Page 42

Kait’s gone.
She’s not coming back.
“Good.” I say it out loud in hopes of making myself believe it but I don’t think it worked.
Kait left her backpack.
I’ve been dancing around it for hours now, oscillating between wanting to go through it and just tossing it out the front door into the dirt. Finally picking it up off the counter, that’s exactly what I tell myself I’m going to do. She’ll be back for it. I know she will. Leaving it for her to find, thrown in the driveway, sends a message loud and clear.
I meant what I said.
I open the front door but instead of launching it off the porch and slamming it closed, I find myself sitting in my favorite chair with it on my lap.
Telling myself it’s already unzipped, so I might as well look inside, I reach in and immediately feel the tall, heavy can of bear repellant she showed me a few days ago. Pulling it out, I set it on the porch next to my chair before reaching back in, this time pulling out her laptop. Damien was right—it’s destroyed, guts hanging out of it’s cracked, plastic casing, the sight of it making me think of Con. He has crates of old, broken computers all over his apartment. I bet if I sent it to him, he could fix it.
Setting it on the table next to me, I reach in again, my hand closing over a thick stack of notebooks. Pulling them out, I look inside. That’s it. Aside from a few pens and a hairbrush, it’s empty.
What did you expect to find? A book titled, The Climber’s Guide to Cheating?
Setting the backpack aside, I concentrate on the notebooks. There’s got to be a least ten of them. All single subject, each with a different color cover.
Flipping the top one open, I scan its pages and quickly see that it’s one she uses for her math class. Scanning the equations, I think of Con again. He’s a closeted math nerd. He'd be able to understand the numbers and symbols I’m looking at without breaking a sweat.
Closing it, I put it back in the backpack. Opening the next one, I can see that it’s for some sort of science class—Biology. Maybe anatomy. Putting it back in the backpack, I open number three, this one a dog-eared dark blue. Easily the oldest in the stack.
The first line, written in the same handwriting I’ve come to recognize as her says:
Tell Luke I’m sorry
I don’t know who Luke is or why Kait feels the need to apologize to him. Probably some guy she fucked over. Trying not to let it bother me or wonder about it, I read the second line.
Tell my father to fuck off
For reasons I understand all too well, that one makes me smile, in spite of myself. This is Kait’s bucket list. A running list of all the things she wants to do in life but is too afraid to say out loud. Flipping through the pages, I can see that it’s been made over a span of years, different things written at different times, in different ink.
The third line reads:
Put horse shit in Abbey’s pillow
It takes me a few seconds to remember what Damien told me the first day I was here—that Kait has a little sister named Abbey.
Again, I can enjoy the sentiment.
Laughing out loud, I flip the page and find more of the same.
Teach Two-tone how to count
Swim in the Ocean
Learn how to rope
Get a tattoo
Climb the Eiffel Tower
Go skinny-dipping
See the Statue of Liberty