Page 179 of Mad Girl

“Have you heard Casey’s going to England this summer?” I asked him.

“Yeah.” Michael winced. “And the thing is, so am I.”

I slammed my laptop shut. “What?”

“I’m going with him,” he said.

“The whole time?”

He nodded. “Our dads think I need to go with him for moral support. His dad isn’t the greatest, you know? Nic’s worried about Casey being holed up with that asshole all summer.”

“You know the other reason they’re sending you, right?” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “They’re trying to keep us apart.”

“I know. They even admitted to that when I brought it up. They say we need a break from each other.”

I couldn’t believe our dads would go to such great lengths to separate me from Michael. We hadn’t hung out alone in two months, and now they wanted us on two different continents? I no longer believed Michael wasn’t part of the reason my dad had talked me into deferring a year. After all, he’d admitted to John—and to me—that he’d known about our summer fling since the very beginning.

Tears sprang to my eyes. “But we’ve never been apart that long.”

Michael grabbed my hand. “But it’s not like you won’t hear from me at all. We’ll text and FaceTime, okay? I’ll have to check in occasionally to make sure you’re keeping your promise to me.”

“What promise?”

“Come on, Elliot,” he said, eyeing me. “Last summer, you promised you’d stop hurting yourself close to your birthday.”

“Oh, right,” I said—because a lot had happened since then, and I’d totally forgotten about that.

“Please don’t do anything because we’re both gone. If you don’t answer my calls, I’m calling your dad.”

The morning of my graduation ceremony, I groggily made my way upstairs for a shower, stopping inside my bedroom to rub the sleep from my eyes. Yawning, I slumped down to my desk chair and glanced around the room, which had barely been touched in weeks. Golden sunshine crept across my duvet. Birds chirped outside my window. My white graduation dress, steamed by Henriette, hung from the top of my closet door.

The sky that day was a beautiful, clear blue. The high would be a comfortable seventy-six degrees with a light breeze. The perfect day for a graduation. For taking photos outside. For celebrating.

But as I stood there, thinking about the tumultuous year I’d had—the gloomy summer I’d have to endure without you or Michael, the year I’d spend sitting at home, not attending college like everyone else—I made a decision, Casey.

I chose violence.

Not the literal kind, of course. But a very specific type of violence nonetheless.

Forty-five minutes later, I found Nic and the Harrises with Garland, having their morning coffee together. I entered the room, still wearing my silky pajama set and robe.

Nic stood. “Elliot,” he said, glancing down at his watch. “We need to leave in twenty minutes. Why aren’t you dressed?”

I stuffed my hands into the fuzzy pockets of my robe. “I’m not going.”

My dad remained standing, speechless, while the Harrises rose from the sofa. Michael slowly reached forward to deposit his mug on the coffee table. Bree, legs draped over the arm of a wingback, glanced up from her phone.

“It’s your graduation,” Nic said, shoulders tensing as he spoke. “Of course you’re going. Go upstairs and change.”

“Not going,” I said.

“What’s wrong?” John asked, stepping forward. “Why don’t you want to go?”

“Don’t want to go?” you repeated, coming in from the kitchen, cup of coffee in hand. You wore a dark blue linen suit with a crisp white Oxford, unbuttoned at the throat. Seeing how handsome you were, all dressed up for me, nearly foiled my plans.

Libby held up her manicured fingers, flashed a blinding white smile at you, and chuckled. “She’s going, obviously. This is just—she’s having jitters. Everything’s fine.”

“Yes, Libby. Everything’s fine,” I said. “I’m simply choosing not to go.”