Page 47 of Pride High 2: Orange

“I’ll work on it,” Ricky promised, his face growing somber. “Are we going to your house?”

Diego tensed. “Why would you think that?”

Ricky swallowed before responding. “I keep thinking about what you said earlier, about how you were only in football so you wouldn’t have to go home after school. Which is strange, because that’s theonlyplace I want to be when I’m at school. Most people like going home.”

Diego clenched his jaw, feeling the pressure build as that world threatened to bleed into this moment. He didn’t want it to. “Let’s go play pool,” he said, starting the car.

“At the bar?” Ricky said in disapproving tones. “Wait, you’re sober now, right?”

“I wish I wasn’t,” Diego grumbled.

“I don’t want to go to the bar.” Ricky sounded pretty freaking haughty about it all as he buckled his seatbelt.

“I bet you’ve never even been drunk before,” Diego said, accelerating out of the parking lot.

“True,” Ricky admitted. “But Ihavebeen high before.”

“Yeah, right. You told me you don’t know how to smoke.”

“Sure, but those pills I took when I tried to kill myself got me blitzed!”

Diego’s stomach sank. “You shouldn’t joke about that.”

“I’m not! I think it was mostly painkillers. My mom said that’s basically opium in pill form.”

“Huh. Do they have any more?”

Ricky shrugged. “No idea. They hide everything now. Even the baby aspirin.”

Diego glanced over at him in confusion. “You got a little brother or sister?”

Ricky squirmed. “No. I just like the chewable kind. They’re cherry-flavored.”

Diego pulled the car over to the side of the road. “Get out,” he said. “I knew you were a nerd, but you’re also a dork, and I can’t handle that.”

Ricky crossed his arms over his chest. “You promised me answers.”

“Fine,” Diego said, shifting the car into gear again.

They didn’t have far to go. Mount Elmore Cemetery was on the south side of town and, from the street, appeared more like a forested park than a ditching place for dead people. Diego had visited the cemetery so often he could’ve driven there with his eyes closed. Maybe if he was alone in the car, he would have. He parked, shook his head at Ricky’s sympathetic expression, and got out, his feet carrying him down a familiar path.

“My dad was really fucking cool,” Diego said after checking to make sure that Ricky was keeping up. “He knew absolutely everything about cars. Everyone loved him. He had friends all over town. We used to carve pumpkins together every year, and this one time, when we were out walking—which we used to do a lot—and he hopped a fence to get on some farmer’s horse. My dad rode him all around without a saddle. He was always doing crazy stuff like that. He was funny as hell too. I swear he knew a million jokes. He took me to my first baseball game. We saw the Royals. I don’t remember who won, but we hung out and ate a bunch of hotdogs. He kept buying me anything I wanted. My dad was generous like that. With everyone.”

He glanced over at Ricky self-consciously, not sure if he was making sense, but he rarely let himself talk about his father. Diego thought about him all the freaking time. He wanted Ricky to know how cool his dad was. That was important.

“He could do funny voices too,” he added lamely. “You would have liked him. Most people did.”

Diego turned left, cutting across a couple of rows and a few graves. He wasn’t worried about that. Some people said it disturbed the dead, but if it was that easy to get their attention, he would have jumped up and down on his dad’s grave, no matter how much it pissed him off, because at least then they’d be interacting again. Besides, he was pretty sure that being dead meant exactly that and nothing more. Diego wasn’t sure why he came here at all. But he did.

The grave was in view now. Someone had left a bouquet since he’d been here last. It was dry now. Diego hated flowers. All they did was remind him how everything died way too soon. He grabbed the bouquet and flung it away. Then he reached into his pocket and toyed with an Orange Crush bottlecap. His dad’s favorite soda. Diego used to bring whole bottles to his grave and pour them out, until the time he stayed long enough to see ants swarm over the spot. Which made him wonder about the bugs underground and what they were doing to his dad’s body. So these days, he just brought the bottlecaps and lined them up in the dirt. Sometimes they got cleared away, but he didn’t care, because his dad didn’t either.

Ricky was shifting next to him as he stared at the tombstone. There wasn’t much to read. Just the name Lorenzo Gomez and some dates. Diego had memorized them long ago.

“I’m really sorry,” Ricky said. “I had no idea! How old were you when he died?”

“Twelve,” Diego said, his throat constricting. They had just celebrated his birthday shortly before the school year began. Everything had seemed fine, to him anyway, but what did a stupid kid know about anything?

“What happened?” Ricky asked while looking uncertain if he really wanted an answer.