He either hadn’t heard you or didn’t care. His hair was tousled from his bike helmet, and he ran a hand through it, combing it into a cresting wave above his angry face.
“And I expected that you wouldn’t take advantage of this situation.”
“What situation?” you said. “What are you talking about?”
He pinched his brow and took a deep breath.
“How oblivious are you, man? The fact that Diana should be with you.”
If it hadn’t seemed so inappropriate, you might have laughed. But the idea felt so absurd to you, even then.
“What are you talking about?” you said again.
Tracks of sweat cut through the dirt on Sean’s face. It occurred to you that all this bike riding might not just be about chasing a new thrill. In that moment, seeing how tired he was, the whole thing seemed like a punishment.
“I can’t open up to people the way you do,” he said. “Okay? I don’t really know how. You’re a genuine person, Case. And I didn’t let her in. I acted like I usually do. I didn’t deserve her. But I just wanted… a chance to fix it.”
You stood up again, unable to sit still anymore.
“Sean, listen! I haven’t taken advantage of anything,” you said.
You picked up the notebook and held it out.
“I never gave this to her! I knew it was wrong. I didn’t act on anything!”
Sean was quiet a moment, and you wondered if he was actually hearing you this time. But then he shook his head and smiled.
“And next you’ll tell me you weren’t just at her house,” he said.
He held your gaze for a moment, giving you a chance to deny it. But on a loop in your head was the kiss, Diana leaning across the table and the feeling of her lips against yours. Why didn’t you stop it? Why didn’t it even occur to you to stop it? You knew the answer, and it hurt your chest to think of it.
“You just assume everyone is going to forgive you,” he said. “That you get a free pass for life because you’re the breakable one. The one we all need to tread lightly around. But it doesn’t always work like that. Some things…”
“Sean,” you said. “Can you just let me talk for a minute?”
But he was already up the last steps and disappearing from sight. You waited a minute to see if he would come back down andscream in your face or shove you to the ground. In that moment, you wanted him to do it. To do something that would be painful enough to settle the score. But Sean had never hurt you, even when you were little, and you knew he never would.
What he did instead was worse. From that day on, he didn’t treat you cruelly. He didn’t scream at you or put you down. He didn’t even look at you with spite or derision.
He just cut you out of his life.
THIRTY-THREE
You gather around Silas’s body with nothing but moonlight and a makeshift torch for light. Will holds the flame out in front of him, and the gentle flicker sends long shadows rippling across the forest floor. Everyone looks down at the body, where you can still make out the outline of Silas’s face under the shirt you used to cover him. There are bugs crawling on him, but Diana brushes a few of them off. The only sound is a cold wind through the leaves. Troy steps forward, and you all form a half circle around the body, waiting for him to speak.
You’re expecting something Buddhist now that you know Troy better. Maybe something about emptiness or impermanence. You don’t know that much about Buddhism, but Sean read you the Heart Sutra once, and there was a lot of stuff in there about how nothing exists. Nothing is born. Nothing dies. That kind of thing. Butthis, you know, is real. There is a corpse here that was once a person.
Troy shuffles in place. Since he was the one who spoke up for Silas, everyone just kind of assumes he’s going to be the one to talk now, and he seems okay with that. He gets a little closer to the body, then he clears his throat.
“Almost heaven,” he says.
He pauses a moment.
“West Virginia.”
He has his eyes closed and his head down like he’s delivering a eulogy, so he doesn’t notice the confused squints on the faces of his fellow mourners.
“Blue Ridge Mountains,” he adds.
