When You Come Back to Me (Lost Boys 2)

“Holden, my boy,” Uncle Reg said, jogging up to me with a short chuckle. “You’re a hard man to get a hold of these days.”

“We’ve been wanting to talk to you about graduation,” Mags said with a bright, nervous smile.

“What about it?”

“We’d like to attend the ceremony. Beatriz too. To celebrate you.?

??

“It’s a major milestone,” Reg added. “Not to mention the tradition of it, turning of the tassel… All the fun stuff.”

“I won’t be walking,” I said. “I’m getting my diploma and getting the hell out of town. You’ll be rid of me.”

They exchanged glances.

“It’s been nice having you, Holden,” Mags said slowly. “We’ve been talking and if you’re thinking you have to leave because the year is up, well…”

“Plans can change,” Reg finished. “For instance, if you wanted to stay—”

“I don’t,” I heard myself say, my voice like ice, even as part of my stupid heart still reached for them. “There isn’t anything for me here.”

Chapter Twenty

Talk to me. Please.

I hit send on the text. Like every other text I’d sent to Holden over the last few days, it went unanswered. Calls went to voicemail.

I slumped on my bed. My tux for Prom that night hung on a hanger on the back of my door as it had on Homecoming at the beginning of the year. I closed my eyes, a stupid hope that when I opened them, Holden would be lounging against my dresser with that irritatingly smug look on his face I loved so much.

He wasn’t there, and his absence was like a hole that had opened in me, empty and cold.

Flowers for Algernon lay open on my bed. I hadn’t read it until a few days ago, after the incident under the bleachers. That night, I’d picked it up and finished it within hours. Charlie, a man with a clinically low IQ, participates in an experiment to enhance his intelligence. His genius skyrockets, but the experiment slowly fails, and Charlie eventually sinks back into his old life.

“And he loses the love of his life.”

Holden had neglected to mention that when he gave me the book.

I sighed heavily and set it aside. My phone was silent. I’d have to pick up Violet in a few short hours, take pictures with her parents, then drive us here and do it again with Mom and Dad. I’d put my arm around Violet and smile as if we were a happy couple.

Outside my room, I heard Mom and Dad’s bedroom door close softly, followed by a muffled sob. I tore off the bed and found Amelia in the hallway, one hand pressed to her mouth, shoulders shaking.

“Hey,” I said, moving toward her.

She shook her head but let me wrap my arms around her. I held her as she sobbed quietly into my shirt. Mom’s scans had come back. Dad could hardly speak when he sat Amelia and me down at the kitchen table a few nights ago. The road was coming to an end. A few weeks at most. And this time, there wouldn’t be a miracle.

“Come on,” I said, leading Amelia into her room, next to mine. We sat on her bed surrounded by posters of BTS and Riverdale. Russian nesting dolls lined every windowsill and bookshelf.

“Mom’s napping.” Amelia sniffed. “Again. I went to talk to her, and she was already tired.” She lifted her tear-streaked face to me. “But she’s been sleeping all day. All day, River.”

“I know.”

There was nothing more to say. No words of comfort I could give her that I wasn’t begging for myself. We sat side by side, our hands in our laps, reality creeping toward us like shadows across the carpet as the sun set.

Finally, Amelia peered up at me. “Are you really going to Prom tonight?”

“You think I shouldn’t? You think I should stay with Mom?”

She shook her head, her dark hair falling in tangles around her shoulders. “I meant, you’re going with Violet?”