far away. Footsteps pounding closer. The last thing I felt before everything went black was cold tile against my cheek.