The Thrashers(17)

She shook her head and jumped into the air-conditioned Mustang.

“I’m glad you want to come,” she said as she buckled.

“Yeah, I guess I just … I didn’t want to hide, but I didn’t want to make it about me.”

“We don’t have to climb the bleachers. We can stay below.”

He flashed her a grin. “Thanks. That’d be nice.” He ran a hand through his hair. Unlike Julian, Zack didn’t use product, so there was nothing to muss. “There’s so many people I haven’t seen since last year, you know? So, like, saying ‘Hey, how was your summer?’ feels wrong.”

“That’s fine. I’ll probably try to see the Millses, but you don’t have to come.”

He nodded, chewing on his bottom lip as he turned onto the main boulevard.

“So, how did you manage to fail chemistry three times?”

He groaned and rolled his shoulders back. “I have no idea. How does anyone pass that class?”

“I know you have ‘the Peter Kim’,” she said. “First-class tutor—”

“The Peter Kim. The one and only,” he said, joining the bit.

“The man, the myth, the legend.” Jodi bit back a smile. “But if you want more help, let me know. I didn’t get an A but I did okay.”

“What would Peter say about tutor interference?” Zack put on his blinker and shook his head in mock disbelief.

“If he would just give you a Kinder Bueno for every question you got right, you’d be golden.”

“Is that how you’d tutor me?” Zack smiled. “You’d train me like a dog?”

“Yeah, I’d tutor you like a dog,” Jodi said. “You get walkies and a belly rub for passing grades.”

“Belly rubs?” He looked over at her and wiggled his eyebrows. “I’m in.”

She laughed and let the AC blast away the evening heat.

When they pulled into the student parking lot, it was already half full. Zack parked behind a large truck, effectively hiding his very recognizable car.

As they walked over to the bleachers, heads turned and hands came up to cup whispering mouths.

Zack could remember small details about every acquaintance, bring up random facts they told him years ago, and turn the Thrasher smile on them without losing any steam. But, although he bumped fists with a few guys on the basketball team, waved at some girls in their class, and said hello to his math teacher, everything felt off.

A news crew was set up at the entrance to the field, the camera guy filming the students filing in. Jodi shivered. She hadn’t expected Sacramento news to still be covering Emily’s story.

They ducked left around the back of the bleachers, weaving through the crisscrossed bars to their favorite spot: underneath the accessible seating area that was always kept clear. It was where Julian liked to smoke weed during Lucy’s track meets. It had a clear view of the field while being entirely hidden by a mesh netting.

Zack jumped up, grabbing the bottom of the highest bench seat he could reach and hung, kicking his legs. Jodi tore her eyes off the muscles popping in his arms and the shirt riding up his stomach and focused on the small stage that was set up in the field.

A projector lit up a white screen with Emily’s blue eyes and wide teeth. Mr. and Mrs. Mills sat off to one side with Principal Robbins. Jodi’s eyes fell on the person sitting next to Emily’s parents and her breath faltered.

Hannah Mills was small and pale, a perfect replica of her sister, right down to her shoes. Jodi couldn’t tell from the distance, but those orange Converse might even have been Emily’s. She wore her hair in a braid on her shoulder—the only difference between the two of them. Emily had never done anything with her wavy hair, letting it hang limply.

“The paper said Hannah found her.”

She turned sharply to Zack and found him staring through the bleacher slats to where the Millses were sitting.

“I know. It’s really sad,” she said. Really sad. No shit.

Jodi began to turn back, but her gaze caught on the light near the empty pathway around the field. It was flickering, almost struggling to stay on.

Emily had had a thing for lampposts. Maybe not a thing, but a quirk. She told them about it one night when Lucy was driving them all home after the movies. None of them knew how Emily had been invited—they just assumed that Zack had told her to come. But Paige found out later that Zack had talked about it in front of Emily, that was all. Not even in front of her, adjacent to her. Emily had shown up on her own, acting like she’d been included.

On the drive home, it was just Jodi, Paige, Lucy, and Emily in the car, but it had felt to Jodi like an entire team of investigative reporters had followed them inside the Jeep. Emily wanted to know everything. Favorite colors, favorite classes, who was dating whom, how long they’d known each other, what colleges they wanted.

During a rare moment of silence at a stoplight, the streetlamp over the crosswalk had flared and gone out.

“Oh! That was me!” Emily had said. “I turn off streetlamps!”

Lucy had turned around in the driver’s seat and drily said, “You what?”

“It’s like a kinetic energy thing I heard about on a talk show. When I get close to a streetlight, it flickers.”

Jodi had exchanged glances with Paige. But it had kept happening when Emily was with them. On the football field, in a parking lot, or stopped at the red light near Emily’s street. Jodi wondered if she would have noticed at all if Emily hadn’t been obsessed with it. Maybe certain lamps just flicker due to the electric current or something.