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Chapter 3


Do you ever wonder why stuff is the way it is? I don’t mean, like, why is the sky blue, or why is the grass green? Those are the kinds of questions little kids ask, and I’m not a little kid. The sky is blue because of how the gases in the atmosphere scatter light, and the grass is green because of chlorophyll – I learned that in science.

I’m talking about why things happen the way they do. Like, why did my dad have to die? The guy who killed him didn’t even know him, so why did he choose our house to break into? It wasn’t even that nice of a house. Why our house, and not the house next door? Why my daddy, and not somebody else’s?

It’s not like I wish it had been someone else’s dad. I’m not that mean. I just wonder why it had to happen at all. Why did he have to die? Why did anyone have to die? Why did everyone die? And why am I still alive?



Thursday, April 5, 2012
8 days before Infernal Friday

“You’re dead!” came a gloating shout, as the gun-wielding character on screen collapsed to his knees, to be devoured by Ganados. “Too bad, the zombies got you. Now come on, let’s go watch High School Musical 3. I’m tired of playing video games.”

The TV clicked off, and Gabrielle Lopez found herself being yanked to her feet by her best friend, Makayla Dean. She dropped the Playstation controller in her hand and followed Makayla from her brother’s room, which they had infiltrated to play on his game console, back to her own, in which glossy posters of Zac Efron and Robert Pattinson smiled down from glaringly pink walls.

Gabby, almost more at home in this room than her own, plopped down into a turquoise beanbag chair while Makayla stopped in front of her TV to put in the DVD. They had only watched the third High School Musical about a hundred times together in the three years it had been out. They knew every line and every lyric by heart. “Sorry, I was just getting so bored watching you play Resident Evil again,” Makayla said, as she turned off the lights and stretched out on the floor next to Gabby. “I’m having a Zac attack!”

Gabby smiled; Makayla was always in need of a Zac Efron fix, even with his face covering her walls, her pillowcases, her folders and notebooks at school, everything. She played along with the addiction, but really, she had forgotten what it was like to care so much about something. She could still recite the script to High School Musical from memory; it was programmed into her brain. But so, it seemed, was everything else she did these days.

She let her mind wander as the movie began; there was no need to pay attention to follow the story she knew so well. She could giggle on command at all the parts she’d once found funny, jump in with Gabriella’s lines when Makayla sang Troy’s, and still be a million miles away in her head. Going through the motions again; that’s what she was doing. She had been doing it for months now. She thought she might be an actress when she grew up, like Vanessa Hudgens, because that was all she ever did anyway. Act.

Staring at Makayla’s TV screen without really watching it, Gabby chewed on her bottom lip. She wished things could go back to the way they were last year, when she and Makayla were in sixth grade. She had never had to act around her best friend then. She had told Makayla everything, all her deepest secrets, which she realized now were nothing all that deep anyway. Certainly not like the thoughts she’d been coping with for the last ten months, anyway.

Everything had changed the night the robber broke into her house and murdered her father. She had changed. She didn’t feel like the silly little girl she’d been when she had gone to bed that night, a twelve-year-old who felt perfectly safe in her house with her mom and dad sleeping in the next room over, unconcerned with the war going on outside her country’s borders, just eager to have the best summer of her life with her best friend forever.

Makayla was still her BFF and always would be, but nothing else would ever be the same for Gabby. She no longer felt safe at home, despite the locks and deadbolts and security system her mother had installed. She didn’t sleep well either. Without fail, she awoke at least once every night, sometimes more often than that, from nightmares that made her dread falling back to sleep. She cried sometimes, burying her face in her pillow to muffle the sound so that she wouldn’t make her mom sad too, but in the light of the morning, she always managed to pull herself together and go about her act, pretending things were still normal and that she was okay.

The ringtone of her cell phone interrupted her thoughts, and the movie as well. Makayla went to pause it while Gabby hurried to dig her phone out of her bag, but Gabby waved her off, saying, “You can keep it playing; it’s just my mom.” She flipped the phone open and put it to her ear. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetheart,” came her mother’s voice. “I’m just calling to check in. Everything going okay?”

“Yep, fine.”

“Having fun? What are you and Mak doing?”

“Watching HSM 3.”

Gabby’s mom chuckled. “Again?”

“Yep,” said Gabby. She wasn’t exactly sure why her replies to her mother had been reduced to one or two words, but most of their conversations went just like this these days. Their relationship, along with everything else, had changed in the last year. Most people expected Gabby and her mother to be closer than ever, now that it was just the two of them, but in reality, it was just the opposite. Rather than cling to the only parent she had left, Gabby had distanced herself.

It wasn’t something she’d done on purpose; it had just sort of happened. She had always been more of a Daddy’s girl, but when he was alive, Gabby and her mom had never butted heads like they did now. Her mother was always trying to talk, asking questions. Gabby hated her prying. She knew, deep down, that her mom loved her and was concerned about her, but she had become so overprotective that Gabby couldn’t stand her sometimes. Even when her mother wasn’t working twelve-hour shifts at the hospital, they spent most of their time apart; Gabby preferred to be alone in the sanctuary of her bedroom.

“Alright…” The voice on the phone trailed off, and Gabby felt a pang of guilt. She knew her mom wished she would say more, wished she would open up to her, but for whatever reason, Gabby could not. She didn’t totally understand it herself, but she could not bring herself to add anything else. “Well, I guess I’ll let you go then. Don’t stay up too late, alright? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“’Kay.”

“’Night, Gabs. I love you,” her mother offered, and the guilty feeling poked at Gabby’s insides some more.

“Love you too,” she replied quickly, and ended the call.

Makayla looked up as Gabby slipped her phone back into her bag and returned to her spot. “Just calling to check up on you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Gabby sighed, rolling her eyes. “You know my mom. She’s so annoying.”

Makayla shrugged, offering a sympathetic smile. “Moms are just like that,” she said, before returning her attention to the movie.

Gabby did the same – or pretended to, at least. She pretended to be thinking only of the complicated lives of her favorite characters, and not her own. She liked spending the night at Makayla’s house because when she was with Makayla, it was easy to do that. She could talk about the boys at school, none of whom she actually liked, and watch their favorite movies, and sneak into Makayla’s brother’s room to play video games, and not have to think about her dad. She didn’t have to walk by her parents’ bedroom and feel sorry for her mother, who must be so lonely, or look at the spot on the kitchen floor where she had watched him die in a puddle of blood. She didn’t have to answer her mom’s questions or listen to her threats to send Gabby to talk to a counselor. Makayla never ever brought up what had happened last summer, and that was how Gabby preferred it. At Makayla’s house, she could be the old Gabby, even if she was only acting, and pretend it had never happened at all.

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