CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
The bell above the bookstore door jingles as I walk in, already feeling like I’ve stepped onto a stage I didn’t ask to be on. It’s my first shift back since the accident. Since everything. And even though I told myself it would feel good to return to something familiar, I realize almost instantly I was wrong. Adam had been against it and were it not for the fact that the basketball team was meeting school, he would have been here.
The air is thick with a kind of too-careful silence. My coworkers pause when I walk past, their conversations abruptly stalling before they shoot each other quick looks. I don’t know what I hate more-the sympathy or the curiosity. Either way, it feels like I’m being studied under a microscope.
“Hey, Ella,” Petra says, her voice a little t
