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

year’s classroom are especially annoying today, even before the bell has rung, and today’s students are in a buzz about the football game that happened Friday night. Everything is so loud.

I’m pinching the bridge of my nose when a person appears in front of me. I look up, meeting Grace’s dark eyes. She looks frustrated and worn out.

I open my mouth, trying to think of something to say, but come up short. I have a flashback of her phone call to me, just before my world exploded. She’d needed me to pick her up. But I’d never shown up.

“Before you say anything, I just want you to know that I don’t blame you,” Grace tells me.

I try to speak, but again, no words come out.

“But that was kind of a jerk move.” She throws her backpack down on the table next to mine, scooting out the chair so she can sit.

“Grace—”

“I kind of deserved it. But seriously?”

I try to figure out how to respond. How can I explain to her everything that has happened? How can we repair this fractured friendship?

Luckily, I’m spared from having to figure it out right now because the bell rings and Mrs. Andrews calls the class to attention, preventing any further conversation. For fifty-five minutes, I sit there, listening to both Mrs. Andrews’s Chemistry lesson on bonds and the echoes of Mrs. Andrews’s Biology class learning about the carbon cycle. By the time the bell rings again, I still have no idea what to say to Grace.

“I get that you don’t want to talk to me. Just… let me know when you’ve come up with a good excuse,” Grace tells me, then leaves the room before I can form a reply.

At lunch, she’s nowhere to be found. Leo, on the other hand, is sitting at the table, staring straight at me as I walk towards him.

“So I heard what happened,” he tells me.

I think of the whole Grace situation, and then I think of getting kidnapped, rescued, and my conversation with Maverick. A lot of things happened. “What’d you hear?” I ask him bitterly. I plop down at the table, exhausted.

“Grace and Andy broke up. That he and Dana are back together,” he replies.

“Officially? Really?” I ask him. He doesn’t reply, but simply nods his head towards the table we’d seen Grace and Andy sitting at together last week. I glance over and don’t need any more confirmation because Dana and Andy are sitting next to each other, mid-kiss.

“And there are rumors,” Leo adds, “about how Grace handled the situation.” I watch him clench his fists on the table. “The whole school is talking about how she started screaming at Andy, about how she supposedly tried to fight Dana. That she’s a psycho.”

“Oh, no,” I blink, sliding my hands down my face. “This is so much worse than I thought.”

“What do you mean?”

“On Friday, when everything happened, Grace called me. She told me that everyone was being mean to her, so she left the party for a minute to go calm down and when she walked back in Andy and Dana were kissing. Anyways, she asked me to pick her up—since her parents didn’t know she was out and Andy had taken her to the party—and I told her I’d be there to get her, but… I never made it.” I say the last few words slowly, hoping Leo won’t need any further explanation.

“You what?” His eyes widen.

“She’s never going to forgive me.”

“How did she get home, then?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I thought she would have called you.”

He frowns. “I guess I’m not even on the list of people to call when she’s desperate.”

“Leo—”

“No, it’s fine,” he puts a hand up. “Where even is Grace now?”

“She was in Chemistry. She didn’t seem very happy with me, so she’s probably avoiding me now.”

“Or just avoiding me.”

“Or both of us.”

Leo and I sigh simultaneously.

“I don’t know what to do. How can I convince her I’m not a terrible friend?”

“You’d better have a really good explanation for why you never showed up,” Leo eyes me questioningly.

I search for some kind of response. I was kidnapped is a pretty good reason, but would she believe that without actual evidence or a police report? And how could I explain the reason for my kidnapping?

Fortunately, Leo doesn’t press the issue when I don’t respond, so we spend the rest of lunch in silence.

✽✽✽✽✽

Grace avoids me for the rest of the week, giving me time to think about everything in my life. Every single strange, crazy thing.

I don’t hear from Maverick, not that I’d really expected to. I don’t expect the strange twitch of disappointment I feel every time my phone lights up and it’s not his name, either. I know that I could just as easily open my phone and send him a text, but I’m not sure what I would even say. I’m still mad at him for erasing my memory, but as time passes, my curiosity grows, replacing the anger.

What is Maverick like? Right now, the only Maverick I’d experienced in person was the frustrated, angry, or desperate Maverick who was caught in a situation he didn’t know how to handle very well. But what was he like outside of that? I think of the echoes I’d heard, where he seemed so sweet and gentle or flirty and playful. Which one was he: the dark, serious Maverick, or the open, lighthearted one?

Perhaps he was both. Perhaps we don’t really know someone until we experience all of the different sides to them.

On Thursday night, I experience another side of Maverick.

I’m sitting at the table attempting to focus on homework when I hear an echo of the doorbell ringing. I hear my own voice, a little bit scratchy, call