Read Online This Is How It Ends by Jen Nadol - Free Book Online Page B

lights—green then pink then blue. I should say something funny , I thought. But it was hard to think with her so close, and the sweet warm smell of her intoxicating. “What?” I asked thickly.
    â€œYou’re a thinker,” she said. “You’re deep but not morose. You’re funny, and there’s just . . .” She paused, gesturing for the words that were missing. “There’s so much there.”
    I held her gaze, aware—like she must have been—that we were looking at each other for way too long, but unable to tear away. I think if we’d been anywhere else, I might have tried to kiss her then. But we were on John Peters’s deck and she was my oldest friend’s girlfriend.
    â€œIt’s all bullshit,” I said hoarsely.
    She smiled wryly. “It sure is.” Her comment seemed to mean more than just the way I acted or what she thought of me.
    Natalie came back to us then, smiling and more relaxed than I’d seen her all day. Eventually Trip drifted over too, and I stepped aside, letting him take the spot beside Sarah, where he was supposed to be. We only saw Tannis briefly when she and Matty Gretowniak came over, bizarrely hand in hand. I smelled alcohol on her breath as she said, “Matty’s driving me home.”
    I’d seen the flask and had known it was circulating, even under Mr. Peters’s watchful eye. I wasn’t surprised Tannis was drinking, but Matty? I gave him a hard look, and he grinned sheepishly. I had no idea if he was drunk or just feeling foolish or something else entirely.
    â€œYou okay?” I asked Matty. “You shouldn’t drive if—”
    â€œI’m fine,” he said. “Ninety-eight percent sober.” He held up a hand. “Scout’s honor.”
    â€œWell, then . . .” I shrugged. “Mazel tov.”
    â€œDude,” Tannis said fuzzily. “You know I suck at Spanish.”
    Trip dropped me off sometime after midnight, Sarah asleep on his lap in the front seat and Nat already deposited at home. My mom was at work, and I crashed hard, feeling the full exhaustion of the Dash and the high of being with Sarah and everything else.
    I woke up to the shrill ring of my phone, the red numbers of my clock blurry but definitely not double digits.
    I checked the caller ID, then picked up hesitantly. I couldn’t imagine why Tannis would call me at all, much less before six on a Sunday.
    â€œRiley,” she said breathlessly. “Natalie’s dad is dead.”

CHAPTER 7
    I STOOD IN MY ROOM stupidly, trying to figure out what to do. Trip was on his way.
    â€œShot.” Tannis’s words echoed in my head. “And, Ri?” she’d said. “Nat found him.”
    â€œOh my God.” But she’d already hung up.
    I couldn’t remember the last time there’d been a murder in Buford. The girl who’d died last year had been a big deal because before that it had been just the usual stuff—heart attacks, old age. My dad’s shooting four years ago had made all the papers, and a TV station had even showed up. Maybe they’d thought that was a murder, instead of what it had turned out to be—a hunter shot by a stray bullet, bleeding out in the woods. I’d been thirteen, and now I remembered only fragments: my mom crying; people bringing food; dishes and dishes of it piling up, uneaten. Staying in the McGintys’ old-people-smelling house, wondering when my mom would be back, worrying that she wouldn’t be. And after, the absence of my dad, a gaping and permanent hole of never. He’d never take me hunting again or teach me to drive, see me graduate, get married, have kids. There was an icy feeling in my gut, thinking of him and of Nat and her dad. And what she’d seen that night at the cave.
    Trip’s honking out front startled me. I zipped up my backpack and went out to meet him, careful—for once—to lock the