A week later, Brooke burst into my place with two coffees and announced:
“Alumni homecoming this Saturday—you’re coming with me, no excuses!”
Brooke was my best friend from before I transferred. She’d moved back too and had been my neighbor for years.
“No way,” I said immediately.
“Why not?” She shoved a coffee into my hand. “All the old classmates are coming. Football game and barbecue during the day, big dinner at night. You want to stay home and rot under a blanket?”
I stayed quiet.
I didn’t dare say I was scared of running into someone.
Brooke knew me too well.
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re thinking about that senior again, aren’t you?”
She knew the whole pathetic story from my freshman year.
How I’d thrown myself into Elliott’s world like a little sun and never came out.
B
