Todd Strasser - Wish You Were Dead

“You … think something happened to him?” Courtney asked.

Stay positive , I told myself. You don’t know what’s happened. There are other possibilities . “He sounded really drunk when he called. He could have wandered off and passed out behind a bush.” The line went quiet for a moment. Then she said, “You don’t really believe that, do you?” “No,” I admitted, feeling my heart sink. “I don’t.” The phone line went silent. I couldn’t help wondering whether our disagreement of a few days earlier was just a spat, or the actual end of a friendship. I’d had many friends and acquaintances, but so few best friends. There’d been Lucy, then Gabby Wald, whose family had moved to London after tenth grade, then Courtney. Was there something wrong with me? Something that prevented me from having boyfriends and close girlfriends?

“I’d better go,” Courtney said, and hung up.

I lay in bed for a while, trying to recall everything that had happened the night before, especially speaking to Adam on the phone. Was there anything I’d missed? Something he’d said? I thought of that mysterious note. You and your friends are in danger .

And now another friend of mine was gone.

The room gradually began to lighten with the coming dawn. Then I had a thought that was so frightening it propelled me out of bed—if Adam was gone in the same way that Lucy had disappeared, then once again, I was the last person to speak to either one of them.

Mom was downstairs in the kitchen with coffee and the newspaper, only the newspaper was unopened. She was gazing out the window at the gray and glassy Sound. I pulled a stool next to her, sat down, and leaned close. Instinctively, she put her arms around me. “What’s this?” I told her what I’d just realized about being the last person to speak to both Lucy and Adam.

She squeezed my shoulder. “Oh, hon, if that’s true it’s just a coincidence.” “But whoever left that note knew,” I said. “They said my friends and I were in danger.” Mom just hugged me and didn’t answer.

“I’m scared,” I said, and trembled.

“We still don’t know what’s happened,” she tried to reassure me. “Don’t forget they were—I mean, they are—boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe they did have something planned.” “Like what?”

“Maybe they decided to run away. Maybe the pressure was too much for them. Maybe she got pregnant and decided to have the baby. Who knows?” I knew. None of that was true. I knew because of how distraught Adam had been that day he’d talked to me at lunch. I knew because he was a close friend and wouldn’t have lied to me when he said he was breaking up with Lucy. I knew because if that was the case, why had someone left that note? I was willing to bet just about anything that Lucy wasn’t pregnant and she and Adam had had no plan.

Sunday 7:05 A.M.

Why Lucy, we thought you’d be happy to be reunited with your boyfriend. What, Lucy? Really darling, you must speak up. Oh, we see, your tongue is swollen and it’s painful to speak. We know you’re weak because you haven’t had anything to eat or drink. But look, Adam’s waking up again! Aren’t you going to kiss him hello? Oh, dear, he’s sick. Isn’t that too bad? But we guess that’s what happens when you drink too much. Come now, Lucy, you can’t get that far away from it. So just get used to it.

* * *

BACK UPSTAIRS I sat at the computer. By now, other parents must have awakened their children to ask if they knew anything about Adam, because the text messages and IMs began to fly. The dominant rumor was that Lucy and Adam had planned from the start to run away together. I didn’t believe it, but I kept my thoughts to myself.

The one person I wished I could speak to was Tyler. Even though I was still disappointed that he hadn’t been around the previous night, this was the sort of thing I felt I could call him about. Or maybe I was just using it as an excuse to connect. I dialed, got his voice mail, and left a message.

After a while, Courtney popped up on the IM list. So now we both knew the other was online. How long were we going to ignore each other? There were times when you had to rise above your pride and do the right thing. I IMed her.

This time, she IMed me right back.

“I don’t believe Lucy and Adam ran away,” Courtney said later that afternoon. For the moment, or maybe forever, we’d put aside our disagreements. After several days of cold rain, it had turned warm and sunny. Under a blue November sky, we sat at a metal table outside Starbucks, both of us having felt the need to get out of our houses. I wore a hoodie and jacket. I’d looked for my red cashmere scarf at home but couldn’t find it, and I wondered if I’d left it in the Safe Rides office the night before. Courtney wore sunglasses. Every few moments she would poke the cuff of her hoodie under the glasses and into the corner of an eye. So I knew she was upset.

“Neither do I,” I said. “But you can see how other people might. All the other explanations are so creepy.”

Courtney sniffed and dabbed her eyes under the sunglasses again. “I know,” she said in a quavering voice, as if fighting not to break down completely. “I mean, what’s going on?”

The question hovered uncomfortably in the air between us. From a corner of my mind came the question I still wanted to ask from a few days before—why had Courtney chosen to fool around with Adam?—but I knew this was the wrong time. Searching for something else to talk about, I said, “Anything interesting happen last night?”

“What, with Maura?” Courtney made a face, as if the words interesting and Maura could not possibly be connected. “She gives me the creeps.”

“It’s not her fault,” I said.

“I’m not talking about the way she looks or dresses. It’s the way she acts . When you’re in the car with her”—Courtney feigned a shiver—“she’s so quiet. And if you ask her a question, you get a one-word answer. I always feel like she’s sucking something out of me. She’s like … I don’t know, a leech.”

“She’s shy,” I said.

A crooked little smile appeared on Courtney’s lips. “You always have to say something nice, don’t you?”

Before I could reply, Jen cruised down the street in her car, leaning over the steering wheel and peering at Starbucks. When she saw Courtney and me, she jammed her brakes so hard that she was almost rear-ended by the car behind her. She quickly parallel-parked and got out. Courtney and I shared a “brace yourself” look.

“O-M-G, girls!” she gasped, coming toward us, trying to act somber given the recent news about Adam, but with a telltale glimmer of excitement in her eyes. She pulled a chair to our table. I had mixed feelings about her arrival. It was both an unwanted intrusion and a welcome relief from the shroud of gloom.

“Like, what in the world is going on?” she asked.

Courtney and I shook our heads.

“But you don’t believe they planned it, right?”

We shook our heads again.

“It’s so weirdly symbolic,” Jen said.

“Come again?” Courtney said.

“I mean, the most popular boy and girl in our school?” Jen said. “The king and queen of the prom? The male and female most likely to succeed? The—”

“And your point is?” I interrupted.

Jen leaned close and lowered her voice. “I’m just saying that if something bad happened to them, maybe it’s not a coincidence. Don’t tell me you didn’t think of that?”

Courtney and I shared a surprised look. Neither of us had.

“We don’t know that anything bad’s happened to either of them,” I said.