Echoes by Marissa Lete (best books for students to read txt) 📕

don’t know. I walked in and they were sitting on the couch together, his arm around her. He was—”

Behind me, in the far corner of the bathroom, a chorus of laughter fills the air. I turn my head around, ready to snap at whoever might be making fun of Grace’s distress, but realize that no one is there. It’s only an echo, probably some girls from last year laughing over a text message or something one of them said.

“Did you see the other one yet?” a girl’s voice says amidst the laughter. I pull my focus away from the echo as another voice responds, turning my attention back to Grace.

“—called me about him falling down the stairs. ‘Here to clean up your mess?’ she said.” Her voice turns obnoxious as she mimics Dana, and she’s oblivious to the small interruption I’d just experienced.

“Are you serious?” I ask in disbelief as I try to fill in the gaps of the conversation.

She dabs her eye before answering, mascara staining the white tissue paper. “Yeah, it’s ridiculous. She clearly set the whole thing up. Maybe he didn’t mean to do it, maybe he—”

“Whoa,” I put a hand up, “hold on. Andy went to that party without telling you— and he knows you don’t trust Dana. He was not thinking about your feelings at all.”

“When has he ever?” A sob wracks through her body.

I pull her into a hug. “My point exactly.”

“I’m so done.”

“I know.” I hold her there for a minute, soothing her. When she finally pulls away, the second-period bell rings.

“You know what, I’m not even going to cry anymore,” Grace says, drying her eyes. “And instead of boohooing and eating ice cream from the tub all day, we should celebrate.”

This is a surprise, but I’m all for it. “What do you want to do?”

“Let’s skip the rest of school. Go explore, or something.” I watch her face brighten as the idea solidifies in her mind.

My eyes widen. “Skip school? But I’ve never—”

Her mouth spreads into a grin, and she takes my hand. “Come on!”

✽✽✽✽✽

Two hours later, we’re sitting in my car in front of my house, the brisk October air quickly sapping any remnants of heat from the inside.

“That,” I say, “has got to be the best cookie dough ice cream I’ve ever had.”

Grace shoves the last bite of her ice cream cone into her mouth. “It was, in fact, very delicious,” she replies, chewing through each word.

I laugh, shaking my head. Skipping school wasn’t exactly as hard as I’d imagined it to be. A trip to the nurse’s office and a call to my mom saying I wasn’t feeling well—including several reassurances that yes, I was well enough to drive myself home and that no, I didn’t need her to come home from work to take care of me—was all it took, and then Grace and I were free to go. Both of our parents would be at work until later in the evening, so we had plenty of time to roam downtown Shorewick before stopping for food. Grace had still wanted ice cream, but we got it in cone-form, which is much less depressing than right-from-the-tub form. Then we drove back to my house, where we sat in the car, finishing up those ice cream cones.

Grace reaches out to turn the volume of the radio up. A pop song I’ve never heard before blasts through the speakers. “I love this song!” she says, excited.

I shrug in response. “Never heard it before.”

Grace gapes at me. “Are you serious? This is, like, in the top ten right now. All the radio stations play it!”

I shrug again. Truthfully, I don’t think I’ve ever turned the radio on in my car before. Cars are one of the only places that I never hear the echoes, so when I’m in one, I like to relish in the silence, something I rarely get to do. At least, I used to rarely get to do. Things are a lot better now than they had been when I was younger.

Growing up, the echoes weren’t exactly something that made sense to my parents. When I was little, they chalked it up to me just having a lot of imaginary friends, but when I started to get older, and I was still commenting about all of the noise I was hearing, they started to worry. Eventually, they started taking me to a stream of mental health experts, all of whom came to the conclusion that I had schizophrenia, bipolar, or some other personality disorder. For a while, I even believed it myself. I was hearing things that no one else was, which was strange. I had to be hallucinating.

At least, that’s what I thought until I started remembering the things I was hearing. My parents singing happy birthday from last year, Dad watching the football game that aired exactly two years ago. And then it all made sense: it was all sound from the past, not just a bunch of random concoctions of my brain. Everything I could hear was something that had actually happened.

After I realized that, it didn’t take long to convince my parents and my psychologist—all I did was listen for the name of the patient who had been in my psychologist’s office on the same day last year and convince her to check her records. When the same name was right there in the file, things changed. Of course, I had to answer a few more questions about past things to convince her and my parents, but when I did, they were baffled by the situation.

Turns out, I just have this strange ability to hear the past, and it isn’t something anyone understands. My psychologist wanted to get some doctors involved and do a bunch of tests, but my parents quickly stopped that before I