Chapter 28
Dylan
It’s after eleven before the lights are out at the school, which is the earliest I’m willing to sneak inside it to check on Tavi, no matter how much I’ve wanted to jump out of my skin for the past two hours.
Last I saw her, the Tickled Pink firefighters were hefting her into Estelle’s SUV while Deer Drop took the lead on us in our last snowshoe baseball game of the season. Whole team headed to Ladyfingers, as we always do, and Lola was the only one in a festive mood while we waited for news on Tavi.
I don’t think anyone else’s knee wouldn’t stop jumping under the table or that anyone else wanted to pace or sayfuck itand head to the hospital in Deer Drop to check on her, but everyone was worried.
Possibly more so when I snarled at being asked ifIwas okay.
Phoebe eventually got word that Tavi’s ankle’s sprained.
Lola called itconvenientthat Tavi had gotten out of playing in the losing game.
I almost came out of my chair.
But I don’t let my temper get the best of me anymore, no matter how much I feel about seventeen again after the heckling at the gametonight, so instead of asking her if she wanted to take it outside, I left Ladyfingers, hit the Pick-n-Shop for comfort food.
I don’t know if it’s for her or for me.
Might take comfort food to get through telling her how I feel.
And I have to.
No waiting. No fear that I’m not good enough for her. No logic telling me it won’t work since she wants to leave Tickled Pink.
I have to tell her.
I have to take this chance.
I sneak through the dark hallways of the high school where I caused hell back in the day and creep up the stairs to the second floor, hoping Tavi’s alone.
Rumor around town is that she picked the chemistry lab as her bedroom, so that’s where I’m going.
I’m almost there when I hear voices.
I dive into the nearest open classroom—pretty sure I had a history class in here—and listen while Lola and Carter walk past, the beam of a flashlight bouncing off the cracked linoleum-tile floor.
“I just don’t get it,” Lola’s saying. “I’m tryingso hardto do what Gigi wants, and she’s all, ‘This is no way to get into heaven, Lola. Look at what Phoebe did. She’s getting into heaven.’ Phoebe called me a brat. She issonot getting into heaven.”
“You’re not here to get to heaven.”
“Shutup, Carter. I am too.”
“No, you’re trying to cash in on easy fame. If you cared about your soul, you’d be volunteering at orphanages and food banks and animal shelters.”
“Not everyone volunteers.”
“Or you could be donating money to save the whatever.”
“How do you know I’m not?”
“You offered Floyd two million dollars for his church.”
“That’s charity.And it’s, like, only two million. It’s not like I offered him fifty.”
“Ask yourself what a guy like Floyd’s gonna do with two million dollars, then tell me it’s charity.”
