Chapter 22: The Tombstone

Abby's POV

The Calloway bus station is open all night, and it has exactly one bench that doesn't wobble.

I took that one at ten past two on the morning of my hearing, with my mother's duffel between my feet and a ticket home in my fist.

The next bus left at 5:40.

I had four hours to decide whether I was a coward.

My phone was open to a website I had no business visiting.

Dell had joked about cemetery plots in October, and I'd laughed.

At one in the morning, alone in my room, I had looked up a stone company.

MEMORIAL STONES, said the site. ORDER IN MINUTES.

I had filled in the form.

Name: Abigail Anne Curry.

Inscription: a field with room for forty characters, and my thumb over it.

WIFE OF, I typed.

I looked at it.

Then I deleted it, one letter at a time, and typed BILLED AND BURIED, and deleted that too.

The dream was right there on the bench with me.

It was always going to come on a Tuesday, in a dean's office, with a ficus.

In the dream I was expelled by Christmas, and nobody I loved said a word, because they were all busy.

I didn't want to find out if it was true.

If I got on the 5:40, nobody could expel me from anything.

"Ticket to where?"

I looked up.

Rowan stood three feet away in a gray coat, with his hands in his pockets and his nose still faintly purple.

"How did you find me?" I said.

"Dell. She went through your search history. She says she is sorry and also not."

"Where's Beckett?"

"Parking the car. Badly."

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