Chapter 8

The rest of the way home, my head was all over the place. Once Eduardo was feeling a little better and I was left to my own devices, my brain went right back to Melanie. I knew I should be more focused on Rafe, since Dad’s life was on the line, but I couldn’t stop focusing on what Melanie did.

Maybe it’s ‘cause she was my first real girlfriend, or maybe because there were some obvious courses to take with her. The Rafe thing, I just had no idea what to do about it short of just taking out Rafe. While that would probably end up stopping him from killing Dad, it would also have me in prison for life, which wasn’t exactly the better life I’d promised myself.

No, I needed another way to deal with this. I just had to think about it. Melanie, however, I did have some thoughts on what to do. Unfortunately, my knee-jerk first thought was to just call her and tell her we were over. In my heart, I knew she’d never change. She was just too controlling and jealous. She had this idea of what the perfect high school couple would look like, and how that would lead to the perfect college couple, and it seemed all a bit too ... John Hughes for me.

At least the house was quiet when I got home. Mom’s car was in the driveway, but she was nowhere to be seen, which probably meant she was in her room lying down. Josh was also nowhere around, but that was normal, since he was always in his room. Probably skinning a cat or something.

Dad, I knew, was at work. Which meant I had some time to think. I thought I should use this time to work out a Rafe plan, but no, I needed to deal with Melanie, if only to clear her out of my head so I could think straight. The straight-up betrayal after she’d looked me in the eye and promised to help Li just stung too much.

I went into the kitchen, dropped my bag, and thought about getting a snack, but I was too riled up to eat. Instead, I paced, looking at the beige phone hanging on the wall, then back at the floor. Thinking.

Finally, making a decision, I walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver. The dial tone buzzed in my ear and my thumb hovered over the numbers. And then I stopped.

What would I even say?

Hey Melanie, just wondering why you decided to stab my friend in the back after promising you wouldn’t?

She would either lie and tell me she didn’t do that, or she would straight up tell me she had. Either would piss me off and start a fight. While that might make it easier to break up with her, I still didn’t know if that’s what I wanted to do.

I put the receiver back on the cradle. Think first, act second. That was my plan with this new life I’d been given by the dream, don’t just react my way through life, but actually think about choices and consequences.

I leaned against the counter, staring at the phone. Minutes passed in silence as I tried to come up with what to say. Instead, all I did was work myself up into being mad. And the anger wasn’t going away. Maybe getting it out was the answer. Rip the Band-Aid off.

Fine. I grabbed the receiver again, put in the first three digits, and paused again. What if she didn’t admit it and confronted me? What if she just lied? What if she twisted it somehow, made it seem like I was the bad guy? She was good at that, making herself out to be the victim.

Crap. This was harder than I thought.

Especially since I’d got myself all worked up. Calling her while I was angry would be a mistake. I needed to be calm and collected. To meet her hysterics, feigned or otherwise, with the opposite.

Just as I was trying to convince myself that patience was a virtue I actually possessed, a knock at the door distracted me from my thoughts.

Wiping my suddenly sweaty palms on my jeans, I walked back through the living room to answer it, since if Mom was having an episode, she wouldn’t get up, and Josh would never come out of his room to answer the door.

Surprisingly, I found Li standing on my front porch, and she looked like a wreck.

“Hey,” I said, stepping back. “Something wrong? What happened?”

She came inside without me having to ask. I closed the door behind her and pointed toward the living room. She did look through into the kitchen as we went into the living room, and at the stairs, and I could read her concern. She hadn’t been back since Josh creeped her out, which told me how bad whatever had happened was.

“He’s in his room.”

She just nodded and started to pace. Just like I had with Eduardo, I let her get out some of the nervous energy and waited, giving her time to start talking on her own.

Like Eduardo, she never did, so I had to prompt her. “Okay, talk to me. What happened?”

Li stopped pacing and turned to face me. “Practice was awful.”

“Awful how?” I asked.

“Taylor, she’s making my life impossible.”

Taylor Stine was the starter for the same position Li played and got most of the playtime. As far as I knew, there hadn’t been much in the way of bad blood between them, so her statement didn’t really give much of a clue as to what had happened.

“She questions everything I do,” Li said. “Every pass, every shot, every defensive move. It’s like she’s waiting for me to mess up. She’s been doing it ever since we got back on Monday, and it’s getting worse.”