CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

LEON

SOFIA

           The lake house was even more breathtaking than I had imagined—literally.

           Even though it was even bigger on the inside than it was on the outside, where it was concealed by the woods in the park, it was easy to render me nearly unable to breathe. The place looked like it hadn't been touched in months by anyone willing to stay for more than a few hours; the cleaning staff had ensured it was immaculate by the time we got there, but it still smelled of abandonment.

          Meridian pushed open the curtains, filling the hallway with light, and I was blinded by the sudden brightness for a brief moment. It was the first time he'd left my side and was quick to return, knowing I was the only one who saw how badly he was shaking. Everyone else was focusing on the infamous lake house, the cryptic house June wanted us to be in, and I wanted so badly to be able to worry about that, too.

          Yet, he was my biggest priority. I had nothing else, no one else to turn to.

           "This is a big ass house, indeed," Grace commented. Everything was so massive, so quiet her voice easily echoed around us. Even she seemed slightly startled by that fact. "Why doesn't anyone come here? If I owned this place, I don't think I'd ever leave."

          Meridian shrugged. "It's secluded. My family is very sociable."

          She threw him a skeptical look. "Guess there's always an exception for everything." He replied with a tight-lipped smile and said nothing else, but she wasn't expecting anything. She was already distracted, pacing around the huge living room, swinging her arms back and forth. "Where are we sleeping?"

          Such an innocent question was more than enough to make me feel lightheaded. According to my mental math, there should be two king-sized beds in the house—belonging to Meridian's parents and grandparents—along with Meridian and June's rooms. There ought to be guest rooms in a house this big, but I doubted any of us wanted to be the one to stay in June's bedroom.

          Back in Palo Alto, both Meridian and June had single beds in their house. I wasn't sure whether I should expect things to be different here or not, but I didn't want to get my hopes up; if I didn't get to stay with Meridian, if the guest rooms were occupied, I'd gladly take a couch, but I refused to sleep in June's bed.

          "I got you covered," Meridian replied. "Sof stays with me, obviously, and you two"—he gestured towards Grace and Christina—"can take my parents' bedroom. Everyone else gets split between the two guest bedrooms. There are four free beds." I dared to breathe with relief. "I could let you"—he pointed to Felix and Xena—"take my grandparents' bedroom, but it wouldn't be exactly fair for Pinkie over there."

          Leon threw him a murderous glare, knowing exactly what he was referring to, whereas Courtney's cheeks were tinted almost the same color of her hair. If Felix and Xena got a room together, Leon and Courtney would have to either share a room with one another, which would be awkward, or they'd be the only ones without a roommate, which would be lonely.

          The rooming situation was settled, but I was still ridiculously lightheaded. I hadn't eaten breakfast, courtesy of my anxiety over college acceptance letters and this entire break, and my low blood sugar was beginning to catch up, in spite of my hard efforts to keep it at bay.

          "I think I need to lie down for a bit," I muttered. It still sounded louder than I had intended. "Can you . . ."

          "Yeah, sure." His hand dropped to the small of my back as he led me towards the stairs. "There are plaques on the doors, so I'll trust you guys to find the right bedrooms. Just . . . stay out of places you're not supposed to be in."

          No other words were necessary. We weren't stupid.

          Meridian's bedroom in this house felt so . . . generic. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that his family didn't spend much time here, but he hadn't bothered to make it look like his. There were barely any personal belongings, other than a few books here and there, but the bed was certainly . . . big. Heat rose to my cheeks, which he noticed, and it even made him chuckle under his breath.

          "Keep your thoughts to yourself," he joked. "The walls are thin."

          The crumpled-up letter in my pocket seemed to weigh a lot more than it actually did. That was the main reason I made my way towards the bed and sat down before completely losing my balance, which would be downright mortifying, but it was also because it made it easier for me to catch my breath.

          I didn't have the energy to joke back. I was certain he knew that, as he must have felt something shift, and watched him come sit next to me.

          "Listen, what's going on?" he asked. "You've barely said a word since we left, and it's obvious something bad happened. Talk to me," he insisted, when I looked away from him, jaw firmly clenched. "I'm worried about you."

          His hand, steady, rested on my thigh. That mere gesture brought tears to my eyes, and I know I couldn't look back up if I wanted to remain as calm as possible. I didn't want to make San Francisco all about me when there were more pressing matters at stake—June, always June—and it was something I knew I'd get over.

          Eventually.

