CHAPTER NINE
Drug overdose. “A deadly cocktail,” they called it.
They blamed it on the fact that her mom was an addict who died of a drug overdose, so Lyric was bound to do the same, right? They showed pictures from Instagram of her “wild” behavior and quoted her Twitter feed, all to justify their story. And no one questioned it because those who knew differently weren’t talking, and those who were talking didn’t know shit.
Such a tragedy.
She was so young.
She had such a bright future.
I hated the news.
Today was her memorial. I sat on the front pew next to her dad, holding his hand. Michael Matthews was a man who’d built a legacy with his words, but today he was speechless, silent. Every once in a while, he would squeeze my hand, and I knew a memory had just flashed through his mind. They’d been flashing through mine all week. We stared at the picture on top of the closed casket. It was one from Lyric’s sixteenth birthday. She was holding her white puppy, Casper, and smiling like a kid at Christmas. She was wearing a bucket hat and a bright yellow top. It was my favorite picture. That was the Lyric I knew. That was the Lyric I loved.
I looked at her smile and was grateful Lyric’s dad took the funeral director’s suggestion. He’d said sometimes it was easier to close the casket and display a photo. Seeing her there, cold, stiff, and lifeless would have been too hard. Mr. Matthews agreed. This way, we could remember her the way we wanted. I wanted to remember that smile.
People filed into the private room inside the cathedral. Some of them I knew. Some of them I didn’t. All of them handed out hugs and false condolences. False because no onereallyliked Lyric. She spoke her mind in an elite world where people were paid for their silence.
But she was my best friend.
Now she was gone.
Lyric didn’t do drugs. She saw what they did to her mom and hated them. Anyone who spent five minutes with her knew that. She was outspoken and confident in her skin. She was sarcastic and loud. That didn’t make her an addict. Something else happened to her, something that someone with more money than morals paid to have swept under the rug. Maybe someone got a little too kinky. Maybe they were a little too rough. I wasn’t a prude. I knew things like that happened. We were surrounded by powerful people, and where there were powerful people, there were other powerful people covering up their secrets.
A still, small voice whispered in the back of my mind.Or dumping them in the bottom of a lake.I shuddered at a distant, cloudy memory I couldn’t be sure was real.
The pastor walked up behind the podium to speak and time slowed. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. My stomach did that thing, the thing it always did when my body searched for Caspian. I missed the pull in the air when he was near. I missed the comfort I found in his stare. It had been days since I gave him the intimate parts of me that until now, I’d only kept to myself. By the end of the ceremony, my mind had finally reconciled with my heart that he wasn’t going to show.
After the memorial, my parents had a fundraiser event to go to. I didn’t feel like forcing smiles while hearing about “how lucky I was that I came from a good family,” so I went home. My father hadn’t spoken to me since the morning I got caught lying to him—and the police. I eventually ended up telling them I went to a party and had too much to drink and was too ashamed to tell them. I made up a story about Chandler Carmichael taking me to a friend’s house just in case anyone saw him in my car that night. It took a few tears, which was easy considering I’d just found out my best friend died, but the cops were convinced I was telling the truth. My father also convinced them to sweep the whole underage drinking thing under the rug. On the outside, he looked like a concerned father. On the inside, I knew he was seething.
When I walked in the door, Lincoln was sitting on the sofa with one arm draped across the back and a near-empty bottle in his other hand. His feet were propped up on the glass coffee table, and his shirt was unbuttoned halfway with his tie hanging loose. He didn’t even make it out of the living room and to the service, probably because he was still butthurt that he and Ethan got in a car accident and botched up his face. That was what he got for drag racing with his friends. Lincoln said Ethan’s car was a mess. Someone said Caspian’s car was worse. Why were those two even racing? As far as I knew, they didn’t even hang out with the same crowd.
I hadn’t seen or heard from Caspian since Mischief Night. At first, it stung. His rejection made my soul ache. But grief quickly took over and swallowed the rejection whole. It took what was left of my heart and tore it to shreds. It rearranged my world and suffocated me. It transported me from pain to anger. If I hadn’t left with Caspian, I’d have been with Lyric. If I had been with Lyric, she wouldn’t be dead.
Now I had no one. My own family rarely talked to me anymore. Dad would rather pretend he was on the phone than look me in the eye. Mom stayed gone all the time. I hadn’t seen Lincoln sober since the day he got in a wreck—the day I found out about Lyric.
My best friend was gone, and Caspian left me to deal with it alone.
Thanks to the Universe’s sick sense of humor, I got to mourn the loss of my innocence and my best friend all at the same time.
And I hated Caspian for it. I hated him for all of it.
Then, I wished he were here to make me feel safe the way he always had.
It was a vicious cycle that I prayed would end.
I walked across the hardwood floor, stopping in front of the leather sofa. “You didn’t go to the memorial.”
Lincoln lifted his gaze without raising his head. “I can remember Lyric just fine from right here.”
“You okay? You’ve been weird.” Weirder than usual. Lincoln was a loose cannon on any given day, but lately, he was falling deeper and deeper into the darkness. It would have broken my heart if my heart didn’t already feel shattered.
“So, because I didn’t go sit in a room full of people pretending to give a shit about a girl they didn’t even know, I’m being weird?” He tipped back the bottle, taking a long pull.
“It’s not about those people, Lincoln. The memorial was for Lyric.”
He scoffed.