The Beauty That Remains: Chapters 9–17

“Nice work, Ms. Malone,” he says, looking at me, as if I’m an impostor or something.

I look at Deedee next, with her honest eyes and big smile, and at Jerome, with his pretty lips and furrowed brow.

And Ro, who looks at me like I’m an apparition half the time and teases me the rest.

After some pretty searing pain, I stand up and twist my wrist toward the mirror.

But Dante’s rage is completely unbridled.

When he whips around, his face is contorted and his teeth are bared.

She looks earnest and innocent...

He invites a couple of kids from down the hall to join us, and an impromptu party starts, just like that.

“He’s unpretentious, you know? He doesn’t care about status and all that. He cares about the music.”

Rohan looks stricken again. He frowns.

One blogger, whose avatar is a photo of a bald girl (her, I assume) with a pink ribbon tied around her head, has reblogged Sasha’s post and added the comment, What a BAMF.

The entrance to the path is sun dappled and pretty, but it’s treacherous once you’re in there.

“I guess I have to skip too,” I say, like it’s not a big deal. “In solidarity or whatever.”

But inevitably, your profile pulls me in like a magnet.

Tears are falling by the time I look at him, a torrent of them, and when Dante sees my face, his looks dark and full like the sky before it rains.

He pries my hands away from the tree and pulls me toward him, and for a second, I fall against his chest and bunch the fabric of his shirt in my fists.

“Who is it?” comes Ms. Lassiter’s voice, sounding tinny and robotic through the ancient speaker on the door.

I pour myself a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and Bram’s last report card, a mediocre mix of Bs and Cs that’s pretty similar to my own, is still stuck to the fridge, magnetic poetry pieces for the words “chocolate” and “sky” holding it in place.

I pivot again, and I see the image of the headstone from Slaughterhouse-Five: “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” It looks like he ripped the epitaph right out of the book.

“Don’t cry.” I feel like such a cliché, but I point to the bed.

But I don’t have any time to digest the news because Yara keeps talking.

It’s a candlelight vigil, where me and a few friends will, like, talk about him.

I wonder where he gets these clothes—if they’re hand-me-downs or if he picks them out at thrift stores or consignment shops just as they are.

But before he can say anything, Perry materializes from somewhere.

“May I have this dance, Logo?” he asks with a grin.
I swallow what’s left in my glass and then oblige because I hope dancing will be a way to open him up, to ease into asking him more about Bram.