Page 8 of I Would Stay Forever (Parkhurst Prep #2)

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Parkhurst Prep had never felt as big as it did on the first day of school that year, and I was grateful for it.

The school, with its stone walls, iron-wrought gates, and gorgeous marble stairs felt like the kind of place I could get lost in.

A place where I wouldn’t feel like I was sticking out or being stared at.

I was just one of the many girls in a navy blue uniform, completely ordinary and not feeling like her life was crumbling around her.

I weaved my way through crowds of other students, all of them yelling out each other’s names and asking about how their summers went. On any normal first day, I would have been doing the same, but right now, there wasn’t anyone I wanted to see aside from Zoey.

I hadn’t seen her since that night. That fateful night, that felt like both eons ago and like it was yesterday.

I never did explain exactly what happened in the alley.

For the couple of days after, I told her I was sick and wouldn’t be able to see her before her trip to see her grandparents.

While she was gone, we texted, but not as much as usual.

When she eventually asked why I was constantly missing, I broke down and told her the short version—that my parents had a bad fight and my dad moved out.

After that, she stopped prying, just like I knew she would.

Maybe she deserved to know more, but I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to utter the words.

“Lavender!”

I froze at the sound of my name, mumbling an apology to the guy who ran straight into my back.

I barely had time to step out of his way before Zoey appeared out of thin air and threw her arms around me.

We were standing in the middle of the hallway, so I heard a few people grumble as they had to swerve past us, but I ignored them as I hugged my best friend back.

“How have you been?” Zoey asked breathlessly. She leaned back and grabbed my face in her hands, turning it one way and then the other like she was inspecting me. “You look good. Have you been good?”

I’d gotten up early this morning to do my makeup and hair.

It was a tradition for me to look as good as possible on the first day of school, before oversleeping and showing up in a rumpled uniform became my norm within a few weeks, but it was especially important to me this year, because I didn’t want anyone to question how I was.

I wasn’t sure how many people knew about my parents’ divorce, and I imagined even less knew about the reason behind it, but it was easy for something to spread like gossip across the school, and I refused to look weak if it did.

I must have been doing well at giving off that look because Zoey’s compliment sounded genuine.

That also told me that I must have really undersold how bad the divorce had been, because she didn’t seem concerned about me.

Zoey’s parents got divorced a few years back and it had happened so seamlessly—her parents sat her down to say their marriage wasn’t working, her dad got a new house in the same neighborhood, and she had the choice of the custody schedule—that she probably figured that aside from the major fight, it was the same for me too.

I hadn’t done anything to make her think that wasn’t the case, including not telling her that I hadn’t heard from my dad since that night.

I knew it would come up eventually, but I guess a piece of me was hoping to delay the inevitable.

“I’m great,” I promised her. Her eyes were bright and a huge smile was crossing her face.

It didn’t take a genius to see that she’d had a good summer, and even if I wanted to tell her about everything going on, I wouldn’t ruin her good mood by telling her right now.

“How have you been? How was the beach? Tell me everything.”

“It. Was. Amazing.” She grabbed my hand and started tugging me down the hall toward the guidance office where we had to pick up our schedules for the semester. “Did I tell you about that boy who lived down the beach from them year-round? Well…”

She started telling me all about him, in a way that made it clear she was totally over Sam from Crofton—and thank goodness for that, because it gave us one less reason to go to Gold Plate Diner.

I would still need to come up with a convincing reason for why we couldn’t go back—I was thinking food poisoning, which went along with why I was throwing up in the alley that night—but at least I wouldn’t be pulling her away from getting to see her current crush.

“So, are you going to see him again?” I asked Zoey as we turned the corner into the office hallway.

“I hope so.” Zoey sighed. “The beach is just so far away, you know? And I…”

She was still talking, but her voice faded out like background noise as I looked down the hallway and saw him .

Just like with Zoey, I hadn’t seen Dean Graham in over a month. But unlike her, it wasn’t because he was out of town.

We’d spent three nights at the Graham’s before going back home and finding Dad gone.

When I left, I promised myself that I would not be speaking to Dean Graham again.

I couldn’t bring myself to face him, not with everything he knew.

And besides, there was no reason for us to continue talking.

We hadn’t been friends before that night, and there was no reason for us to be friends after.

He was just Sebastian’s best friend who had happened to see me at the lowest point of my life. It didn’t have to mean anything, right?

Dean was leaning against a locker and surrounded by a group of guys I recognized but didn’t know, probably some of the other guys on the football team.

I knew I should have kept my eyes forward and tried to focus on Zoey’s story, but as we walked by, I couldn’t help but study him.

His messy brown hair that he’d pushed out of his face.

The tight blazer that was hugging his muscles so perfectly.

The serious look in his eyes as his gaze locked with mine.

Seeing him now transported me back to that night in the alley, and the sadness on his face as he told me what my father had done.

As he apologized as if it was somehow all his fault.

In the weeks since, I’d laid awake at night thinking about him more often than I had any right to.

It seemed like he was the only person who worried about how I felt.

Maybe it was because everyone thought the divorce was my fault or maybe it was because they were all too busy drowning in their own grief of the situation, but nobody else in my family had checked to see if I was all right in the aftermath.

But Dean—he was there. He had cared. And even though he was Sebastian’s friend, not mine, I found myself wishing I could talk to him right now.

But then Zoey tugged me into the guidance office and I lost sight of him. I felt like I’d just been forcibly pulled out of a dream and I blinked a few times, trying to remember where I was.

“Imagine if we have all the same classes,” Zoey said as we came to a stop at the end of the short line. “Wouldn’t that be perfect?”

“Perfect,” I echoed.

