Happenstance 2 (Happenstance #2)(21)
Author: Jamie McGuire

Chapter 9

EVERYTHING FELT INSIDE OUT. EVEN MORE THAN USUAL. Sam had rearranged his schedule with the hospital so he was home more, and because I was down to only a couple of evenings a week at the Dairy Queen, the hours after school were spent watching movies on the couch between my parents, playing Monopoly at the kitchen table, and driving Julianne to Ponca City to shop for shelving and décor for my future dorm room.

One night, sitting between Sam and Julianne on the couch while watching The Princess Bride, Sam reached behind my shoulders to twirl Julianne’s hair. She leaned into his hand.

“How did you two meet?” I asked.

They looked at each other, and Sam paused the movie.

Julianne smiled, but Sam spoke first. “In high school.”

“You’re high school sweethearts?” I asked.

“Yes, we are,” Julianne said, looking at Sam with the same love in her eyes that I’d seen in their wedding photos.

“Even through college?”

“Yep,” Sam said. “We both went to Oklahoma University.”

“Oh,” I said. I knew that. I’d seen Julianne’s diploma framed in the study.

“But we barely saw each other. I was a Kappa Kappa Gamma, your Sam was Sig Ep, and we both had a heavy workload. We agreed that our college experience came first, and if it was meant to be, we would stay together. We experienced things on our own, but my best memories were the things I experienced with Sam.”

Sam pushed up his glasses and grinned. “Really?”

“Really.” She leaned over and patted his knee and then looked at me. “You are going to have a great time at OSU. It’s a beautiful campus.”

“I’m looking forward to it even more than before,” I said, looking down at my hands.

Julianne turned her body toward me, settling against the back cushion of the couch. “Have you talked to him?”

I shook my head. “I can’t think of anything nice to say.”

“Still angry?” Sam asked.

Julianne wrinkled her nose. “Of course she is. Still against prom?”

“I don’t really…I’d never planned on going before.”

“Maybe you could ask someone?” Sam asked.

I shrugged. “There’s no one I really want to go with.”

“What if…,” Julianne began, but then she decided against it.

“What?” I asked.

“What if we went shopping for a dress, and if you decide to go, you’re prepared. If not, we’ll sell it, or you can keep it for a formal if you join a sorority.”

“I won’t join a sorority,” I said with certainty.

She shrugged. “Then we’ll sell it.”

“Maybe,” I said.

My phone lit. It was Weston. Again. It was always Weston. I put the phone back on the coffee table.

Sam and Julianne traded glances, and then Sam lifted his arm, pointing the remote at the television and pressing the play button.

On Monday I was in a strangely good mood, and I decided it was because I was scheduled to work. Weston had stopped trying to explain things to me days before, but he looked miserable. Just as I gathered my things in front of the mural and headed to my car—which was parked on the one end of the small group of cars parked in the lot, while Weston’s truck was parked on the other end—Weston jogged up beside me.

I tried to ignore him, but as I reached for the handle, he grabbed my hand, putting a folded note in my palm.

I crinkled the notebook paper in my fist.

“Please read it. I won’t bother you anymore, if you just read it.”

With the tiniest movement, I nodded once and then opened my car door. The drive to the Dairy Queen from the mural was just a couple of minutes. I parked and walked into the small building, note in hand.

“Hey, stranger,” Frankie said, smiling. She was on the phone, and I could tell immediately that she was talking to her mother about her kids.

I smiled at her, leaned against the counter, and fingered the paper in my hands. After several minutes I finally unfolded it, my face crumpling as I read the two simple sentences.

I TOLD MY DAD ABOUT DALLAS. SEE YOU AT SIX ON PROM NIGHT.

LOVE YOU,

WESTON

I crumpled the paper in my hand and held my fist to my chin, supporting my elbow by resting my other arm across my stomach.

Frankie watched me warily. “I’ve gotta go, Mom. Kiss the kids for me.” She hung up the phone and took a few steps toward me. “What’s that?”

“A note from Weston.”

“Is it bad?”

“We aren’t together anymore.”

“You’re not?”

“No. He…I found out he was planning to help Alder get me to prom so they could embarrass me.”

“What?” she shrieked. “No. Weston wouldn’t do that.”

“It’s in her journal. He didn’t deny it. Brady knew about it.”

The color left her face. “There has to be an explanation. There has to be something else you don’t know.”

“There is. I was stupid,” I said, wiping the ridiculous tears falling down my cheeks.

“But…she’s dead. Why would he continue with the plan?”

“He told her he would? I don’t know. I knew there was more to it. I knew he wouldn’t just suddenly have interest in me. I just…I wanted to believe it,” I said, my voice breaking.

“What’s in the note?” she asked, horrified.

I held it out to her, and she scrambled to read it. Then she looked up at me. “What does it mean?”

“I promised him that if he told his dad he wanted to go to the Art Institute of Dallas instead of Duke, then I would go to prom with him.”

“You don’t think he’d still go through with it. He’s…Somewhere in the midst of all this, he had a change of heart, Erin. He fell for you, and now you know the awful truth, and he wants to fix it. He isn’t the type of person to go through with something so cruel.”

I shrugged.

“You don’t have to go with him. If you’re afraid of what will happen, don’t go.”

I lifted my chin and wiped my cheeks once more. “I’m not afraid of them. I refuse. No matter what they do to me, I am in control of the way others make me feel. They can’t hurt me if I don’t let them.”

Frankie handed me the note, and I took it, folding the wrinkled paper into the same square it was in when Weston gave it to me. As I did so, the paper sliced my finger, and a small dot of blood pooled from the tiny cut. I shoved the note into the front pouch of my apron and wiped the blood on the closest napkin.