Page 13 of What You Left Me

My cheeks burn. “Let’s go. I can come back tomorrow.”

She makes no effort to hide how much I’m disturbing her, aggressively grabbing my magazine to toss onto a stack. “Daniel wouldn’t even come with us here tonight, and he’s having a pool day tomorrow, sohewon’t be driving you.” She shakes Cameron awake. “You’d have to askthissleeping beauty for a ride. Just taking us here was a big deal, especially since she thought she was leaving her car at your house for the night while we partied our youth away with a bunch of classmates we never met. You know how she gets about wasting gas.” Cameron, only half-coherent, gives a thumbs-up to that. “I’m not sure how you plan on doing this again tomorrow.”

I don’t answer. Just stand up and walk toward the exit. They both follow. No one says goodbye to us. A few odd looks, one quasi grin, but no words.

I’ll find a way to get here tomorrow.

5

A yellow sea appears in front of Petra. Students—868, counting herself—cloaked in graduation gowns. She sits among them, smack-dab in the middle. “This again,” she mutters in response to the ceremony. She starts chipping off her nail polish to kill the time.

“What?” Martin McGee sits next to her, his fists balled up in anticipation and his eyes wide with terror and fascination.

“I said that, didn’t I?” Petra asks him, mortified. But she can’t help herself. She keeps talking. “This whole thing is ridiculous. Put on a robe and pretend to care about all of these other people walking across the stage. It doesn’t really do justice to what it takes to get to this moment. Although it’s kind of perfect, actually. Ninety-five percent wasted time, five percent valuable. Just like high school!” The words pour out, her every passing thought now conversation. “Of course, if I was valedictorian instead of Steve Taggart, I’m sure I’d be looking out at all these people and thinking the system was perfect.”

She stops to consider Martin again. His bewildered stare hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s grown stronger. “Figures. You’re afraid of me because I’m being myself,” she says. Her throat goes dry.

“No,” Martin says back. There’s a fervor to his tone. “Not at all.” He shakes off a distracted thought. “I just don’t understand what’s going on.”

“What? With us? Nothing.” Her tongue is as sharp as cut glass. She doesn’t even want to be harsh with him, but she can’t stop. Her usual filter seems to be broken. Her every emotion and thought come out as is, without time to reconsider. Before she can stop herself, she says, “I want to try, but I don’t know you well enough to know if it’s worth it.” This unexpected bout of vulnerability stifles her breath.

The strange mix of confusion and terror on Martin’s face grows.

Petra puts her hands over her mouth to prevent herself from saying more.

Hands over mouth.

Not hers anymore. An old memory overtakes the moment, and with a flick, like a remote changing channels, she’s in the back of Ryan’s Jeep. His callused palm is pressing so hard into her face that her lips fold into her gums.

She’s moving. Fighting. Resisting.

Flick.

She’s back at graduation, one of 868 again.

The scenery sharpens. Details she hadn’t noticed before come into clear view, like the fact that there is a curved wall all around them, and the sky is not a sky, but a ceiling. They’re inside a cylinder of sorts. It’s dank and gray. And shrinking.

The room is shrinking.

“What just happened?” Martin asks.

Petra doesn’t have words. The old memory has affected her like a disease would, preventing her ability to speak.

“Please, just tell me what’s going on,” Martin pleads.

“Petra Margaret McGowan,” a voice calls out from the stage.

Somehow, it’s become her time to graduate. She rises as if possessed and scoots down her row out to the center aisle. The other graduates track every step of her silent processional.

Petra picks up her pace, keeping her eyes trained on her feet, hoping to blend in enough that the stares no longer follow her. When she reaches the stage, she begins the walk from left to right, finding a modicum of comfort in this familiar motion. Still she can feel the other graduates’ stares growing more critical. She reaches out for a diploma, but there is nothing there.

The other graduates laugh.

Petra can’t help herself. She looks out to see their faces.

They don’thavefaces.

Their features are melted into blurs. It should make it easier, but everything becomes more concentrated instead, like the students all have one pair of eyes and one single thought:Petra is a fraud.