I yanked Alex to a stop and pulled my hand free. “Wait. Him and Kim.”

Alex shook his head. “How should I know? And besides, why do you care?”

“I don’t,” I said, hoping he’d believe me. “It would suck if he didn’t go because of—”

“Don’t worry about him. He needs some time, Maddy. Everyone does.”

*   *   *

Alex threaded his fingers through mine and tugged me the few remaining feet to the girls’ locker room. He knocked once before opening the door a crack and yelled in to see if it was empty. School had ended over a half hour ago. Anybody still in there was going to get chewed out for being late for practice.

When no one answered, he pushed the door all the way open and peeked inside. Seeing nothing, he pulled me in. “I figured you hadn’t seen this yet.”

With the exception of gym, which my broken wrist had blessedly excused me from, I never set foot in the girls’ locker room. I didn’t play a sport and saw no need to shower at school. But I knew exactly where Maddy’s locker was. There was an entire block of them set aside for the field hockey team. Maddy’s was smack in the middle, her name artfully etched into the metal.

Tucked in the corner of the locker room was a roll of paper, not unlike the ones Josh and I used when we were sketching out murals. Alex handed me the edge and motioned for me to lay it flat on the floor. I did, using one of the field hockey sticks sitting on the bench to anchor it.

It was huge, easily spanning the length of seven lockers. WELCOME BACK, MADDY. Names of people I didn’t know covered the entire surface. Alex’s was there, Jenna’s, too. Keith, Molly, Hannah, and a couple of other kids I recognized from Maddy’s lunch table. The rest …

I gave up trying to place faces with the names and started counting. Seventy-three total.

“They’re planning on hanging this at the field hockey game this Friday,” Alex said as he held the other side down with his hand. “To celebrate your first week back at school.”

I read a few of the notes, glancing over most. Alex’s message was tagged with an I love you, and Jenna had scribbled out a curt Get well soon. Molly’s was the longest. She’d wished me well like the rest of them, but also written an offer of help, her pretty handwriting saying she’d be there to listen if I needed someone to talk to. Funny how the one person Alex had warned me to steer clear of was the one person who had offered to help.

“That’s why you are going,” Alex said, cutting into my thoughts. “Jenna may be pushing hard for Snow Ball queen, but she won’t win. I made sure of that. And, well, no one is running against me for king, so…”

I turned and stared at him. I’d pegged him completely wrong. I had expected him to be egocentric and obsessed with popularity. But at the end of the day, no matter how obsessed he seemed to be with his image, he cared more about Maddy.

“I have been back at school for three days, Alex. Three short days. I’m not ready yet.” And seeing well wishes sprawled across the banner didn’t help. If anything, it made it worse, kicked the expectations up a notch.

“I know,” he said. “But it’s only November. You have a couple more weeks to figure things out. Besides, it’s not like you have a choice, and it’s not like you’ll be alone. I’ll be there to help you. Our friends will, too.”

32

It was past six when I got home. I expected Mom to be worried, maybe angry. I hadn’t talked to her since Monday when I ran out and left her crying on her bedroom floor.

The house was dark and the driveway was empty except for Mom’s SUV. I opened the front door and was greeted by the dog. No smell of dinner cooking, no TV blaring the news. Only darkness surrounded by silence.

I flipped on a light and dropped my backpack to the floor. The kitchen looked exactly the same as this morning—coffeepot still filled with sludge, dishes still in the sink, dog still covered with day-old soup. I turned off the coffee, dumped the grounds into the trash, and gave Bailey a quick paper towel and water bath. I thought about doing the dishes, but the dishwasher was full and clean. That meant I’d have to empty it first, which I didn’t want to do.

“Mom,” I called, but I got no answer. I wondered if she was out with Dad. Maybe she had gone with him to pick up dinner or something.

Turning on lights as I went, I made my way upstairs. Bailey had made it up ahead of me and was lying on my old bed. I stopped and stared at him, waited for him to jump down and come to me. He didn’t budge, didn’t so much as lift his head to acknowledge my presence. My own dog was turning on me.

With a silent vow to feed him nothing more than dry food until he changed his attitude, I turned around and headed for Maddy’s room. I had to find a brown dress somewhere in her closet or find the time to buy one in the next few weeks. Alex wasn’t letting me out of going to the dance, and until I came up with an amazing reason why I couldn’t go, I had to play along.

There was a flicker of light coming from underneath my parents’ door. I listened for a moment before pushing it open. Mom was there, sound asleep in the overstuffed chair in the corner. The TV was muted. She’d showered—her hair was damp, her face free of makeup, and she was already in her pajamas. I watched her for a minute. I hadn’t seen her this quiet or this peaceful in weeks, and I wondered if it was sheer exhaustion or the help of a few sleeping pills that had stilled her mind.

She had my old baby blanket tucked around her, and I couldn’t help but walk over and touch it, let the tattered softness calm me as well. I saw a cell phone in her hand. I quickly pulled mine out of my pocket and searched through the call list. Alex, Dad, and Alex again. Nothing from Mom. Nothing from Josh.

I carefully took the phone from her hand and dialed the last number she called. It was mine … Ella’s. It went to voice mail, my less-than-enthusiastic directions telling whoever was looking for me to leave a message. From the call log on Mom’s phone, she’d dialed my number fifteen times in the last day, probably so she could hear the distant echo of my voice.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered before I laid the phone on the floor beside her and left the room. Waking her now was pointless. I wasn’t ready to deal with her tears.

I was pretty familiar with Maddy’s closet by now, knew she kept shirts on the left-hand side, organized by season, then color. Jeans hung in the middle followed by skirts and dresses. Her shoes and boots were in their original boxes stacked neatly in the back. And on the far right, tucked behind her jackets, were her formal gowns.

I started there, sorted through three short black dresses, one long shiny-looking red thing, and a top that I would barely classify as a shirt before I found something that would work. It was a dark cream, not brown or tan, but I figured muddy cream was in the same color spectrum so I could talk my way out of that minor discrepancy.

Shoes were a different story. The dress wasn’t new, so I figured whatever shoes she’d bought to go with it would be at the back of the stack. Maddy was never one for recycling clothing. I sat down cross-legged in front of her closet and started sorting through boxes. Red heels, black sparkly flats, some sort of wedge-sandal-type thing. None of them would work. I needed cream shoes, or so I thought. Honestly, I would be fine wearing flip-flops.

I pulled out another box, totally expecting to find an expensive pair of the-wrong-color heels wrapped in tissue paper. I opened the lid, reached in, and came up not with a shoe but a stack of paper. I recognized the first sheet—it was a picture I’d drawn a few years ago, back while we were in middle school. Nothing but a simple rose, its thorny stem weaving around the finger of an anonymous hand. Beneath that was a birthday card I’d given Maddy last year. She hadn’t given me mine until three days later. She said she’d forgotten it at school or something like that. She had every test I’d ever taken for her, copies of the art awards I’d won, and twelve years’ worth of school pictures tucked into that one shoe box.