Maverick

Chapter 30

It was nearly the end of another long day. Huge, luminous clouds had been looming over all day, and every single time I had looked out of the window light spatters of rain covered the glass decoratively. The end of the week hadn't come soon enough. As the final bell resounded throughout the corridor I opened my locker, shrugging on my rain jacket as the hall filled with shouts, chatter and loud, hooting laughter. I felt a hand at my shoulder and turned around, it was Hanna. Since starting college, Hanna had changed a lot. Gone were the luxuriously long, mermaid-like locks she had sported ever since I could remember; Hanna had cut her hair into a short, cute, pixie-style bob. It suited her too, it made her look younger, and the short curls of hair that lined her cheekbones shaped her face delicately. Her radical fashion sense had died down a little too: today Hanna wore jeans alongside a loose-fitting checked shirt and converse. The most abstract change, however, was the fact that now, after almost five months of anger, upset and pretending that the other didn't exist, Hanna and I were best friends again. After the funeral, it had happened almost simultaneously. Suddenly, everything that had happened before seemed insignificant. Meaningless. Almost as if the pain I had experienced with Ezra's death somehow cancelled out all the wrongs I had done to Hanna. Maybe she had finally realised how terrible I felt for what had happened to her that night. It was just sad that it had taken Isaac's death to change that.

"So, anything exciting planned this weekend?"

I smiled at Hanna weakly over my locker. "Not really," I said. "Unless you count two essays and a ton of reading as fun."

"Same." She nudged me in the ribs, her coffee eyes glinting. "But Maverick's picking you up today, isn't he?" I noticed that she made a conscious effort to brighten her voice.

"Yeah, I guess." My locker swung closed with a bang. "It's not what you think, though. We're going to see Gabby."

"Oh, Reece." The multitude of faces around us seemed to evaporate for a moment. All I felt was the hard grip of her fingers on my arm, the only sound her comforting voice, the one thing visible to me the warmth of Hanna's burnt-sugar eyes. "Was the last time you saw her...?"

"The funeral. Yep." I let my gaze sink down to the ground. "I don't even know if she wants to see me."

"Hey. You, Gabby and your Dad were the three people closest to Ezra. Of course she wants to see you."

I mumbled unintelligibly, pulling the collar of my jacket closer around my neck. When Maverick had first mentioned the proposition of going to visit Gabby, I had just gone along with it, if nothing solely for Maverick's sake. Ever since Ezra's death, he had been the lynch target of the town. Nothing too violent could ever happen to anyone in broad daylight, but Maverick had received enough death stares and malicious notes through his letterbox to know that he was no longer welcome here. Somehow, everyone knew about the contestation between Ezra and Maverick, and what had happened that

And with that, Gabby took Maverick into her arms, rubbed his back with her hands. Her eyes were glistening with unfilled tears. Her perfect red lips were pulled tightly into a straight line, as if to hide the emotion. It seemed like the longest moment before she released him, and she brushed a hand against her eyes before gesturing us to follow her into the kitchen. "Coffee, or tea?"

Even though I had visited their home countless times throughout almost the whole of my life, for so many times I couldn't even remember, it felt different. This wasn't the same place where I had spent so many lazy Sunday afternoons playing video games with Ezra, or the garden where we had drunk homemade lemonade until our stomachs hurt, or spent hours in the wood-panelled kitchen perfecting our signature cream scones. This didn't feel like the same place where he had held his crazy house parties.