“I’m sorry, Carter.…I was trying to protect you.”Ĭarter’s hand came haltingly toward my face. I forced them back and stared into the distance, willing myself to stay in control. I couldn’t tell if his words made me angry or sad, but tears tried to spring to my eyes. “It would never occur to you not to shut everyone out.

“If something happened to you-if you got hurt-” “Because it’s a ridiculous idea!” I stared up at him. “And tell me,” I said, “who would I have asked?” “Why didn’t you ask for help as soon as you found out what was really happening?”

“You knew better than to let something like this happen again.” I don’t want to make it worse.”Ĭarter stuck his hands in his pockets. She pretended that she didn’t mean to kill Tashi, but she knew all along that was what she was going to do. “How can you defend her?”Ĭarter turned to me. “Underneath all her attitude, she was just sad, Lex.” He gazed at the yellow-rose-covered casket. “Like half the people here, she was trying to kill.” Who knew? I’d never thought about it that way. Apparently a lot of people found her funny. Adrienne, cane in hand, stood by her mother’s wheelchair on the paved road at the edge of the lawn. “Um…I’m going to go say hi to Adrienne,” Kasey said, limping away. There had just been other things to take care of. I was amazed that so much time had passed. We hadn’t seen each other at all since the night Lydia died. I watched Carter approach from the road, wearing a short-sleeved gray shirt and black pants. Wiley told me so just before she hung up on me. There was no cheerleading squad at Sacred Heart, which was just as well, because I’d destroyed what was left of Megan’s knee. Her grandmother had been threatening it for years. She’d been enrolled at Sacred Heart Academy by Tuesday morning.

She was grounded from talking on the phone, e-mail, texting, or any other form of human contact. She’d probably been drinking, not that you could blame her. Small kept leaning like she was going to fall on top of the coffin. Small clutched each other at the edge of the grave site. Kasey and I stood alone under a tree, at the back of the crowd. Mourners showed up in black tank tops and miniskirts. THE DAY OF THE funeral, it was ninety degrees in the shade. She managed a quivering smile and then looked away, and I knew my lie hadn’t totally convinced her. I looked at her and saw that she was just a broken woman, alone and afraid. There was something else she wanted to know. Then I realized that her question was about more than whether I’d been there. “Very tragic about your friend,” she said.

From Bad to Cursed by Katie Alender