Page 11 of Here We Go Again

“I always thought you girls would bury the hatchet.”

“Haledefinitelykeeps maps of where she put them.”

He shifts against his pillows. “But you used to be best friends. Why do you hate her so much?”

“Because of her entire personality,” Logan answers. She doesn’t want to go into the rest. The past: the pool party, the game of spin the bottle, the dark garden, Jake McCandie. Now: Hale showing her up at staff meetings, making everything look so easy, reminding Logan of all the ways she falls short.

But Joe keeps staring at her with the full weight of his old-man insightfulness. “But you have so much in common.”

“Hale and I have nothing in common!”

“You are both high school English teachers at your alma mater….”

“Yes, but I became a teacher because I genuinely care about helping reluctant learners develop confidence and a passion for school! Hale became a teacher because she gets off on bossing people around. She never once struggled with school, so of course she chose to do it forever.”

Logan has a theory. There are two types of high school teachers: the teachers who had such a great time in high school that they never wanted to leave, and teachers who were so miserable in high school they came back to try to make things a little better for the next generation. Hale is the first kind; Joseph Delgado was the second.

“I know you’ve always had a soft spot for her because you can’t resist taking in strays, but Hale is a rigid, controlling, sanctimonious little shit.”

Joe clears his throat as his gaze settles on something over Logan’s right shoulder.

Behind her, someone clicks their tongue. Logan doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t have to. There’s only one person in Vista Summit who uses condescending tongue-clicks as her weapon of choice. “I said her name three times, didn’t I?”

The tap-tap of pointy heels, and then Hale is standing at the end of Joe’s bed. Hale smells like vanilla body lotion, the same scent she’s worn since middle school. As a consequence, Logan has experienced not one but two panic attacks inside a Bath and Body Works.

“What is she doing here?” Hale asks in that condescending voice that always makes Logan feel like a student again, like she forgot to do the homework and the teacher is making an example out of her for the rest of the class.

“Rosemary,” Joe says affectionately. “I asked both of you girls to come here, actually.”

Hale huffs, and Logan gets a whiff of her mouthwash. Artificial spearmint and neuroses. She’s changed into clean clothes, but it’s just another skirt and cardigan that fits her like a straitjacket.

Joe takes another labored breath. “There’s something I need to tell you….”

“You’re back in diapers, aren’t you?” Logan grimaces. “I sure as shit won’t be the one to change them.”

Joe grimaces, then speaks. “I’m dying, girls.”

Chapter Four

ROSEMARY

Dying.

Rosemary takes a sharp breath and steadies herself against the hospital bed frame. She tries to stanch the anxiety already building in her chest, but it’s useless.Dying.

“Elton fucking John, you’re such a melodramatic queen!” Logan makes a goose-like honking sound that seems to be a laugh. She leans back in her chair and kicks her checkered Vans up onto his beige blankets.

“Fuck you, Logan Maletis.” Joe coughs a few times, and Rosemary hurries to the other side of the bed to adjust his pillows. “Iamdying.”

“What else is new?” Logan asks with that flippant smirk. “You’ve been dying for four years.”

“But now I’mdyingdying. I’ve got mets.”

“What are mets?”

“Hell if I know, but my doctors won’t shut up about them.”

Rosemary looks down at Joe and notices he’s spilled some water on his chin. “Metastases,” she explains, discreetly drying his chin on the arm of her clean cardigan. “It means the cancer has spread beyond your liver now.”