Chapter Twenty — Blair

Blair stared at his food, not hungry in the slightest. His mom sat across from him at the dinner table, chatting like everything was fine and normal. He noticed she didn’t bring up what had happened at school that day—or the way that Blair had just sat there, not saying anything in Sandra’s defense.

Gabe sat next to their mom, silently mimicking her and rolling his eyes while she rambled on about something no one else cared about. Their dad’s attention was solely on his food.

Blair should have said something in his mom’s office—he should have stood up for Sandra. He had meant to and had been scrolling through Sandra’s accounts to show that she had been tagged in the photo but had never posted it herself. His mom was inept at social media and didn’t know the difference.

But by the time he’d found what he was looking for, Sandra had disappeared. He’d rushed out after her, but when he’d found her, she’d been surrounded by Amanda and Gracie. And she’d been crying.

Blair hadn’t known what to do. Sandra’s friends were already helping her, and he hadn’t been sure if Sandra would even want to see him. It was because of his mom that she was crying, after all. Or was it because of him?

Maybe Blair should have taken that risk though. Because she’d been avoiding his calls ever since. And his texts. And his pleas for forgiveness. Sandra wanted nothing to do with him.

“Are you even listening?” Blair’s mom asked, breaking into his thoughts.

Blair blinked a couple of times, taking a moment to focus in on her. “Who else would have the motivation to post that picture?” he asked.

“Did they have to have a motivation?” Gabe said, like Blair had asked the dumbest question in the world. “It could have just been someone who saw it on the website and thought it was wicked awesome.”

Their mom frowned. “It was Sandra. We determined that earlier.”

Blair glared at the piece of pot roast that sat on his plate, still untouched. All of this trouble because of a stupid picture and a meddling mother. Photos were shared online all the time. And yet this one had sparked a special kind of insanity.

Something pushed his chair backwards, jerking Blair and making his arm land hard on the table. “Ow,” he said, rubbing it.

Gabe smiled as he retracted his foot. “Mom was asking about your senior trip.”

“Trip?” It hadn’t even crossed Blair’s mind. He knew it was the type of thing that a lot of kids at school got excited about—their last adventure before real life smacked them upside the head—but Blair wasn’t planning on facing real life. Not yet, anyway. “Oh, I’m not going.”

Rather than seem disappointed, his mom looked thrilled. His dad gave Blair a subtle shake of his head—a warning.

Uh-oh.

“Perfect. I have a friend who has a friend who owns a dude ranch in Utah. They’re looking for students to work there over the summer, and I told her you’d be interested.”

Blair stood, his elbow still stinging. “Really, Mom? A dude ranch?”

“Okay, it’s more of a resort. But I know you’re going to love it. I did a similar thing after I graduated high school and it changed my life.”

He gave a quick shake of his head, barely containing his annoyance. “Could you stop interfering for five minutes? Did it ever occur to you that I like my life—that I don’t want it to change?”

Her lips parted in surprise, but he didn’t know why she acted so surprised. Couldn’t she see what she was doing? She was always taking over people’s lives. At the beginning of their senior year, after Cameron had pulled a prank on the drama club, she had thrown him into the school play to teach him a life lesson. Okay, bad example, because Cameron then met Amanda and fell in love. Kudos to Mom for that one. But she was always trying to push Blair toward the right people, the right job, the right life—what if he didn’t want the ‘right’ things all the time? What if he wanted his life messy?

What if he wanted to date a girl like Sandra and to backpack across the world after graduation and to embark on an aimless mission to discover who he was without his mother watching all the time?

Amendment: He didn’t want a girl like Sandra. He wanted the real deal. And Blair was going to figure out a way to get her back.

“I thought you’d think it was fun,” his mom said, sounding hurt.

Blair released a long and exasperated sigh. “I don’t even know what a dude ranch is, Mom. What makes you think I’d want to work at one? Have I ever expressed a desire to muck out horse stalls?”

“That is not what you’d be doing,” she said, suddenly defensive. “Riding horses is only one of the many activities the guests can be involved with. You could be taking them four-wheeling or to the archery range or shooting or fishing or on the zipline or rappelling in the canyon… It’s right outside of Zion National Park, you know… Or if you don’t want to work with the guests at all, you could…”

Shooting? Rappelling? Blair didn’t know how to do any of that stuff. “Mom?” She continued talking as if she hadn’t heard him. “Mom.” She was still going. “Mom!”

She stopped just as she was telling Blair how he could clean the guests’ cabins—wouldn’t that be fun?

His mom frowned. “You’re not even giving it a chance.”

“Because none of what you’ve been talking about is appealing to me. At all. I don’t want to do it. Please…stop trying to make my life into what you want it to be.”

Gabe piped in, “I’ll go. Sounds fun!”

“You’re not old enough.” Blair’s mom retrieved a pamphlet she’d hidden under her dinner plate. She held it out to Blair. “Will you at least consider it?”

Blair didn’t move to take the pamphlet from her. “Why do you care so much if I make someone else’s bed or teach them how to shoot a gun—which I don’t know how to do, by the way. Haven’t you been trying to get me to apply myself so I don’t end up somewhere like this…this…dude ranch?”

His mom shook her head, but she didn’t seem disappointed. Instead, she looked tired. Like the conversation had taken too much of what little energy she had left at the end of the day.

“I’ve been trying to get you to apply yourself so you have options, baby cakes.”

Whoa. His mom just pulled out her pet name from when he’d been little. That hadn’t happened since—he couldn’t remember the last time. “In order to have options, you need to allow me to have access to them,” he said, his tone softening. “And not just the ones you deem fit.”

She cleared the dirty dishes from the table, quiet.

Blair picked up his own and carried them to the sink.

“You don’t know how the mistakes you make now will affect the rest of your life,” she said.

“I’ll take my chances.”

His mom gave him one last long look. “Do you know what Day of the Dead is?”

Blair was startled by the question. After a brief hesitation, he gave a quick shake of his head.

“Me neither.”

Blair hurried out of the kitchen and up the stairs to his bedroom. An uncomfortable tension had settled downstairs, and he had to get out.

* * * *

Day of the Dead. Día de los Muertos.

Blair had had no idea that Sandra’s shirts had been anything other than artsy skulls, but she had made a point of bringing up Day of the Dead in the meeting with his mother. It seemed like it was important to her, so he had looked it up.

Blair stared at his phone screen, not wanting to read on.

He was afraid of what it would say.

Sandra’s shirts hadn’t given off a creepy vibe, but Blair couldn’t help but think it had something to do with the occult. He didn’t think that Sandra would be involved in something like that.

But still, it was called Day of the Dead.

And if there was anything that terrified Blair, it was death. He hadn’t even been able to look into the casket at his grandmother’s funeral. It had been partly because he didn’t want to remember her like that—stiff and cold. That wasn’t the grandmother he knew. She had been one of the most energetic people he’d ever known.

And he was embarrassed to admit that there had been a part of him that had expected her to pop up out of the casket and scare the daylights out of him. That would have been something Grandma JoJo would have done, and then have a good laugh about it.

Blair steeled himself and then read the first line of the article he’d found online. And then the next. And the next. As he read, his anxiety lifted and he discovered a newfound respect for Sandra. He followed that up with videos and documentaries, not being able to get enough.

Blair finally knew how to prove to Sandra how much he cared for her, and for the things that were important to her.

Because the things she loved had just become a part of him as well.

First things first. He needed to show these videos to his mom.