She placed the papers in a folder and set it aside. “As expected, none of the teachers have any concerns. If anything, you’re actually paying more attention in class now than before.”
“Well, I guess that’s one good thing.”
Her smile was tight-lipped. “How’s everything been at home?”
I schooled my features blank. “Everything’s okay.”
On went the glasses. “Your mother contacted me yesterday. She’s concerned about how you’re adjusting to everything.”
Jerking up in my seat, I snapped my mouth closed. Mom hadn’t spoken to me since the blowup on Monday night. And I was okay with that. “She called you?”
“Yes. She’s worried that you’re having a hard time connecting things from before the…incident with your life now.” Off went the glasses. “Do you want to talk about it?”
My teeth ached from how hard I was clenching my jaw. “It’s more like she’s having a problem with the way I am now.”
Mrs. Messer nibbled on the end piece. “Something to do with a boy…?”
Heat swept over my cheeks. “I was eating ice cream with a boy and she freaked out.” I couldn’t believe my mom had called her! Mom hadn’t made good on calling an actual therapist, but telling the school counselor was bad enough. Gripping the arms on the chair, I took a deep breath. “I’m not the same person I was before the incident. And you know what? I think it’s a good thing. I was a complete and utter bitch before.”
Putting the glasses back on once again, her lips twitched as if she really wanted to smile. Not the fake, tight smiles she always gave me. “Well, if it makes you feel better, I did explain to her that she would see personality changes.”
“I bet she took that well,” I grumbled. “She thinks I’m…”
“She thinks what, Samantha?”
I started chewing on my thumbnail as my foot anxiously tapped the floor. The urge to spill my secrets came at me fast and hard, and I wanted to cave. “I don’t know. She’s embarrassed by me. I think she’s always been.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” the counselor said, watching me. “Have you been able to recover any more memories?”
Focusing on the picture of the cherub-faced little boy in the photo on her desk, I gave a lopsided shrug. “Just bits and pieces, and they don’t make much sense. There hasn’t been a rush of memories, even though I’ve been doing like you’ve told me. I thought…I thought the news about Cassie would trigger something, but it hasn’t.”
“And how are you handling the news about Cassie? Do you still feel apathetic toward her?”
I hated it when she said things like that, even though I understood what she meant. My inability to recall the feelings surrounding my relationship with Cassie did make it hard to share in the grief everyone felt over her sudden death. “I’m trying to remember her.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said.
Returning to my thumbnail, I refused to answer. “Can I ask you a question?”
Mrs. Messer nodded.
“Do people who start to get their memories back see…weird things?”
Her eyes blinked slowly behind her glasses. “What kind of weird things?”
I shrugged again. “I don’t know. Like just seeing weird stuff or hearing voices?”
She took off the glasses, folding them this time. “Some memories can come back in the form of voices or images that may seem strange. If you could give me an example…”
I waited for her to put the glasses back on or to chew on them, but when she did neither, I knew I’d thrown her off her game. Not good. Just from her lack of fiddling with her glasses, I guessed hearing and seeing weird things wasn’t normal.
When I didn’t elaborate, she moved on, but I knew she’d come back to it again, probably on Friday. “Cassie’s funeral is on Monday. That may be a hard…event for you—”
“Or maybe it will help me remember something.”
“Maybe,” she agreed, scribbling something down on her pad.
My session was over, and I had to hurry to my locker so I wouldn’t be late. The first thing I saw when I opened the metal door was a note, written on yellow paper, folded in a triangle. Looking around before I opened it, I made sure no one was lingering nearby.
These notes baffled me—hell, they frightened me. If it had been me…if I’d done something to Cassie and somehow hurt myself in the process, what explained these notes? What was worse? Being responsible for Cassie’s death or the possibility that the culprit was still out there? The same person who was stalking me with a never-ending supply of legal notepaper?
I didn’t have an answer. Sighing, I unfolded the note.
You know why she was at the lake.
Part of me wanted to laugh as I folded up the note, adding it to the other one in my bag, but a familiar unease coated my throat. Obviously I didn’t know why she was at the lake. Whoever was leaving these things needed to get a little clearer about my situation, which brought up bigger questions.
Who was leaving these notes, and how much did they know?
Closing my locker, I turned as Del rounded the corner and sauntered toward me. A little stab of guilt shot through me as I remembered how badly I’d wanted to kiss Carson.
Del wrapped his arm around my shoulders and kissed my cheek before pulling back, tugging lightly on my ponytail. “You look tired. Doing okay?”
I smoothed my hand over my hair self-consciously. “I really didn’t put much into getting ready today….”
“It’s okay.” He wrapped his hand around mine as we started down the hall. “Everyone understands you’ve been through a lot, and with the news about Cassie, no one expects much.”
My brow arched, but I didn’t say anything. Stopping outside of my math class, he kissed me good-bye—this time on the lips. Not a bad kiss at all. It was warm and dry, soft. Even patient, but my toes still curled for all the wrong reasons.
Del pulled back, searching my eyes intently. “You sure you’re just tired?”
Mysterious notes, the possibility that I might have had a hand in what happened to Cassie, and crazy thoughts aside, I had serious boy troubles. As if my life couldn’t get more complicated, I was lusting after the wrong guy according to everyone else—my brother’s best friend—while my boyfriend patiently waited for me to snap out of it.
I needed to figure out how I felt about Del if there was any hope for us because stringing him along wasn’t fair. If I was no longer the girl who’d fallen in love with him, it wasn’t right to keep up this…this charade.
