Though, god, they were not good ones.
“I have no idea why you’re looking for my grandmother, but no matter what the reason is you’re out of luck. She died of a heart attack,” she said, and knew she had made a mistake the moment it was out. Bad enough that Seth Brubaker was getting to see her looking a mess. But now she’d also filled him in on the reason she wasfeelinglike a mess. She had given him more ammunition. And felt pretty sure he was about to open fire.Any second now, she thought.
Then didn’t know what to think when he looked concerned.
“Died of a heart attack? Just like that? With no sign of it being anything else? When?” he asked. As if somehow, inexplicably, he really wanted to know. More than that, in fact. It was like he was frantic to know. Like the very idea of not knowing made him lose his shit, just a little bit.
Even though she couldn’t for the life of her think why. He had long since stopped caring about her—never mind her grandmother. Heck, she couldn’t think ofanybodywho cared about her grandmother. Even her parents hadn’t thought much of her—mainly because they agreed with the rest of the town about how weird and antisocial her Gram had been. The woman would have done anything for anyone, but she didn’t suffer fools. And she wasn’t one for gossip, or too much time spent in company.
So when Cassie had told her parents she was going back to Hollow Brook to settle Gram’s affairs, they’d seemed at first dismissive, and then annoyed.Just sell the house as is and put the money to good use,her father had said.Maybe you can finally get your act together and go to college, like you should have done years ago.
And Cassie had come pretty close to doing that. But then she’dthought of her grandmother wanting her to have the house, and one particular soothing summer she’d spent with her, and she just couldn’t sell it. She couldn’t throw that away. She had to at least pay her respects and swim in a few treasured memories.
And now here she was, paying dearly for that sentimental choice.
“Cassie, answer me. Are you sure she died of a heart attack? Did anything cause it to happen so suddenly?” Seth repeated. Only now he was getting pretty close to yelling. And she wasn’t about to stick around for that.
“I don’t think that’s any of your goddamn business,” she somehow managed to bark out. Then even better: she was closing the door on him.
Actually closing the door on Seth Brubaker. Captain of the swim team. Homecoming king. Guy voted most likely to succeed at being extremely handsome. It was amazing—even if he wasn’t about to go down that easy.
He put a hand out to stop the door. And though it shouldn’t have been very hard to push against him, it really was. In fact, it kind of felt as if she were trying to force a large boulder up a mountain. Instead of just closing her door on a single outstretched arm.
Man, he got strong, she found herself thinking.
It wasn’t just his strength that was startling, however. He was also significantly taller than he had been in high school. She had to tilt her head all the way back just to meet his gaze, and once she had, she wished she hadn’t bothered. He looked weird. Almost like he was having human feelings. About her grandmother, apparently.
“It is my business,” he said. “She was my friend.”
He even made it sound convincing. Like sincerity.
Despite the fact that it couldn’t have been.
“My grandmother would never have been friends with the likes of you,” she said, and it felt true when she did. True enough to get him to stop, at any rate. But he didn’t. He kept going.
“Hey, just because I made a mistake in school doesn’t mean I’m beyond help.”
“Probably not. But calling the abandoning of your best friend and then betraying her in front of said school a ‘mistake’ sure does. I mean, hey, I got that we weren’t buddies by that point. The fucking Jerk Squad were your buddies, despite all the bullying they subjected you to before you turned cool. But I never thought you’d stoop so low as to yell insults at me in front of an auditorium full of the people I had to face the next day. And especially when you only did it to impress those assholes.” She pictured the episode. The talent show, the cake, the icing she’d made with her grandmother that changed colors as you applied it. Then the way it had looked all down her.
They rigged it to topple on you, she told herself, for the umpteenth time.They turned you into something from a Stephen King novel. You know they did, because Principal Sykes found the contraption they used to do it and suspended them for hardly any time at all.
And now she wanted to close the door again. But Seth was still protesting.
“I told you—I didn’t do it to impress anyone, okay?”
“Dude, you didn’t tell meanything. You just yelled an apology, one time.”
“Right. Right, and that was wrong. All of it was wrong, I know that. I fucked up majorly and you hate me and you’re never gonna stop and that’s fine. But if you could please just set that aside for one second, because I really need to know what happened to your grandmother. Like, if I could just hear some of the details.”
Fucked up majorly, she thought, and felt her heart lift a little bit.
But then she digested the rest of what he’d said and forced it back down. Because quite clearly, he was only doing this to get something that he inexplicably wanted. Something probably bad. And so now she had to find out what that bad thing was, before he could somehow hurt her with it.
Even if she had to be a little hyperbolic to do so.
“I see, so you can use those details to torment her too,” she said.
Much to his probably fake incredulity. “You think I’m so awfulthat I can somehow bully someone from beyond the grave? What do you think I’m going to do, dig her up and give her wedgies and a wet willy?”
