20
Monday starts off boring. I drive with Lincoln to school and slog through my first several classes. Fourth period gym has become a lot quieter since Iris’s death. The locker room screaming matches between her and Savannah used to be at least a weekly occurrence, but now, it’s usually just girls gossiping and talking about what parties happened the previous weekend and what’s planned for the coming weekend.
Savannah begged out of class early today, claiming a bad headache, so she’s not even in the locker room as I change back into my street clothes in one corner of the long, narrow space. I’m slipping my foot through the pant leg of my jeans when a hushed voice reaches my ears from the bank of lockers to my right.
“Yeah. She was pregnant.”
I pause.
There’s no reason to assume I know who they’re talking about, but the speaker’s use of past tense makes my body immediately stiffen. Her voice has that harsh, shrill quality that suggests highly juicy gossip, and it makes my heart constrict in my chest.
“Holy fuck. No way. Iris Lepiane was knocked up?”
The other girl sounds both scandalized and highly entertained, and my stomach twists. That’s a real person—a real life—they’re talking about, not some character on a trashy soap. Two lives, if the first speaker is right.
“Yeah. I heard it from Celia, whose mom heard it from her mom. She was fucking pregnant.”
“No way!”
Their voices get lower as they get more excited, as if even they realize how terrible they’re being, gossiping about the dead.
I slide my foot slowly down my pant leg, keeping up the facade of getting dressed, but every molecule of my body is reaching out toward the voices on the other side of the lockers, trying to hear each word they speak.
“Yep. I just wonder who the father is.”
The second girl snickers softly. “That could be a long list.”
“Right? It’d be quicker to make a list of who she hasn’t slept with.”
“Who do you think it was?”
The first speaker sounds like she’s thrilled to have been asked, like she’s been waiting to pontificate on her theories all day. “It’s hard to say. I mean, there’s Trent Calloway, obviously. Conor. Chris. And she and Lincoln Black only dated last year, but hell, maybe he went back for seconds.”
They titter like little birds, but I lose the sound of their voices behind the rushing in my ears.
What?
Lincoln… dated Iris?
He never, ever mentioned that. Not once. And none of the others did either.
My body works on autopilot, pulling on my clothes and sweeping my hair up into a ponytail. But my mind can’t stop circling around that single fact.
Lincoln and Iris.
Iris and Lincoln.
They dated. And he didn’t think that was important to mention after we all witnessed her death? Is that why he was so adamant about not going to the cops? Because he knew he could be a suspect?
Or what if he was, as the first girl put it, going back for seconds? What if he knew she was pregnant? Could he have done this?
My brain balks at that idea, refusing to believe it. That’s not possible. I’m a better judge of people than that.
But I don’t know what to think, can’t organize my thoughts or the powerful emotions swinging like out of control pendulums inside me right now. Anger. Confusion. Worry.
Jealousy.
That’s the one that burns the most, and the one I try to squash down the hardest. It shouldn’t matter to me what Lincoln did or does with any girl, especially one who’s no longer even here.