She just stands there and watches me as I stick all of the things that once belonged to the boys in a box and then shove the box into the small cabinet behind the stepladder. Kaleb’s hoodie is the last thing to go into the box.
The last thing I do is pull my calendar down off the wall and stare at it for one long moment. I had been crossing out the days until the eclipse, counting down until Kaleb’s big event.
It’s only two weeks away now.
I don’t see the point in keeping track of it anymore.
I shove it into the trash can with a satisfied huff. Mom wants to ask me what my sudden cleaning frenzy is about, I can tell by the look on her face, but she seems happy enough that I’m actually doing anything besides acting like a zombie, so she keeps her mouth shut about it and goes back to making soup on the stove.
“I’m going out,” I say to her as I grab my own hoodie. It isn’t as thick as Kaleb’s, but I have to shove that thought aside.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
I don’t know.
All I know, is that I can’t stay here right now. The memory of them still lingers.
The old them. The old me.
“To see what kind of trouble I can get into,” I say. Mom laughs at my joke, and for what feels like the first time in ages, I smile.
I wonder if she would still be laughing if she knew it wasn’t a joke.
18
Sabrina
The cordless bungee jump is just the beginning.
I spend the next few days being anything other than myself. I seem to have a new affinity for being reckless. I find the tallest tree that I can climb and stand on the highest branch, letting the snow fall against my face as I closed my eyes. I even take both my hands off and balance for as long as I can before I finally sit back down. Lucky no one saw that stunt; they would have me committed.
That or any one of the other half-dozen things I find to make myself feel.
I climb rocks without a harness.
I wander further into the forest than ever before, following paths marked by the footprints of feral beasts.
Unfortunately, in a town as small as North Port, distractions of this nature are surprisingly hard to find. At least, for someone my age and without a car.
I soon grow bored with climbing trees and jumping into rivers.
I start to skip school again in search of distraction, except for a day that I show up to one or two classes but don’t really participate in anything anyway. One of the teachers tells me that if I don’t do some sort of extra credit work that I’ll be in danger of not passing, so I begrudgingly sign up for an extra credit assignment at the school science assembly.
Lucky me.
As soon as I get to the auditorium—meaning the cafeteria with the tables pushed up against the wall and folding chairs placed in rows in their place—I feel the itch to leave. This would have been the perfect time to slip away, to go find something better to do. Something that would ease the aching numbness that’s once again spread throughout my entire body.
Th
e task is to be the “guinea pig” for a low-voltage electric experiment in which I am going to get shocked by one of the nerds in the science club. The boy responsible for it, Roland, is actually a really nice guy and much less socially awkward than I had expected him to be once I talk to him.
“It’ll just feel like a shock of static electricity,” he says as we get ready for his portion of the presentation. “Nothing harmful. In fact, it might even tickle a little bit.”
I’m barely paying attention, my eyes searching the sliver of crowd that I can see for any sign I might still be able to slip out afterwards. But then he takes out the machine, pulling it from some locked janitor’s closet behind the stage, and my interest piques.
“Can you adjust the voltage on this thing?” I ask as I play around with his makeshift controls. The machine, although very rough and not exactly aesthetically pleasing, is quite impressive. It’s all wires and dials and very primitive looking metal plates attached to coils. Even though it isn’t on yet, I can already imagine electricity arcing above it … into me.
“I could,” Roland, says, “but obviously I won’t.”