Page 62 of Together We Rot

I lurch right out of my own skin. I swivel and I’m greeted by the front engine of a car. Lucas’s Civic chugs steam into the frozen air, and I was wrong when I said I’d never been so happy to see it before.

Seeing it now is nothing short of a miracle. The locks pop and he gestures to the passenger seat. I dash into it, melting into the heat as it blasts from the vents.

Rubbing my fingers furiously together, I wonder if I’ll ever feel them again.

“Lucas,” I breathe, sounding way too enthusiastic for someone who called him shallow and useless hours prior. He sneers against the cold. His hair is wind-tossed and his eyes are black-bagged.

“I’ve been driving around aimlessly trying to find you guys.” He gulps. “You weren’t at the motel and I saw the bike tracks and I—I messed up.” His voice is clipped and his nails dig into the leather of his wheel.

Elwood’s broken expression burns in place of any relief. Lucas planted that seed of doubt in him and it sprouted too soon. And now he’s gone for good. My patience is thin enough as it is, but today’s worn it away to nothing. Rage is better than grief. Rage is a monster of my own making. “You think?”

Cut the attitude. Mom’s voice bites in my ear. She’s not even alive and is still lecturing me in my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to pretend she’s hovering over me, her hand resting on my shoulder. When you’re angry, she says, it’s like you’re on fire. You need to cool off or you’ll burn yourself and those you care about.

“You’re right.” He deflates, but he can’t look at me when he says it. He focuses on the road as he drives forward. “You’re right; I screwed up. Big-time. Vee’s at Kevin’s place and neither one of them wants anything to do with me. And you and Elwood... wait.” He swivels in surprise. “Where is he?”

A nasty response forms on my lips, but my mother’s memory is vigilant. Cooling off is easier said than done. Harder yet when it’s with someone I hate. If you don’t like someone, try to see them from someone else’s view. There’s good in everyone, if you look hard enough.

I remind myself who Lucas is. To me, he’s a jerk with a God complex, but he’s also Ronnie’s boyfriend and Elwood’s friend. I’ve seen the way Ronnie looks at him when she thinks I’ve got my head turned. I’ve seen Elwood chuckle down the hall at his jokes.

“Gone,” I confess softly, heartachingly. By the time the word has left my lips, we’ve already pulled into the lot of a familiar home.

Only days ago, the ground rumbled with his blaring stereo and cars lined every inch of the street. People milled in and out of his living room, and Elwood’s change was only beginning. Now it reminds me of an abandoned wasp’s nest, shriveled and dead and no longer buzzing with a hive. In place of life, there is a pervasive, haunting silence.

“What do you mean gone?” Lucas pries, yanking the key out of the ignition.

There goes my ooey-gooey heart. I’ve spent my whole life concealing it, and now here I am, tears streaming down my face in front of Lucas, of all people. “I mean he’s gone,” I blubber. “He ran away—” I hiccup and then surprise myself. “Please don’t leave again. I need your help. I can’t let anything happen to him.”

Lucas shouts a curse into a clenched fist. This time his anger is directed at no one but himself. We won’t get anywhere if he keeps impaling himself with it. He mellows at the sight of my tears and his hand does this weird back-and-forth dance like he’s not sure how to console me.

I shake it away and swipe at my own tears. Crying in front of him is bad enough. I don’t need him patting my head and telling me any of this is okay.

His hand lingers for another second in the air before he lowers it to his lap. “I’m not leaving this time,” he promises, and my shoulders soften a tad. “You were right. I’ve been a self-obsessed asshole and I’m sorry. I need to apologize to Elwood most of all, but, Wil, I’ve been horrible to you too.”

Apologizing to me? I’ve spent this entire year wishing him dead.

See? my mother’s voice croons in my thoughts. He’s not all that bad, is he?

We both break away and fixate on different patches of the floor. “I hated you,” I confess. He looks over at me, startled. I keep my eyes trained on my knees. “You stole Elwood from me. Made him laugh in ways I thought only I knew how to. And even when Ronnie was with me, she was still looking over at you. I hated you not because of who you were, but because of what you had.”

This is nowhere near the conversation I expected to be having with him. I hate to say it, but my mom might’ve been right after all. Offering this up to him is a lead weight lifted from my shoulders.

He rakes a hand through his hair and barks out a humorless laugh. “I was jealous of you this whole time.”

“What?” I blurt, because I’m the least enviable person on the planet. My run-down life in a failing motel hardly seems covetable. I can’t think of a single thing about me that I wouldn’t willingly trade away with someone else.

“You think I had Elwood’s undivided attention? Half of our conversations revolved around you. The other half of the time was him blatantly staring at you from across the cafeteria. And Vee? Veronica always gives me the cold shoulder whenever you’re around. Things are so different between us alone, but as soon as she’s hanging out with you, it’s like she hates me all over again. That’s why I yelled at you back at the diner... I was frustrated and angry and jealous. I really shouldn’t have brought up your mom or Elwood. That was a low blow.”

I gulp down my first choice of words. It isn’t about your first thought, Mom always said. It’s about your second. “You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. I’ve got a raging horrible temper and I wanted everyone else to be as miserable as I felt. It wasn’t a lie... I get that.”

His eyes water the same as mine, and the silence that follows next isn’t charged with unspoken venom like all the times prior. It’s a quiet understanding.

“Truce?” he asks with a lopsided smile. He offers a hand my way and I hesitate. It wavers in the air and he almost drops it, but I grab ahold of it at the last second. Warm.

“Truce.” We shake on it, and Lucas’s grin injects me with much-needed hope. “Let’s bring him home.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ELWOOD

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