Read Online Exposure by Kim Askew - Free Book Online Page B

the crown. A weary sensation of relief washed over me when Craig finally pulled up to my house. Beth opened her door, and as I squeezed past her, she grabbed hold of my elbow, forcefully, and asked, “Hey, who tagged you?”
    â€œWhat?” I asked. In the moonlight, her pristine white cheerleading jacket glowed ghost-like. Not wanting to lock eyes with hers, mine landed instead on a spot on her shoulder. A tiny red dot, a mere pinprick-sized blemish was visible on the white leather. Could it have been blood?
    â€œWho. Tagged. You.” Beth said, enunciating slowly. Why had she been so insistent?
    â€œUm, some freshman.” I wriggled free of her grasp. “They all look alike, don’t they?” Flashing a nervous smile, I waved in the direction of the Jeep and headed for my front door, practically at a run.
    Mrs. Kimball’s tremulous voice finally broke my reverie.
    â€œClass, please pass your quizzes to the front of the room.”
    I’d been too immersed in my own thoughts to realize that, possibly trying to keep some semblance of normalcy in the classroom, our physics teacher had passed out her usual Monday morning pop quiz. Lost in thought, I had missed the whole thing. That was when Leonard, who sat to my right, reached over and placed on my desk a sheet of paper with the answers circled in pencil and my name printed in block letters at the top. He’d obviously taken the quiz for me. I turned to thank him, but he looked the other way as if in embarrassment — for once not using the opportunity to assail me with his badly formulated compliments. I was grateful.
    The rest of the day was obviously shot to hell as students gathered in little clusters, comforting each other in shock and disbelief. Others walked zombie-like from class to class with a perpetually pallid look on their faces. A collection of bouquets and stuffed animals was starting to amass outside the hockey rink, and Duncan’s locker was plastered with taped-up notes of condolence. On some level, everyone seemed affected by what had happened, from the thespians to the stoners. And although a few people were milking the drama — sporting black armbands made of construction paper seemed a bit gratuitous, after all — the general outpouring of emotion was a testament to Duncan’s equal-opportunity friendliness. In truth, he’d been the only one of Craig’s friends who didn’t make me feel like a complete waste of space when I was in his company.
    Grief counselors bogarted several of the classrooms on the first floor, arranging the desks in circles, presumably for group therapy sessions. Must be a depressing job, I mused. What somber scenarios did they encounter during the other 364 days a year? A local news network anchor and her camerawoman sat whispering to one another in two of the plastic chairs lined up outside the principal’s office.
    The last thing I wanted to do was talk about my feelings, so after bailing on fourth period I headed for the darkroom where I knew I could be alone. No teachers would be worried about truants today. I walked the hallway toward the art annex and when I was about to round the corner of a bank of lockers, two voices — ones I had recently become all too familiar with — stopped me in my tracks.
    â€œI just can’t deal with the … the
circus
right now.” Craig must have been standing just around the corner. His voice was low, a loud whisper. “Half of them didn’t even know him. Not really.”
    â€œDamn it, Craig, we’ve got bigger issues right now.” Beth’s response was shockingly abrupt. “They’re going to be questioning everybody who was at the party.”
    â€œI still can’t believe he fell! I mean, the look on his face…. It still feels like some bad dream I’m going to wake up from. We should just tell the truth. I mean, I wanted to call the cops that night!”
    â€œNo one