Page 1 of What You Left Me

Part One

1

FRIDAY, JUNE 8

Right here in the middle, with 867 other sweaty kids herded like cattle around me, I want to die. End it all on the football field. Burn up into ash and leave behind this hideous robe. There’s no way I’m spending my afterlife wearing yellow polyester.

The first thing I did when I walked out here today was make an official announcement to everyone in my general vicinity. “In this gown, I am a disgrace to the McGee family name,” I said.

I can’t have my classmates thinking I don’t know how ridiculous I look. I know, okay?

I know.

I’m not the most ridiculous person here though. That award goes to our valedictorian, Steve Taggart. There’s no refund on the six minutes of my life I’m currently donating to his speech about how we’re all birds taking flight. Dude, I’m not a bird. I’m Martin McGee. I’m hot, I’m bored, and I don’t have anyone to talk to right now. Forgive me while my eyes glaze over as I drift off into oblivion.

If I counted, and I mean if I got really specific, I’d say I know about four hundred of the people graduating today. That’s including, like, the drug dealer who sits at my study hall table, that super tall blond who has a cross-country picture on the wall by the main entrance, and the girl who threw up before picture day in first grade. I don’t see any of them right now. Based on the amount of random people around me, this could straight up be my first day of school.

Okay, maybe I don’t want to die, but I could go for teleportation. I’d find Spits and talk him out of our bet. When this is all over, I’ll need my ten bucks for a celebratory meal. It’s the only money I have to my name, and, well, high school will be done.

That calls for a sandwich.

• • •

Oh, Steve Taggart. Sweat has painted circles through his yellow robe. The random smattering of claps that follow his final sentence must be more for his underarm artwork than his terrible speech. My personal applause is for the end of Steve Taggart’s reign as smartest kid in school. See you in hell, Steve Taggart! Or at Notre Dame, but maybe the universe will grant me one kindness and make it so we never cross paths there.

At the rate I’m going, it won’t be a problem.

Steve walks back to his spot, smug and sweat-drenched, and settles into the innermost aisle seat of the front row. The rest of the top ten sit alongside him in order of class rank. The chosen ones.

I’m in the miserable middle, plain old Petra McGowan of theMsection, sandwiched between my alphabetical neighbors. Three different middle schools merged into our high school, and while there are faces nearby that I’ve known my whole life, there are also faces I swear I’ve never seen before. Like the two complete strangers on either side of me. For four years, we’ve coexisted, sharing walls and desks and hall passes and gossip without ever managing to cross paths. When you try hard to be good at this whole school thing, you end up with the same group of people in every class. As the years tick by, the numbers dwindle. No one ever randomly decides to take an AP course. This is the first and only time we’ve all been united; a bunch of squirming and vibrating cells being observed by the microscope that is the high-noon sun, waiting for this pomp and circumstance to end.

Steve Taggart’s speech marks the end of one part of the ceremony and the beginning of the next—the ever-important receipt of the diploma. It begins with the parade of our most intelligent: Valedictorian Steve, Salutatorian Marissa Huang, third in the class Jay Cattaro, and then, my favorite mouthful of a name, Cameron Catherine Elizabeth Hannafin-Bower.

Cameron’s wiry auburn hair engulfs her profile until she becomes nothing but a moving ball of energy, all warm colors and excited twitches. She turns to face the crowd and flashes her most vibrant gap-toothed smile at me. Or in my general vicinity. I’m not sure she can see this far back. Rank eleventh like me, and there is no fanfare. You’re deep among the plebeians, permanently imprinting your lower half into a foldout plastic chair while waiting for your spot in the alphabet.

At least I was blessed with McGowan for a last name, not Prabhu or Stetson. Poor Aminah and Daniel. It’ll be hours before they get to graduate.PandSmay not seem very far from me, but I’m almost positive a third of our graduating glass has anMlast name.

Mister tenth in the class—the last of the spots that could have been mine if things had been different—walks across the stage, ending the stream of academic overachievers getting their only moment of priority over the athletes.

How nice it would’ve been to get that single candle flicker of justice.

The march of the mundane begins with Alex Abraham. His mom breaks the rules and uses a blow horn when his name is called, sending a much-needed jolt of energy through our class. The boy next to me jumps out of his seat.

• • •

Alex Abraham’s mom uses a blow horn. I jump out of my seat.

“Aw, c’mon,” I say to myself. And kind of to the girl next to me. She turns a little, brushing a piece of her hair out of her eyes to see me, so I keep going. “Alex Abraham’s gotta be angling for some kind of last-ditch recognition as a rebel or something. I swear I’ve never heard that kid say more than five words in my whole life. Now he’s got the family bringing out blow horns? Let it go, kid. It’s over.”

The girl does something halfway between laughing and shrugging. We aren’t supposed to talk, but it’s a rule without consequence. It’s not like they’ll take away our diplomas now.

I pass time by trying to list every Cubs manager I can recall, in reverse chronological order. I’m all the way back to Leo Durocher (1966–1972), when I catch sight of Spits shuffling into his seat. He’s arrived right in between the graduations of Bryant Carpenter and Eduardo Carrera, and he’s causing a tiny commotion while making his way down his row. The other graduates yelp as he trips over their feet. Spits just laughs.

“He’s such a loser,” I mutter, half laughing to myself.

“I’ll say,” the girl next to me quips back.

I’m stunned. I shoot her a look, but she’s got her eyes right back on her hands, the smallest trace of a smile hanging on her lips.