Read Online Say Something by Jennifer Brown - Free Book Online

but I couldn’t get anywhere. The farther I got into the Commons, the harder the crowd pushed back. My feet were getting stepped on, my sides were getting elbowed, and then someone thumped me hard on the head, and I went down.
    The second I hit the floor, even as I clawed and scrambled to get to my feet, people raced right over me, their shoes smashing my hands, my arms. Someone’s knee hit me in the nose, and I saw a flash of light and felt blood trickle over my lips. Everyone was pressing so hard against one another, it was impossible to move, impossible to get up.
    For a moment I was terrified. More bangs, more shouts, and with every shot there was a new surge, people tripping over my legs, stepping on my ankles. I doubled over on the floor, crying out in pain every time someone stepped on me, thinking I was going to be the kid in the news story who got trampled to death.
    And then there was a hand. Right in front of my face, reaching toward me in the darkness.
    “Come on!” I heard, and I looked up to see Chris Summers standing over me, reaching down between people to get to me. “Come on, we need to get out of here!” He gave his hand an insistent shake.
    Even though it made no sense to me, rationally, that Chris Summers was going to help me, I grabbed his hand, and he pulled, yanking me up to my feet. He looked a little manic, a little petrified, running on adrenaline alone.
    “He’s shooting! Go!” he yelled. He gave my shoulder a shove toward the exit, but still I stood. I watched him turn to go back into the Commons. Watched him kneel and pull a bleeding girl under an overturned table, where she’d be safe. Watched him steer another girl toward the door, pushing her farther into the crowd.
    And then I saw him crumple to the floor. I saw him bleed. And I saw Nick standing several feet behind him, holding the gun out at arm’s length.
    Nick looked up, and our eyes locked. His mouth twitched on one side in the tiniest of smirks. He looked scared. But also proud. And in that moment when we stared at each other, I felt it. I felt him thinking,
This is ours
. Because he wasn’t the only one who put Chris’s name on the hate list. I was guilty, too.
    I turned and ran. Shoved right over the tops of people who’d been shoving over me. Didn’t care if I knocked someone down or hurt them or left them behind. All I could think was that I needed to get out of there, that I needed to get away. Not from Nick. Nick wouldn’t have hurt me.
    I needed to get away from Chris and all that blood.
    I needed to get away from my guilt.
    Never
, I promised myself.
I will never talk about it. I will never say anything.

Senior Year
    I caught up with Valerie on graduation day, just after the ceremony. She was sitting on the bleachers, all alone in her cap and gown, her tassel fluttering like a flag in the breeze. She was staring off across the soccer field, hands buried in the folds of her robe. She looked softer in this light somehow. Glowy. Pink.
    I didn’t really know Valerie anymore, which was sad, because a part of me still felt connected to her. A part of me understood how hard she’d had to work this year, how much she’d fought for herself, for Nick. Being at graduation took guts for Valerie, and I felt a twinge of my old love for her, for the way she’d stood in front of the people who still blamed her for the shooting, chin up defiantly, owning her place in our class.
    I’d made Dad promise not to tell anyone anything until after I’d confided to Valerie myself. I’d let her take the blame for an entire year. I’d let everyone act like she was the monster who knew and never told. She wasn’t.
I was.
I at least owed her the truth.
    I sat next to her. “Hey,” I said. “Congratulations.”
    “Thanks,” she said, not turning her eyes away from the field. “Congratulations to you, too.”
    “It doesn’t really feel like a celebration, does it?”
    The wind caught the tassel again and pulled it across her