The line moved up and we shuffled forward, stepping deeper into the reception area of the guidance office.

It was a small wing in the corner of the basement floor of the school that was clearly designed to try not to be depressing despite the lack of large windows.

The walls were covered in motivational posters with quotes like “You will never fail unless you stop trying” and “Mistakes help you grow,” which I supposed might be helpful in theory, but instead made me feel like guidance counselors thought we were all doomed to fail over and over again throughout our high school careers.

The reception area was dominated by a white desk and a bookshelf of pamphlets for local universities, and there were wooden doors branching off to various offices.

Despite the “open-door policy” the school promoted, every single door was closed. I guess it was more metaphorical.

“Next!” the receptionist called. The boy in front of us stepped out of the way.

He looked like a terrified freshman, clinging on to his backpack strap with one fist and his schedule with the other.

It was hard for me to believe that it was one three years ago, that I’d been in the same position as him, starting at a new school and terrified for my life.

And now, I was only a year away from going through it all again, only at a university instead of a high school.

I wasn’t sure if the thought made me excited or scared. Maybe both.

“What’s your name, dear?” the receptionist asked me as we walked up to the desk. Even though she was sitting on an office chair at a regular height desk, the wall of the desk reached up to about my chest, making me feel like I was leaning over the wall of a cubicle to see her.

“Lavender Novak,” I said. I saw the usual flash of surprise on her face as she heard my British accent, but then she quickly turned her attention to a folder in front of her, mumbling Novak under her breath.

As she looked, Zoey nudged me and tilted her head toward the university pamphlets on the shelf.

“Got your eye on any?” she asked.

Honestly, despite my plan to get out of town once graduation hit, I hadn’t given much thought to university.

I knew I wanted to go, but I wasn’t sure where.

My only thought until now had been anywhere but here .

Applications weren’t due for a couple more months, so I had time, but I was a little embarrassed as I shook my head.

“We should look at programs together,” she said. She bumped her hip into mine. “We could even room together next year.”

I smiled. “I’d like that.” It would be nice to have a friendly face around.

“Ah, Miss Novak,” the receptionist said, pulling free a light blue paper from the stack. She squinted at it for a moment, then at me. “Interesting collection of classes you have there.”

I took the paper from her hand and scanned it as she asked for Zoey’s name, grinning to myself as I realized why she’d said that.

Because I was a senior, I had a free period this semester, but my other classes were a mess—on top of my core classes, I was taking Art of the Arctic, Satire in Literature, and the History of Warfare.

Course registration had been only two weeks after Dad left.

I hadn’t given any thought to my courses before that, so when the school called to see why I hadn’t registered for any courses in the online portal, I told them I didn’t care what I took and to just stick me in whatever classes they wanted.

I had to assume they put me in the classes with the fewest number of students.

Zoey glanced at my schedule as we walked out and her nose crinkled. “I didn’t even know we had a class called History of Warfare.”

Neither did I, but I guess I was taking it now. It was going to be an interesting semester to say the least.

“And then my math teacher said that he wanted to get an idea of all of our skill levels, so he gave us an entire packet to do tonight.” Zoey sighed and slumped against the locker next to mine. “Can you believe that?”

“Rough morning,” I said distractedly. I was busy frowning at my locker and trying to get the stupid thing to open. I was sure I’d put in the right combination of the lock, but it kept getting stuck. I tugged on it hard, but aside from the sound of creaking metal, there was no change.

“Do you need a new locker?” Zoey asked, tilting her head to the side to study the locker.

This wing was known for having the worst lockers in the school, but I’d never had this much trouble.

I groaned as I tugged on the locker door again and there was no movement at all.

Finally, I just slammed the side of my fist against the metal and voila, it popped open.

Zoey snorted. “Have fun dealing with that all year.”

I stuck out my tongue at her and swung the locker door open all the way. As I did, a small piece of paper fluttered to the ground by my feet.

“What is it?” Zoey asked.

“I’m not sure,” I mumbled as I leaned down to pick it up. It was tightly folded in a small square, the outside blank. When I opened it, there was a hastily scrawled note inside.

Meet me under the football bleachers after school.

I turned it to Zoey so she could see the message and her eyebrows raised in curiosity.

“I wonder who it’s from,” she said. She took the note from me and studied it as if she thought that she could somehow glean the identity from the handwriting.

“Dunno,” I said. I opened my backpack and started shoving the textbooks I’d gotten from my morning classes into the locker.

It was the lunch period now, but I hadn’t gotten the chance to check out my new locker before classes.

“It must have been left for whoever had the locker last year. Guess whoever left it didn’t realize they’d already emptied it out. ”

Zoey’s brows were furrowed as she looked at the locker then at the note still in her hand. I swore I could see the cogs turning in her brain. She was probably making up some grand romantic story of my secret admirer in her mind.

“Nobody even knows this is my locker yet,” I reminded her. Then I waggled my eyebrows. “Unless, of course, you’re the one who wants to meet me under the bleachers after school.”

She laughed and shoved the note back at me. “Yeah, you wish.”

Even though I knew I should just throw the paper out, I looked at it again.

The handwriting was on the messier side, although it was still readable.

If I had to guess, I would say it was a boy’s handwriting—probably a note left for his girlfriend last year.

That was the only reason I could think of for him to not sign his name.

“Come on, we should get to the cafeteria before they’re out of all the good food,” Zoey said.

She started down the hallway and I quickly slammed the locker door shut and jogged after her.

And even though there was no reason for me to keep the note, since it wasn’t even meant for me anyway, I tucked it away in the safety of the front pocket of my backpack, deciding that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to check under the bleachers after school. Just in case.