A.J. shrugged. “I don’t know. Seven years making movies sounds kind of fun.”
Staci rolled her eyes at him. “Anything sounds like fun to you as long as it gets you off that farm.”
Ari felt like sinking into the floor. Her friends were so clear about who they were and what they wanted… it terrified her. It made her feel like a freak. She glanced around at them as they started yammering on about college sweatshirts, roommates, the freshman ten, wondering what on earth happened to her. She didn’t know what she wanted out of life like they did. Staci and A.J. were heading off to RISD together to study film and animation, something they had talked about doing nearly the whole three years they had been dating. Ari shut her locker, trying not to have a panic attack. Never in her life had she suffered from anxiety, but she’d had three attacks this last month. She closed her eyes, her back to her friends. When her dad suggested she studied business at college, Ari hadn’t argued. What else was she going to do, right? Unlike her friends, there wasn’t anything she’d ever felt brilliant at, or drawn to. How could they possibly understand that? She needed someone to understand.
She needed Charlie.
“Hey,” Rachel murmured, resting her hand on Ari’s shoulder. “You okay? You’ve been so quiet lately.”
“I’m fine.”
“Really?”
How could she not talk to Rachel about this? Rachel was her best friend. But then… Rachel hadn’t always been her best friend.
Growing up, Charlie had been Ari’s closest friend. Her family, really. He’d been there when her dad forgot her ninth birthday, and the time she couldn’t stop crying after the lie she told when she was ten years old caused her dad and his girlfriend to break up. There was also that time she’d gotten her first period, and she’d completely freaked out. She’d run from school during lunch and Charlie had chased her into Vickers' Woods behind the interstate. When she’d confessed what was wrong, he had silently taken her hand and walked her all the way to his house and stammered through a blushing explanation to his mom. Mrs. Creagh had hugged her close and called the school and her dad to explain where she’d disappeared to and why. A trip to the pharmacy followed the phone call and a lot more hugging.
Anything good, bad, small or huge that had happened to her, Charlie was the one who had been there. And then something huge— too huge—happened to him and suddenly Charlie wasn’t really there to be there.
“Are you worrying about Charlie again?” Rachel huffed.
Ari threw her a 'don't start' look.
“Let’s go to lunch,” A.J. interrupted, dodging any discussion about Charlie. He thought Charlie was a loser and hated that Ari ‘wasted’ so much time and energy over him.
Stemming a wave of anger at her friends, Ari pulled away from them. “I’ll catch up in a minute, save me a seat.”
A frown appeared between Rachel’s smooth brows. “You’re not going over there?”
Clenching her jaw, Ari turned her back on them. “Just save me a seat,” she called over her shoulder, dodging students in her path.
“You need to give her a break about him,” she heard Staci say, but A.J.’s response was indistinct as Ari moved farther through the throng of teenagers.
Bursting out of the front entrance, Ari inhaled a lungful of warm summer air, shaking her hands out as if the gesture could shake out all her worries. She scanned the parking lot for Charlie, but she couldn’t see him, which meant he was out behind the lot in the trees where the teachers couldn’t see. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to get kicked out. They had already held him back a year. Not that he cared. A rush of angry wasps awoke in her stomach, as they always did when she was about to face him. That hadn’t been the case in the past. In the past, just the thought of him used to relax her. Pulling her shoulders back, Ari started off across the lot with a determined stride. She just had to know he was alright. They hadn’t spoken in two weeks, which was officially the longest they had gone without speaking.
As if coerced onto the scene by a sad Fate, a little boy of nine or ten years old, with dark brown hair and eyes, shot toward her.
“Have you seen my sister?” he asked, out of breath.
Concerned by his appearance at the high school during the day, Ari stopped, grabbing his arm before he could shoot off without an answer. “Who’s your sister?”
“Gemma Hall.”
Ari frowned. Gemma was a junior. “I’ll—”
“Bobby!” They both spun to see Gemma rushing down the school steps toward them. “Did you bring them?”
“Yeah, but you owe me, like, twenty bucks…”
Satisfied there was nothing dramatic going down between the siblings, Ari left them to it, only glancing back once at the kid. He looked so much like Michael.