Page 106 of Personal Foul

Not long after I stop crying, I lean my head against the window and doze off. It’s after midnight, and it’s been a long week. A long day. Full of so many emotions, my body can barely contain them.

I wake up when we exit the freeway, blinking at the streetlights as we pull into a rest stop.

Dylan glances at me as he parks. “Sorry. I need to use the bathroom. We’re not too far outside of Spokane. We’ll be home in about an hour.”

Shaking my head, I undo my seatbelt. “Don’t apologize. It’s not a big deal.”

It’s chilly when we get out of the car, and I reach in the backseat for my jacket. Dylan gives me a tight smile. “You can sleep in tomorrow. We don’t have anything planned anyway, since we were supposed to be driving home.”

I give him a confused look at his use of the word we. “Aren’t you taking me to my apartment?”

He stops halfway up the sidewalk. “Is that really what you want?” At my nod, he sighs. Then, “Is there anything I can say to change your mind?”

When I shake my head, he nods and looks at the ground before resuming his walk to the bathroom. He moves more slowly, as though he’s in no rush now that he realizes we’ll be parting ways in an hour.

I’m not sure why he thought I would be going home with him anyway. Maybe it was like that one night, where he just drove me to his house and overrode all of my objections with reasonable sounding explanations. Maybe he thought he could try that trick again.

Things were different then, though. I’m no longer worried about what will happen if everyone finds out my secrets. I don’t care anymore. The whole point of the secrecy was to keep my friends. But instead, I’ve been lying to my friends, which doesn’t exactly make me feel close to them. I’ve been withdrawing, holding myself apart for fear I might show that something’s terribly wrong. But what good are friends if you can’t talk to them when your life is falling apart?

Dylan has become my only real friend. And now that’s over too.

Everything that I’ve worked so hard to prevent is happening anyway, so there’s no real point in keeping any of it going.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Dylan

Dylan: Can we please talk about last night.

Dylan: I know you went to bed late. Maybe you’re still asleep. Text me when you wake up. Or call.

Dylan: Okay, it’s after three. You have to be up by now. Call me.

Dylan: We need to talk. Don’t just ghost me.

Dylan: I’m coming over.

Isabelle answers the door, her eyes growing wide when she sees me. I’m sure I look like hell. I barely slept, tossing and turning, wondering what exactly Charity meant when she said she couldn’t do this to me. I mean, I guess it should be obvious. She meant she can’t drag me down like her father has dragged her family down.

I knew it when she spoke the words last night. But I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to accept it.

I was supposed to have time to change her mind in the car. But she fell asleep, and when she was awake, she barely responded to anything I said.

So I thought, if she slept on it, she’d feel differently by this afternoon. But it’s almost dinner time, and she hasn’t responded to any of my texts.

Maybe I’m not as smart as everyone tells me I am. Because if I were smart, I’d take the L and just move on.

I can’t do that, though. Something about Charity has always called to me, even back in high school. I ignored it then, but I’ve spent enough time around her now that I can acknowledge it. She always had me hooked without even trying.

So I can’t just let it end like this. Without doing my best to fix it.

“Dylan, hey,” Isabelle says, opening the door wide and inviting me in. “Charity has barely come out of her room today.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Is everything okay? Did you guys have a fight?”

Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I’m not really sure how to answer her questions. “No,” I answer quietly. “Everything is not okay. We didn’t have a fight, but something happened this weekend.” I can’t tell her more than that, because I know she doesn’t know about Charity’s family. I’m not going to be the one to spill the beans.

Thankfully, she seems to accept my answer. “I’ll let Charity know you’re here.”

I shake my head. “Just let me go talk to her.”

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