This Time, I Won't Be His Dead Weight novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bus Stop

Abigail refuses Hailey plainly, then Caleb asks her for until August to bring proof; she boards the bus and finds a new reply under his handle.

"No," I said.

Hailey stood on my porch with the foil tray and the suitcase and her mouth a little open.

"Abby, it's already arranged. My dad called the dean this afternoon. There's a seat for me on the Bridge."

"I didn't ask your dad to do that."

"I know, but we've done everything together since third grade."

"And now I want to do one thing without you."

I said it as gently as I could. It still came out.

Her eyes filled right away. Hailey could cry without her face going red, which I had envied since fifth grade.

"Is it because of what Caleb wrote?" she asked. "Because I swear I didn't know."

"It's because I want one thing nobody has to look after."

"You're not a thing I look after."

"Hailey."

She wiped under her eyes with two fingers and nodded, very bravely, and held out the tray.

"Lasagna," she said. "Heat it at 350. It's the good one."

Then she wheeled her suitcase back to the car.

She waved at me through the back window all the way down the street.

My dad ate three squares of the lasagna standing at the counter.

He said it was a shame about the girl, and he said it was a crime to waste good pasta.

I didn't answer either one.

I didn't sleep.

At 4:30 I lay on my bed and watched the window turn gray.

At 5:20 my dad carried my duffel to the truck.

He drove me to the Greyhound stop outside the pharmacy.

He had a load to pick up in Toledo and couldn't wait. He hugged me hard enough to bend my ribs.

"Call me from every state line," he said.

"There's like four states."

"Then four calls."

He drove off with his hazard lights blinking, which is how he says goodbye when he doesn't want to talk.

I sat down on the bench with the duffel at my feet and the rock hammer in my lap.

At 5:48 a figure came walking up the sidewalk from the lake road.

It was Caleb.

He had not slept either. His shirt was buttoned wrong, and he was carrying nothing at all.

He stopped three feet from the bench.

"You said you'd give me a day," he said.

"I never said that. You said it."

"You didn't say no."

I stood up and took the duffel strap in my hand.

"Is she okay?" I asked. "Hailey. From the boathouse."

"She's fine. She wasn't locked in. The latch had just swung shut." He swallowed. "Abby, I need five minutes."

"The bus is in ten."

"Then I need five of those."

I waited.

"It was never you," he said. "The weight I wrote about. It was never you. I swear on my mom."

"Then who?"

"Someone I made a promise about."

He said it carefully.

"I can't tell you her name, not yet."

He rubbed the back of his neck.

"If I say it with nothing to show, you'll think I'm lying to protect myself."

"And?"

"And I'd be taking something from someone who doesn't have much else."

I stared at him.

Someone he had promised. Someone who didn't have much else.

I knew exactly one girl in Kettle Ridge whose mother had died when she was twelve.

Caleb had stood at the foot of that hospital bed and promised to look after her.

"That's Hailey," I said.

"I'm not going to say a name."

"You don't have to."

"Abigail, listen." He stepped closer and took hold of my wrist. His thumb rested on the inside of it, where my pulse was.

He had never touched me there before.

"Give me until August," he said. "I'll bring you proof. After that you decide, and I'll live with it."

My heart was going so hard I was sure he could feel it.

I pulled my wrist back.

"You just told me you made a promise to a girl who has nobody," I said.

"And I'm supposed to wait in Minnesota while you finish keeping it?"

"That isn't what I said."

"It's what I heard."

The bus pulled in behind him with a long hiss of air brakes.

"Goodbye, Caleb."

I climbed the steps, showed the driver my ticket, and took a window seat on the left side.

I didn't look out of the window until the bus had pulled away.

By then the bench was empty.

I opened my phone to turn it off, and the thread was still open from the night before.

Under his old comment there was a new one.

It had been posted three minutes ago, from the tireswing_cal account.

"If she ever reads this: I'm sorry. I'm fixing it. I just need until August."

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