The pain is there this morning…where my lower leg used to be. It’s worse than normal, if normal is a thing, and it makes me slow to get ready. I have to let Kyle in while I finish brushing my hair and teeth, and he takes over my half-eaten cereal bowl for me while I search for my shoes.

“I don’t think I have ever seen you without a Pop-Tart in the morning,” Kyle says, slurping the last drop of milk from the bowl before setting it in the sink.

“We’re out. Apparently, Dad isn’t shopping anymore either, because we’re out of pretty much everything. You mind running me by the store on the way home?” I ask, sliding my left heel into one of my favorite pair of Vans.

“Sure, but don’t you have rehab?” Kyle grabs my bag for me while I jerk my right shoe into the correct position, and I look down at the laces for a few extra seconds, avoiding him.

“I’m not going,” I say.

Kyle laughs immediately, but he stops when I adjust my posture and look him in the eyes. I reach for my bag, but he swings it over his shoulder and glowers at me, moving toward the back door and holding it open for me to follow. I drag slowly by him.

“That’s your plan, huh? You’re gonna just quit on shit again? Maybe pick smoking back up, mix some pills with a few shots of whiskey, start dangling out of cars, and maybe nosedive off a bridge? Fuck, Joss, you make it really hard to be your friend sometimes.”

I stop a few feet away from his truck, but he keeps going, swinging my bag around his body and tossing it into the back.

“I don’t need your shit, Kyle!” I shout, but my words are cut off when he slams his door closed and quickly turns over his engine.

My standoff is short-lived, mostly because Kyle won’t make eye contact with me, so I walk to the passenger side and get in, clicking my belt angrily and nestling into the corner of the seat, against the window, because I don’t want to be near him.

I expect his driving to be just as rushed—quick turns, hard stops—but that’s not the case. Kyle drives calmly, even though I can feel the words he’s not saying pounding inside of him, begging to come out. We pull into the school without another word between us, and I unbuckle and fling my door open without pause. Kyle remains still, though, and just before I slam my door closed, I catch him rubbing both hands over his face.

“What?” I huff.

His hands fall away and he rests his head sideways against the seat, tired eyes looking at me. “What are we supposed to do now?”

My brow draws in, and I squint one eye, irritated, not yet over my rush of angry emotions, and my leg still firing pain signals to my brain.

“We go to fucking class, then we go home, and I pull out my Jose shirts and I put one on and see if I can pick up some extra shifts, start back early.”

“Not that,” Kyle says, his eyes fluttering with his words as he shakes his head.

I hold the frame of the door opening and lean on my good hip, shrugging.

“What do we do with all of this fucked up shit we know? Wes…his brothers. How am I supposed to walk into that school, slap hands with TK and Levi, and pretend the last two days didn’t happen? How is that okay? Their brother is alive, and I’m not supposed to say a word? What’s your plan, Joss? How are you going to lie to them?”

My breath draws in slowly through my nose, and I force myself to unclench my teeth and let my jaw relax. I roll my shoulders and let go of my hold on Kyle’s truck, taking a full step back with my eyes squarely on my friend’s.

“I’m not,” I say, then slam his truck door closed before I walk around his truck to his side, reach into the back and grab my bag.

I start to walk toward the main hall doors swiftly, but my speed is no match for Kyle’s, and I feel his hand slide around my bicep to slow me.

“You can’t just walk in there and tell them, Joss. I agree they need to know, but this has to be handled the right way. You can’t…”

“I’m not stupid,” I say, shirking away from his hold. I continue to move toward the doors, but not with the same determined march as before. Kyle’s right.

I stop when we get to the main building, and instead let my bag slide from my shoulder to the ground while I sit on the short wall that leads to the gym. My eyes move to the baseball field on instinct. It’s empty, and my gut twists at the thought of no longer seeing Wes standing out there.

Kyle sits on the grass across from me, pulling his knees up and resting his elbows on them, his back leaned against the opposite wall.

“My dad took off last night. I don’t think he came home.”

Kyle’s face falls, his shoulders sagging as the air leaves his body. He knows my worries.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s drinking again, Joss,” he says, but his mouth pulls tight on one side after he speaks, because he knows it also very well might.

My gaze drifts back to the field again.

“I don’t think I can handle it all—if he is drinking? I’m barely holding on, and that…I can’t go back to that,” I say.

Kyle doesn’t respond. He doesn’t have to. We sit out here—in the periphery where no one pays attention to us—until the bell rings. No longer able to pretend, we both stand and pick up our bags, then wait for our friends to walk up the hill from the weight room. My father made it to the gym for workouts, but then again…he always did. He never let the guys on his team down. And even though he isn’t coaching them now, they’re still his guys.

The boys pound knuckles and ask TK questions about football while Taryn slides her arm through mine and walks alongside me to the stairwell. She glances at me, a signal asking if I need her help, but I smile with tight lips and shake my head.

“If you knew the exercises Rebecca had me doing, you’d realize stairs are like kid’s play for me now,” I chuckle.

I don’t show off, even though I feel the urge to. I take the stairs one at a time and hold the rail on the side. I’m careful—just like Wes would want me to be.

“How was Grace?” Taryn asks the moment we settle into our seats in the biology lab. I wonder if Wes would have been in here, too.

“She was…” I slide a new spiral notebook from my bag before hanging it over the back of my chair. I breathe out short and fast through my nose when I turn back to face the table, flipping to the first page and writing the date.

“She was actually great,” I admit, smiling on the side closest to Taryn. My friend mimics my expression. And responds with “Yeah?”

I nod and look down at the paper in front of me, pressing my pencil along the holes by the spine to draw tiny dots. “She gave me some of my mom’s things…pictures, mostly,” I say, biting at the inside of my lip, physically forcing myself to stop from sharing more.

