“What issues?” I asked. Now we were finally making progress. I’d been wondering this all afternoon. “What did Seth Rector ever do to you, Alex?”
“Just stay out of it, Pierce,” he said, scowling. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, believe me.”
“Hey, you guys!” Farah, holding a tray loaded down with tall cups, waved to us from up near the front of the line. “You coming?”
“Uh,” I said, waving back. “Yeah! Hold on.”
I turned back towards Alex. “I don’t know what I’m getting myself into?” I asked him. “Are you kidding me? Do I have to remind you that I died? So whatever’s going on with you and Seth Rector, I highly doubt it’s worse than that.”
Kayla’s eyes got very large. “She died? Alex, you never told me that.”
Alex continued to glare down at me for a heartbeat or two. For a second, I thought he might actually tell me the truth. I could see his Adam’s apple moving up and down. Sweat was glistening all over his forehead and temples. He seemed to want to tell me…which would be convenient, since once I knew, I could begin to work on solving the problem. Some people might not want my help…
But disappointingly all he ended up saying was, “Screw it. You want to hang out with your new A-Wing friends, Pierce? Have fun. Have a blast. I’m out of here.”
Then he turned around without another word and headed across the parking lot towards his car.
“Crap,” Kayla said, watching him go. She turned to look at me. “All my stuff is still in his car. My books and everything.”
“It’s okay,” I said to her. “Go after him.”
Kayla hesitated as she looked past me, towards the table of stunningly attractive A-Wingers, all grabbing at the Gut Busters Farah and Seth had brought to them on trays.
“I don’t get it,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Get what?”
“Why you’d ditch your own cousin to sit with them. They’re kind of mean to people who aren’t…like them.”
“I’m trying to make a new start,” I explained. “And part of it includes not letting bad things happen to people I love.”
“Oh,” Kayla said. She didn’t look as if she understood. But that was okay. No one did, really. “Well, good luck with that.” Then she called, “Alex, wait up,” and took off after him. I sighed.
Then I picked up my heavy bag and started the long hot walk across the beach, towards the picnic tables.
And after he had laid his hand on mine
With joyful mien, whence I was comforted,
He led me in among the secret things.
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto III
Why don’t you love me anymore?
That’s what I finally remembered Hannah had written in the note she’d left Mr. Mueller on the day she died — the note that no longer existed, thanks to Mr. Mueller having destroyed it.
Why don’t you love me anymore?
Hannah may have swallowed the pills that killed her.
And I had failed to be there for her, still too confused and traumatized from everything that had happened to me to remember my promise to protect her from it.
But Mr. Mueller?
He was the one who was truly responsible for Hannah’s death. I’d known it in my bones, with the same certainty that I’d known Hannah’s mom was keeping her daughter’s room preserved as a sort of shrine to her, exactly as it had been the day she died, down to the dirty clothes that had been in Hannah’s laundry basket, so her parents could lift the lid of the basket and smell their daughter’s scent from time to time, and pretend she was still alive.
For weeks after Hannah’s death, I thought of nothing else.
How could I have let it happen?
I’m the one who’d told Hannah evil isn’t just in our graveyards.
Evil can be anywhere. In our churches. In our own homes.
In our schools.
And though I’d promised her otherwise, I’d done nothing to protect her from it.
When I overheard my dad say the Changs had no chance of winning their lawsuit against the school and getting Mr. Mueller removed from his position because it was just their word against his — all they had by way of evidence were a few of Hannah’s diary entries — I knew what I had to do.
And this time, it wasn’t to run like a scared little girl the way I had from John — twice.
Of course things went wrong from the start, though. I didn’t expect Mr. Mueller to turn out the overhead lights during the private tutoring session I’d finally agreed to. Because he had a headache, he said, from all the anxiety.
Not, of course, that anyone at the Westport Academy for Girls believed he’d been romantically involved with a student who’d killed herself over him. Anyone but me. The Changs’ lawsuit had actually made Mr. Mueller more popular. Frantic about his health as the stress from the trial caused him to grow pale beneath his goatee, many of the moms and daughters started leaving him even more baked goods. Some of the girls made up a new cheer to show their support of him. The Mueller Shout-Out, they called it. They performed it at every game and school event.
This was not as bad as the names a lot of them started calling Hannah online: Slut. Liar. Skank.
So it wasn’t bad enough Hannah had to die. They had to kill her memory, too.
The school didn’t even put Mr. Mueller on any kind of administrative leave, either. I guess they couldn’t or it would be like they were taking sides or something.