Chapter 13: The Print Shop

Drew's POV

I did not sleep the night after the meeting, so I was at the county yard before my father's crew.

The grader sat in its bay with the blade lowered.

I sat on the step with a thermos and watched the sky go gray.

I had told her.

For two weeks I had planned it as a confession.

In the end it had come out as a fact about a chipped stone.

She had not hit me, and she had not cried.

She had said she knew who she looked at.

Then she had walked back to her mother's car, and I had stood there until the streetlights buzzed.

In the first life, the week after the gates, I did not go to school.

I went to the hospital hallway and sat in a plastic chair, because nobody had told me to leave.

Her mother came out of a door with her apron still on.

She looked at every one of us along the wall.

She did not say a word to anyone, and that was worse than if she had.

I took that look onto the bus with me the second time.

That was why I was sitting across the aisle with a water bottle in my hand.

Keira Haverty had turned around white in the face.

I did not decide to give her the water.

My hand did it, and then I made myself decide the rest.

At seven I drove into town.

I told myself I was getting coffee.

Mrs. Satterlee's silver sedan was parked outside the Casa Verde Copy and Print, which opened at seven.

She had no reason to be there, since the board's own office had a machine.

The board had put her out of the chair the night before.

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