New Believers Of God

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Over the next several days, I began to put my plan into action, which was nothing short of easy. I took a Wildside brochure from St. Philip's, and also ordered a Hangin' In hoodie for Holly. During that time, I still had to deal with her resentment towards me, and just to stay on the safe side, didn't say a word to the guys about it either. But as much as it may have eaten at me, I wanted to wait until I had it all ready before coming forward.

On the way to school the following Monday, I sat eagerly with the hoodie in my backpack, while trying to act normal in front of Shane as well.

Some days, to help pass the time, I would look out the window and watch the vehicles that were coming in the other direction. This day in particular, I felt like that was something I certainly could have used.

I stared through the glass and saw one by one, buses, vans, pickup trucks, semi-trucks, an ambulance, a couple police cars.

Suddenly, my attention was drawn to the latter as I watched them speed down the road with their sirens flashing and blaring, Shane doing the same himself.

"Where do you think they're going?" I asked him.

"I don't know." he answered, "Probably some old person's house."

"Yeah." I agreed "Or maybe there was a fire."

"Right." he agreed back "But then where's the fire truck?"

We continued to speculate a little while longer before eventually brushing it off as we arrived.

The day started out as normal as usual. I went to my first block and elective, not paying any attention to what we were doing. I had decided to give Holly her hoodie at lunch and just couldn't think about anything else. I could see it now, her face brightening up, making that wonderful smile, and thanking me with a hug of forgiveness. She would see how much I really cared about her and wanted to be her friend. Waiting for that was worth every second.

As my first elective let out, I noticed that something was a little bit off.

Unlike most days, when the halls were loud and crowded, on this one in particular, they were rather quiet. Probably the quietest they had ever been during school hours. However, I didn't think too much about it, simply assuming it was just a strange occurrence, and persisted to grab my lunch from my locker.

As I entered the cafeteria though, that's when I really came to realize that something was wrong.

As I looked around, every person at every table was crying, and other than some light whispering, the silence was even greater. Obviously, I knew this had to be serious, whatever it was. Still, even then, all I cared about at that moment was Holly. But when I headed over to her table, I came to see she wasn't there. With that being the case, I started searching for her, and eventually ran into one of her friends, Anna, who I could tell had been crying hard too. Tears were rolling nonstop down her face.

"Anna." I said, "What's going on here?"

She couldn't even answer at first. Every time she tried, she just cried more.

"Come on Anna!" I told her, frantically "What happened?"

"It's Holly." she finally replied.

I froze dead where I stood.

"What about her?" I asked.

"Her Mom was driving her here this morning." she answered through sobs "They were in an accident."

Just then, I remembered the police cars and ambulance. That was where they were going.

"Is she alright?" I asked.

"No." she answered.

I was too afraid to find out what she meant.

"But she will be." I added "Right?"

"No." she repeated.

Immediately after saying that, she walked away, having reached her breaking point.

As I stood there by myself, I spent the next couple minutes trying to grasp what she had told me, what she had meant by that, and the second I put it together, I started crying too.

Holly was gone, and she was never coming back.