          "I'm just a bit tired, that's all," I explained. It wasn't a complete lie; I'd barely gotten any sleep last night and exhaustion was beginning to get to me. "I think I need a nap."

          "Right," he said, not convinced. "I should go out and grocery shop, but we can talk after I come back. Just, um . . ." He raised a hand, carefully placing two fingers beneath my chin, and I risked a glance up at him. "Try to do the same thing you asked me to do. Don't push me away." I nodded softly and he leaned forward to brush his lips against my forehead. "I'll be back in a bit. Let me grab you some blankets."

          He did just that, while I lied down and pretended I wanted to sleep. Guilt filled every single one of my pores as he set the blankets over me to keep me warm, even though the bedroom was far from freezing, and I wanted so badly to be brave enough to tell him the truth.

          Unfortunately, I chickened out.

          "I love you," Meridian said, giving my shoulder one final squeeze. "Rest."

          "I love you more," I half-whispered, watching him leave.

          Then I waited.

          As soon as I heard the front door close on the floor below me, I kicked away the blankets and bolted out of the bedroom. I probably wouldn't get another chance like this, even though it killed me to be sneaky behind Meridian's back, but I had to do it—no one else would.

          Everything was quiet in the hallway, but I could still hear muffled words coming from one of the bedrooms and from downstairs. Like Meridian had said—the walls were thin. I knew I had to be careful, even if I technically didn't know where I was going and could easily venture into the wrong place.

          I was saved by the plaques on the doors. June's room was right across the hallway, and, after a brief moment of hesitation, I pushed open the door.

          Much like Meridian's room, June's San Francisco room could almost belong to anyone, but I knew her—even after death, I still did. It was highly unlikely, but I swore I could smell her fruity perfume everywhere I went. It was so overwhelming I staggered backward, my breath getting hitched in my throat. It felt like a punch to the gut.

          She'd been here. The smell was fairly recent.

          I wasn't sure what I wanted to find, but my gut told me there was something waiting for me. That's why she had left me the San Francisco note—she wanted me to be here. She wanted me to see something, to find something. I was so close.

          "You know you're not supposed to be here," Leon said, standing right outside. I half-expected him, out of everyone else, to be the one to break Meridian's only rule along with me, but it was still a pleasant surprise to see him. I didn't freeze or get overcome by anger like I used to. "Why am I not surprised?"

          I sighed, tucking my hands inside my jacket's pockets. My fingers brushed against paper. "I don't know. Maybe you know me too well."

          "You're predictable," he pointed out. "I suppose that's also true, though."

          I hummed. "Want to help me out? I thought about looking around June's room to try to find something—anything." I turned to face him, almost expecting some hesitance, but he stepped inside the bedroom without looking back. "I just want to know why we're here. I want to know why she wanted me to come here."

          He nodded.

          It took me a while to remember June had made plans in San Francisco with him, so there was no one better to do this with me, but it still felt like a horrible invasion of privacy. Doing this was probably as painful for him as it was for me, but I wasn't sure how I should acknowledge it.

          "I don't want to spend this week fighting with you," he eventually began, as I went through June's books. Meridian had found the note and the house key inside one of his textbooks and I had found my own note inside my copy of Fahrenheit 451; who was to say this wasn't her modus operandi? "I don't feel like doing that anymore. It's not fun."

          "Was it ever?" I muttered. "Was it worth it?"

          "No. Probably not."

          "We promised we'd keep things chill. You know, for the sake of the group. For June's sake." He visibly winced. I'd just opened a can of worms we'd both managed to keep firmly shut for nearly three years. "I know we can't pretend nothing ever happened, but we can choose to stop being dicks to each other."

          "Sofia, you broke up with me. Not the other way around."

          I huffed, straightening my back. "Leon, I know. Talking about this goes against everything we just said; if we don't want to keep fighting, we need to let things go."

          "You never even told me why," he insisted, hands balled into fists, and my chest tightened. "You just told me you wanted to break up and never bothered to consider how I felt about the whole thing. You stopped talking to me for weeks after the break-up."

          I fell to the bed—June's bed. "Leon . . ."

          "Just tell me why. Tell me why you did it and why it was so easy for you to let me go as if I never meant a single thing to you." His eyes burned deep into mine. I knew there were no romantic feelings remaining between the two of us and, after all that happened, after everything we'd all been through, sometimes I even forgot about the whole thing. What brought me back to reality was the way we both antagonized each other—and had been doing for years. "You didn't call. You didn't text. You didn't look at me. It wasn't easy to go through that."

          "I did it for June." My voice was so low I could barely hear myself. "Everything I did—it was always for June. She loved you."

