Page 6 of Chasing Chase London, Part 8: Valentines Day

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“Bad Boyfriend”–Garbage

As soon as I’m better, Lily gets sick. Mom goes to get medicine for her while she’s sleeping in the evening. I’m catching up on homework from the days I missed when the doorbell rings. I rush to open it, since my aunt and uncle are out on a date, and I don’t want it to wake Lily.

I pull open the door and step back in shock. Lindsey stands on my porch, tears streaming down her face.

“Lindsey, what happened?” I cry. Panic slams into my stomach, and I think I’ll puke even though I’m not sick anymore.

“I don’t know,” she says with a hiccup. “I need you to come over.”

“I can’t,” I say, the panic crashing into me faster. “I’m so sorry, but I have to watch my sister.”

“Can you bring her?” she asks, wiping her streaming eyes.

“She’s sleeping,” I say, agony tearing me in half.

“I’ll bring you right back,” she promises. “It will only take a minute.”

“My mom will kill me,” I say, cringing as I watch a fresh burst of sobs wrack her frail body.

“She won’t even know,” Lindsey sniffles. “I need a friend right now, Sky. Just for a minute.”

I open my mouth to tell her to go to Daria, or Elaine, but it seems so cold.

And selfish as it makes me, a little part of me likes that I’m the one she came to.

Not Elaine, her best friend. Not Daria, whom she’s known longer.

Anyone in school would kill to be in my shoes, to be best friends with Lindsey Darling.

If I turn her away now, she won’t come to me again. This is a test.

I reluctantly lock the door and follow her to her car. I’m totally paranoid the entire drive to her house. I know my mom will absolutely kill me if she comes home while I’m gone.

“What’s going on?” I ask, following Lindsey up to her room. She flings open the door dramatically and doubles over with a fresh burst of tears. I help her to the bed where she sinks down and curls into a ball, hiding her face and quaking with sobs.

“Lindsey, please tell me,” I beg. “You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, sucking in a loud breath. She sits and takes a tissue, dabbing her eyes daintily before she answers.

“I think Chase is cheating on me.”

“What?” I gasp, my blood going icy cold. “There’s no way!”

“I found this in his locker the day before Valentine’s, and I thought it was for me,” she says, reaching under her bed.

She pulls out a pink box with a wide blue ribbon around it.

“But he gave me something else. I waited a couple days, in case he forgot. But he never gave it to me, so I went to his locker, and it wasn’t there!

I found it in his car.” She breaks into a fresh burst of sobs.

My heart is hammering erratically. What do I do? And why did she tell me and not Elaine? Not Chase himself? Why does she think I have insight into Chase’s indiscretions?

“You just, like, took it?” I ask, stalling for time.

“I’m his girlfriend.” She gestures to the box. “Open it.”

“I don’t think—”

“Please,” she cries, mopping at her torrential bout of tears. “I can’t do it. You have to.”

My fingers are numb and shaking as I slowly reach for the ribbon, tugging on the end until it falls in a pool around the box, like blood, the sky-blue blood on my hands. Lindsey has to know. This is punishment. There’s no other reason she’s choose me to endure the torture.

Inside the box I find a bottle of expensive perfume, a pendant with a blue stone on it, and most damning of all, a CD. No one listens to CDs anymore.

No one except me.

My heart drops down to my feet, and I think I’ll faint. I hope Lindsey doesn’t notice how still I’ve gone, or that the blood has all drained from my face.

“I knew it,” she shrieks, hurling herself face-down on the bed. “Men don’t get jewelry for girls they’re not sleeping with. I bet that’s a real sapphire. That means he loves her! Who would dare? Who would dare!”

“Maybe it’s for his mom,” I whisper, my brain having shut down entirely. My whole body is cold and heavy as lead.

“His mom is dead!”

My body starts shaking uncontrollably, and I can’t breathe or think of a single thing to say.

