Ripple

Chapter Three

If there were thirty minutes of every day that I could strike from existence, it would be lunchtime. Unfortunately, I have to use the cafeteria scan card to pay for my meals. If I could get my grandmother to give me cash, I would stop at a gas station or the grocery store. I would buy something, anything, to avoid those agonizing minutes in the lunch line.

Today, I tap the scan card against the stainless steel countertop, anxious to get my turkey sandwich and leave the cafeteria. The lunch lady is almost done—she’s cutting my sandwich in half and putting it on a paper plate.

I grab the plate as soon as she holds it over the counter. Then I take it to the cashier, who quickly scans my card and hands it back. I tuck the card into my back pocket and then head for the door, relief beginning to fill me that the ordeal of getting lunch is almost over.

I realize belatedly that my route may not have been the best choice. Sienna’s crowd—all my old friends—claimed a different table this year. My heart climbs into my throat. I’m going to walk right past them.

I slow down and contemplate spinning around, running away. But then I watch as Nikki elbows Kristy Eckly and nods in my direction. In a matter of seconds, they’re all staring.

I won’t run away. I won’t let them see me sweat. I square my shoulders and walk faster, staring straight ahead, focusing everything I have on a vacant look that won’t betray my emotions. Fifty feet to freedom. The door beckons in the distance. So close.

But I’m so busy trying not to look at them, I don’t see something in my path, and I trip. I throw my hands up to catch my balance and my plate slips from my grasp. I manage to keep from falling, but I can’t say the same thing for my sandwich—it tumbles to the ground and scatters on the dirty floor.

The whole table snickers and laughs. I refuse to look at them as my face burns and I rush for the door, more careful this time about what’s in my path. Just as I reach the exit, I wrench around and glance back. It was a paper sack. I nearly hit the ground over an empty paper bag.

I glance at their table, and my eyes zero in on the one person who isn’t laughing. Cole. His face is completely blank, and he’s sitting there, perfectly still. As always, girls surround him.

I fling open the door and scurry to the bench in the far corner of the courtyard, the one mostly surrounded by shrubs, where they won’t be able to see me from their A-list table in the cafeteria.

Then I pull my legs up on the bench with me and hug my knees. I rest my forehead on them, closing my eyes and taking in deep breaths to steady my aching heart.

I know they all blame me for killing Steven. I know this is my punishment. Just as I know I deserve it. They blame me because they think I should have saved him somehow, stopped the senseless tragedy. If they knew I outright murdered him, I wonder what they’d think, how much worse their taunts would be.

My stomach growls as I sit alone, hoping no one is looking at me but unwilling to glance up to confirm it.

I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting there when a guy clears his throat. I freeze for a second, and then reluctantly uncoil.

Cole stares me straight in the eye. The look he gives me is so different than the ones from the rest of my old friends. His says he doesn’t hate me like they do. He sets the plate down, and I stare at the sandwich.

“It’s not right.”

I swallow. “What?”

“What they do to you.”

I tip my head to the side. “They didn’t do anything. I’m the idiot who tripped.”

“I don’t mean just now. I mean . . . every day.”

“Why do you even care? It’s just the same joke, new year. Nothing I can’t handle.” I jut my chin up.

“Why do you let them do that? Why do you just take it?”

“Because I deserve it.”

He crosses his arms at his chest and looks me dead in the eye. “No one deserves to be treated like dirt.”

I glare at him, wishing he’d leave well enough alone. “Yeah. I do. What happened is my fault, and they know it.”

“You really blame yourself?”

The silence stretches a beat too long. And then, “Yes.”

“Huh.” He sighs but doesn’t seem to know what to say to this. He shifts his weight, glances back at the cafeteria and then at me again. “Well, enjoy your sandwich.”

I want to say something, but there are so many things I want to say that I can’t seem to articulate anything at all. And then, before I’ve even had a chance to get a word out, he’s stepping away from me, leaving me alone with my guilt. I open my mouth to call out to him, but then I just snap it shut.

No friends. That’s my number one rule, the only thing that keeps everyone else safe.

I put my feet back down on the ground and watch him as he crosses the courtyard. A lanky dark-haired girl stops him at the door, giving him a big hug that lingers too long. She says something, and he laughs, and then she walks away, her hips swinging.

He watches her go. I narrow my eyes. He reaches for the door, glancing back at me. He catches me staring and his lips curl into an easy smile.

I look away, down at the sandwich as my stomach growls again. It’s the same turkey-on-wheat that I dropped on the floor, except this one isn’t wrecked and dirt-covered. I glance back at the cafeteria, but, just like I planned, I can’t see their table from this angle.

With a sigh, I pick up the sandwich and take a big bite. I’m so famished that it tastes better than anything I’ve ever had. The sun warms me through my black shirt as I sit there, chewing quietly on the pity gift from Cole.

I hope the weather holds out for another month or two. It rains almost constantly from October to May in Cedar Cove, Oregon. We’re right on the ocean, but the mountains that surround the town trap the clouds right above us.

Then again, when it really pours, there are fewer people up in Tillamook Forest; and I don’t have to worry as much about someone finding my lake. Today, the sun is out, the sky cloudless. We’ll only get a few more weeks of this weather, and then fall will be here, announced by all the leaves turning vibrant shades of crimson and gold, the same as our school colors. By the time football season is half over, it’ll barely be forty degrees out, even by midday. I hate the winters, when dusk begins to fall just a couple of hours after school lets out.

And I dread the dusk. The second the moon rises in the night sky, begins its pull on the tides, I’m drawn to the water. In the summer, I only need to swim seven or eight hours per night, but in the winter, when the nights seem to stretch on forever, it’s closer to twelve.

I take another bite of the sandwich, staring at the ground.

Nine hours to go, and it’s back to the lake.