Free How to Say I Love You Out Loud by Karole Cozzo

I try to keep
my face neutral. But as hard as it is to stand there, it’s even more impossible to move.
    “No, but seriously,” Jason says, “I heard some school for crazy kids closed and they all had to come back to our school.”
    “For good?” Mitch asks.
    Jason shrugs. “Don’t know.”
    Now the girls are starting to involve themselves. “Are they seriously crazy?” Dana questions. “Like, dangerous?”
    A hot ball of fury emerges from the cold numbness in my stomach. What a stupid thing to say. Phillip’s hardly crazy
or
dangerous.
    “I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this much: That kid was out of control,” Jason answers. “He didn’t think twice about attacking the person who was trying to
work with him.”
    Attacking?
    Phillip didn’t
attack
him. Phillip was trying to get away from him, if anything. Phillip was trying to get away from all of it.
    “Don’t we have a right to know or something?” Leighton questions innocently. “Like, did anyone bother to tell our parents about this? ‘Oh, by the by, we’re
bringing a busful of crazy people into your kids’ school.’ ”
    “Course not,” says Dana, taking a sip directly from the bottle of Goldschläger. She teeters on her feet. “It’s just like all the school shootings. Nobody says
anything until after the fact. Then it’s all coulda, woulda, shoulda.” She giggles, a complete, drunken imbecile.
    They don’t know him at all. Yet they assume he is crazy, violent. Likening him to a possible criminal, a possible murderer.
    Why is everyone always so
damn
stupid?
    Hot tears coat my throat and blur my eyes. I need to go. I need to go
now
, or else they might fall, right in front of everyone.
    I turn away from the crowd. “I need a minute,” I mumble in Tanu’s direction.
    But she doesn’t hear me, and grabs at my sleeve, forcing me to turn around. “What?”
    I feel the pressure of unshed tears against my eyes, creating urgency in my escape. “I just need a minute!” I practically shout it, my voice unexpectedly loud and shrill.
    Alex’s eyes leap up from the ground, finding mine. The laughter drains from them at once, and they are dark and serious, intense with concern, through the fire. I hold them with mine for
just a second, begging for the help I can’t ask for out loud.
    But I have to go, so I turn and stalk off into the grove of pine trees, the ones behind the fire pit, away from the people hooking up or smoking up. I collapse onto the ground on a bed of soft
needles that are cold through my jeans. I stretch my shirt’s collar over my chin and curl my hands inside the cuffs.
    I feel like Phillip, suddenly understanding the desire to escape every single sensation around me.
    I glower into the darkness. I mean, truly, I don’t really get
why
, when Phillip is so damn distant from me, it feels like any of this is about
me
. Phillip barely exists
on the same planet as I do. Besides sharing an address and a kitchen table, our lives rarely overlap.
    So why do their comments feel so personal? Why do
I
feel insulted?
    Why do they make me so angry?
    It’s Phillip. Phillip who sometimes doesn’t even recognize me outside of our house. They might as well be talking about a stranger.
    But . . . they just don’t get it. They don’t get how much this is
not
a joke.
    He’s still a person. He’s not a joke to share around a bonfire.
    My life is not a laughing matter.
    Tears finally slip down my cheeks. I draw my knees into my chest and cry into the denim of my jeans. I am silent about it, but I feel the material slowly grow damp against my skin.
    When I manage to straighten up, wiping my tears with the back of my hand, I find gray New Balances and a pair of loose jeans in front of me. Looking up, I see the rest of Alex. I didn’t
hear him approach, and I have no idea how long he’s been watching me.
    He doesn’t wait for an invitation before easing himself onto the ground beside me, Miller Lite bottle in his hand. There is