Page 79 of A Sea of Unspoken Things
My footsteps echoed up the empty hall of the high school’s east wing, my reflection a shifting shape on the floor. The entire building changed on the weekends, with light casting unbroken beams at an angle through the windows and the open emptiness of the rooms almost resonant.
The darkroom had been left ajar, allowing the scent of the developer and the trickling sound of the water bath to drift out into the hallway. I didn’t even blink when I caught the shape of Johnny as I passed the open door, and I wondered if that was how it would always be now—splices of him folded into the periphery of my life.
Olivia’s classroom was empty when I stepped inside, and I glanced at my phone, checking the time. I was a few minutes late. Beams of sunlight pierced through the air, striping the linoleum floor as I walked along the wall, letting my fingers trace over the paintings. Every time I came here, the smell of ink and clay and a hundred other familiar things transported me back to Byron.
I stopped when I reached Autumn’s photography series mounted and framed on the wall. The little star in the corner of the images had been written in pencil, the same one I’d seen on that message atJohnny’s. But those trees looked different to me now. They meant something different. What I wished I could know was what they’d meant to Autumn.
“James!” Olivia appeared at the classroom’s entrance, one hand hooked to the edge of the doorframe.
“Hey.”
“Thought I heard you. You barely caught me.” She walked straight toward a row of large binders on a shelf behind her desk, pulling two of them down.
“Sorry, I got caught up with something,” I said, surprising myself that I was actually tempted to tell her about Quinn. Like the teenage girl in me still wanted to pull it all apart with a friend, analyzing the details of everything. I’d missed that, I realized.
“The folder’s still in the darkroom.” Olivia found the binder she was looking for and pulled it down with a grunt. She opened it on top of the messy desk calendar and flipped through the plastic sleeves. “But I also ran across a few prints and I wanted to be sure you got them.”
I leaned a hip into the desk. “I appreciate that.”
“I know I put them in here,” she murmured, eyes skipping from one photo to the next. She kept flipping until she found it. “There they are!”
A photograph of Smoke and a few others were clipped together and slipped into the same sleeve. She pulled them out, handing them to me.
The corners of my mouth tugged into a smile. The shot of Smoke was of him sitting on the porch of the cabin, his ageless tawny eyes on the road and tongue lolling out one side of his open mouth.
“How are you holding up?” Olivia asked.
I could feel the smile falling from my lips now. “I’m okay. You?”
She closed the binder, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s been a weird few days.”
“Did you talk to Byron?”
She nodded. “They’d been trying to reach Autumn because a portionof her first semester of tuition had been paid for and then she never showed.”
A sinking feeling traveled down to the pit of my stomach, remembering the payment on Johnny’s bank account. I’d have to contact them about that.
“Everyone here has been just devastated. The students, teachers, it’s all so hard to believe.”
I’d come close a few times to outright asking Olivia what she knew about Johnny and Autumn’s relationship, because she hadn’t brought it up once. That tracked with the Olivia I had known before. Sadie had always been a straight shooter, someone who didn’t shy away from things, but Olivia always seemed to exist in the background. Always on the edge of what was happening.
“Olivia,” I began, trying to choose my words carefully.
But when she looked up at me with those wide, innocent eyes behind her thick-framed glasses, I thought twice. There had been so much stirred up, so many questions raised, that I could feel the weight of it all crushing this town. And that made me feel like the fewer people who were dragged into Johnny’s mess, the better.
“Just”—I sighed—“thanks. For being a friend to Johnny.”
“You’re welcome.” A sweet smile stretched on her lips, her head tilting to the side.
“When do you head back to the city?”
“In a few days. Waiting to see how things…” I didn’t finish. I didn’t have to.
She gave me a sympathetic look. “Can we grab a drink at The Penny before you go?”
“I’d like that.”
She turned back to the shelf, stacking the binders in place, and I let my gaze drag over the classroom one last time. Olivia and I had spent half of high school conjuring up the same dream, but only one of us had lived it. And now I found myself wondering who’d been better off. She seemed happy here. Content. It made me ask myself if I could be, too.