Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [119]
Despite her case of nerves, Jules thought about the evening ahead. She intended to call Analise again since Eli had been a TA. What was it he’d said to Jules the last time they’d spoken?
Analise was afraid you might go poking around.
Why?
Jules had considered her cousin’s concerns weird at the time. She’d thought Eli and Analise were worried about themselves and how they’d left the school, but maybe that hadn’t been it. Maybe they’d been afraid of what Jules might find….
She turned the corner and nearly ran over Maeve.
In tears, her shoulders braced against the wall, Maeve slowly slid to the floor, where she dissolved into horrid, heart-wrenching sobs, the books she’d been carrying falling onto her lap.
Jules was at the girl’s side in an instant. “What’s wrong?” Jules bent down on a knee to touch Maeve on her shoulder. “Maeve?”
Startled, as if she’d been in her own private world, Maeve looked up sharply and pulled back. “Nothing.” A bald-faced lie. She blinked back a fresh onslaught of tears and hiccupped, her eyes filled with despair as they met Jules’s.
“Oh, honey, you can talk to me.”
Maeve was sniffing and hiccuping, blinking like crazy. “I…said…I’m okay.” She scooted away, her right hand under her left sleeve and fidgeting—a motion Jules had noticed during class. “I’ll be all right. Really. Just leave me alone.”
Click, click, click!
“I don’t think so,” Jules said softly as she realized that Maeve was repeatedly snapping a rubber band against her wrist. Her face was flushed beet red, and tears drizzled from her eyes, tracking down her cheeks.
“Maeve…you know you shouldn’t be moving around campus alone, but…” Jules respected the girl’s space, but she wanted to help. “I’m here to help, okay? Is there anything I can do?”
“No!” Maeve was emphatic. She sniffed and scrambled onto her feet, losing hold of her bag.
The contents of her open purse tumbled out, scattering across the floor. She lunged for her purse and the books on her lap, and fell onto the floor, sliding on the shiny tiles. “Oh, crap!” Quickly she began retrieving items, a pink eyeglass case, a package of tissues, her wallet, keys, a plastic tampon case.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, mortified as she scooped a pack of breath mints and a pink knit cap into the purse. More tears. Black streaks of mascara. A quivering lower lip.
Jules couldn’t let this go on. “I’ll walk you where you need to go.” She tried to help, scraping up a couple of pens and a piece of paper that read OMEN. She handed them to Maeve, but the girl was suddenly furious. “Maybe you should talk to your counselor or Dean Burdette.”
“Just leave me alone! I’m fine! It’s not so weird to be upset, is it, not with everything that’s happening here.” Grabbing her wallet and eyeglass case, she sniffed loudly again, then shoved the items into her bag. She wiped the tears from her cheeks, then retrieved her notebook—the cover completely covered by ink doodles of faces, stars, hearts, and swirls of Ethan Slade’s initials—which had landed near a watercooler.
Maeve tucked the notebook under her arm, then swept the pens and note from Jules’s outstretched palm. “I don’t want your help. I don’t need your help.” But there was something in her eyes, a glimmer of self-doubt, a deep-seated sadness.
“I’m serious. I think you should talk to Dr. Williams,” Jules suggested, knowing that Maeve, like everyone else here, was caught in an emotional tidal wave, but she wondered if there was another reason other than her grief for her classmate that caused her complete emotional meltdown. “You know, Maeve, we’re all here to help.”
“You think anyone can help me?” she mocked, her face distorted by her ruined makeup. “Are you out of your mind? There’s nothing a counselor or you or anyone else can do, okay? So just leave me the hell—