The Education of Hailey Kendrick - Eileen Cook [70]
“Why didn’t you use the door?”
“It’s a long story.” I could tell that she didn’t believe me. She acted suddenly fascinated by a microscopic-size chip in her fingernail polish. “It was an accident, Kels.”
“Then, why did you leave a suicide note?”
“What! I didn’t leave a note.” Then my mind flashed to the note I had meant to keep people from coming after me when I left for Chicago. I wanted to pull the covers up over my head.
“There was a note. I saw it; someone leaked to the Web already.” She slapped her hand over her mouth. I guessed she wasn’t supposed to upset me further by telling me that my latest adventure had also made the tabloids.
“Can I see your phone?” I said. Kelsie opened her mouth to protest, but I held my hand out. She passed me her phone, and I did a quick search on the Internet. The story popped right up on one of the celebrity sites. I skimmed past the headline and story and read the note again, to see if it sounded as bad as I’d feared.
Please don’t worry about me. I have to go away. No one is making me do this. Please don’t blame anyone. This is my decision. I know my leaving will upset people. I don’t want anyone to be hurt or angry, but this is something I have to do. Please try to understand.
I closed my eyes. It sounded worse than I’d imagined. I might as well have ended the note by writing GOOD-BYE, CRUEL WORLD! and drawing a skull or a black heart.
“It’ll be okay.” Kelsie patted my arm like it was a kitten.
“I jumped off the balcony because I didn’t want to get caught for having broken into Winston’s office. I needed my passport for identification for the plane, so I took it out of his secretary’s file cabinet. My plan was to go to Chicago to see my dad. We had another fight and I wanted to see him.”
“We thought you had your passport on you so your body could be identified.”
“I was jumping from the second story, not into a farm combine. I would have been identifiable.”
“Unless you landed on your face,” Kelsie pointed out.
Our eyes met, and we started to giggle. “Good point. Never land on the face.”
“Well, I suppose the silver lining is that you don’t have to travel to Chicago. Your dad’s here. Not to mention you don’t have to take a cheap discount airline. If you’re going to travel, go first class, or don’t bother going.”
“Whew. Saved from the horrors of low-cost coach travel. All I had to do was break my leg and knock myself out.” I laughed again.
“I am sorry about Tristan, you know,” Kelsie said. “I was going to tell you a thousand different times, but then I never could bring myself to do it. At first I excused it by telling myself nothing was happening. We were just flirting, joking around. Then when it was more, I didn’t know how to stop.”
“Do you love him?” I asked.
Kelsie’s eyes filled back up with tears. “I know I shouldn’t, but I think I always have.”
“It’s okay. You’ll be good for him. He always needed someone who would keep him more on his toes.”
“He still cares for you.”
“I care for him, too. I never stopped. We were good together, just not meant to be a couple forever. I think both of us stayed because we loved how comfortable it felt. Stability is a good thing, but not everything.”
“You still must have been mad that I didn’t tell you. You shouldn’t have heard it from someone else.”
“I wasn’t exactly making myself easy to talk to,” I admitted.
“You pulled away from everyone. Not just Tristan, everyone. It was like you put yourself in exile. It was like you didn’t want to be our friend anymore.”
“I know. At first I was sure it was everyone else, but I think you’re right. I did exile myself. Maybe I needed the space to figure things out, figure me out.”
“Did you?”
“Nope.” We laughed. “But I’m making headway. At least I’m doing something about it instead of waiting for someone else to figure it out for me. I’m not sure where life is going to take me, especially when Dean Winston figures out I