          "And I loved you. Guess that never counted for anything, did it? It was always about you and about what you wanted; it still is."

          "I loved her more," I croaked out. "I didn't want to step on her toes any longer. I didn't want to hurt you either, but I was being forced to choose between two people I cared about; don't you ever think, not for a split second, that it was easy for me either."

          "Whatever." Leon went back to pacing around the room, whereas I had already lost my motivation to keep searching. That was the story of my life—whenever I tried to make things better, whenever I tried to fix it, whenever I tried to help people, I kept doing the wrong thing. I hadn't even been able to help June; what made me think I was going to do it postmortem? "You could have talked to me."

          "Would it have changed things?"

          "No. I thought you trusted me enough to tell me the truth. Guess I was wrong."

          We fell silent. Even though I wished our brief conversation—I refused to think of it as an argument, as I'd grown tired of fighting with people a long time ago—was enough to settle things once and for all, I also knew Leon. There had once been a time when I knew him like the back of my hand, and I knew how destructive his grudges could be.

          Nevertheless, it wasn't about us. I'd have to keep reminding myself of that.

          It seemed like an entire eternity had passed until one of us found something relevant. Whenever I thought about speaking up, my brain turned into cotton candy and no words—or anything vaguely coherent—came out of my mouth, so he had to be the one to do it.

          "I think I found something," Leon announced.

          "What is it?"

          He was standing by her desk, the same spot I had avoided because it felt too obvious. I wasn't sure why I was thinking of June as some clever, mystery-obsessed mastermind, but it didn't make much sense for me to be this worried about what was painfully obvious and what was not. Granted, she'd been the biggest perfectionist I knew, and she rarely ever did something without going over it in her head countless times, but there were things not even she could control.

          Her pregnancy had been one of those things.

          I walked up to him as carefully as possible, as though there was a sleeping baby in the room, and he handed me a colorful flyer.

          "Pier 39," I murmured.

          "I think she's been here," Leon admitted. "If she wanted to come here for Spring Break, if she had plans, she must have been working on it for a while. You knew how she was." I nodded, keeping an eye on the list of Spring Break activities taking place in the pier. "This flyer can't be that recent."

          "No." I flipped the flyer over to check the back, finding a scribbled message.

I chose the best activities for you guys. Do me a favor and check them out, will you? I probably won't be able to make it.

x June

          "It can't have been a suicide," he continued, voice cracking. "It's impossible."

          "She was upset, Leon," I argued, even though I was conflicted. I didn't want to believe June had killed herself, mostly to ease my own guilt over not having noticed there was something wrong, but, at the same time, I needed answers. I needed to know what had happened. "She wasn't thinking clearly, she was drunk, and—"

           "There was no note. She would've planned the entire thing." He yanked the flyer right out of my hands, and I gulped. "Her plans got cancelled because she was pregnant. Pregnant women don't usually take part in dangerous Spring Break activities."

           "Not with that ankle, anyway." He knitted his brows together. "I, uh . . . her parents told Meridian and me she had this nasty injury in her ankle, so I talked to Grace about it. I showed her a copy of the autopsy report"—his nostrils flared—"and she, too, agreed it was a career-ending injury. If she was that hurt, pregnant or not, she would have to sit that one out."

          "She didn't do this to herself, damn it!" I flinched. "She didn't. It's impossible."

          "Maybe she wanted to! She was so drunk that—"

          "Stop it!"

          "Hey!" Grace called, from the door. Christina quickly followed suit, with Courtney following them close behind. "What the hell is going on? Why are you yelling? Why are you in June's room?"

          "Do you think June killed herself?" Leon questioned. Her eyes widened. "Yes or no?"

          "I . . ." She nervously glanced at me. "I don't know. I have no idea. That's why we're here, right? To try and figure it out—"

          "Well, she didn't. It's impossible." He slammed the flyer back onto the desk. "She died because she hit her head. The back of her head. You can't give yourself that injury, can you? She either slipped and fell, or someone hit her. That's it."

          Arguing wouldn't solve anything. We all knew it, yet we always fell back into the same old, toxic patterns. Day one and things were already this bad.

          "Whatever happened, someone will figure it out," Christina said, in an attempt to ease the tension. "Even if it's not us. Someone will."

          "Do you honestly believe that?" Leon snickered.

          She raised her chin. "Yes. Yes, I do."

          He groaned. "Hope you're ready to be disappointed, then."

          Then, he left the room. Shortly after, the front door slammed.