Page 52 of I Would Stay Forever
Who told you that?
Lavender
Oh I don’t know, maybe your sisters you bothered to inform before me
He didn’t respond for over a minute and my blood only began to boil the longer I waited. What the heck was he thinking? In what universe could he ever think returning to Tiffany—especially after everything we’d talked about—could be a good idea? She was horrible to him.
Sebastian
It’s a complicated situation
Let me explain it to you in person
Lavender
I’m not interested
You admitted her cheating was just like Dad’s. If you can excuse hers, can you excuse his too?
I swallowed thickly as I read the message back. For a moment, I debated unsending it and praying that he hadn’t seen it in time. My heart was thudding in my chest as I read it over and over again. But then I remembered Imogen in Urgent Carelast night and Dad’s face as we looked at each other. My family was splintering off, turning into two camps—the ones who could forgive and forget, and the ones who couldn’t. How ironic that Sebastian was the one who had been giving me the cold shoulder after he assumed I was the one to discover the infidelity, only to turn around and forgive Tiffany like it was nothing.
He didn’t respond to my text, which I supposed was probably for the best because any excuse he tried to give me would only make me angrier. I wondered if he’d even read the message or if he was too busy sucking Tiffany’s face off to notice it. If I knew my brother, it was probably the latter. I stewed about it all the way inside, practically breathing fire by the time I reached my locker. The petty side of me wanted to block him so he couldn’t try to explain anyway but I held off. Doing that would only make me more like Dad in a way I never wanted to be.
“Lavender?”
I glanced up at the sound of my name, quickly shoving my phone back into pocket. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Emma coming toward me with purposeful steps.
“Oh, hi,” I said, faltering because I wasn’t sure what to call her. She asked me to call her Emma, but it seemed weird to call her that to her face when she was a teacher. Calling her Ms without a last name felt equally weird, so eventually I settled on not addressing her at all. “How are you?”
“I’m just fine, thank you,” she said. She clasped her hands in front of her and beamed at me—what else was new? “I know I told you that I’d make an appointment time for you to come see me this week, but as it so happens, my meeting was cancelled this morning. Would you mind terribly if you missed some of your first period class? I’ll write you a note, of course.”
Two weeks ago, I would have jumped at the chance to get out of the class, mainly because of the boy I had to sit next to during it. Today, even though I’d just seen him half an hour ago, I wasdesperate to talk to him and hated the thought of being pulled away. I wanted to know if he knew anything about Sebastian and Tiffany getting back together, and strangely, I thought he might be the only person in the world who might be able to make me feel better about it.
But Emma was looking at me with such enthusiastic eyes and I knew I wasn’t in much of a learning mood right now anyway, so I nodded. She clapped, like this was the most exciting news she’d gotten all day, and started leading me down the hall, gushing about the brochures she’d gotten in. My phone buzzed again as we reached her office but I didn’t look at, not caring whether it was Sebastian or one of my other friends.
Right now, all I could think about was that despite the promise I’d just made to Dean, I wanted to get out of this stupid town as soon as I was able—and these university brochures would be my ticket to that freedom.
twenty-six
I sat down nextto Zoey and Paige as they stretched on the gym floor. Volleyball practice hadn’t officially started yet, so everyone was either stretching or gossiping, except for Molly who was talking to Coach Cassidy across the gym. Zoey was telling Paige about the new guy who had switched into her bio class today, but as soon as I sat down, she turned her eyes on me.
“Where did you go on Sunday?” she asked. Somehow, I’d completely forgotten that I hadn’t told her. She was out of school sick yesterday and my day had been busy enough that I hadn’t seen Molly or Paige at all. I was surprised none of them had texted me to ask about it, but then I realized they very well might have and I’d completely missed it. I felt like my head hadn’t been screwed on right since the moment I saw Dad on Sunday, and it had been worsened by finding out about Sebastian and Tiffany yesterday. He and I hadn’t spoken last night, and I got the feeling we were falling back into the old pattern we’d been in for all of August. I was exhausted just at the thought of it.
“Imogen got in a small accident,” I explained as I leaned forward in a hip stretch. “She needed me to come get her from Urgent Care.”
Zoey gasped. “Oh my gosh, is she okay?”
“I saw her yesterday,” Paige added. “She didn’t seem too hurt.”
I nodded. “Yeah, she just broke her wrist and got all scraped up. She was really freaked though.”
“Of course she was,” Zoey said earnestly. “Was your mom not working, though? Why did she call you?”
I froze, unsure how to respond. Of course Zoey would assume that Imogen was at North Glen Hospital where Mum worked. If Imogen had been there, she would have asked them to find Mum for her rather than calling me in a panic. I could lie and say Mum was busy, but I’d learned long ago that even little white lies tended to spiral out of control quickly. Besides, I had enough secrets in my life right now—hiding Dean’s involvement of Dad deciding to come clean about the affair, hiding the affair completely from my friends, and hiding how much time I was spending with Dean from Sebastian. It wasn’t worth trying to keep this one to myself.
“She was at Trinity Hospital,” I explained. “You know, the one over on the other side of Crofton?”
Zoey’s brows knit together. “What would she be doing over there?”