Mulling over my options during my morning classes, I still had no idea what to do. I didn’t know what it was that kept me lingering. Fear of letting go of one of the last things that linked me to my old life? My relationship with my old friends was practically nonexistent at this point, leaving Del as the last vestige of the old Sam. Unable to decide how I felt about that, I eventually pushed those thoughts away and focused on Cassie. The most recent note told me nothing, but it did point me in the right direction.
I needed to get to that lake.
Maybe seeing it would trigger a key memory—help me remember an important detail. Selfish as this was, the need to know what happened wasn’t just for Cassie anymore. I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t the one responsible for what had happened. To her and to me.
A plan formed slowly in my mind, and before heading to my friends’ table at lunch, I was already in the process of implementing it. I stopped at my brother’s table. “Can I borrow your car after practice?”
His brows inched up his forehead. “I’m not sure about that.”
I sat down, prepared to beg and plead. “I promise I won’t let anything happen to your car. I just need to do something after school.”
“What?” he asked, eyes narrowing.
“Something,” I said. “Please, Scott.”
Julie grinned at her brother. “I can’t remember the last time I heard her say please, so you kind of have to let her.”
“You’re not helping.” Scott sat back, eyes still trained on me. “Why don’t you let Julie take you wherever you want to go?”
“I can’t,” she said quickly, then flushed. “Not that I don’t want to, because I kind of do want to hang out, Sam.”
“Okay.” I still felt a little stung, even though I hadn’t planned on bringing anyone with me, but she seemed as if she genuinely wanted to be friends again.
Looking relieved, she smiled. “I have to work at the theater after school. It’s my shift today.”
“Oh, crap, I forgot.” Scott sighed. “Fine. I’ll be home before five. You can borrow it then, and I swear, if anything happens to my baby, it’s your ass.”
Ecstatic, I jumped up and leaned across the table, hugging him. “You’re the best.”
My brother’s jaw dropped. He shook his head, speechless, as I said good-bye to an equally shell-shocked Julie and headed to the back of the cafeteria. Only when I plopped my plate down beside Lauren did I realize Carson hadn’t been at the table. During bio, he’d acted as if nothing had happened between us, and that was probably for the best. At least until I figured out what I was going to do with Del.
I felt better than I had in days. It was as if I finally had a purpose, something to investigate, instead of sitting around in a daze. I dug into what I thought was sliced ham.
“So, I saw you talking to Julie.” Veronica picked at the label of her bottle of water. “Did you guys kiss and make up?”
“She was actually talking to her brother,” Lauren said, her eyes nervously bouncing between us.
“I don’t understand why your brother is with her,” Candy said. “He’s definitely dating down.”
I bit down on the anger building inside me. “What’s wrong with Julie? She’s really nice, and my brother likes her.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Candy glanced across the table at Veronica. “Her father works at a cigar shop in town. And not like he owns and works there, but, like, works there for minimum-wage slave labor.”
“He does?” I feigned shock. “Holy crap, I can’t believe they let her attend school here.”
“I know!” Candy nodded.
Lauren smothered her laugh with her hand.
“She was being sarcastic,” Veronica explained, her cheeks flushed. “God, you’re such an idiot.”
“I’m not stupid.” Candy folded her slender arms and then giggled. “Okay. I may not be the smartest cookie in the shed.”
I stared at her. “It’s the sharpest tool in the shed.”
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
“So is everyone excited about prom?” Lauren asked, striving to lessen the tension building at the table. “It’s, like, less than a month from now. Daddy is getting me this champagne-colored—”
“Shut up,” Veronica snapped. “No one cares about your damn dress.”
“Hey! Don’t talk to her like that.” I clenched the fork. Good thing it was plastic, because I wanted to shove it into what I suspected were surgically enhanced lips. “Jesus.”
Veronica’s skin flushed an unpleasant shade of red under the tan. “Okay. You’re being a bitch, Sammy.”
“I am?” I put the fork down, dumbfounded. All the irritation bubbled up and spilled over. A rolling anger took hold. “I’m not making fun of someone because their parents aren’t rich or because they don’t wear size Gap Kids. That’s what you are doing.”
“Okay. I’m just going to have to be up-front with you.” She twisted toward me, clasping her hands in her lap. With her collared blouse over her gray sweater, she looked like she was ready to give a sermon. “I understand that you’ve had some problems—”
“You mean not having any memories?” I shot back.
“Whatever. But that’s no excuse for how you’ve been behaving. If you keep dressing like you’re a homeless chick and—”
“What’s wrong with how I’m dressed?” I was wearing jeans and a shirt, for crying out loud. Most of my clothes at home were way too nice to wear to school, and seriously? Why would I want to wear a damn dress or skirt every day?
She gave me a duh look. “And if you keep talking to people like them”—them had to be anyone with a median household income under six figures, I assumed—“you’re going to turn into a bottom-feeder. And we’re going to have serious problems.”
Our little spat was drawing the attention of the kids closest to us, and I could’ve just shut up then or got up and walked away, but I couldn’t. I was so tired of…of everything—the looks, the snide comments, and how Veronica and Candy acted as if my memory wasn’t the only thing I was lacking. And maybe it was more than that—the frustration of not knowing anything, of being confused all the time.
Either way, I was so done with these bitches.
“You know what? We already have problems,” I said.
Veronica’s eyes narrowed. “Is that so?”
“If getting my memories back means becoming a huge bitch like you? Yeah, I think I’ll pass on that.”
Some of the kids around us stopped eating. Others choked on whatever was in their mouths. My entire body burned with anger, and I wanted to say more than that, but I grabbed my tray and stood.