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

I choke out. June, as in four months ago? As in, eight months after meeting Maverick for the first time?

“Yeah. It didn’t even cross my mind that y’all might not be together anymore. You seemed so… happy. I thought maybe you’d gone away for the summer or something.”

I have to focus to control my breathing. “What happened to him?” I say, barely above a whisper.

Elle gives me a pained look. “He wasn’t in the accident with you, was he?”

I breathe in slowly. There was no accident. There is no explanation. He’s gone, vanished from my life, leaving nothing behind, not even a memory of him. Except for this girl, in this random coffee shop that I’d never have stumbled into if I hadn’t been chased that night. Why would she remember, when neither I, my parents, or even Tony can remember him? None of it makes any sense.

“I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea you—” Elle begins to say, but I cut her off, feeling my eyes starting to water.

“Thank you for telling me,” I choke out, then turn around. It takes everything I have to pull it together as I walk back to Leo.

“I thought you were going to grab some napkins?” Leo asks as I sit down across from him. He glances up, then frowns. “Are you okay?”

I stare down at my melting cookie-dough ice cream cone. “I’m fine,” I say.

“Look,” Leo shakes his head, “everything’s gonna be okay with Grace, just give it some time.”

I nod, wishing he knew that there was so much more going on in my life. “I think I should get home,” I tell him.

Leo nods and doesn’t say another word to me as we exit the shop. He gives me a small wave as he walks past my car towards his own, and then I drive home in silence.

✽✽✽✽✽

That night, I can’t sleep, something that’s becoming a recurring pattern in my life. I pace back and forth in my room for hours, thinking I might eventually tire myself out, but every time I lay back in bed, I end up just staring at the ceiling, wide awake. Over and over I try to make everything make sense, but I can’t. The ice cream girl had seen me and Maverick coming into her shop for months. And then, in June, we’d just… stopped. What had happened in June? Would I have to wait until then, listening to these echoes for months, to find out? The idea sounds like torture.

Sometime around two in the morning, I’m pacing around my room again when I pause by the window, peering out at the street. I do a double-take when I realize that there, sitting in the driveway of the house that’s been abandoned—Maverick’s house—is a car. I can’t exactly see it very well through the dark, but the dark shape of it is unmistakable.

My heart skips a beat. Someone is there, right now. Could it be him?

I don’t even think about it, I just move, grabbing my coat, rushing downstairs, and slipping on my shoes. Then I’m quietly opening the front door, slipping outside into the cold night air, moving towards the house.

When I get closer, the car in the driveway becomes more visible in the moonlight, and my stomach drops. It’s a black sport’s car. I don’t recognize the brand or model, but it looks exactly like the one that showed up the night of the Halloween dance.

When I get even closer, I see that the entire right side is crushed. I pause, the pieces falling into place. This could be Maverick’s car. He could have been the one protecting me from the Suburban chasing me. If we were so in love like Elle had explained, then it would make sense that he’d want me to be safe. Right?

But, then, who was chasing me? And more importantly: why?

Slowly, I creep closer to the house. I crouch down as I get to the front, not wanting whoever’s inside to see me. I step past the bushes covered in slowly dying yellow flowers, peering at the front. The door has a padlock on it, the same kind I’d seen on houses that have been foreclosed. The blinds in the windows are drawn, and I can’t see anything inside, not even a hint of light.

I slowly shuffle across the front of the yard, making my way to the side, then the back of the house. Whoever parked the car must have gotten inside somehow, and I intend to use the same point of entrance.

At the back, I crouch as I move past each window, trying to see inside. Eventually, I spot what I’m looking for: just past the padlocked back door, a window is wide open with the screen on the ground beside it. The glass is broken through in one corner, a hole just big enough for someone to reach their hand inside and unlock the window.

I sit crouched a few feet away from it, contemplating. If I go, I could run into whoever is inside. If it’s Maverick, I might be able to get some answers. But if it’s someone else, or if Maverick isn’t the sweet, fun guy he sounds like in the echoes…

I shake the thought away. I’m willing to take that risk more than anything right now.

So I wait just outside the window for a few minutes, listening. There’s no noise coming from inside, not even from the past. When I peer into the house, I don’t see any movement, so I throw a leg over the window sill and slip inside.

It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but when they do, I’m surprised by what I see. I’m standing in the living room, and instead of being empty like I’d expected the abandoned house to be, it’s full of furniture.