Chapter 14: Blame

Teagan's post had been up for ten hours when I walked into school on Monday.

It was a photograph of me on the Hargrove drive, soaked, with my head down, under the bare maples.

The caption said, "In February the scholarship girl begged the internet to rescue her from a bus shelter."

"Bowen Hargrove drove out to do it. He never came home."

Under it, in smaller type, she had added, "Ask her why she's still here."

Four thousand views. I stared at the screen in the parking lot, watching the number climb.

Cassie was waiting at the doors with her arms crossed.

"Don't read the comments," she said.

"I read them in the shower."

"Then don't read the ones in the hall."

The hall was worse than the comments.

It was quiet in the old way, the way it had been before Friday. But this quiet had edges.

A girl who had said "Hey, Maisy" to me last week turned her back and walked off.

Two boys from the lacrosse team stood against the lockers and watched me come, and neither of them laughed.

That was the part I did not expect.

In October they had laughed. Now they just looked at me.

Somebody had written ALDER RD on my locker in thick black marker.

I stood there and read it.

It was only a road.

It had a guardrail with a broken post, and I was the reason a boy had been on it.

"Maisy," Cassie said quietly.

"I know."

"Drake's not here," Cassie said. "His car isn't in the lot. I checked."

"I didn't ask."

"You looked."

I had. I had looked at every parking space, and I hated that I had.

By lunch I knew what I was going to do.

I had spent half a day doing what I always did. I held still, and I let things be done to me, and I took it.

Keep reading free with an account. Start How to Wreck My Bully's Heart from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.