Invitation Only (Private 2) - Page 21

Please don't be mad. It's bet­ter for you this way. You're too

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good for me. I'm shit for you. You know I am. I love you. I do. But you de­serve bet­ter than me. So much bet­ter.

I just need some time. Some time on my own, away from my par­ents and all the in­san­ity. You un­der­stand. I know you do. You know me bet­ter than any­one.

I love you so much, Reed. And I'll miss you. More than you'll ev­er know.

Love,

Thomas

Re­lief flood­ed through me so quick­ly and with such force that my eyes blurred with tears. I wiped them away, and read the note again. And again. Thomas was all right. He was fine! He wasn't ly­ing in a pool of his own vom­it some­where; he had gone to get help. He was out there try­ing to get well. He was, in fact, bet­ter than he'd ev­er been.

I took a deep, shaky breath and read the note one more time. Sud­den­ly a new emo­tion poi­soned the re­lief, caus­ing the mus­cles in my neck to tense. Thomas had bro­ken up with me. In a note. Af­ter I'd promised to help him in any way I could, he'd tak­en off with­out so much as a good-?bye and hid­den a breakup note in my stuff. What kind of per­son did that?

Even worse, how could he leave a note in some book and just trust I would find it? I might have re­turned this thing to the li­brary and nev­er seen the note that was tucked away in­side. I might have just gone on wor­ry­ing for­ev­er. He could have just

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called. Just a five-?sec­ond call and he could have told me the same thing. Did he not re­al­ize the tor­ture he'd put me through?

“Ass­hole,” I groaned, mash­ing the pa­per in­to a ball and throw­ing it across the room. Who the hell did he think he was, just de­cid­ing we were over? Not let­ting me have a say in any­thing. Dis­ap­pear­ing and mak­ing all of us wor­ry. The boy need­ed help. Se­ri­ous, pro­fes­sion­al help.

At least he was get­ting it.

Two sec­onds af­ter toss­ing the note away, I got up and grabbed it from the floor. It wasn't as if I could leave it around for Natasha to find. I flat­tened it out on my desk and read it one more time.

That was when a new, even more tor­tur­ous thought oc­curred to me.

The po­lice. Should I tell the po­lice about this note? Show it to them? Clear­ly Thomas didn't want me to. He said right there that he was leav­ing to get away from the in­san­ity--from his par­ents-- and if I told, they would track him down and he would nev­er get the time he need­ed to get bet­ter. But not show­ing the cops would be like ly­ing. It would be with­hold­ing ev­idence. I could get in se­ri­ous, se­ri­ous trou­ble.

God, I just wished I could talk to him. See him. Hold him. Talk some sense in­to him. Maybe if I could talk to him I could get him to take re­spon­si­bil­ity for what he had done. Didn't he re­al­ize how much trou­ble he had caused? Was he that scared of his par­ents that he thought this was the on­ly way?

I imag­ined Thomas out there some­where, alone, try­ing to deal

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with his is­sues, try­ing to make him­self well, and my heart swelled so fast I thought it might pop. I was an­gry at him, yes, but I al­so missed him. I al­so wor­ried about him. I just wished that I could see him and tell him that ev­ery­thing was go­ing to be okay.

And then, yeah, maybe smack him up­side the head for do­ing this to me.

It re­al­ly is amaz­ing, how close­ly hate and love are aligned.

“Screw this,” I said. I couldn't think about it now. I was too tired. Too emo­tion­al. Too in­clined to vi­olence. I fold­ed the note, stuffed it in the very back of my desk draw­er, and slammed it closed.

Okay. Deep breath. At least I knew Thomas was all right now. At least I knew he was out there some­where. And if he had any sort of con­science, he'd have to call me even­tu­al­ly. This note was not enough. We need­ed to talk. Big time.

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MORAL CEN­TER

Af­ter a long show­er, and an equal­ly long think, I felt mon­umen­tal­ly bet­ter. Thomas's note, while it had opened up a huge can of worms, had ac­tu­al­ly ab­solved me from a cou­ple of things I had been stress­ing over. First, he had bro­ken up with me days ago, which tech­ni­cal­ly meant that what I had done in the woods with Whit­tak­er wasn't cheat­ing, which made me feel much bet­ter. Sec­ond, he was gone from school in­def­inite­ly, which meant that I wouldn't have to wor­ry about keep­ing him and the Billings Girls in sep­arate cor­ners. I wouldn't have to wor­ry about that any­way, since he had bro­ken up with me.

Yes. I could be very prac­ti­cal about this. Lev­el-?head­ed Reed. That was go­ing to be my new, in­ter­nal nick­name.

That was part one of the plan. Part two of the plan was find­ing out more about this Lega­cy thing and get­ting my ass there so that I could track down Thomas, yell at him for about an hour, and then give him a chance to ex­plain. A very brief chance. Af­ter all, Dash had said Thomas would be there no mat­ter what. That Thomas was

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