“Was she glad to see you?” Taryn rests her head on her hand, looking at me sideways, and I meet her eyes.

“Yeah,” I nod again, breathing out a small laugh and letting my smile grow until it scrunches my cheeks toward my eyes. “I think she was really glad.”

“Then it’s good you went,” she says.

I can tell a part of my friend is hurt that I went to Kyle instead of her, but I needed my rock. There are some things—some of my ugliest parts—that Kyle will always understand best, maybe even better than Wes.

Mr. Dickerson clears his throat as he switches off the lights and closes the classroom door, so I straighten in my seat and ready myself to take notes as he flips on a projector and begins reviewing classroom procedures. I need to do well this year, preferably all As to prove that I’m not the poor student my transcripts reflect. But paying attention proves impossible, my mind drifting with every new point our teacher reviews. By the time class is over, I’ve managed to write down two bullet points, neither with complete thoughts or sentences.

I pack my things and wear my smile for my friend before we split up. I have algebra next—alone and in a class where everyone is a full grade behind me, and the eyes are on me the second I walk in. I recognize Bria from softball, so I take the seat next to her, near the wall and the back of the classroom, away from everyone’s view. It doesn’t stop people from looking though. I expected it—my story was all this town had to talk about for the summer, and most of the people in here don’t really know me very well; they only hear the stories.

“I’m glad you’re in here,” I chuckle, sliding out my same notebook and turning to the next page, writing the date again with the intention of scribbling more relevant things down this period.

I glance back to Bria, and she smiles and raises her eyebrows, her voice no doubt choked off by the awkward questions now following me everywhere I go. My smile falls to a flat line and my eyes move down to the floor. I nod slowly, wondering how many times I’ll have to do this today.

“It’s okay to talk about it,” I say, twisting my head sideways. She bunches her lips, pretending not to understand. “My leg. I know you want to ask, and it’s perfectly okay.”

Her cheeks become pink as she blinks quickly, looking down at her own pen and paper.

“Go ahead,” I say, turning my body and extending my prosthetic toward her. I wore shorts today, hoping to get most of the questions out of the way. I notice a few students nearby glancing over their shoulders, too, so I begin to talk a little louder. “It only hurts sometimes, and it’s mostly my other muscles feeling overworked or nerves that are sorta getting…I don’t know…tangled I guess.”

“Does it…like…feel different?” Bria winces at her question, embarrassed, so I try to set her at ease.

“I know what you mean. Of course it feels different, but you mean have I gotten used to it, or like when I walk, do I notice one leg isn’t real,” I say, more students turning around. A few get up from their seats at the front of the class and step closer so they can see.

“Can you run?” asks a girl sitting on the other side of Bria.

I nod and smirk, because I can, thanks to Rebecca. “I’m still pretty fast,” I say.

“Do you have one of those metal ones?” a guy asks, standing to look over Bria.

“A blade you mean?” I ask. He nods. “I do. I only got that recently, and I’m still working with it. It’s what I’ll compete in.”

“Are you going to run this year? Like track or cross country?” Bria asks. I pull my legs back under my seat and wink at her.

“Nope,” I say. I keep my smile on my face, my lips tight trying to hold the laughter in as I look up at the teacher now writing notes on the white board. I can feel Bria’s eyes on me still, though, so I lean sideways enough that she can hear me, and I whisper. “I’m going to be the state’s number-one prospect.”

I flit my eyes to hers, and catch her eyebrows lift with a flash as her mouth curves up a hint. I wink again, then look back to the front as I write down the first bullet point about when assignments are due. I’m already one up on my biology attention span.

English is another repeat of algebra, and I answer mostly the same questions to an entirely different group of students. I have weights after lunch, then government and photography, so if I’m lucky, I’ll get most of the show-and-tells out of the way today. Only one person has asked to see how it works, so I did a demo right before lunch.

McKenna is in my English class, and other than my close friends, she’s the only person who has asked about Wes. I told her she probably knew more than I did, because of my rehab work keeping me busy. I thought she’d gloat about it, even though it was a complete lie, but she didn’t. Instead, she gave me a quiet nod of acceptance before walking to her seat on the other side of the room.

When the lunch bell rings, I pull my phone from my back pocket and start to text Kyle, hoping he’s up for driving off campus for lunch. I’m not really up for spending my lunch on display, too. I stop when I see dozens of missed texts, though. Several are from Taryn, but the most recent one is from my dad.

My heart thumping with fear, I walk quickly, slipping into the restroom near the end of the hall where few people go. I lock myself in the last stall and hang my bag on a hook, leaning against the wall while I cup my phone in both hands. My fingers tremble, and I hesitantly slide the message open, preparing myself for the kinds of messages I used to get from my father—the pleas for help, the rants about my mom, the blaming and the hate.

Call me. Now!

My heart races faster, not sure if his words are a good sign or a bad one. My eyelids sweep shut as I press the CALL button and hold the phone to my ear.

“Joss?” I hear Taryn’s voice shout through the bathroom door. The phone still ringing, I unhook the latch on the stall door and step out so she can see me. Her pale face is only outdone by the brightness of her white eyes, her legs teeming with energy as she practically bounces on the balls of her feet, her mouth wide, like an O, and her chest quivering as she struggles to breathe.

“Josselyn, come home,” my father says in my ear. “It’s Wes…”

My pulse stops, and the world goes quiet. Taryn is in shock, her arms waving at me to hurry, but my legs won’t move. They’re practically vibrating from my confusion and the jolt of adrenaline that hit me all at once.

“Josselyn,” my father repeats. “Someone…somehow…they found him.”

I breathe.

I hang up.

I run.