Read Online Say Something by Jennifer Brown - Free Book Online Page A

cheek. “Not really. You think anything ever will again?”
    I scrubbed the toe of my shoe in the gravel, feeling silly in my robe, as if I were wearing a dress. Like if Chris Summers had graduated with us, he’d probably have called it a dress just to fuck with me. “I don’t know.”
    “You know what’s funny?” she said, finally turning her gaze down at her hands. “I always thought he wanted to graduate. But now that I think about it, he never really talked about the future. Maybe I should have seen that as a sign.”
    “Val, don’t do this to yourself,” I said, placing my hand on her back.
    “I can’t help it,” she said. “I’ll never stop wondering and thinking about what I missed. I was so blind. I swear I didn’t know, David. You believe me, don’t you?”
    I let my hand fall back to the seat and took a deep breath. “I knew,” I said.
    She squinted up at me. “What do you mean?”
    “I knew,” I repeated. “I saw all the signs. I saw the names all crossed out on the hate list, and I saw him and Jeremy with a gun at Blue Lake the day before. He said things that didn’t make sense, and I saw the gun under his jacket before the shooting. I saw everything, but I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to get him in trouble or… or I don’t know. All I know is I saw it coming, and I tried to catch up with him, but it was too late. I should have told somebody days before, but I didn’t. All the things they’re saying you’re guilty of? It was me. Not you. Me.”
    Valerie shook her head slowly, as if what I was telling her just couldn’t compute. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.
    “Because I…” I paused, feeling fear tingle throughout my body. “Because I’m a coward and a shit friend.” My voice got thick with tears. I willed a few deep breaths into my lungs and pushed my tongue up against the roof of my mouth to keep from crying. “I’m sorry,” I said.
    Valerie stood and then just sort of hovered there, as if she was unsure what to do with herself. “You’re sorry,” she said, and I nodded, afraid to look at her. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you waited all this time to say anything.”
    “I know,” I said.
    She stayed there for a few more minutes, until we could hear voices, other people coming around the side of the school, taking a graduation-day walk around campus. I quickly wiped my cheeks and stood next to her.
    “I think I know where Jeremy is,” I said. “Or at least where he went after the shooting. I’m going to tell the police. I just wanted you to know first.”
    “Oh my God!” she shouted, wheeling on me, her hands flung up toward the sky. “You knew all this time where Jeremy is? You let me be grilled by the cops, and you let everyone think I… God, David! I thought we were friends.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said again, standing and facing her, not even bothering to wipe away my tears now. “I don’t blame you for hating me.”
    She held her breath and closed her eyes, then sighed and let her shoulders sag. “I don’t hate you,” she said quietly. “I am so over all the hate.”
    She sat back down on the bench, and I sat next to her. Our shoulders were touching, but we might as well have been a million miles away from each other. Any connection we might have once had was lost.
    “He was wrong,” I said. “About them being mistakes.”
    “What?”
    “Nick. He told me once he thought people like Chris Summers were genetically bad, just mistakes that could be wiped out. But he was wrong, because even after the shooting, there are still cliques and still people hating on each other and…” Chris Summers’s hand reached out to me in my mind. “They were sometimes good, too. They were
people
, that’s all. Just like us. Nick was wrong. And retaliating against them was pointless. It didn’t change anything.”
    “No. It changed everything,” she said. “Just not the way he expected it to.”
    We looked over