This Time, I Won't Be His Dead Weight novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Thread
On the last night of exams a classmate reads a stranger's reply aloud about four lost years and 'that dead weight'; Abigail knows the handle, walks off the dock in front of everyone and accepts a spot four states away. Caleb texts: don't send anything.
On the night the exams ended, forty seniors sat on the Sundell dock and passed one phone around the circle.
It was Hailey's phone, and the thread on it was called "If you could do it all over, what major would you pick this time?"
Whoever held the phone read a reply out loud, and everybody groaned or laughed.
"Nursing, so I never have to touch calculus again," a girl read.
"Art history, because my mom says it's useless," a boy read, and the dock cheered.
I sat on the edge with my boots hanging over the water.
Hailey tucked a gray sweater around my shoulders without asking. It was the one that always lived in her bag.
"You're shaking, Abigail Tennison," she said. "You never bring a jacket."
I hadn't felt cold. I put my arms through the sleeves anyway.
Caleb had gone up to the house to get more ice.
The phone reached a boy from my chemistry class, and he grinned at the screen.
"Okay, here's a weird one," he said. "'Psychology. I'd have understood people sooner, and the girl I love and I wouldn't have lost four years worrying about the dead weight between us.'"
Somebody whistled.
"Ouch," a girl said. "Whoever that is, she's about to get dumped by text."
"Dead weight," someone else repeated, laughing. "Poor girl."
I laughed too, because everyone was laughing.
Then the boy held the screen toward the light and said, "Hang on. His picture's a tire swing."
I stopped laughing.
I knew that tire swing. It hung from the maple in my backyard, and Caleb took that picture the summer we were nine.
The handle under it said tireswing_cal.
I took the phone out of the boy's hand and scrolled up to the top of the comment.
It was posted two days ago, at 3:12 in the morning.
I didn't need a minute to work out who he meant.
For four years Caleb Alderson had walked me to class, fixed my bike chain, and done my calculus homework at his kitchen table.
His mother set a plate for me every Sunday. He once lent me forty dollars the week my dad's truck broke down.
And every time Hailey called, he got up and went to her.
She was the "she."
I was the one they had both had to worry about.
"Abby." Hailey reached over and turned the phone face down on her knee, very gently, as if it might wake someone. "Don't read any more. Somebody copied his picture. Caleb would never write that."
"He's the only one who has that picture," I said.
"Then he was tired, sweetheart. It's probably not even about you." She squeezed my hand. "Come on. Let's get you some cocoa."
Her voice was so kind that for one second I almost let her.
Then Caleb came down the dock with a bag of ice on his shoulder.
"Cal!" the boy from chemistry called. "Who's your Psychology girl?"
Caleb stopped walking.
He looked at the boy, then at the phone, then at me.
"Abby," he said.
Three phones were pointed at us. I could see their little red lights.
I stood up, took off Hailey's sweater, folded it, and handed it back to her.
"Congratulations," I said to Caleb. "You two don't have to carry me anymore."
Nobody laughed this time.
So I walked off the dock.
I was halfway along the planks when Caleb caught my elbow.
"Two minutes," he said, low, steering me toward the dark end, past the last string of lights. "Not here. Please. It isn't what you think."
We had barely started when Hailey called behind us.
"Cal? I feel dizzy. The water's moving."
He stopped.
He looked at me, and I watched him decide.
Then he let go and went back to her.
I walked home, two miles along the lake road, with my hands in my pockets.
By the first mile I had made up my mind.
At my kitchen table, I opened my laptop to an email I had ignored for three weeks.
"Congratulations. A place has opened on the Geology Summer Bridge at Northern Shore University, Duluth, Minnesota. Please confirm by midnight Sunday. Classes begin June 9."
I had told Caleb about it in April. I told him I would never go, because he and Hailey were both going to Ohio Valley State, and I had signed up to go with them.
I typed, "Yes. I accept."
My phone buzzed on the table.
Caleb: "Don't send anything yet. I'm coming at 7 to explain 'she.' Please, Abby."
I looked at the screen.
I had already pressed send.
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