Page 36 of What You Left Me

“I didn’t graduate,” I whisper. The right answer to the wrong question.

Confused, Cameron falls onto the buttons inside the elevator. I stare at the illuminated numbers to avoid her gaze. “I don’t get what you’re saying,” she says as she presses two again and again, hoping it will override the fact that she’s also selected every other floor. “Graduation is literally the only reason we’re here right now.”

The earth shakes, pulling us down.

“I never took my Honors Algebra II final.”

“Hornsby? Wasn’t Daniel in that class with you? You were sick on finals day, but you went back the next week and took it. You got a C minus, and it murdered your GPA.” Pressing two, pressing two. Pounding on two. Holding two.

“No, I didn’t.”

“But you said…”

The elevator stops. Doors open. Not our floor.

“You said…” she repeats, her voice getting smaller. She releases the two.

“I said a lot of things.”

The doors close. Down we go.

“I have too many questions to pick one,” she starts. Her breathing speeds up. She’s picked one all right. “How could you be at graduation without a third math credit?”

I speak to the floor numbers. “My parents worked out a deal with the school. I had to go in and sign a form and all this stuff, basically promising to take the final with the underclassmen on Monday.Tomorrow.Wow, it’s tomorrow,” I realize, panicked for a moment. I shake it off. “If I don’t pass, I have to take summer school, and I’ll lose my scholarship at Notre Dame. Probably won’t be able to go at all. But they let me walk because my parents were likeCaroline and Jessica blah blah blah,and final transcripts don’t get submitted until next week. It’s a whole thing.”

We jerk forward. The doors open. Still not our floor. I grab onto the handrail to steady myself.

She shakes her head, trying hard to comprehend this. “Why didn’t you just take a math class senior year?” She squats down to try and catch my eye.

Tears have formed. If I look at her, they will fall.

Doors close. Down again.

“I don’t know,” I say.

I know, of course. But it’s starting again. The words and the memories are creeping out of my attic and onto the main floor. Ryan’s left hand is pressed over my mouth. His right is moving lower, probing.

Cameron hugs me. Her body works as a dam, stopping the flow of memories from breaking me. “Eleventh in the class with a missing credit.” She strokes my arm. “Steve Taggart probably carries a lock of your hair in his wallet.”

I fake a smile for her. “Probably. He knows about the missing credit somehow.”

“Leave it to Taggart.”

“Enjoy your valedictorianism, Stevey. It’s on the house.” The elevator doors open to reveal a bright purple wall. Every hall on the way up was blue. “Ugh. What did I tell you about the way back?”

“Actually, you didn’t tell me anything about it,” Cameron says. Knowing she just successfully navigated us into and out of a delicate conversation, she doesn’t press further. “We’re going to Martin’s, aren’t we?” she asks instead.

“We have to now.”

“You’re right. This is so much weirder than I could have ever thought.”

18

When someone dies, you’re supposed to go through a series of feelings about it. Stages of grief or whatever. What do you do when you’re the one that people think died? Telling Petra about the pact should get everyone to believe that I’m alive. Right? There isn’t a soul in the world who knows about that aside from Spitty. You’re not gonna get any better proof than that.

Right?

How long ago was it that I laughed this off and thought of it as one of my dreams? That is what is killing me, in the nonliteral sense. I have no idea. What if it’s been like thirty years, and I’m some vegetable, and Petra’s some freakin’, I don’t know, astrophysicist or something, and she’s just having some random dream about that guy she met at graduation? Or worse, what if they buried me, and I’m suffocating inside my casket, and no one knows it and, and, and—