Collateral Damage

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Local Child Overdoses. That was the headline they used. It was everywhere, spreading like wildfire all over the news.

Verndale was rocked to the core. First the McCloud scandal, and now this. This used to be such a nice place, people lamented on social media. Now girls are getting raped and overdosing. As if the girls in question willingly brought this misfortune on the town.

Those weren't even the worst comments. Speculation ran rampant on social media over the state of her mind. Plenty of ignorant assholes drew their own conclusions.

Sounds like the kid was a just another retard.

Good thing Granny didn't keep a gun. Then the headcase would have shot up her entire school. At least she had the decency to just off herself.

Not that there wasn't any compassion for the family. When I returned to school the next day, dozens of flowers and teddy bears were spread out on the ground in front of John's locker. Caitlyn Wright and her sympathy squad must have pulled a real rush job to have it ready in a day.

That wasn't all. Taped to the door was a flyer with condolence messages: best wishes, sorry for your loss, thinking of you...

How many of the signers had even spoken to John, much less heard of him, before now?

In any case, John wasn't there to see it. At that point, I wasn't sure if he'd ever come to school again.

Ana stopped at my locker at lunchtime. It had been a while since I'd seen her up close. I noted several new piercings that made ears like they had been bedazzled, along with a red streak dyed through her curly black hair. She stood there, her face anxious, her arms crossed rigidly over her chest.

"Hey," she said softly, looking down at her boots.

"Hi," I muttered back.

"I..." She fidgeted with one of her rings. "I heard about that girl—John's sister. I know you two hang out and...I just wanted to say I was sorry."

I couldn't think of anything else to say. I just nodded.

She chewed on her lip. It was obvious she was uncomfortable just being near me. "You...you doing okay?"

"Not really."

"Yeah." She winced, looked away. "I figured."

I regretted my brusqueness. She was trying to be nice, after all. "How about you?" I tried. "Things okay?"

She shrugged in her familiar, breezy way. "Same ol', same ol'."

"Still seeing Danny?"

"Yup."

"Still watching Scandal?"

"Yup. Fitz is still a dick."

"I figured."

We fell silent. The months apart stretched out between us, a barrier that neither one of us knew how to breach. We had been best friends for years. Now we were strangers that had to force ourselves into a casual conversation.

"So," she cleared her throat. "Let me know if you need anything?"

"Okay," I replied, pretending that she actually meant it.

"See ya." She left extremely quickly.

Later, thought there was a note taped to my locker: Meet me at 3:00 in the schoolyard.

Was it her? I didn't recognize the handwriting, but it must be her. Why else would we be meeting in the same place where we used to have lunch? Maybe she regretted what happened and wanted to set things right.