I’m pretty sure I’m having a panic attack or dying, but Lindsey’s too distraught to notice.

I sit on the edge of her bed, patting her back, while she howls in rage about all the things she’s going to do to the girl when she finds her.

At home an hour later, I lie on my couch-bed and stare at the ceiling. Downstairs, my mom is raging on to my aunt about how irresponsible I am, since apparently yelling at me didn’t get it out of her system.

I feel a little guilty about leaving Lily, but it’s eclipsed by the sickening dread pooling in my limbs and the pit of my stomach.

The worst part is that on Valentines, I wanted Chase to give me something.

I knew he wouldn’t, but I felt that ache all day.

I wished for it. I was thinking about him—was he thinking of me?

When my mom brought Todd’s gift to me, my heart skipped a beat when I thought they were from Chase.

I let myself, for one second, imagine what it would be like.

I crushed those thoughts down, but not before they reared their ugly heads.

How could I have done that, thought that, wanted that, knowing how it would crush Lindsey after all she’s been through?

“What can I do with her?” my mother is asking my aunt. “What if something had happened to Lily?”

I hear her crying, and my guilt twists into a tighter knot. I’ve seen more tears today than I ever wanted to see, and I’m the cause of all of them.

I tried to comfort Lindsey. I told her maybe they were for her, but Chase decided to get her something nicer.

She sniffled and admitted he did get her something nicer, and that she doesn’t like that perfume anyway.

I told her that maybe he’d give it to her for something else that wasn’t as special as Valentine’s Day.

I told her to put the gift back and watch to see if anyone showed up in that necklace. I told her everything but the truth.

“I’ve tried everything,” my mom is saying now. “Maybe there’s some place I can send her, a different school. Willow Heights is so expensive, but maybe I can swing it. I just don’t know what else to do.”

My heart flips. I can’t leave my friends!

Mom’s making it a bigger deal than it is.

I did leave my sister for an hour, but it’s not like she’s a baby.

I locked the door, and she knows not to open the door to strangers even if someone is here with her.

Besides, she was sleeping the whole time.

She didn’t even know any of us ever left, but Mom was beyond pissed when I got home.

Lily appears in my doorway, wrapped in a blanket, her cheeks flushed with fever. “Can I sleep with you?”

“Crawl in,” I say, lifting the blanket. She nestles her burning hot little body against mine.

“Mommy’s yelling too much.”

“She’s mad at me for going to Lindsey’s while you were asleep,” I say. “I wouldn’t have gone, except it was an emergency and I knew you’d be okay. You know that, right? I’d never let anything happen to you.”

“I know.”

I plant a little kiss on top of her head. “I love you, Lil.”

“Love you too,” she mumbles, already half asleep. I hold her while she snores quietly, my mind going back to the dilemma.

Lindsey didn’t seem to know the gift was for me, but why else would she call me? She must at least suspect something.

I’m beyond relieved that Chase didn’t put a card in the box. At least there’s that. I can’t even let myself imagine what would have happened if he had. But he’s getting reckless, and I have no idea how to get through to him. We’ve agreed a hundred times that this has to stop, but it never does.

Unless Mom sends me across town to Willow Heights.

I shudder at the thought of going to school there, especially after all I’ve heard about those kids.

Not to mention the only person I’d know there is Colt Darling, and Lindsey says the Dolces are pretty much trying to kill him now that they’ve gotten rid of Preston.

I picture those four hollow-eyed boys from the news, and a shiver wraps around me. I can’t go to school there.

Not when I’ve finally made friends here.

There’s no way I’d get this lucky twice.

I imagine walking in on a first day all over again, all the blank unfamiliar faces that would stare right through me.

After being someone all these months, having friends and even a boyfriend, I can’t stand the thought of starting over somewhere else, of being nothing again.

I remember my old school, where no one saw me at all, and I know I can’t go back to that after having what I have now.

Nothing could be worse than being invisible again.