"Is it because of what you found in my bag this afternoon?"
I felt like I had been shoved from all sides.
"How did you--"
"Lucas told me." Josh slowly walked toward me. His footsteps were silent. Lucas? Ah, the Dreck boy. He'd done me a real solid. "Guys do talk, you know."
No wonder he was acting so strange. He knew I had searched through his bag. He was pissed. As he came closer, his fingers clenched and unclenched, clenched and unclenched, causing my throat to knot.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I said, staring at his hands.
"Tell you what?" Josh asked with a scoff. "That I'm on five different mood regulators? That if I wasn't, I wouldn't even be the person you, well, that you know and like? Why would I tell you that? So that you could think I was some freak?"
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I stared at him. Who would he be without them? Did it matter?
"You do like me, don't you, Reed?" he asked. He was close enough that I could see his eyes now, and they were all hope.
"You know I do."
"So then what?" He reached for my hand. I flinched, and he looked like I'd just driven a dagger into his back. I felt guilty and sorry and sad all at once. "What's going on?" he asked.
Here it was. The moment of truth.
"Why are you at Easton, Josh?" I said quietly.
His face completely morphed. Everything went slack and his eyes swam. For a long, long moment he just stared at me like I'd betrayed him somehow. Finally, he turned away from me, shrouding himself in darkness.
"How did you find out?"
I took a breath. It hurt my lungs. "It doesn't matter. I just need to know. What happened last year?"
His back to me, Josh pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He let out a sort of low, strangled groan. It was insanely loud in the still hall. I flinched but didn't move.
"My roommate died, okay?" he said, turning his face slightly so that I could see his profile. "He killed himself and I found him and it sucked and I lost it."
"You lost it," I repeated.
"Yes!" he shouted.
I jumped. He whirled around and approached me. "Of course I lost it. Wouldn't you? You live with a guy for a year and a half and
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you think you know him. You think that if he was really depressed or something he would tell you. But no! No. He's walking around like he's king of the world
and his shit's all in a row and you're going to Vail over Christmas with your families and everything's freaking fine, and then one day you come back from biology and he's there and he's dead and there's all this drool and blood from where he cracked his head when he fell and his eyes are all wide and you're the one who gets to find him!"
With one, swift step, Josh was right in my face. His eyes were wild. Wild and not the slightest bit familiar. I didn't move. My heart sent tiny little knives into my chest.
"But you don't believe that, do you?" he said, screwing his face up in indignation. He took a step forward and now I edged away. 'You think I don't know what you're thinking? You think I don't know why we're here?"
With each word his voice grew louder, more strained. He kept coming. And now I was scared enough to contemplate running, but somehow he had positioned himself between me and the door.
"Josh . . . calm down."
I wanted him back. Wanted the Josh I knew. Not this crazy, spitting force of nature.